Cheer Up, Get a Gadget

This is the coolest lamp ever, cordless (after you charge it up). It is about the size of a hand. It arrives folded, and unfolds like a cherry-picker to any extent you like. The head with all the LED lights twirls left and right, up or down. Touch the pad at the bottom and it bursts into light or turns off. Stroke the pad at the bottom and the LED lights turn yellow or dim.

I am fascinated. The bedroom ceiling light is so wuss that it can't take higher-voltage bulbs nor the coiled energy-saving bulbs because they're too long for the fixture's base and cover. Even with a table lamp there was never enough light for taking stuff from the closets or reading--a bedroom not fit for reading, how did I let that happen?--and I wanted a reading lamp but not one affixed to the headboard (which is padded fabric) or a gooseneck that'd be in the way or might poke me in the eye. I looked at some floor lamps that would arch themselves over the bed. The problem is when you want to go to sleep, or more precisely, when you want to sit up, you have to slap them aside. This one is easily picked up and moved anywhere. What a great design. I am buying one for my stepfather.

folded

What am I reading now that there's light? Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here. That guy knew small towns and he is hilariously mean about their leading citizens and persons of quality unencumbered by the thought process, and the virtuous, and cynics, and outliers, the whole cast of characters.

The lamp is not itself pink. That's only the daylight that comes through the pink wintertime insulation fitted over the windows.

Last of the Moguls

Missouri's a great place for antique home furnishings. Have two big ol' hand-me-down floor lamps, one brass (1940s), and one chrome (1930s; has a translucent marble base that lights up when you kick it a little). So old they don't have those modern plugs. So old they take an outmoded type of bulb not found on store shelves anymore, although I've been looking for a couple of years, hoping to stock up. I told the clerks,"It's called a Mogul bulb." They'd say, "Come again?" and "Never heard of it." Has a big base to fit a big socket. Expensive.

Found some Mogul bulbs online at "Bulborama.com" but then I saw they also sold ceramic adapters for reducing a Mogul socket to a regular socket -- for $4. So I bought two. That way my big lamps could use modern energy-saver bulbs. I also bought three-way energy-saver bulbs that don't work three ways, but I'm glad they work at all. (Have you seen the current prices for floor lamps?)

So my quest through the hardware and lamp stores for Mogul bulbs has ended, and along with it a part of history that was built into my home furnishings. Above you see the last of my Moguls, the adapter, and the new kid on the block.