A hero badge is generally reserved for public safety and occasionally politicians who go above and beyond the call of duty, to prove they are idiots. I saw this photo essay and decided that there was only one category where it would fit.

Forty years ago I was living in Wimberley, Texas. During a rare Texas blizzard I was sitting in my living room sipping on some bourbon and basking in the radiated warm from a Franklin stove. I marveled at the fact that a stove, invented by Benjamin Franklin, was still being manufactured without significant changes. Modern science was unable to improve upon a design that was two hundred years old.

As the thought occurred to me, I realized that I was wrong. Modernity had intruded, even on the stove. There cast into the metal was: “Warning stove may be hot, when in use.” I realized then, that we hadn’t  really progressed.

These photos only reinforce that thought.