Lightning Strikes on Kane Street

Last week we had a storm, and folks, it was a doozy. A bolt of lightning struck the historic Christ Church on Kane Street and Clinton Avenue here in my neighborhood, and the falling debris killed some guy walking past. Harsh. The scaffolding that was up is all twisted, there's a huge gaping hole in the roof, and one of the stained glass windows is thrashed, as you can (kinda) see. The trees get in the way of really good disaster pictures, and I missed my chance to take close-ups before the city put wooden walls around the whole site and blocked it off to all cars and pedestrians. The whole street is going to be blocked off by construction for the next month or so while they repair the building.

It's weird to say this now, but I'm more scared of thunder than lightning. My first big summer storm in New York, when I was still living at 187, the thunder scared me so much I moved my mattress to the floor and slept there for the rest of my stay in that house. It never occurred to me to be scared of lightning. It's just light, right? I can feel Sir Isaac Newton shaking his fat little head at me. "Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter into their Composition?… The changing of Bodies into Light, and Light into Bodies, is very conformable to the Course of Nature, which seems delighted with Transmutations…" Somehow that quote relates to the development of the atomic bomb and means I should be way more scared of lightning than I actually am (probably; I don't pretend to understand Sir Isaac Newton, I just read that quote in a comic book once). Look what it did to this steeple!

Like I said. Harsh.