Yesterday morning after breakfast, we heard a loudish crack and a few seconds later the power was out. I was disappointed to discover that our gas stove requires an electric striker, thus rendering me without a cup of coffee for a good hour. I actually spent part of that hour wondering if it was possible to make tea in some lower-tech way than what coffee requires, but I eventually decided that they both require electricity by way of heat. The rest of the hour was spent wondering what might have happened to cause the crack, the outage, and the sirens I then heard.

As it turned out, one of the charming painters down the block, who have been coloring a nice old apartment building with considerable pluck and courage (for example, hopping their ladders to the left and right, while still perched, when they can't reach a certain spot) had cherry-picked himself into a nearby power line. By eyewitness accounts, he was flung out of the cherry-picker onto the sidewalk, where he apparently landed still living. Unfortunately, he didn't stay that way as long as one would have hoped.

He didn't go out without a fight. The cherry-picker sits with two enormous deflated tires, surrounded by charred grass with a white corroded-looking substance. Neighbors stand around gazing at the scene and saying things like, "He was the one with dark curly hair and a bald spot, really nice," and "Jesu Maria."