It was around 9:30 on an incredibly warm and still night and I was just about to start getting the air-conditioner installed in my office window, when, of course, the power went off. My immediate response was not printable in a family newspaper—well, the ones I've spent my career writing for—and my next reaction was to make sure that the outage involved more than just us. It didn't take long to determine that the entire neighborhood had gone dark, but on our road, I noticed the most curious thing: what appeared to be a row of flashing lights in the vicinity of a new power pole. Was this some high-tech method, using LEDs and some kind of micro-chip, to instantly alert the powers-that-be to the source of the problem? No, it wasn't. What I'd spotted was a steady shower of sparks sailing downward from a small fire on the power lines, the result of a tree falling on them and bringing them too close together. The oak, alas, was one of ours, and it had given us no advanced warning of its weakened condition, which was clearly brought on by Carpenter Ants and wet-weather fungi. It was leaning. It had lost its structural integrity. It didn't need any wind to hasten its return to earth. It was time. Too bad the lines were in the way, but six hours later, the unnatural light show had been fixed and the lights were back on. Come daylight, I would have a lot of new oak to cut and stack.