A Life Electric Flashcards
At the stroke of midnight on July 10, 1856, thunder clapped.
Lightning flashed.
And a baby boy was born.
He’ll be a child of the storm, his nurse said.
No, his mother replied. A child of light.
He loved animals and never missed a day cradling and feeding his family’s chickens, roosters, pigeons, and geese.
He had many playmates but his best friend was a cat.
Macak’s back was a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks loud enough to be heard all over the place.
Stop playing with the cat, he might start a fire.
This is nothing but electricity, the same thing you see on the trees in a storm.
He wonder, Is Nature a gigantic cat?
If so, who strokes its back?
He dreamt of flying like the pigeons and geese on his farm - so, he jumped off the roof of his barn holding only an umbrella.
His bones didn’t break, but he was bed bound for weeks.
He remembered everything he read and soon carried whole volumes in his head.
While the family slept, he made his own candles, stuffed towels in the cracks of his bedroom door to hid the light and worked his way through his father’s library of books.
Everyone feared he was at death’s door.
A puzzle he had thought about for years.
A puzzle his university professor had said was impossible to solve.
And he knew it was an invention that would soon power the world.
So he set sail across the Atlantic from Europe to America.
On the fair’s opening day, thousands of visitors from around the world gathered.
And for the first time in history, over a hundred thousand light bulbs lit up at once.
The crowds cheered, trumpets blared, and flags unfurled
Soon once-darkened homes, office buildings, and city streets were illuminated.
So, he gave away the rest of the rights to his invention.
Even as he grew old, he didn’t stop memorizing poems by heart, or solving scientific equations in his head, or taking long daily walks up and down New York’s cobblestoned streets.
He also never stopped loving animals.
He never missed a day.
I’ve been feeding pigeons, thousands of them, for years, thousands of them, for who can tell, he said.
Before making a diagnosis, he would peer into each bird’s eyes, then inspect their wings, beaks, and feet.
Caring for homeless, hungry or sick birds is the delight of my life, he said.
Now newspapers flashed headlines about an unusual old man, scattering seeds in the park.
They called him the Pigeon Charmer of New York,
All things from childhood are still dear to me.
He was a feather in the cap of the whole human race.
A gifted inventor, a creature of habit.
A lover of animals, a friend to humankind.
A child of the storm, a child of the light.
A human flash of lightning, far ahead of his time.
