Lightning takes out a tree, and alas, it’s the wrong one

CORNWALL — Thunderstorms were bouncing around the area in the mid-afternoon on Friday, May 20. Students at Cornwall Consolidated School ended up heading home in the heaviest rain.But the real drama came just as they finished loading onto school buses in the main driveway. With a loud crash, a bolt of lightning hit a tree across the road, near the entrance to the parking lot. As the lightning raced to the ground, it tore strips of bark from the trunk, blew them to bits and scattered them hundreds of feet away.The buses were pointed in the other direction, and the majority of students only heard the strike, but they still had an exciting story to tell their families.The mature tree is slated to be removed, now that its roots have been damaged and its trunk split. The incident followed a decision earlier in the week by the school board to remove two dying trees from the front of the school. “Why couldn’t lightning have hit one of them,” was the oft-heard comment as a crowd arrived at the school later that day for a town meeting.

Latest News

Classifieds - December 4, 2025

Help Wanted

CARE GIVER NEEDED: Part Time. Sharon. 407-620-7777.

SNOW PLOWER NEEDED: Sharon Mountain. 407-620-7777.

Keep ReadingShow less
Legal Notices - December 4, 2025

LEGAL NOTICE

TOWN OF CANAAN/FALLS VILLAGE

Keep ReadingShow less
‘Les Flashs d’Anne’: friendship, fire and photographs
‘Les Flashs d’Anne’: friendship, fire and photographs
‘Les Flashs d’Anne’: friendship, fire and photographs

Anne Day is a photographer who lives in Salisbury. In November 2025, a small book titled “Les Flashs d’Anne: Friendship Among the Ashes with Hervé Guibert,” written by Day and edited by Jordan Weitzman, was published by Magic Hour Press.

The book features photographs salvaged from the fire that destroyed her home in 2013. A chronicle of loss, this collection of stories and charred images quietly reveals the story of her close friendship with Hervé Guibert (1955-1991), the French journalist, writer and photographer, and the adventures they shared on assignments for French daily newspaper Le Monde. The book’s title refers to an epoymous article Guibert wrote about Day.

Keep ReadingShow less
Nurit Koppel brings one-woman show to Stissing Center
Writer and performer Nurit Koppel
Provided

In 1983, writer and performer Nurit Koppel met comedian Richard Lewis in a bodega on Eighth Avenue in New York City, and they became instant best friends. The story of their extraordinary bond, the love affair that blossomed from it, and the winding roads their lives took are the basis of “Apologies Necessary,” the deeply personal and sharply funny one-woman show that Koppel will perform in an intimate staged reading at Stissing Center for Arts and Culture in Pine Plains on Dec. 14.

The show humorously reflects on friendship, fame and forgiveness, and recalls a memorable encounter with Lewis’ best friend — yes, that Larry David ­— who pops up to offer his signature commentary on everything from babies on planes to cookie brands and sports obsessions.

Keep ReadingShow less