If you don’t happen to recognize him, that golden dude up there at the top of this entry is the Angel Moroni, an important figure in the LDS faith. Most Mormon temples are crowned by a Moroni statue; in these parts, where we have four temples in the Salt Lake Valley and two more in the adjoining valleys to the immediate north and south, they’re a pretty unremarkable sight. But every once in a while, something snaps you out of your comfortable complacency and forces you to notice things that have long since faded into the background. Such as the meteorological consequences of placing a ten-foot-high statue covered in highly conductive metal on the highest point of a building that towers above its neighbors.
In other words, lightning struck this Moroni statue during one of the truly spectacular thunderstorms we had over the weekend. You can see that the electrical blast blackened his trumpet, arm, and face. It looks like it also zapped the sphere he’s standing upon, or possibly the current emerged from the statue at this point as it was seeking ground. In other photos of the damage, I’ve seen a lightning rod protruding from the statue’s head, so this bolt must’ve either missed the rod or else was so big that the rod made no difference. It must’ve been an incredible sight, if you’d happened to be looking in the right direction at the moment of impact.
This particular Moroni stands atop the Oquirrh Mountain Temple west of my house, a temple so brand-new that it hasn’t even been dedicated yet. I wonder if the interior now smells, in addition to fresh paint and new carpeting, of ozone and slag?
It must have looked and sounded amazing! When I lived in New York I routinely saw lightning strike the Empire State Building. The *CRACK* was astounding.
Perhaps more astounding than any lightning strike is that there’s a place called “Oquirrh Mountain.” How do you pronounce it? And why on earth is it spelled that way?
I’ve been meaning to get by to try to snap a photo for myself. Not much ornate anything that high in the valley, interesting to see what does happen should it be struck by lightning.
Robert, “Oquirrh” is pronounced “oak-er.”
Like a lot of Utah place names, it’s originally derived from an Indian word, although I’ve heard contradictory stories as to which word, which tribe used it, and what it means. (There were several tribes indigenous to this area when the Mormons arrived in the 1840s.)
Regardless of the word’s true derivation, there are a lot of things named “Oquirrh something” around here. For example, the mountain range on the west side of the valley, where the big copper mine is, is the Oquirrh Mountains (the Oquirrh Mountain temple is nearby, hence the name), and Anne and I went to Oquirrh Hills Middle School.
Kids being kids, we naturally referred to the school as “O’Queer Hills.”
Forgive me if this is insensitive or rude in some way, but the statue now appears to be an African-American man.
Is that as ironic as those of us with stereotype-influenced impressions of Utah would be led to believe it is?
Brian, some would indeed see that comment as ironic, considering that race can be a touchy issue for the church, and for this state in general.
In a nutshell, African-American Mormons were only granted the priesthood — basically full member privileges to participate in church functions, not “priesthood” in the sense that Catholics or other denominations would use that term — fairly recently (the 1970s). Some people still harbor bad feelings and/or cynical interpretations about that situation, and the church still occasionally finds itself accused of racial insensitivity at an institutional level. And of course, Utah is an overwhelmingly white state, demographically speaking. (We do have a fairly substantial Latino population here, but few blacks. I’ve long considered myself a reasonably worldly guy, but I have to confess that I experienced profound culture shock the first time I visited San Francisco as a young man, and found myself surrounded by people of many colors and languages.)
For what it’s worth, I tend to think a lot of people have axes to grind against the church because of the way it dominates the culture and politics of the state, and race is a convenient target for them. That’s not to say there aren’t unresolved problems. But I can say that things have changed a great deal since I was a kid, when open bigotry — justified by some unfortunate scriptural references and local folkloric beliefs — was common.
I think he’s gay, too. 🙂
Robert, you’ll forgive me if I steer well clear of that particular topic!