The captain stood there with his arms crossed looking upwards. “Doesn’t look safe. I wouldn’t do it.” His men silently nodded knowing assent; my confident explanations fell on deaf ears. We said a few more words, but I wasn’t inherently their problem — there was no fire, and slowly they drifted away, back to their waiting trucks, another alarm call resolved with no risk to life or limb. Not yet, anyway — and my stupidity wasn’t going to happen on their watch.

After they’d left, my clients all stared at me questioningly. “Are you sure about this? This isn’t worth anyone getting hurt. Maybe we should try something else … ““Nope,” I said, “I’m sure. Let’s see how this lighting’s going to work.” And rung by rung I started up.

Okay, I’m writing this, so I didn’t die, and no, I didn’t set off the beam detector again – I think we called the insurance company and got them to authorize us to shut if off for the duration of our mockup, I forget. But I did miscalculate a couple of things …

At that steep angle, and with my notable weight inducing the inevitable curve to the ladder, by about 30’ up it’s becoming tangent to the wall. Barely enough room to get my fingers around the rungs, and oh-so-little purchase for my toes. Standing tippy-toed in size 13’s, in other words. Oh, and it’s hot. Heat rises, and 40’ in the air I was into a whole other climate zone. So there I am having a high-dive moment, my clients now toy figures below me, dripping sweat, holding a 10’ pole with a small but not weightless light on it as steadily as I can while holding on with one hand to a ladder effectively applied to the wall. On tippy-toes. Shouting back and forth to people far below who want to evaluate the effect from multiple positions, having me aim at various locations, each change requiring lowering the pole, adjusting the light, raising it again ….

It worked, the lighting concept was a good idea, I survived. But the firefighters – duh – were right. Just not about the aspect they’d identified. Just in general, it wasn’t safe. But I was never afraid, exactly. Wearily anxious towards the end, maybe, but after all — and especially given where we were — we already knew the eyes of god were upon us.

Maybe because I’d worked there before and had a dim memory for a prompt, or maybe just from a lucidity I could have used a few minutes earlier as foresight, I knew instantly what we’d done. In very tall spaces such as this, smoke detection as part of a fire alarm system usually takes the form of what are called beam detectors, a transmitter and receiver placed at opposite ends of the space at a height determined by geometry and building code. Electric eyes, in essence. If the beam is interrupted, as by smoke, the alarm goes off, and unless a pigeon gets inside, 40’ off the ground nothing other than smoke is expected to interrupt it. But the wobbling tip of our giant ladder just had. We leaned the ladder on the side wall and went outside to await Boston’s finest.As a national historic landmark, The Church of the Covenant merited 3 response vehicles, which arrived in well under 5 minutes. The captain approached us with that unique blend of aloof intensity, prepared to save a treasured building and/or its occupants but naturally expecting the ubiquitous false alarm. We told him what we thought had happened, which the annunciator panel confirmed, and after some fossicing about looking for the shutoff, a gaggle of firefighters assembled at the scene of the incident, gazing thoughtfully up at our ladder, now in its intended place and awaiting my attention.“I wouldn’t send anybody up that,” said firefighter # 1. “It’s not safe”“Yeah, that angle’s too steep,” said # 2. “See that symbol on the side? That should be straight up and down, not leaning back. You start to go up that, it’ll come away from the wall. You could fall. It’s not safe.”Mind you, these are guys who live ladders that are going to very not safe places and know their craft. But I’ve been many a dicey place on a ladder myself, albeit in theaters; wobbling side-to-side a couple of feet (literally) while 40’ in the air on the Loeb Drama Center’s old, massive, center-extension A-frames; snaking up into parts of sets on extension ladders set vertically; or hanging out over a 3-story drop on the Agassiz’s bendy fiberglass shepherd’s crook extension ladder hooked over the rim of the ceiling electrical trough. Besides, one simple fact of geometry was in my favor, as I earnestly explained to the assembled group of dubious clients and firefighters. Though 4’ or 5’ out from the wall IS indisputably too close to set the base when you’ll be 40’ in the air, it’s still 4’ or 5’ of space that’s INSIDE the ladder’s feet. I am indisputably getting wider, but I’m nowhere near that wide. The ladder’s entire (and considerable) center of gravity is to the wall, and once I got 15 feet up or so, all of mine would be, too. No way I could fall backwards, even trying. With someone ballasting it on the inside for that first bit, I was totally confident. Which made one of us.

Many years ago I was privileged to work on relighting The Church of the Covenant on Newbury Street in Boston. It boasts some of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s finest windows, as well as a gorgeous and monumental chandelier, which — if I recall correctly – was his first light fixture. It hangs at the crux of the transept, beautifully transposed upon the archwork of the chancel and altar and is spectacular in its Art Deco details (the ancient, scanned-slide thumbnail above does not do it justice). While we added theatrical lighting for weddings, a good deal of architectural detail lighting to highlight features previously invisible, and designed lanterns for the side archways to greatly boost the light levels, the vast and lofty space remained, shall we say, “moody” …A year or more ago I was asked to come by and offer suggestions for further augmenting the light levels, as their aging congregation was finding the dim interior increasingly unworkable. From numerous suggestions made, we chose to mock up a scheme involving tiny, directional low-voltage spots mounted high on the sidewalls, partially camouflaged by column capitals and a ledge under the clerestory windows, and aimed in to the center of the space, where light was needed most.The church has a long extension ladder to get to the uplights we’d added years ago, which are on other column capitals perhaps 30’ in the air. These new positions would be almost 10’ higher, that ladder’s theoretical limit. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to get to the spot directly, I mounted the test light to a pole which I could hold aloft from the top of the ladder, and we began.The pews are securely bolted to the floor, the end of one making a better footing than any well-meaning human (albeit a bit closer to the wall than ideal). It took three of us to get the massive beast vertical, and with the base in place we began extending the upper section by pulling on the integral rope and pulley, the latches of the extension rattling off the rungs of the base section as it went up. A rung or two at a time. Slowly, carefully — heavy thing, wobbling but more or less in control. Almost there … Then came a really big noise. The fire alarm.