Texas

I'm certain that in the 5 years I've lived in Galveston, the temperature has dropped below freezing at least once. It seems, however, that this year, Texas is not capable of handling the extra electrical requirements for its citizens to stay warm all day. This is strange to me, but perhaps the electricity providers do believe in global warming and somewhere recently decided that Texas would not need so much supply. At any rate, they have decided that today we must all take our lumps and do without electricity for short periods of time throughout the day to be certain hospitals (and banks, no doubt) stay up and running.

This is not very convenient for the library computer lab, as this morning since 9:00 AM we have already had four "brown-outs" delivered to us. All the computers go down (staff included) except our servers which are on back-up power supply - for a short while. Each time, we have to run all the patrons out of the lab to an area where there is natural lighting in case we lose our emergency backup lights, and reboot all the computers in the library when the electricity comes back on. We seem to be in constant motion booting up machinery.

We can't close the library, because the Salvation Army is just across the street, and since they are not permitted to remain inside the building between the hours of about 8 - 4, its residents don't have anywhere to go to get out of the cold, except the library. It is a sign of our times that libraries all over the country have become social welfare/service centers. It would probably be expedient to have a counselor and a registered nurse on staff as well, since many of the homeless people have medical and mental problems. Unfortunately, we do not have those salaries in the budget.

I am also pretty certain that another reason we can't close is because they don't want to pay staff for being at home. A staff member agrees, saying, "That's reason #1. Reasons #1-25."

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.