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What if the lights go out?

GLOBE MAGAZINE

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

February 05, 2012|By Neil Swidey

(JOHN TLUMACKI )

A COUPLE OF MINUTES past 8 p.m., five days after the Halloween storm had blacked out much of Boxborough, Maureen Strapko ushered out the last patron from the town library and locked the doors for the night. While most of that northwest-of-Boston community – like much of the region – remained in the dark, the Sargent Memorial Library had been welcoming the biggest crowds of Strapko’s decade-long tenure. That’s mainly because restoring power to key town facilities like the fire and police departments had also turned it back on at the nearby library.

Across the week, the place had become a refuge for weary residents needing to warm up, use the bathroom, and recharge their laptop batteries. Strapko had come to know the precise location of each of the library’s 48 electrical outlets in the public areas and had even granted needy patrons access to the outlets in the staff areas. Since the storm, she had opened the library early and closed it late, seeing the protracted power outage as an opportunity to put into action her belief that libraries should be vibrant community centers, not morgues where people are ssshhhh’d into submission.

In truth, there was another reason Strapko was so willing to put in the extra hours. She had no interest in going home. Her house in neighboring Bolton was also without power, and when there – with no electricity, no heat or hot water, no working refrigerator, no Internet and no phone – she and her husband were left feeling isolated and irritable. She knew the helplessness that nearly 2 million New Englanders were experiencing: the frustration of being ignored or strung along by their electric company; the impulse to clear out of town and cash in every accumulated Marriott rewards point at whichever highway-ramp Courtyard still had a vacant room.

After locking the library doors, Strapko found her husband waiting for her in his car. They headed out of town to a well-lit restaurant for an unhurried supper of hot soup. When they returned to the library to retrieve her car, it was about 10 o’clock. Strapko was astonished to see that there were still half a dozen cars, sport utility vehicles and Priuses alike, idling in the parking lot, the drivers’ faces lit by the bluish glow of their laptop and smartphone screens. She later learned that all week long, people had been lingering in the parking lot into the early hours of the morning, unwilling to disconnect from the library’s 24-hour Wi-Fi lifeline. A dozen years into the new century, this is how hopelessly reliant we’ve all become on power.

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