Lights out at Seattle Public Library
I’m a fan of public libraries. I used to work for HBO, which at the time had its headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, just a few blocks from the historic branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL). When I would travel to NYC on business, I would often visit NYPL.
Here is Seattle, I hang out at Seattle Public Library (SPL), which has multiple branches. Last weekend, on Sunday, my day’s journey took me to Capitol Hill and while there I decided to stop by the Capitol Hill branch. I got there around 12:40p and after about five minutes, the lights went out.
At first, I wasn’t sure what was happening. Then I looked over at the people who had been working on the public-access computers; they were no longer engaged with their screens. I asked a person at the front desk, “Did we just lose power?” They replied, “It appears so.”
I waited for about 30 minutes for the power to come back on, but it didn’t.
As I mentioned last week, the power had recently gone out twice where I live in the Ballard neighborhood. This event makes three power outages in three weeks.
One of my neighbors had suggested that the outages were caused by demand on the grid from people using their air conditioners. However, on this particular day, it was pretty cool outside, not really air-conditioner weather.
Published: Sat 26 Jul 2025
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