Perfect Place To Escape The Power Talk

To find a place around here last week where people weren’t talking about the ice storm’s aftermath, you pretty much had to locate a spot where people weren’t talking at all.

The bright newspapers and magazines area at the downtown Spokane Public Library was one such haven Thursday afternoon. A diverse group of about 30 people was spread out at desks and tables, reading.

There was a fair amount of sniffing, coughing and page turning. But nobody asked “Ya got power?”

At least not that I heard.

In sitcoms and movies, librarians constantly shush people. In real life, they’ve got better things to do. But even some severe-bun stereotype obsessed with maintaining quiet would have been hard-pressed to find a patron to scold.

Everybody seemed happy with the near-silence. These people behaved like refugees from too much conversation.

And they had picked a scenic place to park themselves. Walled by windows, that part of the library offers a terrific cityscape view looking north toward the river falls.

But most of my companions there in the periodicals section weren’t just staring into space and daydreaming about electricity. They had their coats draped over their chairs and were leaning into the magazines and papers before them.

I waited for people to get up to leave. And I watched them reshelve their reading selections.

A girl in a green sweater who wore her hair in dreadlocks put back a copy of Seventeen magazine (cover story: “How to Stay Cool When You’re in Love”).

A woman with eyeglasses perched atop her head returned, though in the wrong place, a copy of Cat Fancy (“How to Play With Your Cat”).

Another woman walked away and left Weight Watchers magazine on a table (“The Holidays: seeking peace and losing pounds”).

A thirtysomething man in a blue Dallas Cowboys jacket abandoned a copy of Successful Farming (“Learning From Their Yield Monitor”).

Resting on other tables, still other publications encased in stiff plastic covers reflected wide-ranging interests … Barron’s, Shape, Entertainment Weekly, Road & Track, Glamour, Australian Geographic.

The life of the mind is bigger than any power grid.

A bald guy in a gray sports coat lugged a Sunday edition of the Washington Post. He had a slight tremor. He plopped the fat paper onto a table and sat down.

Outside, it was snowing again.

, DataTimes MEMO: Being There is a weekly feature that looks at gatherings in the Inland Northwest.