An hour ago, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey announced that certain non-essential businesses should close until April 17th by the end of day. This doesn’t include gas stations and grocery stores, but rather entertainment and leisure venues like bars, salons, and the like. This is not a shelter-in-place rule, but with increasingly fewer places to go to, we’re drifting in that direction. Many businesses which had initially tried to sustain themselves through carryout orders have already closed, including my favorite Mexican restaurant (farewell, Vera Cruz enchiladas) and my coffee shop.
The library has had an active week, as we’ve promoted our continuing service to the public in the radio, on facebook, and with banners and flags. The building is closed to the public, of course, but we’re faxing, scanning, making copies, and doing all sorts of things, from proofreading resumes to doing unemployment filings over the phone for people. We’ve developed a system over the last couple of weeks, keeping different work sorted into different folders, and going down with an envelope of supplies — whenever we are outside making a delivery of documents, people spot us and drive in, so we have to be prepared with fax cover sheets, a helpful pen, etc, on the spot. One bright side to this is that I’ve had more on-duty time in the fresh air the past week than I have in eight years!
Blogwise….I have three books waiting for reviews, one of which will kick off READ OF ENGLAND 2020. Odds and ends, really — bit of birth, bit of death, bit of the in-between. Yesterday I posted a review for The True Soldier, which I’d intended as a ROE entry, but is mostly about the Battle of Bull Run.
Stay safe! Once this is all over it’ll make for a heck of a party.
Reading Freely 
wow, you’re really a full-service outfit! unemployment even… impressive.. our lib is just closed… period.
Ours is one of Alabama’s more challenged communities, so we do our best to help make it better!
Well, here in Cali we’ve almost completed our second week of lock down (I think Monday will be the start of our third week). I say lock down bc we are sheltering in place AND there is no where to go. Only very strict rules for essential businesses. So I assume Alabama is not as far along as the West Coast, and certainly not the East Coast. Nonetheless, that is nice to know that your library is so productive and proactive.
Stay healthy!
I suspect the bulk of our cases are in Birmingham, just as New York’s enormous amount owes to the NYC metroplex. We’ll work until we can’t!
I’m so glad you’ve been able to keep working! I wish ours were doing what you’re doing. A lot of people are lost at sea when it comes to paperwork (and for good reason, seems like it’s always more complicated than it should be).
Some of our libraries have given it up already, judging by the emails I’ve seen being swapped — mostly smaller communities, though. We’ve been keeping a log of the amount of faxes, etc we’ve done, and we’re not doing bad at all, numbers-wise. 50-60% depending on which aspect of our work you’re looking at — numbers of people vs numbers of typical faxes/scans, etc.
My work is coping as much as it can by working remotely but we essentially do office installations/builds which is rather difficult to do by e-mail. Of course I’m technically retired now – technically because my official last day is 8th April so I’m on vacation till then. Going forward things are going to be odd for a while. We’ll get through it though. A confused start by a lot of countries to begin with but *finally* we’re starting to get a grip on things. Stay Safe!!
As a friend of mine said, this may prove to be a good thing in the balance — because the survival rate is really high (unless you have a preexisting condition or take aspirin, apparently) — it’s a practice run for a REAL pandemic.
It’s definitely a warning call. It *could* be so much worse. Hopefully we’ll all be much better prepared for the next one when it comes.