It ain't no calamity, Jane.

For the past two days, the library where I work has been dead in the water. It all began when four out of the five disk drives on our main server failed at the same time. These drives operate in a mode in which every bit of data which is written to the first drive is copied to the remaining drives so that if one drive fails, another one instantly takes over. This is the way banks and other transaction-intensive systems work.

In the best traditions of "the show must go on", I did not cancel the seniors computer class on Friday. One computer was working, which was the instructor's machine, because it was able to bypass the computer that regulates access to our public computers. So I set up the projector, and the five people who were registered arrived, and we commenced with something more akin to a demonstration than a hands-on session.

The subject was Microsoft Word XP, and we worked out way through a few of the more interesting things, like how to put tables into a document, and how to put pictures into tables. Suddenly the lights flickered several times, and the entire place plunged into darkness. The lights then came back on, and the computer rebooted and I resumed where I left off: showing how the Declaration of Independence could be imported from a website into a two-column newsletter.

The lights flickered and dropped a second time, and the computer died once more. One of the students rose and put on her coat, at which point we all agreed it was time to leave. Meanwhile, anyone who was in the library building and not on staff pretty much exited as well.

It turned out that the cause of this problem was a cold front that brought wind gusts to 50 miles an hour and higher. So now the library was without power as well as without a computer system.

It is a very rare occurrence for most libraries to be closed at times when they are normally open. Sometimes patrons become upset and unreasonable in their reaction to the closing, especially those who use the library primarily as a form of public shelter when other institutions are closed. Parents who are accustomed to leaving their latchkey children in the library until they can pick them up after work are also affected. But normally, libraries tend to stay open as long as they can without endangering the public or the staff.

Schools, with all the liabilities involved in busing and child care tend to close at the slightest sign of disruption. That didn't happen in Cincinnati this year at the commencement of our first major storm. For some reason, the administration dismissed the kids at the usual time, even though there was icing and snow happening earlier in the day. As a result there were reports of some children sitting on school buses for five hours before they arrived home. The next storm, things were different. The schools were closed even though the roads were pretty much clear.

In this area, the schools have five "calamity days" before time has to be made up. According to the Free Dictionary, a calamity is:
  1. An event that brings terrible loss, lasting distress, or severe affliction; a disaster: A hurricane would be a calamity for this low-lying coastal region.
  2. Dire distress resulting from loss or tragedy.

Seems like a bit of semantic escalation to call a winter storm a calamity. Perhaps "inconvenience days" would be a more reasonable term. Calamity? Think Katrina. Think Iraq.