Tonight is the library’s twice-yearly members’ meeting. Our bylaws require it. Normally we would spend the afternoon getting the room spruced up, setting out the wine and a platter of food, ordered from a La Mediterrenee, bringing down the decorative sign-in book that resides upstairs in the Membership office. This time the preparations just involve interdepartmental negotiations about whether it would be a Zoom meeting or a Webinar.

I suspect the main question members ask tonight will be about when we re-open. There is talk about a partial end to the city shut-down this July. I am ambivalent. As much as I long for a return to normal life, I am skeptical about safety, and about the practicality of reopening the building. I’ve heard talk at other venues about taking people’s temperature before they can enter, requiring masks, gloves, drastically limiting the number allowed in, etc.

As someone who was tasked with making sure members behaved in gatherings, dealing with nuttiness, medical emergencies, intoxication, I wonder if the belligerence about social distancing rules we’ve seen in in other cities can happen here. Before, my policing of events mainly consisted of discreet “shushes” during films. I’d hand out water and hard candies to coughers, snatch away the microphone (if I had to) during Q&A. I’d summon either the guard downstairs or an ambulance in the event of faints. At worst, I’d call the police — which I only had to do once in over fifteen years because of an out-of-control drunk.

How would I deal with some aggressive person putting his face close to mine, yelling, threatening? With several?