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BACK BAY No more hiding in the stacks? If the city shuts its Copley Square library Sundays, where will all the homeless go? By David Abel, Globe Staff, 2/2/2003
But where will they go, if Mayor Thomas Menino follows through on a
proposal to close the Boston Public Library on Sundays to save money? ''I don't know,'' says Peter Poulimenos, wearing seven pairs of pants
and carrying six large, ragged bags. ''I'd probably stay outside all
day.'' During the cold months, especially now with the temperature hovering in
single digits, the Copley Square landmark becomes a magnet for the
homeless, attracting so many of the city's downtrodden that on a recent
day they occupied nearly every other seat in the first floor of the new
building. With steadily growing numbers of homeless men and women -- last month,
city officials counted 6,210 homeless in one day -- librarians and
security guards say they are more frequently nudging chronic sleepers (a
violation of library policy), booting people who use restroom sinks as
showers or laundries, and calling emergency medical workers on passed-out
alcoholics. One recent Sunday, security guard Richard Edwards had the unenviable
task of removing a man from a bathroom stall in the library's basement, an
out-of-the way location visited by scores of homeless every day. When another homeless man complained the guy inside was snoring and
sitting on the toilet for about an hour, Edwards marched off to the
bathroom. He went to the corner stall and knocked on the door. Nothing. He
knocked again, and still getting no response, he opened the door of the
stall next to it, stood on the toilet, and said, ''Sir, I'm sorry, but you
can't sleep inside the bathroom.'' Then he jimmied the locked door and roused the man, bundled in winter
gear and curled atop the unopened toilet. As Edwards escorted him outside
the bathroom, the bedraggled young man looked at the guard and asked:
''Can't a man get some peace?'' Seemingly oblivious to the expulsion, Poulimenos, a skinny, homeless
graduate of Boston Latin and Amherst College, was washing up in the
bathroom and putting on his many street clothes before heading off into
the night. The white-bearded Poulimenos, 64, had spent the entire day in the same
seat in the library's Bates Hall trying to solve equations from a
dog-eared copy of ''Calculus 5/E With Analytic Geometry.'' When he's not
studying integrals or derivatives (''it helps me understand the epicycles
of today, in other words the meaning of quantum mechanics''), he reads the
Bible, in Hebrew and Aramaic. He's haunted the library nearly every day for the past nine years, when
he began living under a bridge in Charlestown. The son of a cobbler and a
one-time gas-station cashier says he would suffer if the library closes on
Sundays. ''All my books are here.'' No final decision has been made on the Sunday closings, floated by
Menino following cuts in tax revenues and state funds. ''We're all waiting
to find out what's going to happen,'' says P.A. d'Arbeloff, a library
spokeswoman. It would certainly affect Fred Woods, 38, the former parking garage
attendant who has been homeless for the past three years. He regularly
bides his time at the library watching movies or reading books, including
''Wealth Building Journal'' and ''How to Make Money in Stocks,'' for a
life-skills course he's taking. Of his fascination with food coupons, Woods says: ''I'm always hungry
and this helps me get by.'' The aspiring lawyer says his happiest time of the day is when he can be
alone in his own mind at the library. ''This is my quiet time,'' he says,
sitting amid his books and coupons at a table on the first floor of the
new building. ''The shelter is so intense. There's so many people there,
so close to you, you can't think there.'' If the library closes, he says, ''I'll probably just go to the
Prudential Mall, hang around, kill time, and hope I run into someone I
know.'' For Matt Wilson, the chief problem would be boredom. The 50-year-old
vagabond from Tennessee, who says he has worked as a teacher for mentally
ill children and has done demolition work, loves the library. ''I'm a reader,'' he says, his nose nearly pressed to the small print
in a book of New York Times front pages. ''I'm in pursuit of knowledge.
That's what I do.'' Then he adds: ''It's also nice to get out of the cold.'' After years sleeping outside or in shelters where he's forced to leave
around dawn, his face is drawn, his eyes are red, and his hands are
chapped from the cold. If he can't spend his Sundays at the library, where
he said he has learned ''as much as a professor'' about engineering, art,
and other fields, he says he might consider skipping town. ''It's enough to make me think about changing my relationship with the
world,'' he says. ''I don't want money or physical possessions, I want
wisdom.''
David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. This story ran on page 1 of the Boston Globe's City
Weekly section on 2/2/2003.
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