Snapshot no. 1 from Jebworld: Okay, so it's not much of a library, but what should you expect when you enter the belly of KGB headquarters?

I mentioned recently that the morning after the election I headed for Florida to deal with too-long-postponed family matters. I mentioned at the time that I have two little vignettes of Life in Jeb Bushworld that I want to share.

I don't claim that they're scandals of an order to qualify as Turning Points in the Revolution. There may even be explanations of sorts for them. And I don't intend to make great research projects or crusades of them. I offer them merely as vignettes--call them snapshots of "Your Gov't at Work (or Whatever)" in the realm of Chimpy the Prez's Smarter Brother.

I have to back up a bit. When my stepfather's health forced my folks to move south in the '70s, "Aventura" was still an unincorporated chunk of the northeast corner of Florida's Dade (now Miami-Dade) County, a shimmering glimmer in the greedy eyes of the developers who envisioned, well, the developers' paradise the present-day City of Aventura ("the City of Excellence," it proclaims at every opportunity) has become.

One of the bright spots was the coming of the Northeast Dade Regional Library. It was, well, a really nice library. In more recent years my mother grumbled about the librarians in charge, but that may have been because their predecessors set a high standard. It was a placed filled with people soaking up information, a place filled with reading materials--and, yes, listening and viewing materials, and also computers that anyone could sign up to use. It was a genuine community resource--an abundant source for community-oriented materials, and even a gathering place.

It was, in other words, a demonstration that government can do things right, sometimes.

Then came the horrible hurricane season of 2005. Obviously, what lodged in the national memory--such as it is--is the devastation of New Orleans and the nearby Gulf Coast. Heck, it's not even clear that the nation remembers that. So there was never much room for national awareness of how badly some of those storms hit Florida. And especially with consciousness focused on the devastation to the west, Governor Jeb's standard of "preparedness" was adequate to forestall the kind of nasty finger-pointing attention that, it seems to me, began the unraveling of his brother's presidency.

You always hear in Florida how popular Governor Jeb is. The assurances of his popularity are always accompanied by a laundry list of issues on which a large number, often a majority, of Floridians disapprove of his administration. This popularity of his often seems to me kind of like the celebrity of those celebrities who are famous for being famous--is it possible that his popularity is just on account of how popular he is?

To return to 2005, I had to look it up, but it was Hurricane Wilma that more or less blew off the roof of the Northwest Miami-Dade Regional Library. Clearly the structural damage was severe--and very likely so was the damage to the library's holdings. In the grand scheme of things, I suppose it's understandable that there were higher priorities in restoring life to something like "normal."

But that was a year-plus ago. I knew that for a while, at least, some sort of bookmobile was wheeled up to provide minimal library service to the community. But I hadn't heard anything recently, and wondered if the library itself had been reopened yet. I kept an eye on it as the bus from the airport passed the site. I wanted to react quickly enough to ring for the bus stop right in front if the library was open. I was imagining getting at one of the library computers--checking e-mail, catching up on Howie's day-after DWT election coverage, maybe adding a quick note of my own.

As the bus approached, it was easy enough to see that there were no cars in the library parking lot. Then I noticed that was a sort of fenced-in no man's land. As we passed, I noticed that there was a big sign posted on the fence, which seemed to say something about the library having relocated. When the bus reached its final destination, Aventura Mall, I was curious enough to walk back. Sure enough, the sign announced that the library had relocated to the Aventura Government Center.

The address was more or less on the route I would be walking to the senior residence where my mother lives now, so I decided to check it out.

I had already noticed an apparent recent discovery among local builders of the smoked-glass-and-chrome look, which seems to be their solution as development develops higher-rise developments. The Aventura Government Center turns out to be just such a monstrosity.

The lobby was not only nearly empty but--thanks to the light-blocking efficiency of that smoked glass--nearly dark. Off to one side was a lone desk with a lone guard. It was pretty much the way I imagined a new KGB headquarters would have looked if one had been built in the later years of the Soviet Union. (The smoked-glass-and-chrome look would suit Moscow about as well as it suits suburban Miami-Dade County.)

I headed for the desk and announced with something like excitement, "I haven't been to the new library yet."

"Is that where you want to go?" the guard said. In fairness, he was much more cordial than I imagine his counterpart would have been if this were actually KGB headquarters.

I said it was, and he instructed me to stand on a pair of feet emblazoned on the floor. After taking a picture (of sorts--it could as easily have depicted wheat harvest in Ukraine as yours truly), he handed me a peel-label "'pass" and directed me to a circular stairway up to the second floor. When I got there, I looked around, trying to find the new library. There were a few shelves with books (probably more than the "dozen" I remember telling people there were--though I think it's probably still fewer books than I own), a larger number of shelf units displaying DVDs, and a few tables--well filled with people, I should add (though 15 or so people would probably have been enough to accomplish that).

It's essentially what you see in the photo I found online, except that you might not guess from the photo that that's it. I know it is, because that's what I eventually asked the two women behind the desk, once I had given up looking for the rest of it and regained my powers of speech. "Is this all of it?" I said, pointing.

Even as I said it, I wished I could have found a less tactless way of asking. But that really was the question. And the answer was: yes.

It turned out that they do have computers--laptops that I might have been able to use if I had a library card, which I could get if I were a resident, or I could use my mother's card, I was told . . . but by then I just wanted to get out of the place. I paused long enough to ask if the library was being rebuilt.

"You mean the other library?" one of the women behind the desk said. Again, not overly tactful of me, forgetting that this was a library I was standing in. In my defense, I like to think that anyone who has ever been in an actual library could have made the same mistake. I figured the space might equally well have been a storage space if somebody hadn't gotten a juicy tax break or giveback for making believe that it's a library.

But I recovered quickly enough to confirm that yes, I was wondering about the other library. And I was told that yes, it is being rebuilt. I felt better than I had since I'd first set eyes on the KGB building. "It's such a nice library," I said.

Well, it was. Now, all this time later, it stands there looking as cared for and functional as the Chernobyl plant.

And I'm naive enough to be shocked. Shocked that a regional resource for information, knowledge and general community awareness has been allowed to all but vanish from public consciousness. Sure, I know there are priorities. But sometimes what people don't do tells us more about their priorities than what they do.


POSTSCRIPT

On the Miami-Dade Public Library System website where I found the photo, it accompanied this piece announcement:

Northeast Branch

The Northeast Branch Library has relocated to the mezzanine level of the Aventura City Hall located at 19200 West Country Club Drive. At 1,200 square feet, the new location is open and airy and will provide patrons a much needed improvement to their library experience.

Severe roof damaged caused by Hurricane Wilma forced the Northeast Branch Library to close its doors at its old site. At the new location, patrons can check out lap tops, DVDs or their favorite books.

The Northeast Branch Library will be open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Two things:

First, what kind of library, branch or otherwise, is open only weekdays and never later than 5pm?

Second, is the writer of this bit of copy being intentionally deceptive? Or is he/she genuinely unaware that what was "relocated" was not a "branch" library but Miami-Dade's Northeast Regional Library? Somehow in the process of relocation the facility seems to have metamorphosed into a branch library. Frankly, I'm not sure that what's been put there qualifies for even that designation. (I'm guessing they had more books in that bookmobile they brought in right after the hurricane.) But I can't help wondering whether the history here has been deliberately obfuscated.

Of course, a bit of casual rewriting of history certainly fits in with the KGB motif they seem to be going for.