The Silver Spring Penguin

Tuesday night’s public meeting at ye old library offered plenty of ideas on what belongs inside its new Fenton Village digs. But none were as original as those proposed by Buddy.

Buddy (not his real name, and not to be confused with this Buddy) had a thick head of wiry white hair that poofed just past his shoulders. He had a matching mustache and wire-rimmed glasses, and despite his thin frame, had disproportionately large pecs.

As the meeting’s moderator made her way across the crowded room, taking suggestions for more computers, more books and a green roof, Buddy rose from his chair against the back wall and offered his two cents.

“It’s a bad idea to have cameras in libraries, because people can see what you’re reading,” he told the 60 people in attendance. “Some people wanna be watched, but I don’t see how that squares with a free society.”

Buddy went on to complain about the Long Branch library, which he said installed security cameras after its renovation. What becomes of these surveillance videos, he wondered aloud. Can face-recognition technology be used on these collected images to identify fugitives or the community’s personae non gratae?

“That’s like something you see in East Germany or North Korea,” Buddy said. (The communist-bloc country of East Germany bit the dust in 1989, along with the wall that contained it. However, North Korea is still paranoid. Score one for Buddy.)

Buddy continued, to the audience’s frustration. “We’re running more quickly into a surveillance society,” he went on. “I want this new library to be a gestapo-free zone.”

The moderator, recognizing that Buddy was starting to annoy people, calmly replied: “Just to summarize, you don’t want security cameras, right?”

Correct, library patrons shouldn’t be singled out on video for reading Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital”, he answered.

Quickly, the moderator thanked Buddy for his remarks and then shifted her attention to the opposite side of the room. But as soon as the next audience member began to speak (a suggestion to increase the large-print holdings), Buddy shot up from his seat, his straight right arm reaching for the ceiling and his fingers fanned out. And as the moderator again made her way across the room, she had no choice but to recognize Buddy.

There used to be a martial-arts studio near the new library site, Buddy began. Its proprietor wasn’t just an experienced instructor but a black belt in an obscure form of tae kwon do. His name was Kai Wong Kim, and his name deserved to hang over the new library building, Buddy said.

The moderator again thanked Buddy for his suggestion, then moved on. After hearing requests for more scholarly works and an exhibit space, one audience member suggested more foreign-language literature. Perhaps the library could consult the area’s immigrants, particularly those from Africa, on which master works should be in the collection, she said.

And that was Buddy’s cue to jump in.

Most people from western Africa — Nigeria in particular — speak Hausa, he informed the room. However, the Yoruba language is also spoken in Nigeria, and Ethiopians speak Amharic, he added.

And again, the moderator thanked him for his comments.

After ten minutes, Buddy grew silent. It may have been the moderator’s new focus on library programs that lost his attention. Or maybe he had just said what he needed to say.

Lead image courtesy of Flickr user View-Askew. Embedded images courtesy of Flickr user Trehala and Alan Light.