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Questions that didn't used to be sinister



Since folks on this list might have architectural blueprints in
their collection, I decided to post this here.

In this post-9/11 world, questions that were once innocent now
seem sinister.  For example, this week I had a young woman
caller who wondered if we had blueprints of a certain skyscraper
in another city.  Being a public library, we don't have
blueprints of anything, so I suggested she might find
photographs, floorplans, or elevations in various architecture
books in our collection.  I did not make any effort to identify
who *might* own the blueprints, assuming they even exist.  It
sounded like a naive school assignment question so I did not go
any further with it or feel alarmed.

My thinking went this: the violent attacks we have become sadly
familiar with, from Columbine to Oklahoma City to NYC and
Washington, have thus far been the handiwork of men.  A teenage
or college-age woman doesn't seem like a huge threat.  (I
therefore apologetically plead guilty to gender profiling.)

Continuing to think out loud: it doesn't seem likely that
someone targeting a certain building would be so clueless as to
call a modest public library hundreds of miles away to ask for
blueprints.  But maybe there really are nitwits with terrorist
aspirations using teenage girls as a front.

The next day, the supervisor, looking over the phone logs,
inquired about it--did I check caller ID?  What was the caller
like?  Now we are instructed to check caller ID and report
telephone inquiries about blueprints for public buildings, even
though my city happens to boast buildings by major American
architects which are the subject of continual popular and
scholarly interest.

What would you do?

=====
"My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
So much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary
power, reconstitute the world."  -Adrienne Rich
   Cynthia Van Ness, bettybarcode@yahoo.com
   http://cynthia.is-online.net

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