Mort Rosenblum: The seeds of community thrive in the library

Some good news for a change.

I just found the perfect gift for every age and taste, an unlimited free pass to all that a wondrous world has to offer. And for those who happen to be homeless, it is shelter from heat or cold, smiling people offering food, counseling and sympathetic ears.

A library card. Who knew?

This was meant to be a bit of investigative-ish reporting. I did know about libraries, in fact. But word on the street was that Pima County planned to close its main book palace downtown along with some of its 27 branches. As usual, the story is much more complex.

The upshot is that I’ve found my new happy place in Tucson, a bilingual frontier town-city, unique in that word’s proper meaning. Since 1947, I’ve watched the Old Pueblo lose much of its soul to modern times and newcomers who eat tacos with forks.

Livable, lovable cities — urban communities — rest on three pillars: an independent-minded daily paper, or preferably two; a shared sense of place rooted in history and tradition; a well-stocked and well-staffed library to take people far beyond their direct line of sight.

When economic and societal factors alter the first two, the last redoubt is that library. And today, when so much of the America we knew is coming unstuck, the Pima County Library is on a tear to meet that challenge.

In the ‘60s, I worked in a long-gone salmon-hued building shared by the Star and the Tucson Citizen. After basement presses began rumbling at night, we relaxed on its ironwork balcony to hear Ronstadts and friends waft music from Ash Alley across Stone.

Tucson’s library was that stately columned children’s museum by Armory Park. In earlier days, industrial moguls with consciences gave something back to ordinary folk. The Andrew Carnegie Library was completed in 1901, among his first across a nation of readers yet to imagine TV.

Back then, we returned books by the date stamped inside to avoid hard looks from no-nonsense librarians and fines that cut into our lunch money. It survived the 1960s hecatomb when “urban renewal” bulldozers bladed much of Tucson’s old adobe heart.

Pima County Library opened in the 1980s. It brought new life to a downtown left bleak when department stores moved east, and it began broadening its scope. Today, indulgent smiles replace penalties for late returns. And books are almost an afterthought.

At the Woods branch near Prince Road on 1st Avenue, in a bare-bones neighborhood, freshly arrived refugees from far-flung places get their first taste of America. They page through magazines, zoom with families left behind and make new friends with locals.

Chinyere Olumba, the manager, grew up in Detroit with parents from Nigeria. The pay scale is middling despite a required M.A. in library science. From all appearances, she’d work for free if she could swing it. With three kids of her own, she exudes motherly warmth.

“Little kids come up and ask if they can hug me,” she said. They can. She helps with children’s homework and finds competent help for adults with a problem.

Each branch is different, from upscale Oro Valley to tough neighborhoods where sheriff’s deputies keep order during restricted hours. And they all hit the skids during Covid lockdowns in 2020. Staff positions went unfilled. Visitors dropped by half.

On the ghostly fourth floor of the main library, director Amber Mathewson explained why the system faced a bad rap earlier this year.

The city-owned building went up with high hopes, designed by an architect who favored open spaces and a marbled facade. Now marble chunks drop off, discomfiting passersby. Sections are closed off. Estimates say a renovation would cost $90 million.

Mathewson’s senior staff drafted a confidential plan to revamp the whole system with a smaller main library and several closed branches. Someone leaked it online ahead of time. Howls of protest from the staff and library lovers, caught unaware, prompted a rethink.

In January, the library plans a massive public campaign to solicit thoughts from the community. Various ideas are afloat for a downsized main library. All branches are to remain open, with enough new hires to staff them.

Mathewson was guarded until she detected a bibliophile reporter eager to get the story straight. We went beyond facts and figures.

She started at customer service 34 years ago, then did every job from driving a bookmobile to running the show in 2017. “If anyone would have told me I would be library director,” she said, “I would have laughed.”

Growing up on a rural Colorado wheat farm, she told me, she wanted to be a physician. But she discovered what she calls library magic. “Now I feel like I can help heal people with books, with knowledge,” she said. And in other ways.

In one case, a homeless man came in with painful sores on his legs. A nurse at the library treated them. Others helped with a resumé and job applications. With a haircut and donated decent clothes, he was soon managing a Target store in Tucson.

Nearly a third of Pima Country’s million residents have library cards, but only a fraction of them check out books or engage with the library. “We have to go outside of our walls,” Mathewson said. “Sometimes I feel like we’re the best kept secret in town.”

The library is hardly forbidding. People wander in through glass doors off the Jacome Plaza, which can get ugly when protests clash with cops. No metal checks or sign ins. I had a card in minutes. Books I took out are due whenever, essentially, unless someone requests them.

A special collection details Tucson’s history. I skipped a free Covid text and a chess game but pawed though seed drawers. I asked a desk guy how to return seeds. If your plants grow, he replied, bring some back. Amused, he added that not everyone is a good gardener.

I talked briefly with Toby Wehner, an elfin outreach associate, always on the move in a tie-dye shirt. He knows everything and everybody after decades at the job.

Library officials answer to Pima County brass, so I stayed off the record on politics. In America today, a few wrong words can have consequences.

Instead, I watched people of all sorts pore over authoritative publications, world maps and weighty tomes. Some sit for hours on computers and engage strangers in conversation. Racks of newspapers are thoroughly thumbed. You can almost see kids’ curiosity soar.

If a free-for-all United States manages to be sane again during these perilous times, I suspect that good libraries — beyond being happy place — will have a lot to do with it.