Carnegie stack room
 

The Carnegie Stack room on the lower level is my favorite place on campus, a solitary hiding place that I visit virtually every weekend; to sit alone in the plain little desk against the back wall and to comb through the stacks to identify a few of the many superb volumes on genetics and biochemistry.

Starting high up the hill at the Blackford coffee-pot, I take a mug of black coffee out to the Blackford deck, usually in the cold; coffee finished, I descend toward the Harbor. This vertical journey ends at the bottom of Carnegie, in the stacks room, which seems to rest below the Harbor like the mud when the tide goes out.