A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

One of my favorite, slightly strange hobbies is to photograph buildings around campus. Sometimes I photograph the exteriors. Other days, for example, when the weather is challenging, I photograph interiors.

I have favorite buildings I like to return to (Old Main, the Katz law school library, and the new Business Building, for example). But I like to explore and add new ones to my repertoire whenever possible.

I like the look of a clean, well-lighted place (as did Mr. Hemingway, I believe). And this is one of the best ones on campus. It is an interior scene from the Hintz Family Alumni Center, near the duck pond.

On this morning, it was raining heavily, and I had an early breakfast meeting at the Corner Room. (You can guess just what I had - yep, my old stand-by, the early bird special!) It was raining so hard when I drove into town that visibility was nonexistent.

I parked on College Ave. and leaped out with my umbrella into traffic and pouring rain, but by the time my meeting was done, it was merely drizzling. So I made time for a quick indoor photo shoot at the nearby alumni center.

This is a space that inspires confidence, possibly even more so than usual among the obsessive-compulsive. I like to walk into a nice, clean, organized space, and this was that indeed.

There was lots of wood and leather and plenty of golden light. As it was early in the morning, almost nobody was around, and the place was silent, absolutely hear-a-pin-drop quiet like a library. The chairs were neatly lined up and I liked that; in fact, I liked it a lot.

The song to accompany this image celebrates the golden light and the silence of this space: The Tremeloes, with Silence Is Golden. And here's a nod also to Ernest Hemingway, as I shamelessly stole the title of this Blip from one of his short stories.