I completed my degree in 2002, but spent most of my Columbia experience at the university in the mid-70s. Air-conditioning was not a ubiquitous pleasure then, and finding a cool and quiet place to study might mean dim obscurity, virtually underground. I enjoyed hiding in the stacks at Butler Library.

That was a treasure trove. My favorite day at Columbia was the one when I stumbled on shelves of "Vanity Fair" magazines from the earliest days of publication. In the then dim and musty fastness of Butler Library, I had retreated into another world. I sucked down the wit and wisdom of another time while lolling on the hard, cool floor in the stacks. I forget what I ought to have been studying, but my mind was also hiding from responsibility in the chilly, sophisticated prose of generations before.

I lost track of time, and the place made no difference at all as I was somewhere else in all but a real way. Good and lost to my flesh, until my belly began to bite and the library threatened closing, I think. It has been too long now to remember what I read that day. It was being lost to myself, living entirely through my eyes, that made the day good. That was my favorite day at Columbia.