Professor Macksey's Library (Again)

I Should Be Tweeting

   You may recognize the wonderful room above which was at the top of a post I did back when Professor Macksey passed away a couple of years ago (see: Professor Macksey's Library.) If you do recognize it, it is probably not because you ever look at this blog, but because you saw a tweet about it on Twitter. Apparently it went viral and I am sorry to say that it is unlikely that I was the source of this virus, since I don't think the tweeter mentioned MM. Perhaps he would have, but the number of words he can use is limited. Here is the story about it:

"A Library the Internet Can’t Get Enough Of: Why Does This Image Keep Resurfacing On Social Media?" Kate Dwyer, New York Times, Jan. 16, 2022
"On the first Tuesday of the year, the author and political activist Don Winslow tweeted a photograph of an avid reader’s dream library. Bathed in the buttery glow of three table lamps, almost every surface of the room is covered with books. There are books on the tables, books stacked on mahogany ladders, and books atop still more books lining the shelves of the room. “I hope you see the beauty in this that I do,” Mr. Winslow wrote in the tweet, which has been acknowledged with 32,800 hearts."

Apparently, the tweet also garnered 1,700 comments. My post has been read by about 30 people since September, 2019, none of whom chose to comment. Nor did any choose to complain, I might add, and I am not bitter about my lack of popularity. I would like to suggest, however, as all news broadcasters now do, that if you want "BREAKING NEWS" about such things and wish to be the first in your coterie to know about them, you should consult MM. 

  By the way, the article (not the tweet) also included the information below. If you add it to what I provided earlier about Professor Macksey, you will know much more than the Twitter users who just viewed the photograph:

Dr. Macksey’s book collection clocked in at 51,000 titles, according to his son, Alan, excluding magazines and other ephemera. A decade ago, the most valuable pieces — including first editions of “Moby Dick,” T.S. Eliot’s “Prufrock and Other Observations,” and works by Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley — were moved to a “special collections” room on the Hopkins campus. After Dr. Macksey’s death, a S.W.A.T. team-like group of librarians and conservationists spent three weeks combing through his book-filled, 7,400-square-foot house to select 35,000 volumes to add to the university’s libraries.

This all happened at Johns Hopkins, by the way.