Culture Watch
And Consider This
Galileo's Daughter Dava Sobel; Penguin Books; 368 pages $14.00 in paperback
Listed as a Senior Women Web "Sighting" when it first came out, Galileo's Daughter has now appeared in paperback, and shouldn't be missed. Letters from Suor (Sister) Maria Celeste, a nun confined to her convent, to her father, Galileo Galilei, give us a window to the customs and events of the seventeenth century. None of Galileo's letters to this daughter have survived, but even though the correspondence is one-sided, we can posit the missing words.
Despite the formality of address and the sometimes-awkward translation from Italian, the letters show us a brilliant and beloved daughter of a famous father who uses her gifts to "bloom where she is planted." They also show us a father who is beleaguered by the authorities of his church. Dealing with the forces of The Inquisition while knowing that his theory of the motion of the earth and planets was provably correct, Galileo maintained a precarious balance, with imprisonment, possible torture and even death as a reward should he falter.
This is a marvelous book, sufficiently episodic that one may dip in and out, but also sufficiently interesting to keep you reading right up to the small surprise at the end. J.S.
Exhibits
Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years -- Selections From the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
May 1, 2001–July 29, 2001 Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall, 2nd floor
Even though most of us were teenagers or adults when Jacquie and Jack were residents in the White House, it took the Met show to provoke memories of the glamour and style Mrs. Kennedy represented for US women during the early '60s. Long before Jacquie assumed residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there had been a feeling of fashion provincialism on the part of many American women. No more.
Jacquie, even though partial to a French designer even before her White House arrival, made a point of taking up Oleg Cassini, a designer born in France but thought of as being US based. Women admired and imitated a style considered both simple and elegant with those Jacquie touches: sherbet colors, pillbox hats and for White House galas the use of white in a regal way. Jacquie continued to develop her own style in the years following 'Camelot,' but the impressions of the way she looked and who she represented when she traveled as First Lady will always be with us. This exhibit renews and defines those memories.
After the Met exhibit, the collection will travel to the Kennedy Library in Bost (Sept. 12 to Feb. 28).
T.G.
Julia Sneden is a writer, teacher, wife, mother, grandmotherand care-giver. She lives in NorthCarolina. She can be reached by email.
