Happy Winter Solstice Holiday
I’m going to take a short break from blogging over the holiday, so I hope you all have a relaxing break from workâhowever you choose to celebrate (or not celebrate) the season.
23rd December, 2003
Galileo’s Daughter
I watched a very good documentary yesterday, based on the book “Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel. It was a very interesting glimpse at Galileo’s character (the word ‘arrogant’ springs to mind), and the rather touching relationship he shared with his illegitimate daughter, Maria Celeste who had been cloistered in a convent since the age of 13. It’s slightly frustrating, because while her letters to Galileo have been preserved, his to her haven’t survivedâprobably because the convent was a bit wary of keeping letters from a convicted heretic. Maria’s letters reveal a woman with a very lively mind, who was in as much of a prison as her fatherâperhaps a worse one, as the physical conditions were so harsh in the convent. She suffered a lot of ill health and died terribly young in her mid-thirties.
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