Tea leaves: obsessed with a book - (she has a most capacious brain)

Medusa, by Harriet Hosmer

I have not finished reading Figuring (by Maria Popova) yet. I could have finished it 2 weeks ago, but it's too delicious to gobble. Its narrative sweeps through astronomy, physics, poetry, music, women scientists (many of them astronomers, including Jocelyn Bell, whose discovery of pulsars was appropriated by her advisor. He won the Nobel. Grrrrrrrrr.)

Virginia Woolf, Kepler, Frederick Douglass (who, as we know, "is an example of somebody who's done an amazing job that is being recognized more and more"), Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman, Rachel Carson, Harriet Hosmer (whose sculpted Medusa is caught in mid-transformation from beautiful woman to mythic monster), botanists, mathematicians - the narrative includes so many women and men you may think you know.

I thought I knew, that is. I love Emily Dickinson, I love Margaret Fuller. I did not know the contexts that Popova provides - historical, cultural, medical, and artistic. I did not put these women in the full context of the patriarchy, and that is the most crucial context of all. As we all know.

We are told that Emily Dickinson and one of the women she loved read Aurora Leigh to each other. We learn how Aurora Leigh was conceived. We learn that the first photograph that was taken by a woman - Anne Atkins, who studied and collected algae - also created the first book published that was illustrated by photographs. Hers. We learn so much, and it flows. It just flows.

Maria Popova's own narrative about the book is perfect. Read it.

By the way - Popova's webpage, Brain Pickings, is addictive. It sometimes opens with a popup. Do you hate popups? You won't hate hers. Today's popup is an excerpt from one of my my favorite poems. It could be almost anything. She has a most capacious brain.