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Banner Image:
Detail of a portrait of Daniel Webster by Chester Harding, c.1850-1852. This
portrait hangs in the Busch Reading Room.
Jax Peters Lowell Wins Leeway Foundation Transformation Award
 Athenaeum
Member Jax Peters Lowell has been awarded the Leeway Foundation's Transformation
Award for Fiction and Poetry. Among her works are several books including Against
the Grain, The Gluten-Free Bible; an illustrated children’s book, No
More Cupcakes & Tummy Aches; a novel Mothers; and the memoir An
Early Winter.
The Transformation Award provides
unrestricted annual awards to women and transgender artists living in the
Delaware Valley region who create art for social change and have done so for the
past five years or more, demonstrating a long-term commitment to social change
work.
Above:
Jax Peters Lowell.
Focus
on Shakespeare in Cinema
Those of you who have attended the Athenaeum's
Shakespeare seminars with Dr. Ejner Jensen may be interested in Focus on
Shakespeare in Cinema presented by the Philadelphia Film Society and the
Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival.
Tickets are on sale
online at https://pfs.ticketleap.com/,
and will also be available for purchase in the lobby of the Prince Theater
beginning at 6:30pm (one hour before each screening).
$10 General Public; $8
Senior/Student (with proper ID); $6 PFS Member
 Wednesday,
January 13
The
Tragedy of Macbeth
(Roman Polanski, 1971)
Screening
followed by a moderated discussion. Moderator
Annalisa Castaldo, Professor, Widener University.
Synopsis: Roman Polanski's version of Shakespeare's tragedy about a Scottish
lord who murders the king and ascends the throne. His wife then begins
hallucinating as a result of her guilt complex and the dead king's son conspires
to attack MacBeth and expose him for the murderer he is.
 Wednesday,
January 27
Henry V
(Kenneth Branagh, 1989)
Screening
followed by a moderated discussion. Moderator:
Dr. Matthew Kozusko, Professor, Ursinus College.
Synopsis: King Henry V of England (Kenneth Branagh) is insulted by the King of
France. As a result, he leads his army into battle against France. Along the
way, the young king must struggle with the sinking morale of his troops and his
own inner doubts. The war culminates at the bloody Battle of Agincourt.
Hidden Treasures
 The
Athenaeum's Vaux Collection is full of treasures, but this month we highlight
one especially interesting item donated by former Athenaeum President, George Vaux
(1908-1996). The drawing to the left is a design for six Federal style
rowhouses designed and built c. 1796. They were located on Pennsylvania
Avenue at 19th St. NW in Washington DC. Among the developers of the property were James
Greenleaf, John Nicholson and Robert Morris.
 The
most important feature of this drawing is the house on the 19th St. corner, which had a rounded
end to meet the angled intersection. This large house was purchased in
1800 by
the federal government and was occupied by the State Department. Over the years
it served as home to a number of important historical figures including Vice President Elbridge Gerry
(1813-1814); President James Madison (after the White House was burned,
1815-1817); Vice-President Martin Van
Buren (1833-1837); and General George
McClellan who used the building as his headquarters during the Civil War. The
corner house was demolished in 1959 to make way for an office building, but two
of the houses in the row remain as part of the Mexican Embassy.
Above
Left: The c. 1796 drawing showing the plan and elevation of the row.
Above
Right: Detail of the house on the 19th St. corner that served as the temporary
White House.
Member Critics
 Vonnegut,
Kurt. Look at the Birdie. New York: Delacorte, 2009.
It
probably happens to all of us eventually: trying to pull out a happy
ending from an ever-worsening disaster, the author pulls in an improbable doctor
ex machina. Well - if you can use a thief to catch a thief, it isn't
malpractice to use a doctor to doctor a story, is it? Anyway, this is an
"average" Vonnegut work: often scarily good, but sometimes . . .
not. . .
Submitted by Dr. Harold Rashkis.
Do you
have a book that you loved (or hated), and would you be willing to share that
opinion on the Athenaeum e-newsletter? If so, please send your short essay
to sltatman@philaathenaeum.org.
Save
the Date:
January
12: Socrates Cafe, 11:00am.
February
1: Coffee Day in Members' Reading Room.
February
6: First Saturday, Athenaeum open, 10:00am-2:00pm
February
24: Thomas Fleming, The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers. Lecture
and Book Signing, 5:30pm
See
the Event
Calendar for details and additional
events.
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