An Elsa After My Own Heart

Dear Karen,

So I was spending some quality time with the new issue of the Digest when I stumbled across an interesting article on Einstein. I believe it was taken from the book Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. (No, I'm not so well-versed in Einstein literature to just know that...it said so, right there on the page.) I was particularly interested in the article because of our recent foray to the Planetarium. Remember? The one where we decided after the fact that we weren't smart enough to have watched that movie about black holes? All that talk about Einstein and they never did clarify if his concepts were really verified or not...again, I assume that they were - after all, it was Einstein - but you just never know, eh?

I digress.

So I'm reading this article and rolling my eyes at the fact that Einstein "was overcome with happiness" when he succeeded at algebra. Heck, I woulda been too, had I ever succeeded at algebra. I woulda been all kinds of happy. But then I keep reading and they mention that at a press conference in the US in 1921, a reporter happened to ask Einstein's wife, Elsa, if she understood her husband's theories about relativity - to which she said,

"Oh no, it is not necessary to my happiness."

You go, Elsa. I think I would have liked you.

Love,
Julie