Roundtable

The Rest Is History

Segregating the sexes through architecture, fast food in ancient Rome, and the twilight of Queen Elizabeth’s corgis.

By Angela Serratore

Friday, July 17, 2015

Shaker meetinghouse in New Lebanon, New York, c. 1935. Library of Congress.

• A dare from Jorge Luis Borges sparked the creation of the Masone Labyrinth, the world’s largest maze, which was completed in May. (Smithsonian)

• Shaker buildings were designed to reflect the sect’s belief that men and women should mix as infrequently as possible: “The perfect symmetry of an interior, in which one side meticulously mirrors the other, door for door, stair for stair, each fitting answering another, is an absolutist aesthetic that came into its own with functional modernism.” (London Review of Books blog)

• Queen Elizabeth II’s care for her pet corgis shows the public a softer side of the leader of the royal family—despite her status, she feeds and walks the dogs herself. Now almost 90, the queen has insisted that no new corgis will be added to her household. (Vanity Fair)

• How do we write about the dead? “After all that they have suffered, why should they also suffer the indignity of our gaze? I would not want to be seen in this moment of humiliation. This thought is immediately replaced by another: they are not suffering our gaze. They are dead. They are not suffering anything.” (Paris Review Daily)

• In 1922 F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu terrified audiences and set a new standard for fictional horror. This week, the director’s skull was taken in an apparent grave robbery—the manager at the German cemetery where Murnau was interred has suggested “a possible occult motive.” (The Guardian)

• The release of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman troubles parents who named their children after Lee’s most beloved character. “‘Oh no, I hope Atticus didn’t turn bad or something,’” said Christopher Campbell, father of three-year-old Atticus Campbell, who was born shortly after his parents moved to the Atlanta area from New York City. ‘We actually had that discussion. It was almost a joke.’” (New York Times)

• How Thea Foss, a Norwegian immigrant living in Washington during the late nineteenth century, turned a $5 investment into a fleet of valuable boats. (Atlas Obscura)

• “The food would have been simple, by Roman standards—no peacock’s tongue here. Instead there would have been things like roasted partridges, pork, goose-liver pâté, eggs, sausages, salted hams (a Pompeiian establishment advertised: ‘Once one of my hams is cooked and set before a customer; before he tastes it, he licks the saucepan in which it was cooked’), lentils, peas, wheat or barley porridge (barley was cheaper), meat stews, and—perish the thought—sow vulvas.” Archaeologists working in Pompeii suggest that Romans, like us, enjoyed eating fast food. (Lucky Peach)

• What we’d buy with $75,000: a dress worn by child star Shirley Temple in a 1934 film. (Kansas City Star)