Egg and spoon race at the first Westmoreland Fair, Pennsylvania, 1936. Photograph by Arthur Rothstein. The New York Public Library, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Farm Security Administration photographs.
• Saidiya Hartman on history: “When I shared with friends and classmates at Yale that I was writing about slavery, their eyes glazed over with boredom. ‘What kind of boring historical project is that?’ they seemed to say.” (The Nation)
• “How centuries-old whaling logs are filling gaps in our climate knowledge.” (Grist)
• A reading list on the past and future of museums. (Africa Is a Country)
• The history of anti-abortion propaganda. (The Drift)
• Considering Undine Spragg. (Paris Review Daily)
• Meet the Los Angeles Breakfast Club: “The group was formed in 1925 as a parody of the Masons and other brotherhood organizations. This means the morning is filled with codes, secret handshakes, and hidden meanings. Its rituals include member initiations that involve sitting on a wooden horse blindfolded while placing one hand in a plate of runny eggs.” (Los Angeles Times)
• On Betty Medsger’s photographs of women at work. (The New York Review of Books)
• This week in obituaries: Gael Greene, Takeoff, Sy Presten, Calvin O. Butts III, Jerry Lee Lewis, Daniel Smith, Patrick Haggerty, Hannah Pick-Goslar, Paul Morantz, Ian Jack, Roz Wyman, Rodney Graham, Philip Hiat, Christine Farnon, Thomas Cahill, Gerald Stern, Jonathan Stedall, Harry Bates, George Booth, Romano Mazzoli, Bernard Rosen, and Julie Powell.