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Complex Numbers #1081213 added December 16, 2024 at 7:51am
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Fork You Too
Way the hell back in 2018, Quartz published the article / stealth book ad I'm linking today.
Does it? Does it really remain at the center of dining controversy? Because I thought that in 2018, and even now, the "center of dining controversy" is how to handle mobile phones at the table.
On June 25, 1633, when governor John Winthrop, a founding father of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, took out a fork, then known as a “split spoon,” at the dinner table, the utensil was dubbed “evil” by the clergy.
While this article is US-centric, and makes no attempt to be otherwise, other sources  show that the fork has been considered a tool of the devil since it was introduced to Europe. This is, naturally, just another in a long list of humans considering anything new and different to be necessarily evil, because we're kinda stupid like that.
Forks were pretty much unheard of during Winthrop’s era. People would use their hands or wooden spoons to eat. The Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston says that only “a handful of well-to-do colonists,” adopted the use of the fork.
I mean, technically, you're using your hands either way.
When Americans finally started their love affair with the fork, their dining etiquette compared to their international peers became a source of controversy for centuries, whether it’s the way the fork is held, only eating with the fork, or using the “cut-and-switch.“
Oh, no, different countries do things differently. The horror.
During the time it took for Americans to widely start using the fork, dining cutlery was evolving in England. Knives changed to have rounded blade ends, since forks had “assumed the function of the pointed blade,” says Deetz.
I'm betting there were other reasons for the switch, like, maybe, deweaponization?
So if you've ever wondered why some cultures point fork tines up while others point them down, well, the article explains that. Sort of. Unsatisfactorily. Still not mentioned: why formal place settings are the way they are.
Also not mentioned in the article (perhaps one of the books it promotes says something about it, but it's unlikely I'll ever find out) is the abomination known as the spork. |
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