Monday, April 23, 2012

The VIDA Count & 1914






I keep thinking about the VIDA count and wondering how different our lives are than, say, 100 years ago. So I turned to my trusty Wonder World Encyclopedia for insights.

the VIDA count

2 comments:

TC said...

"The vocation of daughter is regarded as almost, but (or was it if?), not quite as seriously as that of the son" has to be one of the more thought-provoking sentences thus far provided us by that great Holy Book, the Wonder World Encyclopedia.

(The "funny thing" (?), though, Nin -- I can't stop imagining that sentence being written by a female stenographer, toiling away at very small wages in the boiler-room sweat-shop of the Wonder World Encyclopedia head editorial offices, while the editor-in-chief was off having a drink at the joint around the corner.)

TC said...

And the maybe even funnier thing is this, when one turns to the research trail and seeks Wonder World Encyclopedia (1914), looking for the absentee boss and his fellow slavedrivers, one discovers on the first search page no evidence of the existence of that authoritative volume -- but links to two American woman poets (and no stenographers!).

And their names are (envelope, please!)...

Emily Dickinson, and

(the winner is)

Nin Andrews!

So it seems that after lo these many benighted eons there may finally exist some meagre smidgeon of justice here in this wondrous world after all.