It’s a long time I’ve been away. More illnesses have sidetracked me yet again. No point in blogging about it, whining about it. You don’t want to hear about it any more than I want to write about it.
But while recuperating, I read a new encyclopedic work, 1001 Ideas That Changed the Way We Think, edited by Robert Arp. I also finally finished reading a large anthology of feminist writings I started years ago, Women Without Superstition: No Gods — No Masters, edited by Annie Laurie Gaylor. It took me so long to finish because the subject, oppression of women by religion, made me so furiously indignant I would have to put the book away for months at a time.
I also got to wondering if there were any other encyclopedists active these days. A search of Wikipedia gave disheartening results. Of the several dozen listed, a large percentage are long deceased. Of the few yet living, most are in their 70s and no longer producing or editing. I’m hoping that those active today aren’t famous enough yet to be included in Wikipedia.
When I chose my tagline, “the few, the proud, the several centuries out of date” it was mostly facetious. Now I think it was more accurate than I imagined.
The Lonely Encyclopedist 