Data entry, and more data entry...

Well, it's been quite a while since I posted last. Stuff and whatnot have kept me from posting, but fortunately not from working, although progress is...well... slow. Of the 950 people I have in my database, I'm about to break record number 400, or "Hodge, Beatrice." Our friend Beatrice, it turns out, went from Boston when she was 32, to the Near East (as the YW termed the area- Constantinople, and then Prague) first with the Red Cross, and then with the YW, where she was "Migration secretary" from 1922-25. Oh, and she was Presbyterian. After she came back, she listed a contact address of the Social Service Department, Charity Hospital, New Orleans, LA. And that is all there is. Sadly, no photo, and (perhaps more pertinent to my lovely dissertation), no more info on what relatives she listed as emergency contacts, and no data on her "Training and Experience" (since these were both on the same side of the xeroxed 3x5 cards that I'm getting all this info from, I suspect that info just didn't get copied, or perhaps they figured that since the Red Cross took her on she was credentialed enough).

So, entring that type of data has been (more or less), the sum and total of my days- fascinating yet brief glimpses into 400 (so far) women's lives, which I will try to reduce to a series of tables and charts, only to turn around and tease out the details on a select few. There are some occasional striking comments, including one woman who died in the 1923 earthquake in Japan, which decimated Kobe, I believe (although I need to double check). In fact, for going to relatively dangerous places, like Europe during WWI, surprisingly few seem to have died on the job. Most seem to have lived until the 1960's, although it's difficult to tell from the records. It makes sense given that they were generally from the same age cohort.

So, I continue to sift, enter, and compile my data, and in the mean time mentally write the framework of the chapter- may I reach number 950 soon!

Qutoe from my notes- This week's comes from an absolute gem of a book- Marjorie Hillis' Live Alone and Like It: A Guide for the Extra Woman from 1936. I probably won't use it in the chapter, but it has been a joy to read (for both how things have changed, and how they haven't):

"This book is no brief in favor of living alone. Five out of ten of the people who do so can't help themselves, and at least three of the others are irritatingly selfish. But the chances are that at some time in your life, possibly only now and then between husbands, you will find yourself settling down to a solitary existence.

You may do it from choice. Lots of people do- more and more every year. Most of them think that they are making a fine modern gesture and, along about the second month, frequently wish they hadn't....

The business of making your own life may sound dreary- especially if you have a dated mind and still think of yourself as belonging to the Weaker Sex. But it really isn't. You can have a grand time doing it. You can- within the limitations imposed on most of us, whether we live singly or in herds- live pretty much as you please. To be sure, you will have nobody to make a fuss over you when you are tired, but you will also have nobody to expect you to make a fuss over him, when you are tired. You will have no one to be responsible for your bills- and also no one to be responsible to for your bills. You will be able to eat what, when, and where you please, even dinner served on a tray on the livingroom couch- one of the higher forms of enjoyment which the masculine mind has not yet learned to appreciate." (p.15-18)