CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
Air has a face, the sea has lips, and cliffs have ends. This we learn in From the Lips of the Sea by Clinton Scollard (1911), The Face of Air by George Leonard Knapp (1912), and The Cliff End by Edward Charles Booth (1908).
You've seen the unlikely animal tombstones with rhyming epitaphs at Disney's Haunted Mansions, but here's one for a trout that dates back to 1855. From Popular Mechanics, 1913.
You've heard Paris called the "City of Light," but even after the Enlightenment, its streets were impenetrably dark. "Paris is a city of darkness." From Popular Mechanics, 1918.
Imagine seeing headlines like these, today. Vestiges of another age. "City eyesore transformed into Greek theater" (Popular Mechanics, 1917). "Sunken-garden beauty spot made from ugly gully" (Popular Mechanics, 1920).
The headlines at the top of our collage proclaim that Mr. Hogan is a prophet who has a "vivid air dream," yet in the clipping he doesn't remember his first flight and tends to think about his next dessert while piloting. How can we reconcile this seeming conflict? "Sometimes the visionary's discernment is blinded by familiarity" (Jackie L. Green, Vanguard of Visions and Dreams, 2012).