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.
"A round of hard, stony applause broke out" (Carol Dawson, The Mother-in-Law Diaries). Stony applause is quite rare, and this illustration of it is from Lustige Blätter, 1914.
"'The Spirit of Electricity,' the heroic statue atop the Telephone and Telegraph Building, New York. It has been called the 'most inspiring thing of its kind in the metropolis." From Long Lines magazine, 1921.