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.
Not to alarm you, but for every cloud (b) there is an anti-cloud (a), and no anti-cloud has a silver lining. From the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (1871).
Here's as good an explanation of the weather as we've yet encountered: "Old Father McNether / He sorts out the weather." From The Peter Patter Book by Leroy F. Jackson and illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright, 1918.
The Hermetic secret that "time is a snowflake" is a googlewhack. (We'd have saved this item for winter time, but "time is a snowflake" might not be a googlewhack then. In the meantime, we trust your discretion.) This will also be of interest:The Collected Lost Meanings of Christmas.
Living as we do in the lightning capital of the United States, we can confirm that this is indeed Adamastor, "a hideous phantom whose face is scarred by lightning and whose eyes shoot fire." From St. Nicholas magazine, 1908.