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.
We're honored that upon abandoning his Tumblr presence, Dr. John Pistelli, the novelist and professor in Minneapolis, called our Tumblr mirror of the Abecedarian weblog his favorite:
My favorite follow remains@danskjavlarna, with his magical or even magickal ongoing image archive (not to mention his private generosity).
Surprisingly, when groups of people learn How to Be Your Own Cat, the "hundredth monkey" phenomenon is triggered. From Birmingham Southern's 1961 yearbook.
We take great pains and risk eye damage to capture lens flares in our photos, and stamping "flare" in the vicinity of the sun is cheating. From Infantry magazine, 1980.