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.
Some methods of boosting academic achievement are as much a shift in mindset as anything else. The use of concentric circle mandalas came with a significant degree of risk (psychosis) and was out of favor by 1980, or at least so we imagine. From Elmhurst's 1970 yearbook.
At first glance, we thought an expectant mother was standing behind a transparent Date Due slip, perhaps to find out her due date. From Eastern Kentucky's 1973 yearbook.
[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost
sense of immediacy. We follow the founder of the Theater of
Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then
flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free. The images
we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
From the University of North Carolina at Asheville's 1971 yearbook. For an explanation of how this scanned page captures a genuine spirit, see that remarkable book The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine, which makes good on its promises of real ghosts, actual hauntings, and necromancy by proxy.