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.
How is a paint-worthy subject like an airpane exit hatch? Sometimes the nearest one is behind you. In this illustration by Frank Haviland for The Bystander (1906), the artist is blissfully unaware that he has a half-human sea creature for a critic.
"Oh overflowing cask, you give drink and fill to drunkenness every loving desire. You give joy and illumine all our understanding" (Catherine of Siena, 1347-1380, qtd. in An Anthology of Christian Mysticism by Harvey D. Egan).
The keg/cask/hogshead imps appear in Punch, 1860. The spigot fairy appears in Fairies and Folk of Ireland by William Henry Frost, 1900.
You've heard the old saying that one catches more flies with honey, but
the truth is that one catches more flies with reconnaissance. An illustration from an 1856 issue of Punch magazine.