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.
Reblog only if you're a recreational reader and can relate to the special joy depicted in this photograph. From the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville's 1951 yearbook.
Given how a booklover's shelves tend to sag, making the world one's bookshelf might be a practical solution. From Moline Community College's 1961 yearbook.
"The pleasant books, that silently among our household treasures take familiar places, and are to us as if a living tongue spake from the printed leaves or pictured faces."
[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.]
"A book is tremendously important. Nobody ever paid for the price of a book, they pay only for the printing. But a book is actually an offering and must be regarded as such. If you give honor to the man who writes it, there is something in that which further induces the expressive powers of writing."