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 Andrew M. Reichart, managing editor of Argawarga Press (weird books for weird people), listens often to the "Anagrammatical Ancestor Spell" flexi-disc we recorded for Fiddler's Green #5. Thank you, Mr. Reichart, for calling our recording "inspiring."
"'I don't want to be a descendant,' he said; 'I'd rather be an ancestor.'" An illustration from a 1912 issue of Scribner's magazine. You can actually choose your lineage (and prove your claims) with the tips in Heirs to the Queen of Hearts: Tracing Magical Genealogy.
[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.]