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.
Over the past four years, British recording artist Benjamin Berry (of Fear of Tigers fame) has been working on a musical companion to our Field Guide to Identifying Unicorns by Sound. As we simply can't wait for that release, we've been recording some tracks of our own, in conjunction with voice artists Jonathan Caws-Elwitt, Hilary Caws-Elwitt, Robert Parker, and Karen Kahler. We've even worked in some fantastical unicorn facts not previously revealed in the field guide. Our first recordings are available for free listening over at Soundcloud. Remember that for every heart icon you click, a baby unicorn takes its first steps.
An illustration from Carrageen and Other Legends by K. M. Loudon (1892), drawn by Edith Scannell. The caption reads: "And the snow fairies came and covered them both."