The main thing I think is quite cool, besides the sheer persistence, is that anyone noticed and there's a community following this. Everyone has stuff going on in their lives, this seems so obscure that you'd almost expect people to shrug and ignore.

Seems likely that Robert Truman Hungerford has been placing these ads himself for the last 45 years, as a kind of solitary practice. He is apparently now giving hints to their interpretation (http://www.maydaymystery.org/mayday/texts/25-dec7.html): "Good starting point: Historically, what sort of compass is in the picture?"

This week sucked, so nothing really got updated, but I took a cue from one of the previous emails and decided to blow off about 3,000 important things I should have been doing and read Magus (link to Amazon product page) instead.

I have my complaints about Amazon, but you know what I respect the hell out of them for: that 27-year-old web link still works.