They Dreamed the Impossible . . . and This Proves It

--It’s weird science at its kookiest, a collection of 200 books, drawings and pamphlets by brave laymen who tried to master such ontological questions as “Why Life Exists and Allied Subjects.” Now their works are part of the Archives of Useless Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, affectionately dubbed “the nut collection.” “We want to collect basically not only what worked but what didn’t work,” said archivist Kathy Marquis. Included in the archives are the works of Cyrus Reed, who advanced the theory that people are living inside Earth. And there is Seabury Doane Brewer, who said that the sun is actually 600 miles away from Earth, as opposed to the 93 million miles generally accepted by astronomers. Titles in the archives read like skits from Monty Python’s Flying Circus: “The Fact of All Life,” “Beyond Einstein” and “A Layman’s Guess or the Universal Electric Life Theory.” Explains Marquis: “The successful guys think about impossible things and try to explain them.”

--A Cree Indian who ran 2,700 miles to draw attention to his quest for the return of a sacred relic has been told by officials at the American Museum of Natural History in New York that he cannot have the artifact. Museum spokesman Herbert Kurz said a letter had been sent to Jim Thunder’s home in Edmonton, Canada, notifying him of the museum’s decision. Thunder said he is a great-great-grandson, through adoption, of Chief Big Bear, the Cree leader who created the artifact--a calico-wrapped bundle holding bear claws, sweet grass and a plug of tobacco. It was meant to give spiritual strength and guidance. Thunder said he had been told through dreams and visions to retrieve the bundle, which had been given to the museum in 1934 by a son of Big Bear, and to take it to his tribe in Western Canada. Thunder said he “had been anticipating” refusal by the museum to give him the relic. Thunder, 38, arrived in New York on March 21 after the run across Canada, which he began in Edmonton last Sept. 1.

--A reunion this weekend marking the 20-year anniversary of a galvanizing student protest at Harvard University won’t be attended by one of the key figures in the incident, then-Harvard President Nathan Pusey. “It was just a lot of screaming,” said Pusey, who ran Harvard from 1953 to 1971. “I was disappointed that any students or any faculty at Harvard accepted the notion that somehow Harvard was the source of evil and should be attacked.” Pusey, 82, said there was “no way” he would participate.