The Maniac Collector's Inbox Sherlockian Overload Sometimes there are not enough Sherlockian things to do and other times there are just too many. I am experiencing the latter this week. I started the week off working in Seattle, Washington by not doing a single thing Sherlockian but I ended it with just too many Sherlockian things to do. Last week was the monthly meeting of one of the local Sherlockian societies, the Diogenes Club of Dallas. During that meeting, the decision to bring Dallas’ other Sherlock Holmes society, The Crew of the Barque LONE STAR out of dry-docks on a more regular basis. Currently, the Crew only meets once or twice a year. The special events have always been under the guise of a cruise of the Barque. Dallas’ second oldest society co-founded by Francine Swift and John Bennett Shaw in the mid-70’s took up where the area’s first Sherlock Holmes society, Victoria Regina, had left off. Dr. Charles Petty founded V.R. He was the Dallas County Medical Examiner and known for showing up at crime scene wearing his deerstalker and Inverness Cape. He is also the person upon which the old television show Quincy was based. The Crew of the Barque LONE STAR was founded during what now seems to the Golden era for the creation of Sherlockian societies. The Afghanistan Perceivers, Dean Clark’s society in Tulsa, and The Nonpareil Club over in Ft. Worth, both were founded during this time along with a plethora of others. Those were the days when John Bennett Shaw was hosting Sherlockian seminars around the country and about the same time of the publication of Nicholas Meyer’s Seven Per-Cent Solution. This was the decade prior to when I became a Sherlockian, but I digress. On Monday, I am driving down to Austin to conduct an interview with a Sherlockian invested into the Baker Street Irregulars in 1968. It just happens that the Austin Sherlock Holmes Society is meeting the same night. My interview will not afford me the opportunity to attend their meeting. Peter Blau will be in Houston on Wednesday. The Practical But Limited Geologists will be meeting but I will not be able to make this meeting either. My work schedule originally had me in Washington, D.C so I never planned on going to Houston. Wednesday is also my wife Joyce’s birthday and it is best not to schedule a Sherlockian event on that particular date, a mistake I will never make again. Not that she would be too upset it is just much easier on the marital-bliss front if I keep wife-related birthday events and Sherlockian events as separate as possible. Houston Sherlockian Timothy Evers will be in town on Wednesday and luckily, he will visit me during the day. I do not mean to imply that Joyce does not like or tolerate Sherlockians. She does 364-days a year, just not very well on April 13. Timmy will visit and be gone before Joyce is home from work. Therefore, you see, there are Sherlockian feast and famines. I am experiencing one of those times. I am having one of those up times and must choose what I participate in and what I cannot. I hope I make the correct choice. I would not have it any other way. Happy Collecting!!
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Past 2011 Columns January 2, 2011 January 9, 2011 January 16, 2011 January 23, 2011 January 30, 2011 February 2, 2011 February 13, 2011 February 20 2011 February 27, 2011 March 13, 2011 March 27, 2011 |