Out With The Old . . . .

Baby New Year 1995 seems to be galloping eagerly in with his little hands ready to grab our lives and run. But before we get dragged off on this wild new orbit, let's take one last look at Old Man 1994. He was an interesting enough old guy, and one we might remember for a bit.

January started out with the usual Big Doings in New York City. Not being the sort of person who goes into the big city all that often, I usually just sit back and sigh at the thoughts of the people I'm missing and the books I could be buying. This year, however, had two events of note that one could feel way out in the hinterlands. One was the sixtieth anniversary of the Baker Street Irregulars of New York. I hated to miss it, but figured the hundredth anniversary will be the really big one (and, gee, I'll only be seventy-seven! ) .   In any case, sixty years is a very impressive milestone, especially when you consider what good condition the group is in.

The other event of note was really a non-event. January 1994 marked the first year without an ASH Birthday Dinner. With so many of their key members now attending the BSI dinner, the remaining Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes went in with some local groups to form the "Fortescue Symposium" as a substitute. The ASH dinners were legendary for their rowdies and comedy, and their passing has been commented on by more than one correspondent.

Will the Fortescue Symposium eventually fill those big shoes? Or will the infusion of ASH into the BSI bring more rowdiness to that crowd? Will either Bob Burr or I ever get to New York to find out?

Late spring 1994 finally saw publication of The Universal Sherlock Holmes. Despite all those inclined to pick at nits, including this columnist, the mere fact that the massive bibliography got produced was an event in itself. Ironically, as the work that attempted to catalogue everything written on Sherlock Holmes came out, the amount of writings on Holmes has started to increase again, making its instant obsolescence even more noticeable.

We've seen more pastiches in bookstores than any time in the last decade, some of them actually good. A second Encyclopedia Sherlockiana with a slightly different slant appeared out of the blue. And Otto Penzler's paperback reprint series of classic Sherlockiana has been a godsend for younger Sherlockians who don't have the hundreds of dollars it would take to purchase the original editions of those
books, even if they could find them. The electronic superhighway has been creeping into Sherlockian circles, and this year it crept into the life of this particular Sherlockian.

Joining up with the Wigmore Street Post Office bunch on Prodigy (an over-the-phone-lines computer service, for the non-techies out there) has made my computer more than just a fancy typewriter/toy. It now brings me messages from Sherlockian friends at a speed the U.S. Postal Service can't hope to match (though you still can't beat a letter    for expressing yourself).

One day soon, I'll have to take one step further and join "The Hounds of the Internet," but for now, I'm just delighted to have discovered a whole new kind of Sherlocking. And for those of you who've heard the rumor, I will have another book out one day soon. It's called The Armchair Baskerville Tour, and I'm in the final chapter of writing it, so it should be complete by the end of 1994. That means it won't get to the publisher until early 1995, and Plugs and Dottles will be sure to have the info as soon as it's published.

I think you can definitely expect to see a side of The Hound of the Baskervilles that you've never seen before, if you decide to join me for the tour.  I've had great fun in 1994 wandering around London and the moors of Dartmoor in the 1880's, all without leaving Peoria, and I think you'll enjoy the trip as well, even if you've been there many times before. It really is a very weird place. Well, with that brief retrospective, it's time for Baby New Year 1995 to take over. He looks like a lively lad, and I hope you all have fun with him, because I certainly intend to. Thanks to all my old and new friends who made this year so great. We've got a lot more good times to look forward to -- you can count on it.