Sherlocking At 35,000 Feet
By Don Hobbs

This is the sixth week in a row that I have been on the road. My normal travel schedule keeps me on the road about half the time but due to the resignation of a couple of co-workers, I have become a real road warrior. I am looking forward to some extended time at home, where my little library is feeling neglected. I will be out again next week but will be home for two weeks in a row following that. My life away from home does mean books are not arriving. No, there are always books arriving. When I am away, those little salmon colored parcel-pick-up-slips from the local post office seem to accumulate. Every worker at the Flower Mound Post Office knows me by first name. How often do I walk in and hear, “Another book pick-up for Mr. Hobbs.”

I love the flexibility of a job that allows me to travel but I love even more the extended stays I sometimes have at home. Sitting upstairs in my library, working on deciphering some new exotic translation or teaching a class over the internet is a comfort zone I relish. Most of my co-workers think I am some sort of renaissance man because of the things I do for fun. Those lucky enough to have visited my library understand a little bit more what the term Sherlockian means.

The difficulty of writing a weekly Sherlockian column from 35,000 feet is the lack of internet connectivity. I use the internet many times to check on facts, search some element of a particular story, or some other far-fetched idea. A perfect example of this happened on the way to the airport. I noticed a political sign for a person running for city council. The candidate’s name was Steve Dixon. I may have a slight case of altitude sickness, brain fever, or just plain old man syndrome but I can not remember if the Canonical character was named Steve Dixon or Steve Dixie. I recently saw another sign for a James Philmore but I was somewhere else and never saw that sign again. The point is, I was going to write some cutesy article today on the number of political candidates with Canonical names but not being able to verify Steve Dixon from Steve Dixie, I have had to go in a totally different direction., as you can see.

Writing from my cramped airline seat, at 35,000 feet, I have to wing it, so to speak. Even so, sometimes an idea will take flight and the end result is a soaring success but at other times, I have a failure to launch experience. All in all, last week was a bountiful Sherlockian week. I had several more submissions from Ted Bergman, of Sweden. He has really taken a liking to The Galactic Sherlock Holmes. He also sent me a list of three pages of corrections for the Swedish section. He was almost apologetic in offering the corrections but as I told him, this is the exact kind of help I need. Some of the errors he found were made by me such as minor spelling mistakes but other were errors form Ronald De Waal’s original work. There were a group of books that stated they were translated by Från Engelskaan that turns out to mean “from English” in Swedish. I hope that Sherlockians all over the world will take the time to correct other mistakes that GSH includes. Only by outside help, will it become a valuable tool for foreign language collectors.

Well, I have filled another page of Sherlockian ramblings at 35,000 feet. Who knows where I will write the next one but rest assured I will.

Happy Collecting!!