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Recruitment Time!
The Baker Street Journal made it’s way into the mailbox this week. That same-old, same-old cover we’ve been looking at for about fifty years stared up like the statuary in front of a library or museum that’s been around since you were a kid. After a moment of proper awe at its grand old institution status, I made my way inside to find an editorial reminding me that most Sherlockians are old geezers, and that I’d better get busy recruiting some new ones. While I’ve come to suspect that, even the 1940s, most Sherlockians were old geezers and that is just our status quo, I can still appreciate need to recruit newbies into the hobby. Pity I’m just so awful at it! Luckily for everyone else, The Baker Street Journal provided a series of tips for luring fresh meat into our Sherlockian storage locker. I fear it’s just too late for me in that area, but let’s review their hints anyway, just so I can fully marinate in my own recruiting failures over the years. 1. “Take a friend or neighbor to your scion meeting.” Okay, I’ve done that. Friends, co-workers, relatives. Not a one of them has ever found the hobby as interesting as I do, which is understandable, as I’m a bit of a nutter about it. But none of them even asked when the next meeting was. My worst failure was a friend who even had his own 221B room – even he didn’t want to keep coming to scion meetings! How bad do you have to be not to recruit somebody with their own 221B room? Of course, now that I no longer have a local scion society, that option is really out anyway so the world is spared my further attempts on that front. 2. “Write a letter to your local paper whenever anything suggesting Baker Street appears in its pages.” Okay, I’ve admitted that I’m a bit of a nutter, but I’m not as loco as those people who write to our local editorial page. Have you read the letters that appear on those pages? Besides, my neighbor has that base covered, though I think its a while since his letters to the editor mentioned Holmes – another danger with writing to your paper: once you get started for Sherlock’s sake, you may start doing it for any old reason. And suddenly you’re one of those people. 3. “Set up an exhibition of some Sherlockiana at a local library.” Been there, done that, a couple of times. Entertained the homeless who hang out there and occasionally I run into someone who goes, “Sherlock Holmes? There was an exhibit about him in the library once.” Other than keeping future small talk interesting, it didn’t really seem to make much of a dent in our scion society ranks. 4. “Give a gift subscription to the Baker Street Journal to a friend, your local library, your alma mater, or a local college or high school.” Okay, I can appreciate that the Journal is trying hard to keep its subscription numbers up, but $36.50 for a gift to those people who didn’t like coming to a scion meeting or get converted by looking at my fabulous library exhibit? Screw them! They can get an eight dollar deck of Flux cards for a gift like all the rest of my friends! Okay, so I’m a bitter old geezer of a Sherlockian. Somebody better recruit someone to replace me, so the BSJ can keep that $36.50 rolling in once I’m gone. My own tip for that? Use this new-fangled thing we have called “the internet.” I hear that’s where all the kids are hanging out these days.Your humble correspondent,
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