The Everything Meeting

 This afternoon the Crew of the Barque Lone Star met as they do every month on Zoom. I was having a great crash after four solid days of hard household labor, unhealthy eating, and probably too much caffeine. The nature of Zoom being what it is, when a meeting has over sixty attendees like the CoBLS does, one can turn off camera and microphone, hide in the corner, and just let it wash over you.

As they moved from live meetings to Zoom, the Crew took their local meeting activities with them, the story discussion, the quiz, etc. And then they took advantage of Zoom's reach to pull in speakers. And added a whole Conan Doyle wing. At this point, the Crew of the Barque Lone Star's meetings have become the "everything bagel" of Sherlockian meetings. And the quality of the bagel has been holding up.

In the olden times of the eighties, you really had to go to a major banquet of one of the better societies to get the content you got at today's monthly Zoom of that one society. Tim Johnson, today's main speaker, gave a wise and enlightening talk that could have graced any venue we have. Steve Mason is planning and executing these meetings with the grace of a seasoned master of ceremonies at this point, and while it's still a little early to look back historically and see just what has occurred here, the Crew of the Barque Loan Star is a great example of the best of what we've gotten from a major societal handicap of the past couple years.

I don't want to even appear to diminish all of the other great Zoom gatherings that have risen to the challenge, but our Texas-centered friends have really gone for it, and deserve much praise for going "Yes, and . . ." to all the possibilities that have arisen from our new mode. Embracing opportunity rather than worrying overmuch about guarding traditions is always the way our hobby moves forward, and the Crew has certainly done that. 

Next week, the Holmes, Doyle, & Friends 2022 symposium will be bringing people together, live and in person, in Dayton, and it will be great fun to see many of the new friends we've made over Zoom in person for the first time, as well as those lovely old faces we know so well. But Dayton comes but once a year. The other eleven months?

Well, we've still got the everything society, and all those other flavors out there.