Holmes in the Heartland -- The Morning After

 A lot of times I "live blog" a Sherlock Holmes weekend. 

I type up little notes of what's going on as I sit in the talks, post as quickly as I can, and generally keep friends unable to attend in the know. For Holmes in the Heartland in St. Louis this weekend, I definitely failed in that, and not for any reasons that were actually bad. 

So here we are, coming down on a Monday morning after another weekend of Sherlockian camaraderie as one does. The first two paragraphs of this blog post started on Sunday morning, but as happened so often, when I'd sit in the hotel lobby to catch a better wifi signal than my room would allow, I would just wind up talking to people. Now, I've just got nothing to distract me but the dread of a Monday return to work.

Holmes in the Heartland can, I am very certain, be judged as a success on many levels. Eighty-six or so people attended, and as one person happily told me yesterday "I stayed awake through the entire thing!" That might seem like the bare minimum for praise, but let me tell you, I have sat next to dozing Sherlockians at such weekends. A lot of us are older, and sleep comes very easy to us. And even when I was younger, I'd often skip many a mid-afternoon speaker to take a nice break in my hotel room. Couldn't do that this time -- the speakers were all engaging and on their "A" game. 

I want to especially credit Ray Betzner and Mike McSwiggin for their work in the lead-off morning slot and the first-talk-after-lunch spot. Those places on the roster are key, and both performed perfectly, setting a fun tone and stimulating Sherlockian brains. And while I'm calling those two out specifically, every speaker was worthwhile and did well at the podium: Kristen Mertz, Cindy Brown, Steve Doyle, Beth Gallego, Monica Schmidt, and the Joe Eckrich/Rich Krisciunas/Michael Waxenberg final act. It was a nicely put together mix of folks, over which Rob Nunn served as master of ceremonies.

But, as many of us said, time and again, the speakers weren't even the high point. The high point was just the people, from every corner of America, gathering to just hang out with their fellow Sherlockians. From the Friday night "Just Desserts for the Professor" to the Sunday closing lunch at the Spaghetti Factory for those last hangers-on. We just had a good time being together, talking Sherlockian life, and getting to enjoy the kind of conversations you don't get on Zoom.

Zoom is now with us ongoing, and a great place to encounter folks for the first time, but I think it has actually increased our enjoyment of the live get-togethers. We can get the initial social stuff out of the way there, and the live encounters just get to be next level because of that. And not just Zoom -- the Sherlockian Chronologist Guild has been interacting only by PDF newsletter for two and a half years now, and the prospect of Mike McSwiggin doing a chronology talk (among other things) brought about eight of us together in one place -- an unheard of occurrence!

I could go on and on about Holmes in the Heartland here, but the workday awaits. Sigh.

More notes spawned by this weekend to come.