What level do we Sherlockian at?

 Way back in April, a goodly number of us attended a conference that emphasized the importance of the local Sherlockian society. The point was well made, and it was a fine conference, but there was a mistake one could easily made walking away from that conference in the joy of just being there.

While there were many an Indianapolis local there from the Illustrious Clients, for the most part we were all handing out flyers, etc., promoting our local societies to people who weren't local to the place we are from. We encouraged people to come visit us, log on to our Zooms, etc., and that's where I suspect one could miss the point. It isn't people coming from other cities served by other societies that make a local Sherlockian society strong and healthy. It's the people who live in your town. Any visitors are just the icing on the cake, not the cake itself.

It seems like a very obvious point, but it's an issue that can suck the life out of a local Sherlockian society. If a group's best and brightest are keeping their Sherlockian gaze on distant horizons -- the birthday weekend, the conferences that draw from across the country, the larger journals, and the friends from distant places -- they are apt to overlook the needs of their local group.

Am I calling anyone specific out in that statement? You bet I am . . . myself!

Even if you don't go to New York every year, even if you've had that BSI shilling long enough to be bored with it, the siren song of the larger Sherlockian community outside of your town still beckons. Some members of a local scion will always share you interest, but the larger part of what often makes up a local Sherlock Holmes society are people who just like talking about Sherlock Holmes with their local Sherlockian friends. They have no thoughts of being invited to a Baker Street Irregulars dinner, or driving up to Minneapolis to see a rare tome. They just like the local hang. And that's fine.

In the early 2000s, I had a lot of non-local aspirations. Hosting a Sherlockian website, publishing a bi-monthly journal, just kicking things up a level, right at the time when our local scion needed leadership. My usual partner in crime, who was great at keeping local meetings running, had retired from the job, and I just wasn't giving the local scion the attention it deserved. Had I been born at some later time, I might have gotten some sort of attention deficit diagnosis because ritual and routine have never been my strong suits, and that's what keeps a Sherlock Holmes society chugging along. You can have creatives doing random, wild guitar solos of Sherlock work in your group, but the steady drumbeat of an ongoing meeting schedule and regular events are the beating heart that keeps a group alive.

As I've gotten older, I've come to really appreciate Sherlockiana at the local level. Our monthly library discussion group is the steady drumbeat that keeps Holmes alive here, and I'm appreciative of that.