Our risen energy levels and the next state of the world

 It's Sunday night, I'm exhausted, but I just have to push out one more blog post.

Because here we are.

The vaccines are starting to open things up in the U.S. and we're all starting to have to deal with two worlds at once -- the stay-at-home Zoom world we created to get by and some version of that old social meet-and-greet world we left behind. Saturdays that were full of Sherlockian Zoom meetings are going to find birthday parties for four-year-olds, sporting events, and everything else pushing in on that space very, very quickly, not to mention actual Sherlockian gatherings.

And beyond that, have you noticed the energy in the Sherlockian world that rose up during this pandemic?

TV shows, movies, and best-selling books have brought us influxes of new Sherlockians and the energy they bring in the past, but the new connections we were pushed to, the change in focus our lives took, and even the very hard possibility that death could strike a lot sooner than any of us expected, all swirled together to give existing Sherlockians energy levels we've rarely seen rise up for non-Sherlock reasons.

New societies, new creative ventures . . . so many things that have touched us all. And now the question becomes, how much of this can we sustain without burning ourselves out? If we do truly get covid out of our daily concerns, how much of it will stand the competition of everything else flooding back into our lives? 

This is such an exciting time to be a Sherlockian, and there's just something very pure about it. It's not just a single aspect of the hobby, like one new media excitement. It's all of it. The old, the new, the borrowed, and the BLUE.

Time to get some sleep, I think. We're all going to need it.

The pastiche experiment fails

 "It's not you, it's me."

There's a reason that break-up line became a bit of a trope years ago. While one person has tried their best to make a relationship work, the person that wants out of the relationship knows full well why it isn't working, but doesn't want to cause any more damage than they have to on their way out the door.

So, when it comes to new Sherlock Holmes stories, which are coming out by the seeming millions of late, I have to say it:

It's not you, it's me.

After avoiding Sherlock Holmes pastiches for a long time, I tried to go back, picking a popular book that seemed well-regarded among my fellow Sherlockians. I tried reading, losing myself to the narrative, riding along with Holmes and Watson for the adventure presented. But I kept getting kicked off the train.

I know the original characters and their sixty-story universe too well at this point. And I know Doyle's skills, and the things he could do that another author might be awkward at pulling off. Add to that mix forty years of headcanon -- everything that evolved in my own brain after repeated exposure to the original Canon. I just can't read a book where the little cartoon angel and little cartoon devil on my shoulders are both screaming "FAKE! FAKE!"

Fic based on TV shows doesn't bother me. AUs don't bother me. But anything that tries to adhere to the original universe and starts dropping in modern attitudes, obvious historical research, or take a character to a very weird place . . . WAH-HAH! Off the narrative train I get kicked. (Not sure who the metaphoric conductor doing the kicking is, but he probably looks a bit like me.)

At this point, those who still enjoy pastiches are a bit like my friends who enjoy beer. 

"Try this one," they'd say, "you'll surely like it!" I can't tell you how many dozens and dozens of craft beers I tasted before realizing it was just the hops and grain taste -- beer was just not my thing, and I needed to stick to ciders, meads, or other non-grain based beverages. At some point, you just have to accept your state.

I'm a little jealous of my friends who get to enjoy new Sherlock Holmes stories, just as I'm jealous of any person younger than me, getting to experience those things in life only fresh eyes can enjoy and having first-times the like of which cannot be repeated. But on the good side, Sherlockiana is a broad enough hobby that there is always some aspect of it that you ignored previously that still waits for you to enjoy at a later date.

My pastiche years were great years, and a good part of the reason I love Sherlock Holmes so much now. For a modern reader, they often act as a gateway drug to Doyle's prose which was written for readers that weren't living in 2021. I know they helped me enjoy his work more. But, sadly, I think those days are done.

So, as I leave pastiche behind again for a while, and lose myself in the work of a modern author and the non-221B world they have created, I just have to sigh and go, "not you, me," and dive back into Sherlockian chronology . . . which few Sherlockian chronologists even enjoy reading.

Life is weird, isn't it?

Judging his "Jonathan"s

 "His wife and his children awaited him at home, but no father ever returned to tell them how he had fared at the hands of his secret judges."

-- One of those parts of the Canon we don't look at much

How judge-y are you feeling of late? Hopefully not much. Hopefully not going full-on Jefferson Hope,  "I knew of their guilt though, and I determined that I should be judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one," because that last part is just plain illegal. It's best to stop at "jury," because then you have friends who agree with your judgment. Now get ready for a swerve.

Why does Sherlock Holmes call Jonathan Small by his first name?

"Jonathan, with his wooden leg, is utterly unable to reach the lofty room of Bartholomew Sholto."

"And rather to Jonathan's disgust, to judge by the way the [sic] stamped about when he got into the room."

"Jonathan I shall leave to you, but if the other turns nasty I shall shoot him dead."

Sounds like he rather likes Jonathan, the purported baddie of The Sign of the Four.

"There is nothing at all new to me in the latter part of your narrative, except that you brought your own rope," says Sherlock Holmes,  which is either deduction or . . . he just knew the way any of us know something: He had heard it before.

"Is there any other point which you would like to ask about?" Jonathan Small asks Sherlock "affably." Then departs with "Good-night, gentlemen both."

What a charmer he is!

Jonathan has a limp, from the most severe sort of leg wound, in a tale where another John that Sherlock Holmes is rather fond of suddenly has a leg wound.

It's been a long day, I'm a bit tired, and as you saw from that sudden topic change, rather distractable. But, still, why the heck was Sherlock Holmes talking about Jonathan Small in a very familiar tone like that?

Hrmmmm.

A new tool to be added to your Sherlockian toolbox

 I don't get into my day job on this blog, but one of the parts of it is working with a software that is always under development. It's makers are constant adding new parts and pieces, new abilities, and then kind of going "you guys figure out the best use for this." And with their substantial user base, and the more clever among my ilk, folks do often come up with some pretty good ways to use the latest thing.

One of Sherlock Holmes's greatest strengths was doing that very thing -- looking at techniques and tools from other professions and going "How can this benefit detection?" It's a very human talent that has served us well, for the most part. I bring all this up, because this week, somebody handed Sherlockians a tool that we don't quite know the best use for yet.

The energetic and imaginative mind of Paul Thomas Miller gave us "Chapter and Verse Holmes" this week, a version of the complete (depending upon where you are, due to copyright) Canon that has Bible-like numbering of each line of the sixty stories. We've been using the Jay Finley Christ abbreviations for a very long time now (much to the whiney consternation of some anti-Christs) and this takes it to the next level.

Remember when Watson considered breaking up with Holmes? (STUD 1: 60)

Now, you're probably going "Sure, you saved time typing that reference, Brad, but I don't have 'Chapter and Verse Holmes,' despite the fact you linked in in this post twice now!" True, but you know what that also means? I now have a secret code for communicating with my fellow adoptees of "Chapter and Verse Holmes" for passing messages in Canon-speak.

The Porlock-like use of this new work for secret messages is just one of the potential applications for it. Paul didn't create it for that, but like I said, we humans like to find other uses for our tools. It's what we do.

Over the decades, Sherlockians have been handed a lot of tools for our study of Sherlock. Getting a "search" function for the Canon was a very big deal, but before that, we had concordances -- three different ones, each created with different thoughts in mind. Now, you might wonder what use a concordance has when searches are available, but can a search engine find every first name in the Canon? Can it list every insect? Nope. Concordances are still great for subject listings.

Sherlockians have traditionally like to do a massive amount of work to hand their fellow Sherlockians a treat, and some go really go that obsessive extra mile. Sherlockian chronologists fall into that category and since Paul Thomas Miller has already done that deed once, we can certainly see he has the gene for it, and he's young enough that you have to wonder what comes next. Hopefully he'll never succumb to the Ron De Waal bug and try cataloging everything ever written about Sherlock Holmes, which was once almost possible and now is beyond the grasp of any mere mortal.

But he is to be much congratulated in this moment, however, for handing us one of those tools we can play with now or tuck away for use decades from now as suits our fancy. Get out there and download whatever version of "Chapter and Verse Holmes" that your local copyright restrictions allow -- it won't be there forever (at least not on Paul's site), and you may wish you had someday, especially if some of us annoyingly tell you things like "Quit STUD1:72!"

Moriarty among the carnivores

In the mood for a little dark Sherlockian ponderance today? Here you go.

We still aren't sure exactly what killed Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls, as much as Sherlock Holmes feels certain that something did.

The fall? Drowning? Maybe a hungry bear, looking for a fish, who found a mathematics professor just lying there on the bank?

That last possibility sent me down a rabbit hole, as so many Sherlockian details do, into discovering that by the end of the Victorian era, the Swiss and their tourists had pretty much wiped out all major carnivores in Switzerland. Wolves, bear, even the lynx, pretty much gone from their country. Hailing from Illinois, I can understand how that happens. My ancestors pretty much did a bio-purge on this area as well.

So what might have taken out a crippled Moriarty, as he lay, barely breathing, having dragged himself out of the water with the last of his strength?

Well, it probably wasn't a bear. With the last bear in Switzerland to be killed on September 4, 1904, chances are that they weren't too plentiful in 1891. Wolves were long gone. Lynx had become like bigfoot, since cats are always harder to spot, being night predators. The Swiss even seem to have wiped out vultures during the 1800s.

So, once we have eliminated the impossible, what carnivorous beastie remains that might decided to take out a barely-alive math tutor on the banks of the Rychenbach?

Otters.

After a decade of comparing Benedict Cumberbatch, such a perfect visualization of Sherlock Holmes for reasons we couldn't quite understand, to otters . . . well, the truth becomes apparent. It was an otter that surely finished Moriarty and put that image into our collective consciousness. Sure, they're smaller than bears or wolves, but after that fall, it didn't take much. And there was plenty fishy about Moriarty.

We'd like to forget about Profesor Moriarty after he went over that cliff's edge. Sherlock Holmes sure seemed to -- unless the hiatus was Holmes actually taking the time to make sure. But nature was not about to forget about the criminal mastermind, at least not for a little while . . . .

A John Watson by any other name would . . . be quite different, really!

 Ah, John H. Watson. So many John Watsons out there, and so many Dr. Watsons, as any Google news search will let you know very quickly if you're searching for Watson news. John Watson comes in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and characters, and even Sherlockians are a lot more accepting of variations in their Watsons than their Sherlock Holmeses.

His name has a sort of "John Smith" common touch that helps make him the everyman who is easy to identify with as he narrates his surprise at the twists and turns of life with Sherlock Holmes. But have you ever stopped to wonder how different Watson would have been had Conan Doyle kept his original vision of the character and named him "Ormond Sacker."

Ormond Sacker is no John Watson.

Ormond Sacker is a weird little guy. He even sounds a bit rat-faced, and maybe more street-wise than John Watson. His Cockney girlfriend probably calls him "Ormy," and you don't grow up a "Sacker" without punching more than your share of folks.

While a name does not define us, names do influence who we become in subtle ways. If we could name one baby Ormond Sacker and on John Watson, and have them raised by identical parents, I'm betting they're going to be very different men once they grow to adulthood. The Victorian era was full of notable Watsons contributing to society, but has there ever been a famous Sacker?

Ormond Sacker might even be the most famous one, which is weird for a fictional character who doesn't appear in a single story. (Well, didn't appear . . . I'm sure Sherlock Holmes fans have fixed that at some point.) Unless "Orville Sacker" is more famous, thanks to The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes's Smarter Brother.

The word "sacker" means one who pillages, loots, and plunders, unless you're talking about American football or an HR firing specialist. "Ormond" hails back to an ancient Irish kingdom, a London children's hospital, or James Ormond an English/Irish/Scottish sea captain who worked for Spain to bring Franciscan settlers to Northern Florida. Ormond castles in both Scotland and Ireland are owned by families other than Ormonds. So "Ormond Sacker," literally sounds like one of the guys that came and took castles and kingdoms away from the original Ormond clan.

This guy isn't sitting around Baker Street, nursing a war wound. He either found a cunning way to avoid service altogether or was killed in Afghanistan for liking the fight a little too much. And if we start getting into what pairing him with a Sherrinford Holmes would look like . . . why hasn't anyone done a book of short stories about those two? What fun working out that alternate universe and how different its encounters with the familiar clients and villains would be!

Just by the names alone. And for the record, I'm not sure a Watson by any other name would smell as sweet. But I'll leave the debate on Watson's bathing habits to the experts. (Oh, you're out there, you little devils. You're not fooling anyone.)

When Conan Doyle flip-flopped a classic tale to get a crap one

 Our local library discussion group met tonight to discuss the dreaded "Three Gables," and, as always, I came away from that discussion with a few fresh perspectives on an old familiar tale. But this time, one of those thoughts fairly shocked me as the mental tumblers clicked into place.

The thing about "The Adventure of the Three Gables" is that in 2021, you're blinded by the story's outright racism right off the bat. The minstrel show thug Steve Dixie and the other characters' reactions to him are so awful that he eclipses everything else in that story -- like the sexism. A lot of "punching down" is going on in this tale, and even Watson takes a hit. And those aren't the only problems.

Over the years, many a Sherlockian has commented on the tale's plot being similar to "Red-Headed League" or "Three-Garridebs," being basically about a ruse to get someone out of their house to steal something. (Sure, the wealthy antagonist offers to just buy the whole house first, but, hey, close enough.) With those comparisons in mind, and the story's other issues, though, I never stopped to realize the story that "Three Gables" actually resembles.

"There was never a woman to touch her," Sherlock Holmes said of Isadora Klein, which puts one in mind of Holmes's former thoughts on Irene Adler . . . and how Adler's place in his mind may have faded with time, if it was what Watson thought it was even at its peak.

Is Isadora Klein another Irene Adler? Nope!

Isadora Klein is the King of Bohemia.

She has an upcoming marriage to a person of stature. She has an ex-lover who has something she doesn't want her intended's family to see. And she hires some burglars to get that thing back.

"The Adventure of the Three Gables" is a reverse "A Scandal in Bohemia."

But Douglas Maberley, being a much weaker specimen than Irene Adler, dies of broken heart pneumonia, and leaves his mother to hire Sherlock Holmes. Imagine if Irene had come to Holmes first to help her figure out what the King of Bohemia wanted so badly that he was sending thugs after her -- suddenly you get "The Adventure of Briony Lodge" instead of "A Scandal in Bohemia."

And as much as Holmes thinks the King of Bohemia is a jerk, the detective doesn't ask him for the modern equivalent of half a million dollars just to make Irene and her husband feel better about being burgled. "Three Gables" doesn't just gender-flip "Scandal" without indulging in a bit of its discrimination along the way. And we don't come away from this one liking Sherlock Holmes as much as we do in the light-side version of this plot.

"The Adventure of the Three Gables" is soooo problematic, and casts a shadow over everyone involved. Conan Doyle's later life faculties got questioned a lot this evening. But I sure never expected that it was the evil twin of the tale that lead off the short stories we prize so much.