An unexpected boom

When Sherlock Holmes closes a door, Jefferson Hope breaks out a window.

That might be the best Sherlockian allusion to make for what we're now seeing as humanity gets over the initial shock of transitioning to pandemic life. With local scion meetings, banquets, symposiums and all the in-person stuff being shutdown, did our lives suddenly have less things to do?

Not if you have a good internet connection.

Where we were once limited by distance, an ambitious Sherlockian can now attend gatherings in Dallas, Seattle, New Jersey without paying air fare or taking time off work. The John H. Watson Society, a group too widespread to gather regularly, threw a meeting together in a week or two that went very well. And Zoom calls aren't the only shift. The Baker Street Irregulars, usually known for print endeavors, have launched a video blog as a direct result of the shift. The Scintillation of Scions changing to online this year may not be a permanent change for them, but they are blazing new territory for other Sherlockian events of the future.

Sherlockians plainly know what to do with lemons. Every flaw Conan Doyle ever let slip into his works has resulted in some beautiful blooms from Sherlockians using those flaws as seeds in their mental gardens. This pandemic trouble was just one more little Watsonian slip, once we realized it wasn't going to kill us immediately.

Even here in my own little corner of the Sherlockian universe, what started as a nightly relaxation when I found the usual video game wasn't working during corona stress, has turned into a new Sherlockian mini-hobby: Photoshopping books into imaginary Sherlockian works for my library of dreams. A week's furlough took me down a rabbit hole of vacation-in-place (but shifting in time) that led to about a third of a draft for a book, which is continuing even now . . . and, yes, Sherlockian, what else?

If Covid-19 doesn't kill us, Sherlockiana just might, as all this piles up. But then, we always knew that a thorough investigation of Sherlock Holmes takes a life(time).

So here we go, once again.