Complicated times.

"You know my methods in such cases, Watson: I put myself in a man's place, and having first gauged his intelligence, I try to imagine how I should myself have proceeded under the same circumstances."

-- Sherlock Holmes in "The Musgrave Ritual"

Sherlock Holmes was a wise man, on that, I think most of us can agree.

And perhaps he was never more wise than in the statement above. Empathy. Trying to see another's point of view. Trying to just understand. Sherlock Holmes used that skill, among many others, to walk into so many situations that made no sense whatsover, and saw just what was going on.

Now, take the statement above and replace "intelligence" with the word "anger."

Tonight, I am angry, about as angry as I get without letting go. And that little choice, that momentary decision to just let it all out, that second when you know it would just feel so good to let it all out . . . yeah . . . it comes with regret most times. But as much of that emotion as I'm feeling tonight, I know that there are people out there whom I can't do a Sherlock Holmes and put myself in their place. They're carrying an anger that my life, my happy home, my sense of safety, has kindly never let me feel. I know it exists, because I'm a human being and still share that humanity with those folks.

I can't put myself in that other man's place tonight. But goddamn, how angry he must be. 

Sherlock Holmes had some other skills too. He could look at patterns in the mud, patterns in people's behavior, patterns in orange seeds in the mail, and see the larger picture. It was never just about the mud or the pips. Sure, he might have stopped at the mud splatters, "Watson, your boots are muddy, should we have Billy shine them up for you?" but we wouldn't read those stories, for some bore who just didn't like Watson having muddy boots. No, Holmes looked at those boots and saw the story behind them.

But the patterns, too, are almost beyond us. The web's have been woven over decades, not by Moriartys, but by clumsy worker bees pursuing single objectives without looking at collateral effects, with so many motives. Greed, egotism, sex . . . it would be so lovely to see a master plan at work behind it all, to just go, "Hey, if we shove Jeff Bezos off a waterfall, this all gets fixed!" (Yes, I know Jeff isn't the guy we most want to shove off that falls, but he's got a worldwide web under his control, so good Moriarty metaphor.) We'd like one simple answer like that, one hound with phosphorous on his face unleashed by one greedy cousin, but it isn't that simple. It took all of us to get here.

There's a reason we love Sherlock Holmes. He solves seemingly unsolveable things, and if we could solve things, we wouldn't love him so much. We can't come close to being him.

John Watson on the other hand, a man who was willing to travel with a stranger to a demon-haunted land just to see if he could help, even if Sherlock wasn't there, that guy we can do a fair impression of. To be brave when we don't understand, to listen to explanations that weren't immediately apparent to us, to allow other people to use their own skills, learning, and that little thing called "science" to show us facts that we didn't know before, whether or not we like them. John Watson had the hard job at 221B Baker Street, just being ready to help even when he wasn't the one who got noticed, got credit, or got to even seem smart.

And he knew how to wait and to listen. That, in the end, is how we come the closest to putting ourselves in another person's place, even if there is no way to truly ever feel what they feel. So maybe tonight, in this moment, we try to put our own reactions aside long enough to listen, like Watson.

It may be all we have.

If you decide to leave Sherlock stuff for a bit, which is my general specialty, here's a guy worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4amCfVbA_c

Does the Canon have an expiration date?

As fans of Sherlock Holmes, we like to think of him as eternal.

And to some extent he is. The legend, the icon, the archetype, all that is a part of our culture now. But the original ACD stories? Classics, indeed. Favorites of many a living human, yes. But generational change is going to impact how future folks see those same tales.

After reading "The Adventure of the Wisteria Lodge" for our monthly Sherlock Story Society discussion at the Peoria Public Library (currently on Zoom), the good Carter remarked on how racist the story was with respect to any non-white, non-English people in the story. While we all go "Hey, that Three Gables thing is awfully racist!" it's slowly creeping up on most of us that the Italians, the South Americans, the Greeks, the anybody-but-regular-Brits tends to be seen as the problem to be solved.

Even if it's just a "fiery and passionate" woman with "Welsh blood" or the "fiery tropical love" of a Peruvian (both of which add a charming bit of sexism to the racism), there are many a trait from caricatures apparent when it comes to those of foreign birth. Where once we finally just went, "Steve Dixie is awful!" more and more people are looking at characters like his boss, Isadora Klein, with a scrutiny she didn't get before.

Even that best of Conan Doyle's tales of dealing with race, "The Yellow Face," has that very unfortunate title and main issue that there's something to be worried from that face of a different color. Replace "Yellow" with "Ghostly" and you not only can do the same story, but it actually becomes more eerie. Not just the possibility of a dead husband in the neighboring cottage, but a seriously dead husband back there.

Movies tend to show their age in a much more obvious way. The clothes, the dated dialogue, all those details that can make the whole venture seemed a bit foolishly dated. They are easily seen for what they were: products of a less considerate age. Literature, especially that deemed "classic," is usually of a quality that doesn't call itself out so quickly. And yet, over time, the details emerge. E-books of the "complete" Sherlock Holmes become less complete.

The bathwater around this baby is the same bathwater as in years past. Our awareness of how dirty it is sure has changed in the last forty years. But here's the thing: Sherlock Holmes is popular in Japan. Sherlock Holmes exists in India. Sherlock Holmes is well known in lands where the words aren't exactly the same as the words we read in England, America, Canada, etc. And yet, Sherlock Holmes is still enjoyed with different words.

We call those sixty stories "the Canon," comparing them to the Bible or some other Holy Book. And the thing about the Bible? It's been read and enjoyed in several different English editions for a very long time. As the Canon of Sherlock Holmes falls completely out of copyright, could it be time for a new edition of our own Canon? Something a little more cleaned-up for modern and future readers?

There will always be those purists who cry "blasphemy!" at such a thought, but there are also those legions who enjoy Sherlock Holmes in words that are not at all Conan Doyle's, in every form of fiction we have. What would a little polishing of the diamond hurt? There are actually a lot of differences in our existing editions, and super-purists still go back to the original Strand Magazine version if they feel the need. Or even the printed manuscripts.

Sherlock Holmes is eternal. But every single word of those sixty stories needn't be, if we want to show some thoughtfulness and care for people other than ourselves. That's what so much of the questions we face now really are: Are we just thinking of ourselves, or caring for our neighbors?

Even here in Sherlock-land.

Postscript: And can you imagine the joy some congress of Sherlockians would have debating every change in the creation of a New Modern Complete Sherlock Holmes? You know they would, even in the most heated debates along the way.

The Return of the Dangling Prussian

It was both 1895 and 1985 when I first went into the bartending business on 2/21 of those years.

The above is a completely factual statement, oddly enough. How?

The Dangling Prussian.

There's a whole long involved story about how the Prussian came to be, besides the rumors of the fate of a particular German spy. It involves Dubuque, Iowa, an Englishman, and a Spider. But the short version is this: I wanted to do virtual Sherlockian meetings before the internet existed. When all we had was the good ol' U.S. Postal Service. Impossible, you say?

Well, even if you don't, there is one place where the impossible is very possible, where Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson live on, and where it is always . . . always . . . 1985.

Armed with only an IBM Selectric typewriter and a group of friends who liked to write letters, I gathered nine Sherlockians in the upstairs clubrooms of a pub called the Dangling Prussian. Gordon Speck, Jim Duval, Paul Herbert, Bill Cochran, Pj Doyle, Pattie and Terry Brunner, the good Carter, and myself became part of the story of a meeting -- the first meeting of a brand new Sherlock Holmes society called "the Montague Street Incorrigibles."

Everyone had been asked to send in some words of greeting, some general conversation on the story for the evening ("The Musgrave Ritual"), general musings on other topics, and, eventually, comments on the previous meeting. Those words were woven into the resulting story of that meeting on February 21, 1985, in the inn where it was always 1985.

We met three times a year, and little props came into the meeting packet to enhance the experience, including recipes for the annual banquets -- well, except for the time Moran was the caterer and packets of instant gruel arrived with the meeting story. The sergeant-at-arms was the big fellow who ran the inn, named Arminius Detweiller, and I served as the club secretary, working part-time behind the bar for Detweiller as the 1895s went by.

Inside the Prussian by Troy Taylor

The one-big-story version of the Montague Street Incorrible meetings lasted three years, with all the work it entailed, and then, in 1991 (and also 1895) the Prussian re-opened as an amateur press association -- another pre-internet make-do, where a publication was collated from individual pages sent in by the members of the association. That first gathering, with original Incorrigibles Pj Doyle and myself, adding in William Ballew, Peter Blau, Bob Burr, Wally Conger, Linda Reed, Tina Rhea, and John Stephenson. That version lasted until 1998, and got a lot more raucous, with some members writing their own stories of the goings-on downstairs in the main bar-room of the inn. Signora Ricolletti was hired on by Detweiller as the club's formidable bouncer, and despite that, there was at least one big fight with Alexander Holder.

Canonical characters did show up quite often during both incarnations of the Dangling Prussian, and I really wish it could have been kept open until 2004, when the Dark Lantern League -- a full role-play group -- started up, and could have me there. But that's another story.

The reason for this little trip down memory lane is my being invited to bartend virtually once again after twenty-some years, for a happy hour at the Dangling Prussian, this time over Zoom on Friday night June 12th, as a part of the massive Scintillation of Scions on-line symposium.  That Friday night will feature fifteen different guest bartenders, each with their own bar/lounge, ranging from the Tankerville Club to the Petri Wine Bar, with some really fun hosts. You have to be signed up for the symposium to join in, and it might even get a little crowded -- the sign-ups for the Scintillation have been impressive.

I got the late shift, so who knows what the crowd will be like at that point. This time the story is definitely going to write itself, though, so I will be very curious to see how it works out. (Oh, and by the by . . . the bartender at the Dangling Prussian prefers mead and mead-based ciders and wines for the drink specials. I mean, c'mon, Sherlock Holmes didn't retire to a vineyard like Jean Luc Picard, now, did he? And if anyone deserved the spirits of the gods, it was our consulting detective friend.

Cheers!

The Adventure of Micah Clarke

Every now and then, I sort through my shelves and go, "Why do I have all these copies of Micah Clarke?"

And then I squint up my face to demonstrate that I'm thinking very hard and ask my tortured memory cells, "Did I even ever attempt to read Micah Clarke?"

More evidence for the camp that believes I might be one of the worst people in our hobby . . . well, their hobby. I'm a lovely Sherlockian, by my lights. But I suspect  a few Sherlockians also consider being a Sherlockian means being a proper Doylean, and when it comes to that? Oh, yes, I am a horrific Doylean, and I've got the spinning Doyle coffin to prove it.

So, back to Micah Clarke. I have these books for two reasons, the first being the predecessor to the information superhighway, the antique superhighway. In other words, the interstates full of antique malls that appeared across this land and then started fading fast when eBay started scooping up all the good stuff. There was a period, a lovely little period in the last century, when you could actually find Sherlock Holmes items for a buck or two at said antique malls. And if you didn't find Sherlock Holmes, you could find Conan Doyle.

And one of the most common ways to find either Sherlock Holmes or Conan Doyle was in cheap hardcover editions of pirated novels printed before all the copyright arrangements were nailed down between American and England, and Conan Doyle had proper contracts in place.

A Study in Scarlet and Micah Clarke were two well-plundered sources of pirate booty. The former was just as commonly found as the latter in the earliest antique mall days, but no Sherlockian ever stops to go "Why do I have this old copy of A Study in Scarlet?" Micah Clarke, though?

One wonders, now and again. I do need to read it one of these days, I suppose.

Love in a time of horse factory explosion

After being recently confused by an attempt connect our current pandemic with Sherlock Holmes in "The Dying Detective," I was relieved to be reminded of a true Canonical pandemic reference while listening to this week's "The Final Podblem."

Of course, they didn't specifically mention it, a certain member of that podcast team being a lying liar who can pull off an outlandish fabrication without a hint of falseness. As their review of "The Yellow Face" came to the fate of Effie Munro's first husband, instead of dying of yellow fever, he was suddenly dead of an explosion at the horse factory.

T'was an early morning, one of those where a man of a certain age awakes feeling oddly enough in parts of the body that hypochondria set in ("Is this it? Is this when the [Insert Killer Ailment Here] gets me at last?"), so I shall claim multiple excuses for starting to look up Canonical horse factories. You know . . . those CANONICAL HORSE FACTORIES that Sherlockians have discussed for all of my forty years in this business.

Ooof.

The Canon has a leather factory (Close!) and a bicycle factory (That surely ran the horse factory out of business.), as well as a bust factory and an artificial knee-cap factory, but as you probably well know, not a single horse factory. Not the little factory in Sweden that makes wooden horses. Not one of those gruesome joints were they make horse steaks and horseburger. And not a subcontractor for Westworld's robotic steeds.

What would a Canonical horse factory be, except one thing: A handy diversion from a yellow fever pandemic that was supposed to help divert we stupid laymen one step further into thinking a horrific yellow face at a window was the result of ravages of yellow fever. I don't think I ever quite fell for that one. But in Victorian England? A young medical man trying to pull a literary trick on the average Jimmy England? Oh, yeah, yellow fever will give you permanent yellow ugly-face, sure.

But this is 2020. We're much more medically savvy than the common Victorian. Right?

Well, I would be putting on airs, but those explosions at the Victorian horse factories really have me in a funk. Poor John Hebron.

The Darkest Golden Age of Sherlockiana?

Man, I hope I don't die soon.

Too dark? Hey, being over sixty in the age of pandemic really puts a tinge of existential threat on things. I mean, even that silly phrase, "existential threat" is just a way of fancy-word sugar-coating "HEY, THIS THING COULD KILL US!" Not like all life isn't about just staying alive. Whether you're a brother, or whether you're a mother, you're stayin' alive, stayin' alive . . .

Because, HEY! Once you get past all the disease, death, unemployment, ignorance, et cetera, et cetera, ET FRIGGIN' CETERA, there's a lot of really good stuff going on in the Sherlockian world right now. The sheer number of cool ideas spinning around our mental planet like an asteroid belt of gifts from Santa's sleigh since the cosmos shook our cage has been a real teaser for better things ahead.

Too many metaphors at once? Maybe. But that's kind of where I am.

The wave of "Hey, I can attend Sherlock Holmes society meetings anywhere!" is just one part of it. To combat the stresses of everything else, I think our brains are just naturally coming up with beautiful little trail markers to try to distract us. "Oh, look, here's a path you haven't explored!" And when one of us goes down that path, others notice, start that way, and diverge onto their own sideroads. It started before the pandemic hit, but the pressure of an "existential threat" seems to be adding a quiet push of "USE IT OR LOSE IT!" behind it all.

Thanos is snapping his fingers, time to find your Avengers, to borrow from what may be the last blockbuster ever, if the theaters close down for good. (See, there's a thought we never used to have even come up. Existential threats!)

I've written before, I think, about how Sherlockiana didn't really come into being while Doyle was churning out stories, killing Sherlock, bringing Sherlock back, etc., when life was good. No, it took a Great Depression, a World War, a pandemic, and all the other crap the early twentieth century had to throw at humankind to spin a few folks into birthing Sherlock Holmes fandom. Sherlock was there, fun to read and all, but that next step . . . that thing that turns the raw material into a diamond . . . is the pressure. Doyle provided the vein of minerals to mine. The times created the miners to dig it.

Waking up in the morning to a genius take on Holmes and Watson from one of our better prospectors is starting to be a regular thing. And things that didn't used to have "Sherlock Holmes" written all over them are now getting red glowing letters with that name appearing on them like a targeting laser.

Things to do. Research to look into. Words to write. People to see? Well, that one's a little harder, but we'll get there. Hope you're finding bright spots in all this, because they seem to be there.

Man, I hope I don't die soon.

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.