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| Like Sherlock Holmes, James Dean and Carrie Carlson are experts with swords. (Ann Andriacco photo) |
You
never know what you’re going to learn at a Sherlock Holmes conference. Only
later does your previous ignorance strike you.
For
example, the 105 participants in A Scintillation of Scions VIII in the Baltimore
area last weekend learned a lot about fencing from Carrie Carlson and James
Dean. And it wasn’t a lecture – they demonstrated, right in the middle of the
room in full costume. No blood was shed, but we certainly got the idea.
And
what does swordplay have to do with Sherlock Holmes? Why, the detective was an “expert
singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman,” Dr. Watson noted early on in A Study
in Scarlet.
In
other scintillating presentations, a stellar array of interesting speakers held
forth on Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini, the Guy Ritchie movies with
Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, BBC Sherlock, Victorian spiritualism and women
in the Canon, Holmes as showoff, and the implications of considering Holmes to
be a highly functioning sociopath (definitely untrue) or somewhere on the
autism spectrum.
Playwright
Lee Shackleford previewed the 40-minute first episode of his new webseries “Herlock,”
which re-envisions Holmes as a modern-day woman named Sheridan Hume.
Throughout
the weekend Jacquelynn Morris, ASH, BSI, JHWS, and her all-female Scintillation
organizing committee were easily identified by the tiaras they wore. The headgear
could not have been more appropriate.
Now,
aren't you sorry you weren’t there (if you weren’t)? Well, there’s always next
year. And this is one conference that just keeps getting better.
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