40 Years With My Local Scion Society

A Tankerville Club meeting

This Saturday, January 16, marks the 40^th anniversary of the first time I attended a meeting of the Tankerville Club of Cincinnati, a scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars. In those days, it was presided over by our late Founder and Official Secretary Paul D. Herbert. He is well remembered for his quizzes, like this one:

 

Although we contain to attract new faces, I am just one of an incredibly high number of our members who have been faithfully attending meetings since the 1980s. That connection and stability has been important to me as much else in my life changed over the decades.   

Now I preside over the Tankerville Club as Most Scandalous Member. Our last physical meeting took place March 6, 2020, on the very cusp of COVID, but we have had three virtual meetings that I think went well. We still have toasts, a quiz, show-and-tell, and a story discussion – plus a guest speaker, which was a relative rarity in the past.

Zoom has opened up the possibility of bringing in speakers from all over the world, and many groups have. In fact, a good number of our virtual attendees as well as the speakers come from other states. They have made a great contribution to the club. The downside is that some of our longstanding members can’t or won’t join us virtually. I miss them and look forward to seeing them again when we can meet in person. 

Last Friday I was honored (and shocked!) to be invested as a member of the Baker Street Irregulars with the investiture name of "St. Saviour's Near King's Cross." It means a lot to me to be part of this storied literary society. But the BSI scion societies, such as the Tankerville Club of Cincinnati, the Agra Treasurers in Dayton, the Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis, and hundreds more, are where most Sherlockian socializing goes on throughout the year.  

If you are a Holmes enthusiast and you don’t belong to a Sherlockian society, this is a great time to join one. But if you’ve only been to virtual meetings, I hope you’ll soon have the chance to go to a physical one. It’s a different experience, and a good one.