July News and Announcements

We had another packed house for our meeting this month!  And we had plenty of news, discussion and activities to keep everyone busy, so let's get down to it:

First things first: Holmes in the Heartland will be back in 2020!

That's right.  Mark your calendars for another great Sherlockian weekend right here in St. Louis!  On July 24-26, 2020, Holmes in the Heartland: Arch Enemies will have some of the brightest Sherlockian minds, St. Louis highlights, great food, and plenty of fun!  We will be holding our symposium at the Sheraton Westport this year, and a block of rooms will be available for anyone coming to Holmes in the Heartland.

Friday, July 24 will be a tour of the historic central branch of the St. Louis Public Library, a presentation of the St. Louis Sherlock Holmes Research Collection, and dinner at Bailey's Range.

Saturday, July 25 will start off with time to visit many Sherlockian vendors for the symposium.  We will have our day of great speakers on the topic of "Arch Enemies," with a break for lunch and more vendor shopping.  And as usual, you can count on dinner and a night full of fun events!

On Sunday, July 26, we are going to put the "Arch" in "Arch Enemies."  Join us for a tour of the newly remodeled St. Louis Arch, including a trip to the top, film on the construction of the famous landmark, and a tour of the Westward Expansion Museum.  Following that, we will head to historic Laclede's Landing for a farewell lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory.

Look for more information on this exciting weekend to come soon.  But mark your calendars.  This is a weekend you will not want to miss!

And if that weren't enough fun to look forward to, we have another movie night coming up!  August 3, we will be hosting a Sherlockian Movie Night at the St. Louis Ethical Society (9001 Clayton Rd) starting at 6:00.  Bring your own food and drinks and join us for a double feature of Basil Rathbone's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and "They Might be Giants."  There is no admission price, but we will gladly take donations to cover the cost of the room.

Our next meeting will be on September 14, and that month's story will be "The Greek Interpreter."  As well as great camaraderie, discussion, and news, we will also have the new Parallel Case of St. Louis pins debuting at this meeting.  Members at the September meeting will be the first ones to get a chance to purchase the new pin.  The cost is $10 per pin.

The Parallel Case of St. Louis is on all of the major social media platforms.  You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for news about the Parallel Case and plenty of other Sherlockian news from around the world.

If you haven't read it yet, check out Stacey's blog post about the family life of Queen Victoria.

Tassy was interviewed on Rob's blog this month.  Lots of good Sherlockian discussion!

The next meeting of the Harpooner's of the Sea Unicorn will be this Friday, July 19 at Pio's restaurant in St. Charles.  This month's meeting will be their titular story, "The Adventure of Black Peter."

The triennial Norwegian Explorers of Minnesota conference will be August 8-11 in Minneapolis Minnesota.  Museum curator (and former Holmes in the Heartland keynote speaker) Tim Johnson has posted some previews of the exhibit online and they look amazing.

The Left Coast Sherlockian Symposium will be October 12 & 13 in Portland, OR, and looks to be a great time.  You can listen to the Baker Street Babes interview with symposium director, Elinor Gray here.

The Kirkwood Theater Guild will be performing "The Game’s Afoot or Holmes for the Holidays" November 1-10.  We will pick a date for a Parallel Case group outing at our September meeting, so if you'd like to roll into Kirkwood with our band of gypsies, please do!

The Baker Street Irregulars will be hosting a symposium dedicating the BSI Archive at the Lilly Library in Bloomington, IN on November 8-10.

The Disney 1x1 Podcast recently posted an episode covering The Great Mouse Detective.  One of the hosts of this show lives in St. Louis, and had great things to say about hometown boy Vincent Price's role.

The Enola Holmes movie keeps making news with its casting.  In the past month Henry Cavill and Helena Bonham Carter have been cast as Sherlock Holmes and Enola's mother respectively.

Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes 3 has a new director attached to the Christmas 2021 release.  Dexter Fletcher has replaced Guy Ritchie on the film.  Fletcher recently directed Rocketman, and took over the duties of directing Bohemian Rhapsody when that director was released from the project.  In a Sherlockian connection, Dexter Fletcher voiced one of the gargoyles in 2018's Sherlock Gnomes.

Brad Keefauver joined us this month, and recorded a live episode of The Watsonian Weekly, the podcast for the John H. Watson Society.  You can hear many of us talking about hidden criminal empires, movie versions of Watson, and how many times Watson used the word "parallel" here.  If you aren't familiar with the John H. Watson society, take a minute to check out their website and journal.  The Watsonian journal is a really great publication that comes out twice a year.  Anyone who is interested in Sherlockian scholarship, pastiche, or any writing will find something they like between the covers!

After the usual stack of giveaways, including a handmade Sherlockian journal and t shirt from The Game's Afloat conference years back, it was on to quite a discussion of The Resident Patient!  But that's a story for another post...