I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere

Remembering Dr. James E. Smith II

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"winner of the Jackson Prize" [HOUN]</h4>
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Dr. James E. Smith, II, BSI ("Winner of the Jackson Prize") died in Maine on December 24, 2012 at the age of 90.<br />
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He served in the Army during WWII and was honorably discharged as a Corporal on December 24, 1946, exactly 66 years before his death. Dr. Smith was a psychiatrist for the Baltimore County court system and after his retirement, moved to Port St. Lucie, Florida.<br />
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He enjoyed classical music, opera, the Baltimore Orioles, crossword puzzles, and singing in his church choir. When his children were young he listened to the Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcasts with the volume turned way up -- inspiring one of his children to a lifelong appreciation of music, and driving the other out of the room.<br />
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Jim was Napoleon 178 in The Six Napoleons of Baltimore and gave several solidly researched talks at their annual Saturday with Sherlock Holmes at the Pratt Library. He was also a member of Watson's Tin Box for many years.<br />
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At his memorial service his daughter read several passages from the Canon, saying that her father loved the world of Sherlock Holmes. On display at the service was a Six Napoleons of Baltimore tee shirt.<br />
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Jim Smith was invested into The Baker Street Irregulars in 1998 as "Winner of the Jackson Prize."<br />
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Remembering Dr. James E. Smith II

"winner of the Jackson Prize" [HOUN] Dr. James E. Smith, II, BSI ("Winner of the Jackson Prize") died in Maine on D...

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by Francine Kitts

Remembering Robert Burr, BSI

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<b>"His friend the lascar" [TWIS]</b></h4>
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<i>Editor's note</i>: Brad Keefauver, BSI ("Winwood Reade") wrote this remembrance of his good friend Robert Burr, who passed beyond the Reichenbach on January 9, 2013.<br />
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On May 28, 1992, Bob Burr got a phone call from Tom Stix, the head of the Baker Street Irregulars at that time. Tom offered Bob the editorial reins of <span style="font-style: italic;"><b><a href="http://bakerstreetjournal.com/">The Baker Street Journal</a></b>. </span>After talking to Philip Shreffler, who was ending his seven year run as the journal's editor, Bob decided a few days later, not to take the job.</div>
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To many of those who encountered Robert C. Burr, BSI ("The Rascally Lascar"), in various internet venues, the thought of Bob Burr being in at the helm of America's greatest Sherlockian publishing legacy has to seem a little insane at best. His persistence in horrible jokes, non-politically correct comments, and terse, often sharp reactions annoyed more than a few, and got him kicked off of the <a href="http://www.sherlockian.net/hounds/"><b>Hounds of the Internet</b></a> more often than any other. But the internet Burr of later years was only one part of that complex fellow who was also a great host, a steadfast scion leader, and a careful perfectionist when it came to the written word.  He died on January 9, 2013, in Peoria, Illinois, at age 82.</div>
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The simple facts on Bob are these, as he wrote them up for <a href="http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/pjstar/obituary.aspx?pid=162279095"><b>his obituary</b></a> himself:</div>
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He was born June 21, 1930 in Paterson, NJ. to Howard E. and Helen (Matthews) Burr. He married JoAnn Taggart in Ames, IA, on July 1, 1953. They divorced in 1963. There were no children of the marriage. His life from 1964 to 2004 was deeply enriched by his Significant Other, Lucy Sommerfield, until her death in 2004.<br />
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Bob received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Rutgers University in 1952, and his M.S. in chemistry from Iowa State University in 1955. He was an instructor in chemistry at Bradley University from 1955-1961, and a chemist at Peoria's USDA Lab from 1962-1988.<br />
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His two abiding interests were barbershop style singing, and the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes.</blockquote>
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As always, Bob left out a lot. In the 1960s, he was the local chairman of NICAP (the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena), looking into UFO sightings. In 1977, after waiting almost two years for local science fiction author (and Bob's neighbor) Philip Jose Farmer to start a promised scion society, Bob called the first meeting of Peoria's <b><a href="http://www.sherlockpeoria.net/Hansom_pages/Hansomsmain.html">Hansoms of John Clayton</a></b> and held it at his home. He published the society's lively monthly newsletter, <span style="font-style: italic;">Plugs & Dottles,</span> from 1978 to 1998. Beginning in 1981, the club's triennial journal, <span style="font-style: italic;">Wheelwrightings,</span> was was of the few scion journals to be typeset in the days before desktop publishing, a luxury that Bob quietly paid out of his own pocket. He took over that journal's editorship in 1983 and held those reins until its final issue in January 1992. When offered the BSJ editorship a few months later, he was not ready to end his editorial retirement for that even greater responsibility, which his sense of perfectionism would have made him work doubly hard on. In 2011, a collection of pun-filled tales he had printed over the years was published, in book form with the help of Philip K. Jones, under the title <span style="font-style: italic;"><b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/178092044X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=178092044X&linkCode=as2&tag=thebakerstree-20">The Punishment of Sherlock Holmes</a></b>.</span></div>
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Bob Burr was invested in the Baker Street Irregulars in 1987, having never attended an official BSI dinner nor attending any after that, except for the appearance of a life-sized photo of him (lovingly nicknamed "Robbie") in the photo of the 1989 dinner. An attempt to collect for that attendance was made by Tom Stix, as well as chastising him for wearing a flannel shirt to such a formal affair. Even though he did make it to a few midwestern Sherlockian conferences of note, Bob was well known for not leaving Peoria, Illinois. He still managed to touch a lot of lives.</div>
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Feel free to leave your own memory of Bob here.<br />
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--</div>

Remembering Robert Burr, BSI

"His friend the lascar" [TWIS] Editor's note : Brad Keefauver, BSI ("Winwood Reade") wrote this remembrance of...

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by Scott Monty

Episode 50: A Golden Passage

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Our 50th episode is a fitting one. As you know, a 50th anniversary is typically celebrated with gold. Because we appreciate our listeners so much, we would settle for nothing less than the same.<br />
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But our gold comes in the form of a scintillating conversation with the two editors of the Baker Street Irregulars' eighth entry in their <b><a href="http://www.bakerstreetjournal.com/itemsforsale/bsimanuscriptseries.html">Manuscript Series</a></b>, <b><i><a href="http://www.bakerstreetjournal.com/wrongpassage.html">The Wrong Passage</a></i></b>, which is a look at the manuscript of "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez." Co-editors Andrew Solberg, BSI ("Professor Coram") and Robert Katz, MD, BSI ("Dr. Ainstree") joined us to discuss just what it is that goes into creating a significant piece of scholarship such as we've come to expect from BSI publications of late.<br />
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From the history of the manuscript itself, to artifacts from Paul Churchill's famed "evidence boxes," to an in-depth look at the historical background alluded to in the tale, the breadth of topics within the book is impressive. Also included are a number of other analyses on topics ranging from the historical and geographical to the linguistic, religious and medical, by noted Sherlockians Peggy Perdue, BSI ("Violet Westbury"), Denny Dobry, Donald Pollock, MD, <strike>BSI ("<i>The Anthropological Journal</i>")</strike> former member of the BSI, Albert Silverstein, BSI ("Professor Presbury"), C. Paul Martin, MD, BSI ("Dr. Leslie Armstrong"), Jacquelynn Morris, Richard J. Sveum, MD, BSI ("Dr. Hill Barton"), John Baesch, BSI ("The State and Merton County Railroad"), and William Hyder, BSI ("A Most Valuable Institution").<br />
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Our discussions range as far and wide as the book itself, and we also cover just a bit of the BSI Weekend festivities from 2013. But more on that in a future episode. This one clocked in at over an hour and 20 minutes, but we think you'll enjoy the conviviality between four Sherlockians as you spend a long evening with Holmes.<br />
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<b>The Editor's Gas-Lamp:</b> We thought it was fitting to focus on 50th anniversaries, so we took a page from the 50th anniversary year of the<i> Baker Street Journal</i> and read the Editor's Gas-Lamp of Vol. 46, No. 4 from December 1996, with Donald ("I'm not a member of the BSI") Pollock as editor.<br />
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<b>Links:</b></h4>
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<li><b><i><a href="http://www.bakerstreetjournal.com/wrongpassage.html">The Wrong Passage</a></i></b>, available for sale for $35 </li>
<li>T<b><a href="http://www.bakerstreetjournal.com/itemsforsale/bsimanuscriptseries.html">he BSI Manuscript Series</a></b></li>
<li>Randall Stock's <b><a href="http://bestofsherlock.com/">The Best of Sherlock Holmes</a></b></li>
<li><b><a href="https://plus.google.com/communities/114565123495685504221">The Sherlock Holmes Community</a></b> on Google+</li>
<li><b><a href="http://www.bakerstreetjournal.com/ebooks/ebsj.html">The eBSJ</a></b>, now available for purchase</li>
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And as always, please give some love to our sponsors <a href="http://www.wessexpress.com/"><b>Wessex Press</b></a> and <a href="http://www.bakerstreetjournal.com/" style="font-style: italic;"><b>The Baker Street Journal</b></a>.<br />
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<i><b>Editor's note:</b> this entry has been updated to reflect Donald Pollock's non-association with the BSI. </i><br />
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</i></div>

Episode 50: A Golden Passage

Our 50th episode is a fitting one. As you know, a 50th anniversary is typically celebrated with gold. Because we appreciate our...

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by Scott Monty

Celebrating Sherlock Holmes's 159th Birthday

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"the celebrated Mr. Sherlock Holmes" [SCAN]</h4>
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What do you get for the man who's 159 years old?<br />
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At first blush, one might be tempted to say, "Oxygen!" or "A defibrillator!"<br />
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But in our case, the man is none other than the celebrated Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was born on January 6, 1854. And while his existence has been known to us for 125 years thanks to his first appearance in <i>A Study in Scarlet</i> in <i>Beeton's Christmas Annual</i> of 1887, we trace his birth to the year 1854 and the date of January 6 and the Baker Street Irregulars celebrate it on <b><a href="http://bsiweekend.com/">or around that date every year in New York City</a>.</b><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="more"></a>But why January 6? Tradition has indicated that it is due to these factors:<br />
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<li>In "His Last Bow," Holmes, in the guise of Altamont, was called "A tall gaunt man of sixty," and we know that story took place in 1914.</li>
<li>Over the course of his recorded adventures, Holmes quoted Shakespeare on and off, but it was only <i>Twelfth Night</i> that he quoted twice. The inference? That he preferred that play over the others for some reason - namely, that the twelfth night of Christmas was his birthday. [<b><i>BONUS: can you name the two quotes and the stories in which they appeared?</i></b>]</li>
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Of course, we recall heartily the words of Vincent Starrett, BSI ("<i>A Study in Scarlet</i>") in his poem "221B" that Holmes and Watson "<i>never lived, and so can never die</i>." While that may be the case, they still live on in our hearts, as "only those things the heart believes are true."<br />
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Happy Birthday, Sherlock Holmes. Many happy returns.<br />
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Oh, and if you're looking to follow along for the BSI Weekend action, please be sure to set your searches to the <b><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23BSIWeekend">#BSIWeekend</a></b> hashtag.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Top image credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/36101699310@N01/71810156/">diamond geezer</a> (Flickr)</span></i><br />
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