Chicago Meeting(s) Report and Recording of S. Doyle's Torists Speech

[Max Magee]

Helloa, all!

Two Chicago scion society meetings were held last week. One, the Torists International S.S., always meets September 27th to Celebrate Dr. John Watson's birthday.

This particular 27th happened on a Wednesday, so I didn't stay over, though some came in on Wednesday and left Sunday morning.

Steve Doyle was the featured presenter on Wednesday 9/27 and gave a talk called "Whiskey and Sodality."* A recording of his talk was just published (it's a great talk, but the WiFi dropped out for four minutes about 8 minutes in, it was restored 4 minutes later).

https://youtu.be/gdPG7py2fVE?feature=shared

Some photos from that event here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/18Z1hqiKg2X2fcVb7

Before the next scion dinner, my local hosts, Rudy and Anastasia took me on a tour of the Graceland Cemetery, where, among many other notable Chicago personae, Allan Pinkerton, Kate Warne, Vincent Starrett, and Augustus Dickens are buried. The place was full of magnificent sculpture and masonry—it has to be seen to be believed. We stopped at a Serbian coffee shop called Café Beograd (trad. spelling of Belgrade), with Nikola Tesla (he was born and raised in a Serbian village of what is now Croatia) mural on its wall. There's a strange story about how Tesla's ashes and his final resting place are in dispute (he died in New York...).

Album:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/F9rq3cVHKwKkV3dH6

The Hounds of the Baskerville (sic) met Saturday night, and Susan Dahlinger, the original guest, fell Ill and couldn't make it. The speaker they found to fill in for Susan, Dr. Carlina Maria de la Cova, B.S.I. ("Anthropological Journal") of South Carolina University did a fine job describing the influence and overlap of Sherlock Holmes' methods with the earliest pioneering forensic scientists. There were many slides I wanted to read more carefully, so I took many photos of them. Oh, and I've buried the lede—Jon Shimberg, the Chief Stewart of the Torists was invested!

Here are some photos of the talk and afterparty at a local watering hole called Bokeh:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Bj9GmBsZ3yUhFr636

All in all, a tremendously interesting and congenial weekend with some whiskey and even more sodality. I encourage other Notorious Canary-Trainers to join me when I inevitably return to visit the Chicagoland Sherlockians.

Max

Max "Magic Jezail Bullet" Magee

"I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery."

* In October (1933), a Chicago writer named Vincent Starrett published an unusual sort of biography called The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. The time [was] ripe for sodality — even whisky and sodality, says Christopher Morley — and the idea of a club called the Baker Street Irregulars occurs to Starrett in Chicago and Morley in New York simultaneously.

[Max Magee]

Slight correction, Jon is the Chief Steward, not the Chief Stewart. Apologies for my error.

This

Not this

Max