My talk at the Legion of Zoom Scion meeting - Feb 2024

The Legion of Zoom Scion Society was launched during the height of the pandemic, as people missed their 'normal' face-to-face meetings, dinners, lunches, cocktail hours, and seminar series. As meetings switched over to virtual during the pandemic, people had a chance to see other Sherlockians from across the globe no a regular basis. Some (many!) became frequent attendees of many meetings a week - for me this was a wonderful to enter the Sherlockian world and learn an incredible amount.

And so, the Legion of Zoom was formed - learn more here https://www.dfw-sherlock.org/the-legion-of-zoom-scion-society.html. As the site explains:"In the Fall of 2021, 4 devoted Sherlockians determined it was time to organize and recognize those other Sherlockians around the world who have spent much of the 2 preceding years huddled in front of their laptop, IPad, or Smart Phone.  Daily, weekly, and monthly, these devout students of the great master have attended virtual meetings to listen to wonderful speakers from across the spectrum, take quizzes on that month's story from the Canon, listen to adapted radio plays, and numerous other activities surrounding Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and the literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, without whom, it would NOT always be 1895."

Membership of the society requires one to have attended 17 different society zoom meetings, and submit the list. I am proud to say that I'm a member. The Legion of Zoom also launched an annual 'Virtual Conference', the first being in 2022 and so on. The talks from 2022 and 2023 are recorded and available to watch - and are worth reviewing.

The agendas for the first two meetings were as follows:

2022 (along with toasts and a radio play)

• Scott Monty, BSI: “This Fantastic Business of Advertisement: Brands in the Canon”
• Barbara Roden, BSI: “That’s My Watson: Nigel Bruce and the Case of the Canonical Sidekick”
• Robert Katz, BSI: “A Long Afternoon”
• Ray Betzner, BSI: “Whatever Happened to Baby Rucastle: A Case of Canonical Lycanthropy”

2023 (along with toasts and a radio play)

• Cliff Goldfarb, BSI: “The Hunt for Colonel Sebastian Moran”
• Mark Jones, BSI: “What Possessed John Straker?”
• Anne Millar: "Haunted Holmes:  Sherlock Holmes and Horror"
• Catherine Cooke, BSI: "A Look at the Locations of Two Cases"
• Beth Gallego: "An Irresistible Fascination: Fact and Fiction Behind Baron Gruner's Post-Hypnotic Influence"
• Burt Wolder, BSI: "The Many Problems of Thor Bridge"

In late February 2024 the third Legion of Zoom Virtual Conference was held, and I was honored to have been invited by Edith Pounden to speak. 

I decided to expand on the topic of 'Australia and Australians in the Canon'. I'd previously talked on this topic at the The 44th Annual Enoch Pratt Saturday With Sherlock Holmes held in Baltimore MD in November 2023. My blog post on this event did not address the content of my first ever Sherlockian talk, but this Legion of Zoom meeting was recorded and thanks to Steve Mason it's available to view here: https://www.dfw-sherlock.org/2024-conference-summary---presentations.html 

2024 speaker list

• Shana Carter, ASH: 'The Adventure of the Cardboard Box' as a Depiction of Intimate Partner Violence"
• Bob Coghill, BSI: “Serendipity and Sherlockiana”
• Steven Doyle, BSI: "Adelbert Grunner: The Most Misunderstood Villain in the Canon"
• Matt Hall: "Australian Inspirations in the Canon"
• Sonia Yazmadjian: “How a French Hero Saved Sherlock Holmes' Life”

Steve Mason was kind enough to provide my video directly to me so that I can also embed it in this blog:

My goal is to write up some aspects of this talk for a Sherlockian article (the central discussion of themes, influences, and historical context for Australia), but as you will see there are many opportunities for follow-up studies and specific aspects of the Holmes stories. One key approach for creating this article was that when I first started thinking about the study of Australia in the Canon, I found an incredible number of detailed articles on specific points in the 'Passengers' Log', but for my local American audience, I realized that 'zooming out' to provide overall context for Australian elements of the story was relatively unaddressed. Furthermore, an understanding of how the Victorian Britain viewed Australia, and how Australia was viewed had also been under-explored. And so I have spent time creating the talk you see recorded above!