Monica Schmidt

"You need a website!"

 The Red Circle's

Alan Rettig

in standard webmaster protective gear

July 19, 2011 -- Weaving Our Website

One might wonder why it took so long for The Red Circle of Washington to have a website. Well, it all started at "The Spirits of Sherlock Holmes" in Minneapolis in August 2010, when the Sherlockian conference arranged by The Norwegian Explorers included a paper written by Russell Merritt on the subject of silent films. Unfortunately, Russell had fallen off an Alp and couldn't attend. His paper was read by Julie McKuras, and included mention of the classic Russian silent film Battleship Potemkin. During the question period that followed, someone asked when the film was made. Julie quickly confessed that she didn't know, but made a guess (which was close), when a young woman in the audience quickly announced "1925."

During the next break I asked the young woman if I had correctly observed that she had Googled the answer on her cell phone. She said that indeed was how she came up with the date of the film so quickly. She was Monica Schmidt, who was attending the conference from Iowa. When I asked which Sherlockian society in Iowa she was a member of, she explained that she didn't know there were any, and that she had heard about the conference at the website of a society in Wisconsin. I happily introduced her to Dick Caplan, who presides over The Younger Stamfords in Iowa City, and she asked him why they didn't have a website.

It dawned on me that there are more and more people who believe that anything worth finding ought to be findable on the Internet, and that societies that want to attract younger members need a website. At the next meeting of The Red Circle I asked if anyone would like to serve as webmaster, and Alan Rettig kindly agreed. Needless to say, since you're reading this Logbook entry you have found your way to our online home. If you haven't already, we hope you'll click through our pages and that you'll like what you see. Please come back often.

The Younger Stamfords now also have a website in case you want to see what Monica has done way out there. There are other Sherlockian societies that are online as well, and you'll find a list of almost all of them at Chris Redmond's excellent Sherlockian.net.

And if you're interested in Sergei Eisenstein's seminal motion picture masterpiece Battleship Potemkin, a newly restored DVD version was released last year by Kino International. It boasts the original score freshly performed in digital splendor, and the disc is replete with fascinating extras. Highly recommended.