It’s Elementary! Holmes Still Has Mysterious Appeal

--Watson might have called it “The Fantasy of the Fantastic Fans.” Holmes might have deduced that someone had passed around a 7% solution. But about 130 apparently sober “Sherlockians”--otherwise known as the Baker Street Irregulars--gathered in Hoboken, N.J., to debate such theories as whether Sherlock Holmes lives, at the ripe old age of 131, in Sussex, England, where he keeps bees. The Irregulars--named for a gang of street urchins who helped Holmes with some of his cases--also contend that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was only the literary agent for Dr. John Watson, who really chronicled his comrade’s adventures. Sherlockians wear T-shirts with slogans like “Sherlock Lives.” They send each other Sherlockian Christmas cards and Holmes Honey and spend their vacations trying to find places like Tredannick Wollas, where Holmes’ “Adventure of the Devil’s Foot” took place. At least three scholars have debated in print whether Holmes was colorblind. But conference organizer John Bennett Shaw, a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota, injected a note of rationality: “Once you lose sight of the fact it’s a spoof, you’ll probably be locked up . . . or maybe you’ll get in Congress. We’re not quite as crazy as we appear.”

--Greenville, S.C., Mayor Bill Workman, who once proclaimed that “people are just pigs with short snouts,” has been named “Mr. Short Snout, USA,” by a group trying to improve the image of pigs. “We looked all over the nation for the top pig booster,” said Jack Tate, curator of the Greenville-based Short Snout Society. Workman helped earn his title by proclaiming two official “Pig Days” in the city.

--Amy Carter wants to be “just another Joe Person” during a two-week visit to the Soviet Union, a nation her father never visited as President. Amy, 17, was scheduled to leave with 119 other travelers under sponsorship of the Atlanta chapter of the International Friendship Force. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter gave Amy the trip as a high school graduation present.

--Maria Shriver, niece of the late President John F. Kennedy, plans to marry Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Boston Herald reported. Shriver is the daughter of Sargent Shriver and his wife, Eunice Kennedy. Schwarzenegger, a former world-champion body builder, may be best known for his movie roles as Conan the Barbarian. Shriver is the West Coast feature reporter for the “CBS Morning News.”