2009 BIRTHDAY WEEKEND
ASH played a prominent role throughout the weekend which began with the traditional ASH Wednesday gathering at O’Casey’s. The next morning Doré Nash co-hosted the Morley walk with her usual panache.
On Friday the Gillette luncheon was again hosted by Susan Rice in conjunction with Mickey Fromkin. S.E. Dahlinger spoke briefly about her William Gillette research, and the Friends of Bogie’s (ASHes Sarah Montague and Andrew Joffe, along with Paul Singleton) presented a somewhat revisionist take on several of Mr. Holmes’ more famous cases. Al Gregory announced that Greg Darak won the 2009 Jan WHIMSEY award for his pastiche “The Adventure of Holmes’ Shortest Case” which appeared in Vol. 24 No. 1 of the Muse. Greg received a handsome certificate and a check for $221.17. The award was established and funded in ASH Jan Stauber’s memory by her husband, Al Gregory. It is given to the author writing the most whimsical piece during the Muse volume year (i.e., from the December to September issues). Our thanks to Al for sponsoring the award and to Greg for delighting us and our readers.
Several ASH were honored at the BSI dinner that evening. BSI shillings went to S.E. Dahlinger, The Bruce Partington Plans, and Allan Devitt, The Dancing Men. Susan Rice received an Editors’ Award for her work on the Christmas Annual “Of Dubious and Questionable Memory,” and Mary Ann Bradley was presented with a solid gold diamond-encrusted “The Woman” door charm, as well as a painting of herself by Gail Postal, in recognition of her services to the BSI. Professor Coram (aka Andy Solberg) provided a highly irregular dissertation on the Irregular shilling.
And the Contributions Editor is extremely envious of the Managing Editor (i.e., Evelyn Herzog) who won the Mazarin Stone (or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof) at the cocktail party raffle.
Friday morning began with the Beacon Society meeting. Susan Diamond is the group’s secretary and Marilynne McKay is the new webmaster of BeaconSociety.com. Myrtle Robinson, Andy Solberg, and Sue Vizoskie are all committee chairs.
Sunday featured two events starring ASH. This year’s ASH brunch was hosted by Lyndsay Faye, while ASHes Francine Kitts and Warren Randall, ably assisted by Dick Kitts, and coordinated the BSI “Knothole on Wheels” excursion to the wilds of Long Island and various sites associated with Christopher Morley. Congratulations to the Kitts duo and Warren for a flawlessly executed outing!
