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Our Sherlockian society is based in New York City, but (as might be expected) Adventuresses may be found all over the USA, as well as in the UK and Europe. Membership in ASH is by invitation (see "about ASH membership" below), but guests are welcome at many gatherings. ASH activities include the Spring and/or Autumn Dinner in New York as well as other Sherlockian events where Adventuresses congregate, especially the Holmes Birthday Weekend every January. The ASH quarterly journal, The Serpentine Muse, shares photos and presentations from Sherlockian events attended by ASH members anywhere in the world. Serpentine Muse-ings is a two-volume anthology of ASH publications. History Founded by a group of women students at Albertus Magnus College in the late 1960s and led by Principal Unprincipled Adventuress Evelyn Herzog, ASH achieved early notoriety when its members picketed the Annual Dinner of the Baker Street Irregulars in protest of the BSI policy of excluding women. For the next 25 years ASH thrived with its own (coeducational) dinner on the same January night as the BSI event. When women were finally invited into the BSI in 1991, selected Adventuresses were among the first to be invested. As more Adventuresses were invited to attend the BSI dinners, the traditional January ASH dinner was replaced by The Baskerville Bash (1997-2006), an event now called The Gaslight Gala. An informal ASH Wednesday dinner and Sunday brunch now bracket the Birthday Weekend in NYC. Other ASH activities include an annual Spring Dinner, an annual Autumn Dinner, and informal ASH Wednesday get-togethers. A favorite ASH motto is Ovid's Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi sed saepe cadendo. (A drop carves the rock, not by force but by persistence.) Classic ASH Songs are sung at many gatherings. Although some Adventuresses sing like angels, others are possessed by tone-deaf demons -- but ASH always values enthusiasm over musical expertise. A New Generation Four special male Baker Street Irregulars were invested into ASH in 1991, but only one was still living in 2006. That year ASH history was made with M.E. Rich's announcement that in 2008, the 40th anniversary year of ASH, men would be allowed to make an ASH of themselves. (Read M.E.'s statement about ASH membership.) In January 2008, longtime ASH Peter Blau was joined by nineteen friendly Sherlockian men who enthusiastically swelled the ranks of fully-invested ASH. (For one man's thoughts on becoming an ASH, see The View from Sherlock Peoria by Brad Keefauver, ASH, BSI.) Formal requests for membership should be addressed to the Principal Unprincipled Adventuress:
Evelyn A.
Herzog For more detailed information on ASH history, read "Dubious and Questionable Memories: A History of the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes," published by the Baker Street Journal. The 2004 BSJ Christmas Annual was written by Susan Rice, with memoirs by Paula Cohen, Mickey Fromkin, Kate Karlson, Ann Byerly Marlowe, Pat Moran, Linda Patterson, and M.E. Rich, and a new poem by Dorothy Belle Pollack. The Muse story is told by its current co-editors. All this fun is only $11; for your copy, send a cheque (made out to "Evelyn A. Herzog") to Evy at the address above.
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About
ASH