Gillette to Brett III

Wow! What a great weekend. Wayne and I headed out fairly early on Friday for our drive to the Indiana University campus in Bloomington, arriving in time to attend all the festivities for Gillette to Brett III. And the weekend turned out to be a 9.9 out of a possible 10.

 Most of the convention would be held in the Union Hall on campus, which is basically a really nice hotel and convention hall with lots of wonderful rooms, but maybe lacking slightly in restaurants. Which did not turn out to be much of a problem.

 Just out side of the hotel window was this wonderful little stone church and cemetery.

Very rural English country in style and look.

We only had two events planned on Friday evening, the first taking place at Lilly Library. And for any bibliophile it was a treat.
The library is a depository for thousands of books and manuscripts of all kinds. Many dating back hundreds of years.
We were even allowed to touch a page from a Gutenberg bible. Yes, I did say touch.

On display in the first room we had a session in, were some works from Doonesbury. Garry Trudeau will be doing a presentation at the university next week.
I always enjoy seeing how cartoons and comics are put together, start to finish, so it was really a treat for me.

Our first speaker was Joel Silver from the Lilly Library who described to us the purpose and history of the library. Then showed us some of the items they have, including a first addition Chaucer's and 1490 math books, and of course, a treat for Sherlockian's, an original Beeton's with Study in Scarlet in it.
This is also where we got to touch the Gutenberg Bible page.








After his talk we went to another station to learn about old book repair and preservation.
This was followed by a viewing of old manuscripts.

Manuscripts by JM Barrie of Peter Pan fame.
And friend of Doyle's.

Original manuscript from 'The Red Circle.'

Papers on Poe, or from Poe.
And a piece of his hair.

From Doyle on 'The Final Problem'

An original sketch from the waterfall side fight.
Not what we ended up seeing in the Canon is it?

Movie script for 'Seven Percent Solution' signed by N. Meyer.



And all this so far had just been Friday evening.

After the Lilly Library we all headed back to the Union Hall for a reception where we got to. . . .

. . . try local brews. . .

. . . meet Nicholas Meyer, here with Wayne. . .

. . .here with me.

We took our pictures with the upcoming movie poster.


Wayne.

Me.

Sat. morning found us having breakfast in the Union Hall cafeteria.

With the talks starting soon after.

Curtis Armstrong, BSI, actor gave the first and I thought the best talk on the faces of Sherlock Holmes.
During the day we had talks about Peter Cushing, William Gillette, the actor who played Lestrade in many of Rathbones Sherlock Holmes movies.
We had a talk about an old Sherlock Holmes play and a BBC series that has covered all the stories.

Me with Curtis Armstrong.

Although our banquet would be kinda rushed, the food was excellent and the desserts were a picture to behold.

(You can use this as your wallpaper if you like.

We ended the evening with a viewing of the film, 'Seven Percent Solution', lead first by a talk from our host Steven Doyle and writer Nicholas Meyer. This is the 35th anniversary of the film.

Wayne with Hoggie
Carmichael.

The university even installed a calabash shaped lake on campus for our benefit.



And we even got to touch a page from the Gutenberg Bible.

Wow.