Yes, today is the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday!
I didn't know that until a few days ago. Although Ulysses was published in 1922, the day it chronicled (all 700+ pages of it) was June 16, 1904.
All these years, I've known about James Joyce's novel, but have never tried to read it. Seemed too much trouble, too many pages of experimental writing.
But this year, I decided to do something about it. Back in April, I'd found myself with some time on my hands in Charlottesville, Va. It was late one evening, and I'd found out that there was an overnight Ulysses reading on the UVA campus. Since I was staying nearby, I walked over, and with some difficulty, found the building where the event was taking place.
Unfortunately, the people reading aloud were not very good at dramatizing the text. Not that it's easy to do so with the lack of punctuation and run-on sentences that Joyce uses in this book, but still... it sounded as if the particular readers I'd chanced upon were reading from the phonebook. Booooorrrrring!
(I stayed about 10 minutes, and left.)
More recently, to better acquaint myself with James Joyce, I bought some audiocassettes of excerpts of his works. And borrowed a copy of Ulysses and a Cliff Notes pamphlet from the library.
Moreover, I've been thinking that it might be interesting to visit Dublin. The novel is set in Dublin, and there're all sorts of commemorative festivities going on there, this season. I'd never considered it before, but I recently discovered that the Irish airlines, Aer Lingus, flies to BWI. (I'd been trying to explore cheap ways of getting to Dresden and Prague, using European discount airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet.)
But why all this sudden interest in Bloomsday?
Well, it turns out that this is my birthday.
Happy birthday, to me!
The adoration and eulogies of Reagan have provoked sober backlash. I hear it every morning with callers to C-SPAN's "Washington Journal".
When the news broke, CSPAN opened the phones over the weekend. The praises of Reagan were overwhelming at first. It sounded like most of the populace thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Gradually, more callers expressed opposing views.
4 or 5 days after his death, opinions have evened out, somewhat. I like the man, but I'm not keen on his presidency, nor his governorship.
Perhaps the best coverage on his legacy I've read was in the LA Times. It was a long obituary and mentioned the positive and negative.
I prefer balanced over biased coverage. Don't know why people would want to rewrite history and regard Reagan as one of the greatest Presidents of the twentieth century, because he made them feel good or defeated the Soviet Union or stopped spiraling inflation or whatever. Some of the things he's given credit for are not exactly all his doing, and some of the calamities that he and his administration produced have been ignored by his admirers.
I heard Congressman Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) this morning on C-SPAN, promote replacing Andrew Jackson with Ronald Reagan on the $20 bill. Someone else suggested putting Reagan on the $10 bill.
Give me a break. He's got enough buildings and roads and facilities named after him.
I wouldn't mind if his face was plastered on a line of no-stick frying pans. After all, he was known as the "Teflon President", cause negative news wouldn't stick to him.
On the eve of the Tiananmen massacre anniversary, we have incidents of alleged police brutality in Towson and Sowebo.
I guess the lesson is that we must all learn how to react to police presence and actions. They will not hesitate to use force in various circumstances. After all, that is part of their training, and a remedy that is easy to resort to in these troubled times.