Bloomsday 2016

Bloomsday again!  for those who weren't reading here last year, June 16 is the day on which all the action of James Joyce's novel Ulysses takes place in Dublin.  The protagonist is Leopold Bloom, aided and abetted by Stephen Daedalus (late of Dubliners), hence the name of the celebration. Joyce fans invented it.

And, I think they knew, my potatoes burst into flower overnight and here they are, celebrating their writer!  

who knows what Joyce would have had to say on this coincidence, probably a 600 page novel full of allusions to the potato, its vital significance to the Irish people, the tragedy of it, the comic sidelines, the in depth history of its literature, its current ironic imprisonment in a little American container situated on a huge continent, and who knows what else.

Anyway, as the granddaughter of an Irishwoman, I proffer my humble bit.  

You will see, bottom left of the Kindle, showing a high percentage read, that I'm getting down to the finish line on reading Ulysses, which I will do before it does me in.  You'll see the potato in blossom, down on the patio, to the left of the word "feelings".

It's wonderful reading, but so packed with allusions and references that you just have to find out more about, that it's slow going.  Good thing I have it on my Kindle, otherwise my shoulders, always a bit iffy nowadays, would have packed in completely holding it up. Each year I think I will have finished reading it by Bloomsday, and up to now each year I haven't managed it.

Well, next Bloomsday, perhaps that will be true.  Either that I've read it or haven't managed it. This campaign promise will work either way.