Off to Portland OR today. Missing my normal
Bloomsday activities but I send best wishes
to all Joyce fans who will be celebrating
today.

The one connection I'll have to Bloomsday
today is that I plan on seeing Irish fiddler
Kevin Burke this evening. Mr. Burke, on his
CD Up Close, does a flawless version of
Stack of Barley, the only tune mentioned
(that I know of) in Ulysses.

Spokane WA is now the closest big city to me.
Here's how they spend Bloomsday. Isn't
this very, very sad?!

I received this announcement via email. Sounds
like a lovely time. If anyone goes I'd love
to hear about it:

"Bloomsday 2005
AN EXTRA-ORDINARY DAY ........To celebrate
that special day known as Bloomsday, the Irish
Community Arts Project will present a reading
by invited literary figures at the graveside of
Lucia Anna Joyce who died in Northampton in
1982. The event will take place at 7pm in
Kingsthorpe Cemetery on Thursday 16th
June 2005.

Further details from Peter Mulligan
Project Co-ordinator, The Irish Community Arts
Project. Northampton Connolly Association
Northampton NN3 2BY / Tel. 01604-715793
e-mail: _pmcelt@aol.com_ (mailto:pmcelt@aol.com)"

I found an interesting discussion board
on the critical Joyce question:

What was Joyce's favorite apple?

The answer:

"James Joyce's favorite apple was
Calville Blanc"

Some people have no appreciation
of history as evidenced by this
article in the Telegraph entitled
Developers Threaten Joyce's Seafront.
The development referred to in the
article would include a huge shopping
area, concert venue and 180 flats taking over
the area Joyce described as: "Woodshadows
floated silently by through the morning
peace … Inshore and further out the
mirror of water whitened, spurned by
lightshod hurrying feet."


Here's an excerpt from the article:

Lovers of literature are fighting proposals
for a huge development that will dominate a
picturesque Victorian seafront which inspired
James Joyce's classic novel Ulysses....

..The plan involves reclaiming five acres
of the coastline for a 10-storey building
that will extend 200 yards into the sea,
dwarfing Regency and Victorian crescents....

...The port, which was created by the great
Scottish engineer John Rennie, has an emotive
place in Irish history. It was the scene of
great heartache as the main harbour for the
emigration of hundreds of thousands of people
to America....

Raising the Wind has a new Joyce
Message Board.

Very cool.

" By popular demand, we've established
a raising the wind message board where
visitors can post comments, share
information, or generally raise the
wind. You will notice that there is a
banner ad. That is the modest price that
this hosting service extracts from us.
Enjoy!

My new job is with the Capital Habeas Unit of
the Federal Defenders Office. So after being here
for seven months, my thoughts finally turn to
Joyce and the Death Penalty. The only mention
I remember in Ulysses is the one in Cyclops where
Bloom discusses the one area in which executions do
not serve as a deterrent: erections.

I don't believe that holds true when the method is
lethal injection.

I'll have to dig a little deeper to find Joyce's
personal view of capital punishment.

This time of year is usually fraught with
Bloomsday planning, but now that I no longer
live in Chico, I find myself facing the
prospect of a Bloomsday alone.

I didn't get started on creating a Moscow
Bloomsday because I had planned to return
to California on the big day, but now it
looks like here I'll stay.

The nearest Bloomsday event is in Spokane
Washington, 90- miles away where they hold
a Bloomsday marathon. That's right -running
on Bloomsday ...no reading, no singing...
a travesty.

I received my copy of the Sotherby's catalog from last July's big auction in the mail on Saturday. It cost $22 and was speedily shipped. It features nice photos and descriptions of the Joyce items up for sale. The cover is the best part: Joyce's singing medal. If only I'd had this job then I would have bid on that medal, or Joyce's spectacles. You can order a copy here.

Keiran Cooke writes of the sad demise of Bewley's in Dublin here.

Excerpt:

Now Bewley's - once described by the Irish poet Brendan Kennelly as "the heart and hearth of Dublin" - has closed, another victim of rising rents and changing tastes in the Irish capital. Goodbye to romantic memories of sitting in front of the fire and gazing dreamily out into an eiderdown of fog. Goodbye to the ghost of James Joyce, licking his fingers over sticky buns and drinking the only cup of coffee in the country that didn't taste like heated-up bog water.

Dan Harper has a nice Joyce quote in his recent Santa Cruz Sentinel article though I must take issue with his topic. He writes about the oppressive cold of Santa Cruz California. As a former Californian who is spending her first winter in the wilds of Northern Idaho I'd like to tell me Harper the following: "I know cold. Cold is a friend of mine. Mr. Harper, Santa Cruz is not cold!

The Oregon Register-Guard recommends James Joyce’s Dublin as a hot Christmas pick. Excerpt below:

"James Joyce's Dublin: A Topographical Guide to the Dublin of Ulysses," by Ian Gunn and Clive Hart, allows readers to trace, step by step and place by place, the meanderings about Dublin on June 16, 1904, of Leopold Bloom and dozens of other characters in James Joyce's landmark novel. (Thames and Hudson Inc., 160 pages, with 121 illustrations, $45)

I'm moving to Idaho. Got a job with the
Federal Defender's office .

I probably won't be able to resume
posting on a regular basis until the end
of November. But please make use of
the archives for the past year.

Moscow or Bust!

Sorry to be so lax in posting. I have a job
interview in Idaho on the 20th and am semi-
preparing to relocate. So I doubt I'll start posting
again for the next few weeks.

Unemployed for seven months...wish me
luck.

Brendan Kilty is a fine man, as you will
learn if you read this article from
The Australian.

An excerpt:

“JAMES Joyce devotee Brendan Kilty was so
outraged when he learned wreckers were to
demolished his idol's childhood home in
Dublin that he went to the site expecting to
join a throng of protesters.

"I was the only one there," he said yesterday
as he recalled the 1998 demolition of 2
Millbourne Avenue, Drumcondra. “

The DVD of Sean Walsh's Bloom will be released
in the US this week. For information on getting
a copy:

e: info@ulysses.ie
w: http://www.ulysses.ie

Here’s an interesting article (though
difficult to read due to weird graphics)
about the various versions of Ulysses.
It's called “Haveth Versions Everywhere
or Here Comes Everybody’s Edition of
Ulysses”

Here’s a book I’d love to have:
Joyce in Art: Visual Art Inspired by
James Joyce. The book is a companion
to the exhibition of the same title (at the RHA
in Dublin), curated by the author for 16 June
2004, the centenary of Bloomsday.

It is the first historical account of visual art
inspired by James Joyce and includes works
by Man Ray, Brancusi, Eisenstein, Matisse,
Motherwell, Scully, Beuys, Christo, Bacon,
Hamilton, Cage, le Brocquy, Cooke and others.

Tomorrow is James Joyce Meetup Day
when you can meetup with other local people
interested in discussing the works of the Irish
author, James Joyce. The website lists members
and towns. Apparently the meetups are help
the first Tuesday of every month at 8PM in a
variety of towns in the US and Europe

You can read about a new docmentary entitled
"Following James Joyce ... Dublin to Buffalo" here.

An excerpt:

The film traces the Irish-born author's travels from
Dublin to Paris and to Pola, Croatia; Trieste, Italy;
and Zurich, Switzerland -- all cities where he
made his home at some point. It charts also the
fate of two collections of Joyce's manuscripts,
notebooks, private library, correspondence and
family portraits -- one rescued from wartime
Paris, a second procured from Joyce's friend and
publisher, Sylvia Beach -- as they made their way
to an unlikely final destination: Buffalo.