…I’d stopped for a long while, mostly because it seemed more seeds blown into the wind and for the less existential reason that I switched who was hosting my site. So this is the first post with the new host.

For the moment, I’ll call it my Bloomsday Blog, because I think my focus for a bit will be on putting on this “event” at the Hooker-Dunham Theater on June 16, 2020.  Bloomsday in Brattleboro.

For someone like me who likes to read Ulysses and gradually come to understand it, to visualize what Joyce is writing, to have the characters speak for themselves, is incredibly exciting. It brings a whole new dimension to the book.

So I put together a “script.” I say “put together,” not “wrote” because the words are nearly all those of James Joyce, not me.  I’ve chosen a few moments out of the thousands of moments in the book in the hope that they tell a story of Ulysses knowing that there are so many other stories that could be told and so many other ways to tell them.

But the event is first and foremost a celebration of the written word. Here, as elsewhere in the world where Bloomsday is celebrated, it is the spoken word we celebrate.

Ulysses was banned in the United States and England for being obscene or incomprehensible or both.  Distribution was prohibited and copies of the book were burned from its birth in 1922 until Justice Woolsey of the Southern District of New York, ruled its favor in 1933.

Getting a group of actors with strong voices to read a series of excerpts I’ve stitched together has been very exciting.  Ulysses is an amazing novel,  but also one that can be quite intimidating. I’m hoping our show will display enough of its essence that our audience will feel they spent their time well.

So we’re off and running. Tuesday, June 16, is coming up faster than we think here in the middle of Vermont winter.