Forest Grove Bloomsday Festival 2012: the 90th anniversary of the publication of "Ulysses"

[Marilyn Monroe reading Molly Bloom's great feminist soliloquy
in Ulysses.]

The program for the Forest Grove Bloomsday Festival 2012 appears below.  We are especially honored that this year's invocation will be offered by a special last-minute guest: the formidable Molly Bloom herself. Late this afternoon Ms Bloom replied via email to our invitation, sent in March, with an unequivocal: "...yes I said yes I will Yes."

FOREST GROVE BLOOMSDAY FESTIVAL 2012
SHATTERDAY - JUNE 16, 2012

- PROGRAM -

12:00-2:00:  Honored guest Ms. Molly Bloom, with selected readings on Moorish walls and mountain flowers (from "Ulysses").

1:00-5:00 p.m.:  Keynote address by Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocentgeneralhistoryspecialprofessordoctor Kriegfried Ueberallgemein

6:30-9:30 p.m.:  International panel discussion on "The Nameless Barbarity which we have been called upon to witness"  Panelists include:

Hiram Y. Bomboost
Countess Marha Virdga Kisászony Putrápesthi
Commendatore Bacibaci Beninobenone
Monsieur Pierrepaul Petitépatant
Grandjoker Vladinmire Pokethankertscheff
Archjoker Leopold Rudolph von Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler

 10:00-11:00 p.m.: Readings from "Ulysses" by:

Count Athanatos Karamelopulos
Goosepond Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch,
Herr Hurhausdirektorprasident Hans Chuechli-Steuerli

11:00 p.m.-3:00 a.m.:  Dramatic reenactments by:

Olaf Kobberkeddelsen
Goosepond Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch
Señor Hidalgo Caballero Don Pecadillo y Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la Malaria
Mynheer Trik van Trumps
Pan Poleaxe Paddyrisky 

3:00 a.m.-4:00 a.m.:  Dissertion by Stephen Dedalus entitled "I fear those big words that make us so unhappy."

4:00 a.m.-5:00 a.m.:  Concluding remarks by Leopold Bloom on the following theme: "I was blue mouldy for the want of that pint."

5:00 a.m.-noon:  Traditional Irish breakfast (by special request of Leopold Bloom), including the inner organs of beasts and fowls with thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes and grilled mutton kidneys which give to the palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Security provided by Constable MacFadden of Booterstown.

Location:  Uncertain as of this writing due to the arbitrary denial of the required permits.

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This slideshow, first posted in 2009, is Runes' tribute to James Joyce, with kora accompaniment by the great Toumani Diabaté of Mali. (You may need to pause the show to read some of the longer text entries.)

Happy Bloomsday 2012!

[Note:  All persons named above are either major or minor characters in Ulysses.]

ReJoyce on Bloomsday

"The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works." —James Joyce

This slideshow, accompanied by Toumani Diabaté on the solo kora, is Runes' tribute to James Joyce on the 105th anniversary of Bloomsday.

Observed annually on June 16^th in Dublin and elsewhere, Bloomsday celebrates the life of the Irish writer and his novel Ulysses, whose events occurred over a single day and night in Dublin in 1904. The name derives from Leopold Bloom, the protagonist (some would say "antihero") of Ulysses. The same day in 1904 was also the occasion of Joyce's first romantic encounter with his future spouse, Nora Barnacle, on the beach near the village of Ringsend, outside Dublin.

"Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives." —James Joyce

The following excerpt, from Finnegans Wake, is recited by the master himself:

[Slideshow produced by M.J. O'Brien, 2009.]