Good Wednesday morning. Happy Bloomsday!
Unless you were an English major (like, the kind that got an BA or MA in literature), you’re probably not aware of the history behind Bloomsday.
It’s a commemoration and celebration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce, observed annually in Dublin, Ireland and elsewhere today. Why today? Because it’s the day on which all the events of his famed novel, “Ulysses”, takes place.
“Ulysses” was, of course, written by James Joyce, who is known for his complex style, his use of stream-of-consciousness prose, and his writing of content that is viewed in some corners as explicit.
The book’s protagonist, Leopold Bloom, spends the day in question exploring the pubs, churches, streets, bridges, and shops of Dublin, Ireland. It is a modern-day version of Homer’s epic, the Odyssey, in which Bloom, his wife Molly, and Stephen Dedalus represent Ulysses, Penelope, and Telemachus, respectively.
Ulysses was published in Paris, in 1922, but was banned in the U.S., the U.K. and Russia. Legal battles brought it to a wider attention. In December 1933, a judge ruled in the case of United States v. One Book Called Ulysses ruled that the book was, in fact, art and not filth, and that it could be published in this country.
Upon its initial publication, “Ulysses” received both praise and criticism, but also became known as something of a literally challenge. It is certainly a bear to get through.
The word “Bloomsday” first appeared in a 1924 letter written by Joyce. In 1929, booksellers Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier hosted a lunch at a restaurant outside of Versailles to honor the 25th anniversary of the book’s publication and to mark the publication of a new French translation. It was attended by Joyce and about 30 others, and took place on June 27 – the first Bloomsday celebration.
Bloomsday wasn’t celebrated in Dublin until 1954 when Irish writers Flann O’Brien and John Ryan held a gathering at Martello Tower – the setting in the first episode of the book. Today, it’s known as James Joyce Tower and houses a museum dedicated to Joyce. The city itself began embracing Joyce in 1982, during the centennial year of his birth.
Now the day is the most celebrated holiday in Dublin, second only to St. Patrick’s Day. It’s popular to celebrate by retracing Bloom’s steps in Ulysses, but a host of events are traditionally held around the globe on this day – including James Joyce lookalike contests, readings, conferences, road races, role-playings and more.
If you’re planning on going for a bit of a ramble in honor of this day, you’re in luck when it comes to the forecast. No storms on the horizon, just a mix of sun and clouds and comfortable temperatures in the low 70s.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden will approach his first face-to-face summit with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, today with one of the longest foreign policy résumés of an American leader in recent history.
Biden’s summit with Putin in Switzerland, chosen for its history of political neutrality, will not be the first time the two have met. But it will be their first meeting since Biden became U.S. president, the so-called leader of the free world.
The No. 3 Senate Republican, John Barrasso of Wyoming, told a group of voters that he wants to make Biden a “one-half-term president.”
Biden has doubled down on his campaign promise to end privately-run detention centers, including those that detain immigrants, but immigrant rights advocates are getting impatient.
A federal judge in Louisiana has blocked the Biden administration’s suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, in the first major legal roadblock for the president’s quest to cut fossil fuel pollution and conserve public lands.
Justice Department prosecutors asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
The Israeli military said it had conducted airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, after officials said that the militant group Hamas had sent incendiary balloons into southern Israel from Gaza, in the first eruption of hostilities since an 11-day air war ended last month.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans have sought medical care for post-Covid health problems that they had not been diagnosed with before becoming infected with the virus, according to the largest study to date of long-term symptoms in Covid-19 patients.
In the next few days, the United States will surpass 600,000 deaths from Covid-19, the highest known death toll in the world.
An antibody treatment developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has been shown to significantly cut the risk of death among certain hospitalized Covid-19 patients, raising hopes for a valuable new tool for tackling severe cases.
Office towers and nearby businesses in central business districts are missing out on the strong economic recovery, largely because the rise in vaccinations and easing of mask restrictions haven’t propelled most employees back to work.
Morgan Stanley’s top boss issued a stern warning to his staff – come back to the office by Labor Day, or face a pay cut.
Retail sales dropped in May, marking a shift in consumer spending from big-ticket items to goods and services related to going out amid business reopenings and higher vaccination rates.
The Food and Drug Administration cleared an additional batch of Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine doses from a troubled production plant in Baltimore.
The Covid-19 virus infected people in five U.S. states in December 2019 and early 2020 before those states reported their first cases, according to a large new government study, providing new insights into the first, unseen weeks of the deadly epidemic.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed an executive order mandating that public colleges and universities cannot require students to receive the COVID-19 vaccine or require students to submit proof that they received the vaccine to attend in-person classes.
A small new study offers a glimmer of hope that giving organ transplant recipients a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine could boost their protection against the coronavirus.
Vermont has become the first US state to reach its 80% Covid-19 vaccination goal and is shedding all statewide restrictions on dealing with the pandemic, including letting a state of emergency expire last night.
States with higher vaccination rates now have markedly fewer coronavirus cases, as infections are dropping in places where most residents have been immunized and are rising in many places people have not, a Washington Post analysis has found.
The governors of New York and California, the states hit earliest and hardest by the pandemic, triumphantly announced that they had lifted virtually all restrictions on businesses and social gatherings as both states hit milestones in vaccinating their residents.
The lifting of restrictions will be a boon to the hard-hit hospitality and entertainment industries.
The day was marked in New York with a 9:15 p.m. statewide fireworks celebration to honor the essential workers, without whom he says the state could not have made it through the early days of the pandemic and the daily devastation that followed.
Also, a number of public buildings were lit up in blue and gold – the state’s official colors.
“Remember June 15,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. “Remember today. Because it is the day New York rose again. We are standing in a monument to coming back better than ever before.”
Cuomo used a campaign-style rally that included handing out plaques to union leaders to announce the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, while conspicuously making no mention of the state’s estimated 50,000-plus deaths from the disease on his watch.
The city is doling out cash to 10 lucky New Yorkers who get vaccinated against COVID-19, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office, the latest effort to encourage more people to get jabbed.
While Cuomo publicly distanced himself from his onetime top aide, Joe Percoco, after his corruption conviction, members of the governor’s inner circle — including one of his sisters — have for years been quietly raising money for Percoco.
The controversial directive for New York nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients increased the death toll among residents — and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s claims otherwise have been disproven, according to a New York State Bar Association report.
As school districts plan what school will look like in the fall, New York State United Teachers is strongly advocating for an end to “concurrent instruction” – teachers simultaneously teaching to students in the classroom and those attending class remotely.
One week until the end of a bitterly contested mayoral primary, and a day before the race’s final debate, Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley are both trying to establish themselves as voters’ best alternative to the race’s apparent leader, Eric Adams.
As New York’s Democratic primary nears, Black voters appear torn between Adams and Wiley and their divergent views on balancing public safety and civil rights.
Wiley received a significant pay raise from the non-profit where she worked immediately before becoming de Blasio’s legal counsel in 2014, and several months before he tapped one of the non-profit’s board members to serve on the Human Rights Commission.
Wiley has made her work expanding high-speed Internet access to poorer New Yorkers a focus of her campaign, but a key piece of that effort — installing broadband in three public housing developments — remains incomplete six years after it was announced.
Former Citigroup vice chairman Ray McGuire has embraced the role of outsider in the Democratic primary and says the city doesn’t need another politician as mayor.
Garcia said that she supports the controversial law that lets NYPD cops be prosecuted if they restrict a suspect’s breathing or blood flow and also opposes any use of “stop and frisk”– even as city voters say surging crime is their No. 1 issue.
Democratic mayoral hopeful Andrew Yang pushed back on rival Adams’ accusation that he’s benefited from the unreported labor of a prominent YouTuber — but did not deny the allegations.
Likely voters in the Democratic mayoral primary say public safety is their number one concern — and a significant majority support increasing the size of the NYPD budget, according to a new poll.
Staten Island Rep. Nicole Malliotakis — the city’s sole GOP congressional member — is endorsing fellow Republican Curtis Sliwa for mayor.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced she’s backing Tali Farhadian Weinstein’s run for Manhattan district attorney — a big coup in a crowded field that has focused much of their attention on criminal justice reform.
Steve Behar, a Democrat running to represent eastern Queens on the City Council, has gone after a number of women on social media — along with joking about rape and apparently challenging a man to a fight after getting into an argument on Facebook.
As the city starts to recover, buoyed by low virus rates and widespread vaccinations, yellow taxis are largely missing from many street corners and airport arrival areas.
Food delivery apps that create alternative phone numbers for their restaurant clients so they can take a cut of telephone food orders may soon need to start disclosing the practice in the Big Apple.
An investigation into Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s finance chief, appears to be heading into its final stages as prosecutors increase pressure on him.
Trump repeatedly pressured the Justice Department to overturn Joe Biden’s victory, at one point urging prosecutors to file a Supreme Court lawsuit to nullify the election, according to new emails released by the House Oversight Committee.
Trump announced he will visit the US-Mexico border region with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott at the end of this month to draw attention to what he called “grave and willful dereliction of duty” by his successor.
Award-winning actor Lisa Banes, who died after suffering injuries in a motorized-scooter crash in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, loved her work, family and simple joys like making breakfast and reading a newspaper at home, her wife said.
Harvey Weinstein can be transferred to California to face rape and sexual assault charges, a New York judge ruled, paving the way for the disgraced mogul to return to the state where he made his name and where a second criminal prosecution looms over him.
The Brooklyn Marathon is planned next year for April 24, giving New York a second big race through its neighborhoods.
A former NYPD cop was repeatedly raped, sodomized and mentally tormented by a cadre of officers over the course of five years but when her case was brought to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, they declined to prosecute, a new federal lawsuit claims.
The manager of a Manhattan Shake Shack falsely accused of serving cops poison milkshakes last year said officers forced him to make a shake in front of them, then tried to trick him into admitting he added bleach.
Jack B. Weinstein, a legal scholar and famously independent federal judge in Brooklyn who led the legal system into an era of mass tort litigation, has died at the age of 99.
Harvey Fierstein, a multiple Tony-winning performer and writer, has donated $2.5 million to create a new “theater lab” at the New York Public Library’s Lincoln Center campus.
Jay-Z is knocking a New York photographer for allegedly “exploiting” his image after the two men worked together on photo shoots back when the Roc-A-Fella Records founder was a Brooklyn teen on the cusp of superstardom.
Acknowledging criticism that the film adaptation of his musical “In the Heights” failed to adequately depict the dark-skinned Afro-Latino population of Washington Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda apologized for falling short in “trying to paint a mosaic of this community.”
Chesley B. Sullenberger III gained fame in 2009 as the pilot whose nimble maneuvers safely landed a malfunctioning plane in the Hudson River. Now he’s going to be an ambassador to the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization, a UN agency.
The Senate confirmed Lina Khan for a seat on the Federal Trade Commission, and Biden tapped her to lead the agency, a post that will allow her to pursue aggressive enforcement of U.S. antitrust and consumer-protection laws.
The Rensselaer Environmental Coalition will rally outside City Hall tonight urging the Common Council to pass a resolution calling on the state Department of Environmental Conservation to immediately revoke the SA Dunn Landfill’s operating permits.
Rensselaer Mayor Michael Stammel is calling on the state to close the Dunn landfill, an ongoing source of complaints and controversy.
Schenectady residents were on edge yesterday morning as authorities tracked a bear through the Woodlawn neighborhood in an attempt to keep it out of roadways.
The city will once again open back up the South Troy Pool in July.
The Albany Police Department’s new therapy puppy has a name: Charlie.
Motorists getting off or on Exit 23 of the Thruway need to take care starting last night and through the rest of the week, as work crews are removing the toll barriers. The work will run from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m.
