Happy Bloomsday, Mr Joyce! Many years ago just for fun I took a course called Three Great Novels, but I only remember one of them – James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses. It may sound like hyperbole but reading Ulysses in that class changed my life, at least my reading life, as I now measure every work of fiction I read against that great book. Since then I’ve reread Ulysses several times and every June 16th for years I’d celebrate Bloomsday at Symphony Space in New...
Archive - June 2014
A dozen or so years ago my cousin Kathy called from DC and asked me to join her the following month for a Jewish women’s weekend retreat. Because geography had always kept us apart, spending a weekend with my cousin was wonderfully appealing and a women’s retreat would be a new experience for us both. Kathy and I arrived on the beautiful grounds of the Pearlstone Retreat Center in Maryland on a Friday afternoon and met the 16 other participants and the female rabbi and young cantorial...