Bloomsday is celebrated around the world, usually on June 16, the day James Joyce’s character Leopold Bloom took his storied walk around Dublin in the book, Ulysses.
In Philadelphia, The Rosenbach Museum and Library, which houses the original handwritten manuscript of the book that took Joyce seven years to write and most people a lifetime to read, hosts 10 hours of readings by local actors, scholars, and dignitaries at its location in Delancey Place.
This year, the Burlington County NJ St. Patrick’s Day Committee is joining the celebration with its first ever Bloomsday event, to held Saturday June 17 from 12 to 2 PM at the Burlington County Lyceum of History and Natural Sciences, 307 High Street, Mt. Holly. The Georgian mansion, dating back to 1830, previously housed the Burlington County Library.
“We thought it was better to hold it on the weekend rather than in the middle of the work week. It will be more accessible to people,” says Jim Logue, who co-founded the Burlington County parade back in 2004 and has been running it ever since.
He’s made Bloomsday more accessible in other ways too. Along with listening to readings from the novel by English literature faculty from Rowan College of Burlington County and volunteers from the parade committee and community, you can taste a bit of Leopold Bloom’s day: Christopher’s Catering in Mt. Holly is supplying Bloom’s lunch—salad and gorgonzola cheese sandwiches.
“It’s a local deli here in town that makes great sandwiches,” says Logue. “I went to them and asked if they could make the sandwich. At first they said, ‘Oh, we don’t serve gorgonzola cheese.’ Then I told them it was for 50 people and they said, ‘Oh, we thought it was for one person. We can get gorgonzola cheese,” he laughed.
You can also listen and even hum along to Bloom’s day. Logue recruited Bob Hurst of the Celtic rock group The Bogside Rogues to sing a few of the songs mentioned in the 732-page novel, which was scandalous for its time. “There are several Irish songs mentioned, including very obscure Irish songs,” says Logue. “I found and handful of them on the Internet, including Silent, O Moyle, Love’s Old Sweet Song, and The Croppy Boy, that Bob is going to sing at the event.”
“We’re bringing the music and the taste and the written word all together,” he says.
There will also be a short film about Bloomsday from the Bloomsday Film Festival in Dublin.
Making Bloomsday even more accessible: This is all free. “We’re taking part of a grant we got from the state Council of the Arts to make it possible,” says Logue.
Making Ulysses accessible to another thing. According to the website Good Reads, the novel is one of the five most abandoned classics along with Catch-22, Lord of the Rings, Moby Dick and Atlas Shrugged.
Logue, who is doing a reading on Saturday himself, admits he’s still “making my way back through it,” for the first time since he was in college. “I’ve read most of it. I’d be lying if I said I read the whole thing.”
But you don’t have to have read Ulysses—or even to want to read it—to enjoy Burlington County’s Bloomsday event. It’s just another way to plug into your heritage, says Logue. “When we were talking about doing another event—we do the parade and an Irish festival in the fall—we realized that most of our events revolved around music. But literature is as big a part of Irish culture as music is.”
