Today is Bloomsday. For all of those readers of James Joyce, it’s the day that his novel Ulysses takes place: June 16, 1904. One of the main characters is Leopold Bloom (along with Buck Mulligan and Stephen Daedalus). It’s amazing that Joyce could fit the events of one single day into a book that long.
What is even more amazing that it was BANNED in the United States until 1933! It was supposed to be obscene. I read several parts of it and could not find anything wrong with it.
Tomorrow my wife and I are going into Manhattan to see
Inherit the Wind on Broadway. I had seen the movie versions, both the 1960 version with Spencer Tracy & Frederic March and the 1999 version with Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott. I am anxious to see Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy present it live. Based on some of the things that I have seen in the news, such as the Creationist Museum in Kentucky, the revival on Broadway is quite timely.
So that nobody brands me an agnostic or atheist, I am neither. I consider myself a Church going Catholic, but do not force my views on others. I do not believe that the Bible is meant to be taken literally from beginning to end.
What confuses me is the fact that some fundamentalist groups want the Harry Potter books banned because they are unscriptural, yet find nothing wrong with video games like
Grand Theft Auto. Go figure. As far as Creationism and a literal interpretation of the Bible go, I am not a follower of them. The universe is
much older than 6000 years. If everything in the Bible is literally true,
why are most Christian still eating ham, pork, and shellfish? According to Leviticus, they are abominations. Why are stores open on Sunday and church goers not killing them? According to Leviticus, it was permissible to kill a person who violates the Sabbath by working.
Inherit The Wind attempted to show what can happen when one group forces its religious beliefs on everyone.
The banning of
Ulysses until 1933, along with Prohibition, are other examples.
On to the baseball scene: 
the Mets snapped their losing streak last night, 2-0. 
The only problem was that it was the Yankees who lost (and Boston won).
Today I am home sick from work for the first time in about 2 years. It turns out that I have a respiratory infection and was coughing so badly yesterday that my boss actually told me to stay home today. So I did. However, it meant changing my voice mail at work and also calling some people who I was supposed to meet with this morning to tell them that I would be out and we’ll have to make it on Monday.
However, hopefully I will be back at the softball fields by Sunday, even if just to cheer them on.
