It has long annoyed me that the only day of the year most folks focus on all things Irish is March 17th...when June 16th is arguably a vastly more interesting commemoration. (CERTAINLY more contemporary, the 20th Century as opposed to the 4th or 5th.)

For today is Bloom's Day (+118), that bygone Thursday, June 16, 1904 being the day on which is set the marathon-length "Ulysses", the frequently if indirectly quoted and oft-banned--if not necessarily in Boston than in many other locales--novel that is widely deemed James Joyce's masterwork.

I can't say that I've read it in its entirety, but the novel does have the distinction of being the only major work of fiction purposely crafted in a variety of styles, none of which are (at least considered) repeated after their specific chapter.

Now, I don't have any pretentious of being a literary critic--though I do dyl, er, DILigently chronicle the work-product and multifarious other doings of a certain recent Literature Nobel laureate--but I did manage to get through a sizable portion of Joyce's tome about Bloom's travels around Dublin that day; this despite having positively detested "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", which a Boston University lit class force-fed me in 1974.

And I DID make it a point to sample every style of "Ulysses", something I'd encourage y'all to try for yourself some future Bloom's Day if you haven't ever gotten around to it.

Inasmuch as Joyce never assigned a date of death for his modern-day Odysseus protagonist Bloom, perhaps in tribute select Monday, January 13, 1941, when Joyce himself expired in Zurich after abdominal surgery two days prior.

Most folks incorrectly presume I'm Irish myself, given my given name, my fair skin and sandy hair--Finnish and Czech, actually--but I do recognize the outsized contribution Irish culture has had for a nation which still hasn't equalled its pre-potato-famine population. And I'd say that even if I wasn't a longtime Reaganite.

So to paraphrase how the great--and NOT AT ALL late--David Hartman used to close Good Morning America in those days when it wasn't hosted by the current of GMA clowns, "Now go out and make it a good Bloom's Day!

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida