THIS Rhett Butler Will Never Die

I phone my son, who lives in Ireland every chance that I remember to. It's basically a matter of trying to catch him at a time when he is not at work, college, or sleeping. I called him last night, around 10pm his time and he answered on the very first ring. He said, "Dad, I'm in kind of a messed up situation right now." Knowing what kind of activities and people he interacts with over there I was practically prepared to hear anything. Oddly enough, I did not feel any sense of distress or fear coming from him. He went on to explain that he had received a phone call from his boss at his job, who he had become quite close friends with. Billy works at a rescue mission run by the Salvation Army where they take drug addicted homeless men in off the streets in Dublin, Ireland. Many of the people that work for the operation have come through processes of recovery from addiction issues in their own lives. In the phone call with his friend, he found out that his friend had mad...

It's the birthday of James Joyce , ( books by this author ) born in Rathgar, Ireland, just outside Dublin (1882). He's best known today for Ulysses (1922), his attempt to recreate a single day in the city of Dublin, with all its sights, sounds, smells, as well as the many different kinds of people, the way they talked, and what private thoughts floated through their heads as they went about their daily lives. He wrote the novel while living in voluntary exile in Zurich, and he did all kinds of research to get the details right. He asked his Aunt Josephine to send him copies of anything to do with Ireland: newspapers, magazines, history books, guidebooks, maps, and photographs. Because he chose June 16, 1904 as the day on which the novel would take place, he made sure to include real details about things that had happened on that day, including sporting events, news items, and even newspaper advertisements that appeared in newspapers on that day. The first printing of...