The layout of the page and the prominence of the photo got me to read this first thing this morning. Online I might not have noticed it. And that’s just one page. The paper is filled with things that catch my eye.

99 years ago a Paris bookshop published the full 700+ pages of James Joyce’s Ulysses. All those pages were about the comings and goings of Leopold Bloom on one ordinary day in Dublin, June 16, 1904. June 16 has become popularly known as Bloomsday. Many celebrations and readings are held every year on this date. There’s this poem in The Guardian that goes counter to Molly Bloom’s famous Yes at the book’s end:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2021/jun/14/poem-of-the-week-my-mother-says-no-on-bloomsday-by-mary-odonnell?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

from an article in the new New Yorker:

Before the pandemic, six per cent of Detroit’s fourth graders met proficiency benchmarks in math, and seven per cent in reading, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

 

THESE NUMBERS WERE IN THE TIMES’ Pentagon Papers at 50 special section today:

-number of American soldiers who died in Vietnam:   

 58,220

-estimated number of Vietnamese soldiers killed:        

950,765

-estimated number of Vietnamese civilians killed:     

1 million to 2 million

 

16-PAGE special section. The Pentagon Papers at 50. You can likely find it on nytimes.com.

You still wear your mask inside the Strand bookstore. Some late afternoons when I’m finishing my hour walk, I stop in. When I walk along the outside on 12th Street, I take photos of people if they look interesting to me. Today some did.

 

from The New Yorker:

HOW ACT UP CHANGED AMERICA

The defiant group of AIDS activists was itself riven by discord. What can the movement’s legacy, of both ferocity and fragility, teach us?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/14/how-act-up-changed-america