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Bloomsday Breakfast at Bryant Park creates buzz for Ireland
NEW YORK — With all of the less-than-happy stories in the news, how do you brand a country, create community involvement, and make people happy?
Ireland, through the auspices of Imagine Ireland and the Irish Arts Center, hosted a Bloomsday breakfast smack in the middle of the city at Bryant Park, on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.
It was a perfect location because the park backs on to the main library, and the breakfast was in honor of James Joyce and his groundbreaking work Ulysses. The novel chronicles a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, and his travels around Dublin on June 16, 1904.
One hundred and seven years later to the day, in a leafy enclave with a backdrop of skyscrapers, New Yorkers (and lots of visitors to the city) were entertained by Songs of Joyce and the Darrah Carr Dance company.
Performers, and many of the attendees, dressed for the celebration in clothing that would have been appropriate in Dublin at the beginning of the 20th century. Women carried lace parasols and wore street-length skirts, and hats with flowers. Men looked handsome in striped jackets and boaters. Of course you knew it was the 21st century–people were snapping photos of the event with their cellphones.
Celebrants lined up for tea and coffee, while breakfast hors d'oeuvres, courtesy of food purveyor Tommy Moloney, were butlered. Among the items passed were Bloom's Beast and Fowls, which consisted of black pudding, white pudding, and sausage, and Tommy Tucker's Bread and Butter, toasted Irish black bread, creamer potato, organic egg, and spring onion butter sauce.
The highlight of the two-hour event (which began at 8 a.m. and finished promptly at 10 a.m.) were readings. Most of the presenters were people prominent in the theater. Fionnula Flanagan opened the book, and Aedin Moloney closed it.
James Newman, Charlotte Moore, Terry George, Michael Noonan, T.D., Minister for Finance, Ireland, and Isaiah Sheffer also read. Sheffer, artistic director of Symphony Space, has been hosting a 13-hour reading of the book at the upper Westside location, every year for the last 30!
It was a glorious morning honoring one of the most important novels ever written, and leaving people with only good to say about Ireland and the Irish. Clearly, sales of all thing Irish will increase, as more people buy the book, purchase the comestibles, and visit the country, after participating in the event.
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