"Stately, plump Buck Milligan came from the stairhead,

bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed." Welcome to the opening sentence of James Joyce's magnum opus, the 1922 novel Ulysses which for the author's fans -- I'm not one, but give me time -- is Bloomsday, commemorating not only the single day the events of the novel are set in (June 16, 1904) but also named for the main character Leopold Bloom, an advertiser in Dublin. Count your blessings that I didn't use the LAST sentence, which in the version I own spans forty-two pages. Nuts, and I thought a Saramago sentence was long ... still, if Jean-Luc Picard believed he could tackle this novel on holiday (in fact, see the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Captain's Holiday" for him citing it as travel reading) I see it as not impossible. Read another Joyce novel, Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man at the turn of the century, and that wasn't impossible.

But a lot happens in fifteen years ... sibling rivalries that make both participants' blood boil, from Cain and Abel (and Perez and Uzzah, and Ishmael and Isaac, and Esau and Jacob, and that's just in Genesis!) to Sarah and Jeffrey ... it's just a pain, and sometimes it is just not worth it to deal with or even moderate them! Volume two of DC Comics' adaptation of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (ISBN 9781401243128) I expected to pick up where volume one left off, with He-Man and his friends having retaken Castle Grayskull with Skeletor plotting revenge in a Sorceress-less Eternia, but no, this graphic novel collection gives us background on several main heroes and villains (say, Prince Adam didn't discover he was He-Man but rather was granted the power, and He-Man's dad King Randor and his half-brother Skeletor ... well, he becomes Skeletor courtesy of Hordak who a million years before the main story begins beat out his own brother Zodac.

And I thought the toy line was confusing when I collected it in the eighties -- well, I may have to read it again. There's also something about two gems, one able to travel through time and the other through space ... this Saturday we got up early to travel to Jamestown about three hours southwest of Minot to visit a family member of ours in prison. I've got to admit it gave me the chills as 1) I never expected to go to prison unless it was as an inmate and 2) I half-fear, about as much as I fear dying alone, that I'm going to go there to visit someone and be left there. Well, I wasn't or you wouldn't be seeing this message ... we had to head out early, though, because visiting hours that day were 10:30 to 3:30 and Martha's sister Mary, niece Josceline, and family friend had been before. Before going to jail, the family member we visited was thin as a rail and was close to losing all his teeth, now new teeth were in and he's BUILT.

Not the way you want to get built, trust me! (Really, kids, trust me. And if you won't trust me, trust someone who's there now telling you that.) We had dinner at the Applebee's in Jamestown and drove home; I should say, Martha drove home as she will not let me drive in the car unless she is dying tired! I offer, but I'm turned down, oy vey. Just as well, I guess, the way she criticizes other drivers not as good as her within the car ... that irritates me because she doesn't expect Sarah and Jeffrey to do the same thing? (This is nothing compared to what I do, storming off in a huff like Sunday afternoon because everyone else wants to laze around the house, I grant.) Finally finished Frederick Wensley's 1931 memoir of his time with the police 40 Years of Scotland Yard on the trip as well as another book which I'm going to save for another day, and I have a good reason for that.

This week the kids are also getting their start in summer activities, with Day Camp at our church staffed by Camp Metigoshe counselors now in its second of five days. After I got off work last night I picked up Sarah and she told me what they had learned about Abraham and how God promised his descendants would be as numerous as the stars, how Isaac (whose names means "laughter, Jeffrey pointed out!) was born when Abraham was ninety-nine and Sarah was ninety, and how they had fun there. Them I picked up Jeffrey from his second night at basketball camp, held six to eight at Jim Hill. He'd asked us for weeks to go and we paid for him to go; he says he's learning a lot, and considering how often he asks to go to Longfellow's playground to play basketball, he ought to be getting some awesome shots in! Meanwhile, Sarah's new stuffed white tiger Tundra is guarding our van ... got to be done.

David