It's Bloomsday. My first in Spokane.
I won't be participating in the run this year — there are some semi-urgent home repairs that need seeing to, and besides, I haven't used my Nike running shoes for their god-given purpose in nearly two months — but I might observe from the sidelines if time permits.
In my ignorance I thought that Bloomsday — or the "Lilac Bloomsday Run," as it's called in full — was simply named in honor of the purple seasonal flowers that can presently be seen blossoming all over The Lilac City. But it turns out that it has literary origins. Don Kardong, who founded the race in 1977, named it with James Joyce's Ulysses in mind, I suppose because the course meanders through the city in the same way the fictional Leopold Bloom perambulates through Dublin. Given that the date of the novel's setting is very specific (Thursday, June 16, 1904), I'm not entirely sure why the race isn't held annually on that day instead, but perhaps no one in the Spokane tourism office wanted to compete with the booze-sodden Dublin-based event that's held then and started twenty-three years before Spokane began soliciting runners for its 12k.
As part of the citywide Bloomday celebrations, Auntie's had $1 bargain bins outside its main doors yesterday. Too bad I only spotted them while driving past en route to the co-op. I'll try to stay on top of these sort of deals — for my own sake as well as yours — in the future.
At any rate, to well and truly mark this grand occasion, Bloomsday founder, runner, writer (and, of course, Spokanite) Don Kardong has been added to the list of local authors. You can still find his Bloomday: A City in Motion and Thirty Phone Booths to Boston, both now out of print, on Amazon, as well as Hills, Hawgs, and Ho Chi Minh, a sequel of sorts to Thirty Phone Booths. The books (including signed copies) are also available from his website.
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