Given Ireland's recent rejection of the Lisbon Treaty and subsequent news coverage that showed many of the Irish to be far less educated and articulate than their American cousins would like to imagine (some Irish voters claimed they voted against the treaty because it would infringe on local tax rights while others thought it might somehow affect same sex marriage laws), it might help to remember the poetry of William Butler Yeats and W.H. Auden, or the prose of Jonathan Swift, or of course the stories of that fabulously wandering storyteller, James Joyce. Yes, especially him. Today is Bloomsday, the significance of which derives from the novel, Ulysses, written by Joyce and published in 1922. The entire story takes place in Dublin on June 16th, 1904, and involves a protagonist named Leopold Bloom, hence the moniker, Bloomsday. So, Happy Bloomsday. Lift a pint, and share a passage or two.