a Bloomsday festival - James Joyce & Ulysses

by Diana Serbe

As a teacher, she is Prof. Black, and she is my mentor. As a friend, she is Martha, so close that I call her a sister/friend.

We met when I made the decision to go back to school. If I had any trepidation about returning to school, I soon forgot about it. Her teaching, as exuberant as her red hair, left no time for anxieties. Her ebullience was magnetic: I returned for another, then another of her classes. She became my mentor, however, on a study trip to Ireland when I was late to class.

Martha has always been inclined to teach her classes wherever she and her students happen to find themselves. On the day in question, class was held in the lounge of a hotel, and Martha was conducting the seminar from the top of a pool table. I came in late which interrupted the class. I apologized by saying that I had gone out to the woods. Quoting W.B. Yeats, I ended my apology by stating that "a fire was in my head." From her seat on the pool table, Martha congratulated me for having Yeats committed to memory, but said that it did not excuse me from being on time. In that moment, I saw her rigor as a scholar and professor, as well as her flexibility as a person. She was my mentor from then on.

All of life is Martha's classroom, so she never settles for mere office hours with her students. Instead she gives parties, and the most celebratory one of all is at the end of the semester, June 16th, that day called Bloomsday which celebrates James Joyce's book, Ulysses.

Bloomsday is no ordinary day, and Martha is no ordinary woman. She offers kidney pie to commemorate Leopold's first meal of the day. She offers 'Buck Mulligan' stew to celebrate that character in Ulysses. But the star of the show is the cottage pie. Can a humble meat dish topped with mashed potatoes be the piece de resistance? Yes, if this is Bloomsday, no ordinary day, and the hostess is Martha, no ordinary woman. Yes.

Using cucumber slices for the round eyeglasses favored by Joyce, a carrot for a pipe, red pepper for a mouth and green pepper for a bow tie, she creates on top of her cottage pie a vegetable likeness of the great James Joyce. The man who has spawned an industry of scholars is immortalized on a bed of mashed potatoes. Yes. On the sideboard is Molly Bloom's orange scented seedcake, Joyce's symbol of life itself. "Have some," offers Martha.

There is but one possible answer: Yes Martha yes I will Yes.

About Barbara: Barbara is a writer living in NYC where she counsels people who battle multiple sclerosis. Two outstanding mentors have had a profound influence on her - Professor/author Martha F. Black who is also a sister/friend of the first order and the 19th Century poet, Emily Dickinson.

top of page    contact us   membership agreement

 previous mother    next mother

• 'Molly Bloom' Seed Cake

also try

• cottage pie