The other bookgroup had its annual brunch and gift exchange at Le Central. I had pain perdu, offered The Bookclub Cook Book, and received a set of notecards in a box (it's always about the box) shaped like a circus tent.
Afterward I strolled up the to the library, where I have barely set foot since Dot Org moved to the hinterlands. My first destination was a performance by someone from the Colorado Shakespeare Festival called "Shakepeare's Sister." Almost as soon as I entered (a little late, but not disruptively), "Joan"--Shakespeare did have a sister so named--asked for a volunteer to be Titania and called on me. She sat me down on the edge of the stage, asked if I could snore (yes), and then put something "on your pretty hair." At that I was putty in her hands. To a portly man who had to play Bottom without any prop, but who did get to bray, I got to say--well, repeat, phrase by phrase, like wedding vows,
I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again:
Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note;
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;
And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me
On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.
Because no, I don't have a tremendous lot of Shakespeare committed to memory. I can, however, snore, and speak such lines with eye contact, affect, and without balking at the pre-vowel "mine." When she released me, I began to return to my spot but she had to remind me, "May I have my tiara?" So that's what I got to wear. It was just like the one I got for Haitch to wear at her graduation party.
It was fun, if not so fun as the audience-participation Richard III in The Eyre Affair.
Afterward I wandered happily about, browsing, selecting Graham Greene and Flannery O'Connor and in between discovering, in the jacket matter of The Basic Eight, that Daniel Handler--i.e., Lemony Snickett--at least used to live, if not still lives, in Old Lyme! Damn, I wish I had known that when I saw him in October so I could have pestered him instead of just handing my book to him with a smile and mere hello.
Later the Denver Gay Men's Chorus performed in Schlessmann Hall (the atrium, pretty much, except not Greek). They sang the national anthem and several secular Christmas songs, including one piece memorable for its being African instead of European, with different voices chanting in different rhythms, really nice.
I stopped into Capitol Hill Books on the way home and found How the Grinch Stole Christmas for pertinent English practice for the frenchlets, and even The Trumpet of the Swan to go with the Audobon stuffed trumpeter swan I picked up ages ago. I mean to replicate American fauna in the frenchlets' house, it's true. They already have have a bison named Wyoming (a hard sound for French speakers) and a bald eagle named Sam. I mean to find a skunk and a raccoon, but after those I'll have to look up specifically North American critters. Or American, like mountain lions.