Tuesday, September 08, 2015

New choir director

The Columbus Centre Community Choir has a new director, Paolo Busata.  We met him last Tuesday at a meet & greet, and had a full rehearsal last night.  We learned the first parts of "O Canada" and "Time to Say Goodbye." He's introduced some new voice exercises.

The Saturday before last I went to John Snow's book club.  The place at the Lillian Smith library somehow got double-booked, so they went to some coffee shop.  Unfortunately, I was late getting there and didn't know where they'd gone!  But I met up with Gabriella, who was also late, and we went to a Second Cup and had our own mini-meeting.  I wouldn't have been worth much at the main meeting anyhow since I hadn't read any of Stendhal's RED AND BLACK.

Sunday night I went to the Politics Meetup for the first time, at Scallywag's.  They had a political trivia quiz and I finished second. (We needed a tie-breaking bonus round.)

Last week I went to the Electric Caterpillar bookstore and bought a book of Italian folktales.  I'm now translating the Turinese story "The Canary Prince," about a princess locked up in a tower who sees a prince on the ground, but they're too far apart for talking and can only gaze at each other and wave their hankies. (Oh well, I like to think she had a voice like Fran Drescher while he had a voice like Robin Leach!) Then a fairy gives her a book where she can turn the pages one way to turn him into a bird who can fly up to her windowsill, then turn them the other way to change him back.  But her evil stepmother puts some pins in the cushion he lands on...

I also got a book about a hundred famous Italians.  But that book's language is less simple, better suited for Moira. (She's been reading a novel in Italian!)

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