Looking for Something to Do? Free Events March 11 to 17

Here are free events scheduled Saturday, March 11, to Friday, March 17.

All events are free, so take a look -- and don't you dare say there's nothing to do in Pasadena!

March is One City, One Story month -- our annual community reading celebration! Have you read this year's Pulitzer Prize-winning selection "The Sympathizer" by Viet Thanh Nguyen yet? OCOS events are scheduled all month long. Coming up:

• Come to a "The Sympathizer" book discussion Saturday, March 11, at 10:30 a.m. at Allendale Branch Library or 10:30 a.m. at Hill Avenue Branch Library.
• "The Children of An Lac" (1980, NR) starring Shirley Jones, Ina Balin and Beulah Quo will be shown Wednesday, March 15, at 1 p.m. in the Donald R. Wright Auditorium at Central Library. The film is based on the true story of film actress Ina Balin and her efforts with an American Red Cross volunteer and a Vietnamese woman who runs a Saigon orphanage to rescue as many orphaned children as possible in April 1975 and fly them out of the country before the city fails to the communists. 
• The documentary film "Last Days in Vietnam" (2014, NR) will be shown Thursday, March 16, at 6:30 p.m. in the Donald R. Wright Auditorium at Central Library. During the chaotic final weeks of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army closed in on Saigon as panicked citizens desperately tried to escape and American soldiers and diplomats faced a moral quandary. Witnesses and rare footage reveal the heroism and sacrifice that played out amid the pandemonium.

Solo and ensemble works by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Bruch and Smetana will be performed Sunday, March 12, at 2:30 p.m. in the Donald R. Wright Auditorium at Central Library, sponsored by Tuesday Musicale of Pasadena.

Oakwood Brass will perform classical works Wednesday, March 15, from 12:10 to 12:40 p.m. for the popular Music at Noon recital series at Pasadena Presbyterian Church.

The third Thursday of every month is Free Admission Day at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. On Thursday, March 16, from 5 to 8 p.m. enjoy the new exhibitions The Golden Twenties: Portraits and Figure Paintings by Joseph Kleitsh, Interstitial and Gustave Baumann in California plus a serenade by a harpist in the main gallery and a visit by Pasadena Symphony's Random Acts of Music.

Sunny Tales: Shamrock Party for preschool-aged children Friday, March 17, from 10:30 a.m. to noon at the Finnish Folk Art Museum on the grounds of the Pasadena Museum of History will feature storyteller Sunny Stevenson telling tales of St. Patrick's Day followed by a pot-of-gold craft to take home and a snack.

"Thoroughly Modern Millie" (1967, G) starring Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore will be shown Friday, March 17, at 1 p.m. in the Scott Pavilion at the Pasadena Senior Center. Two recent transplants to the Big Apple in the 1920s experience a different kind of excitement and adventure than what they expected. You do not have to be a member of the Pasadena Senior Center to attend.

Connie Sheu and Adam Pettit will perform Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's "The Well-Tempered Guitars" Friday, March 17, at 7:30 p.m. at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music. While the event is free, reservations are required.

"An Irish Celebration" Friday, March 17, at 7 p.m. at Parson's Nose will include music, poetry and humor from the Emerald Isle in honor of St. Patrick's Day. While the festivities are free, reservations are required.

The Pasadena Community Orchestra presents Beethoven + Holst + Pichl Friday, March 17, at 8 p.m. at First Church of the Nazarene in a program that will include Beethoven's Egmont Overture, Holst's St. Paul Suite, Pichl's Concerto No. 1 for brass and Beethoven's 8th Symphony,

Photo credits: Pasadena Public Library, Johann Nepomuk della Croce, James Warren Childe, Victor Talking Machine Company, Smetana Museum, Oakwood Brass, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Wren's World, Universal Pictures, Pasadena Conservatory of Music, Alaris Health, Pasadena Community Orchestra.