RICHFORD, Vermont — Sometime Monday morning, a second handwritten note appeared on the community board at Richford Public Library, pinned directly below the first one — below the patron question that had started the whole thing, below Aubin-Roy's earlier reply that she was thinking about it seriously. The new note said she was going.

Colette Aubin-Roy, who has worked the reference desk at Richford for eleven years and whom most regulars describe as the person who knows where everything is and what it means, had decided to attend the official dedication of Les Marées / The Tides — the bilingual public sculpture installed this month at Burlington's Central Transit Hub to mark the principality's entry into the RONAn federation — at the ceremony scheduled for Friday. She did not send an email. She did not mention it at the morning staff meeting. She wrote it in both French and English, as she had written the first note, and she put it where people would see it if they were already looking.

She said she intends to bring nothing and say nothing. She described the plan, in her note, as going to look at it.