Fighting for the Mentally Ill

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts.  Read Charlotte's columns in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

In the 80s, when we lived in a small Central Massachusetts town, my eldest daughter had a particular admirer named Micah. Micah was a precocious and very handsome six-year old classmate. His mom, Paula, asked me to arrange a playdate for the two first-graders and shortly after, we mothers became fast friends.

A Fox or a Hedgehog?

Liz Reed is an Adult and Information Services Library at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts.  Read Liz's column in the June 19, 2014 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

I recently returned to my undergraduate alma mater for my five-year reunion.  St. Lawrence University (SLU) is a small liberal arts college nestled in the river valley between the Adirondack Mountains and the St. Lawrence River in Northern New York State.  New York State covers a huge geographical area, and in this case, “northern” does not mean just north of New York City, or even near Syracuse or Rochester.  The university, located in Canton NY, is at the tippy-top of the state, about a half hour drive from Canada.

A Bright Morning Dawning - Maya Angelou

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts.  Read Charlotte's column in the June 13, 2014 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

It was a crisp and brilliant morning when I first became acquainted with Maya Angelou. Oh, I don’t suggest I actually met Ms. Angelou. It was more like I was stirred to her powerful genius.

I’ll give away my political inclinations (love me or hate me) when I declare that I was thrilled to attend the presidential inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton on January 20, 1993. A life-long democrat since my early days in a Democratic household, I was first registered to vote in the early days of 1970s. Congress had passed the 26th Amendment in 1971 providing the right to vote to any American aged 18 or over and so, the 1972 election was just around the corner. I was a starry-eyed and idealistic young politico. In neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay Area, I knocked on doors for Democratic presidential candidate, George McGovern. Some of my best friends joined me and we felt that we could change the world.

The Power of Music

Bonnie Wyler is a Literacy/Outreach Librarian at the library. Read Bonnie's column in the June 5, 2014 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

I began playing the piano when I was nine years old, and very quickly found that playing music was an outlet for my emotions, feelings I could not have articulated but that I felt intensely when I played beautiful music.  There is something very powerful and life-affirming about expressing yourself in this way.  Recently I’ve found that other people in some very unlikely places are having this same experience.  One of the places is a garbage dump in Paraguay and the other is in the Republic of Congo in Central Africa.  These stories are from two of the poorest countries on earth, yet in each instance, the power of music allows people to transform their lives and find hope.