Michael Tougias - A Passion for Writing

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the November 26, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Michael Tougias is the third author to visit the Morrill Memorial Library this fall (as part of the Stuart Plumer Author Night Series). He is a local author and his book, The Finest Hours (coauthored with Casey Sherman in 2009) is the basis for a Disney film that will be released in theaters in January of 2016. Casey Affleck, Chris Pine, Holliday Grainger and Ben Foster star in the movie that portrays a daring and harrowing rescue off the coast of Cape Cod. The movie has had several planned release dates over the past few years – one as early as this October and the other as late as the spring of 2016.

Saving the Children: Riders on the Orphan Trains

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the November 19, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

 One-hundred and seventy-five years ago, social workers and philanthropists in Boston in 1840 began the "Boston Plan". Orphaned or homeless children were “placed out” in the hope that they would be adopted by families who wanted them. Children from Massachusetts were sent to what they hoped would be new homes in states as close as Vermont or as far-flung as the farms and prairies across the American Midwest in the Westward Expansion.

Some of the children had lost both parents; others had lost only one, but the surviving parent could not care for them. One of the largest criticisms of the Boston Plan was that it allowed some children to become indentured servants to families who wanted extra hands on the tracts of land they were settling or the land they were farming. Now considered illegal or cruel, the organization sponsoring this plan sincerely believed they were taking these orphaned children from the mean streets of the city and giving them a second chance at a wholesome life in the country.

Handmade Crafting

Read Alli Palmgren's column in the November 12, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin. Alli is the Technology Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library.

I really look forward to the first Thursday of each month. I work the late shift on Thursdays, so my mornings are generally free. This is when I make most of my appointments, run errands, and once a month, head to the Norwood Senior Center to do crafts. Now, I know that I’m closer in age to the seniors that spend their days at 245 Nichols Street than to the seniors that spend time at 275 Prospect Street, but several months ago I was actually invited to lead a monthly craft class, I jumped at the opportunity.

The Race to Be First: Subways and More

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the November 5, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

We can be proud of many things in Massachusetts, especially those attributed to our fair city Boston. In Boston Firsts (2006), author Lynda Morgenroth describes forty of the “feats or innovation and invention that happened in first in Boston and helped make America great.”