From the Morrill Memorial Library - Norwood, MA

The Madoff Affair: A Personal Tragedy

2012-02-09T19:44:00.000-05:00

Charlotte Canelli is Library Director at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin each week.

Thereare times when personal tragedies catch us in a net of disbelief, rage orcompassion. Tragedy, like reality, issometimes not dissimilar to passing a car wreck on the side of the road andwilling oneself not to look. Yet, something hard to watch is also somethinghard to turn away from.

Perhaps watching the ‘car wrecks' from the sidelines is even more compelling today in the era of television. We began broadcasting game shows like TheDating Game in the 70s and MTV’s Real World in the 90s. Today we have The Bachelor. Jersey Shore. The Kardashians.

Theycan be hard to watch but often too hard to turn away from. Ratings for realityshows have gone through the roof around the world.

Personal tragedies often fascinateand puzzle us. Compelling personal accounts of loss or downfall often appeal toour compassion, our curiosity and our ire. The story of the Bernie Madofffamily is one of them.

It wasn’t long after Madoff’sconfession amazed, enraged, confounded and shocked the world that books werepublished about the ruin and misfortune of a his family. “The Story of BernardL. Madoff, The Man Who Swindled the World” by Deborah and Gerald Strober wasrushed to print in early 2009, just months after Madoff’s own sons calledauthorities on December 10, 2008.

Immediately after the Ponzi schemewas revealed, Alexandra Penney began blogging her personal experience as “TheBag Lady Papers” in December 2008. Penney, a graduate of Smith College, a published author and an editor ofSelf Magazine, Penney made quite a bit of money in the 80s and 90s and a familyfriend recommended that she invest it with Bernie Madoff. We all know the endof that story. Overnight, Penney wasbroke. Her blog became the book “BagLady Papers: The Priceless Experience of Losing It All” (February 2010) and ispart rant, part confession, part therapy. It is also a story of tragedy andtriumph as Ms. Penney navigated through the experience of losing everything,expressing her sometimes childish anger at Madoff and the Wall Street rules thatallowed it all to happen.

Adding to the farce, of course, wasthe story of “family-man” Bernie’s 16-year affair with Sheryl Weinstein. “Madoff’s Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernieand Me” (July 2009), is Weinstein’s account, published in the summer of 2009,only seven months after Madoff’s Ponzi scheme came crashing down. At first,many in the family chalked the book up to the fantasy and get-rich book schemeof Weinstein. Today many believe thedetails of the sordid affair, a pitfall of egos and wallets large enough to getpeople into trouble.

A senior writer at the New YorkTimes, Diana B. Henriques covered the Madoff affair as it broke in December2008 through the attempts to recover some of the lost billions for the innocentfamilies who had invested their life savings with Bernie. “Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Deathof Trust” was published in April of 2011 and describes the scandal from insidethe financial world to inside the personal disasters of fracturedfamilies.

Of course, there were people whonever believed Bernie Madoff’s luck with money early on. Erin Arvedlund and Harry Markopolos were twoof them. Essays, exposes and insistenceon investigation fell on deaf ears for over a decade and those frustratingversions are recounted in “Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of BernieMadoff “(June 2009) by Erin Arvedlund and “No One Would Listen: A TrueFinancial Thriller “(December 2009) by Harry Markopolos.

Many people in the world were caught up indisbelief when Bernie Madoff was proved to be a swindler, a hoax and afraud. Certainly, he caught his familyby surprise. Central to the tragedy ofthe Madoff family, was the crushing disappointment of the Madoff sons, Andrewand Mark.

Published nearly simultaneously, “Truth andConsequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family” (2011) by Laurie Sandell and “TheEnd of Normal: A Wife’s Anguish, A Widow’s New Life” (2011) by Stephanie MadoffMack tell a nearly identical story but from two different viewpoints.

The Madoff had two sons, Mark and Andrew.Both sons graduated from college to jobs in the Madoff firm and a career in asomewhat separate, somewhat connected firm that operated several floors abovethe Bernie Madoff Ponzi operation “Truth and Consequences” explains the story from the younger brother,Andrew Madoff’s, point of view. AuthorSandell chronicles the personal versions of Andrew and his girlfriend,Catherine and Bernie Madoff’s wife, Ruth. Their story sometimes conflicts with that of Stephanie Mack just as impressionsof Bernie Madoff conflicted with the real man behind the mask.

Stephanie Madoff Mack was married toMark, the eldest son of Bernie and Ruth Madoff. On the second anniversary ofBernie Madoff’s arrest, Mark tragically took his own life leaving his wife andfour children from two marriages. The accusations and pressure of living withhis father’s crimes weighed so heavily that Mark Madoff could no longer bearit. Believing that he and his youngerbrother did the right thing in turning in their father, Mark could not believeit when they were accused for an opulent lifestyle supported by Madoff moneyfrom the day they were born. .

Stephanie Madoff’s story, “The Endof Normal” is a heartfelt chronicle is Mark’s story. Like Alexandra Penney’s “Bag Lady Papers” thedetails of a lifestyle replete with expansive apartments in Manhattan,beach-front vacation homes around the world and unlimited credit accounts canbe a bit nauseating. Most of the have-nots, or middle class, know a world verydifferent than Penney’s and Mack’s.

Victims of Bernard Madoff’s financial crimesand schemes involved all of his close friends and all members of his family. They are stories of the realities of personaltragedy.

Library Lover's Month

2012-02-02T16:30:00.000-05:00

Norma Logan is the Literacy Volunteer Coordinator at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

February is upon us. The festivities of the holiday season are distant memories, and we are facing the second month of the New Year thinking of hearts and flowers for Valentine’s Day. However, there is something else to celebrate in February, and that is Library Lovers’ Month! If you are already a Library Lover, come celebrate your passion, but if you are not, come visit us and discover all the great and free things that adults and children can do and see at your library in 2012.

Come get a library card if you don’t have one. It will open many doors for you.

It will allow you to use the library computers, and get on the many databases on the Morrill Memorial Library website (www.norwoodlibrary.org). If you prefer to bring your own laptop, you can connect to the internet for free. You can even sign up for a beginner level computer class or get museum passes for reduced entrance rates.

Come support Library programs. Become a Literacy Volunteer and help someone learn to speak, read or write English better, or be an Outreach Volunteer and deliver books to shut-ins. If you know someone who may need help speaking or reading English, send them to the library for free English tutoring. Join the Friends of the Library, and be involved in helping the library prosper.

Come to the library with your children or grandchildren and involve them in story times. For a $15 donation, you can even celebrate a child’s birthday by choosing a newly ordered book on a cart, and having the child’s name and birth date put on a bookplate inside the book.

Come be entertained with Monday night at the movies, or learn something new at an educational program sponsored by the library. Come play in the Adult Scrabble Club on Tuesday evenings. Children in grades 3-8 can play in the Kids Scrabble Club.

If you can’t get to the library, did you know that
• you can download electronic books on that new Kindle or Nook you got for the holidays?
• you can visit the library’s website (www.norwoodlibrary.org), and explore the databases with your library card at home?
• Norwood residents unable to get to the library because of special needs, illness or
disability can have personal delivery of reading materials?

The library is here to serve your needs. In this time of budget cuts and financial worries, don’t let the library be taken for granted. Encourage your elected town officials to support the library and its needs. This is the time to acknowledge the value of libraries and to work to assure that our libraries will continue to serve.

In the words of Salman Rushdie, “If knowledge is power, then the public library system gives that power to anyone who wants it.”

Goodnight Gadgets Everywhere

2012-01-26T17:00:00.000-05:00

“Goodnight iPad” by Ann Droyd came out just in time for the holiday season. I imagine it was a gift under many Christmas trees as it was under mine. A fun book with great colorful illustrations and witty rhyming text, it parodies the children’s classic “Goodnight Moon” written by Margaret Wise Brown many years ago.

“Goodnight iPad” looks and feels very much like the children’s book it mimics except the large green room buzzes with iPads, Nooks, Angry Birds and screens of every type. Father rabbit holds remotes in each hand while he lounges before a huge LCD Wi-Fi HDTV which extends across one entire wall. A warren of tiny rabbit children wear 3D glasses, text their Facebook friends and play video games at the same time.

All the while a mother rabbit rocks in a chair by the fire and sleepily watches the activity through her polarized spectacles.

“And the bings, bongs, and beeps. Of e-mails and tweets. And a fed-up old woman. Who is trying to sleep.”

That’s it, she says. “Goodnight iPad. Goodnight remotes. And Netflix streams, Androids, apps, and glowing screens.” At the end of this story, she hushes her family off to bed, unhappily unplugged while she contentedly reads “Goodnight Moon” by flashlight to the cat.

Pulling the plug on technology might feel like amputation to most families today. When Australian mother Susan Maushart realized that her family was being torn apart by technology, she decided to pull all the plugs. “Torn apart” might be an exaggeration, of course, but dinnertime and family time with her three teenagers were constantly disrupted by text messaging, emails and Facebook updates. Ms. Maushart felt that technology had taken a toll on her family and so she finally said “no” to the iPhones, iPods, IMs and PCs. She herself slept with her iPhone and she knew that it was going to be a very difficult transition. For six months she insisted that her family would have absolutely no access to screen entertainment or communication in their home. This included computers, cellphones, PC gaming and television.

She began by rereading “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau, an account of his two-year experiment of solitude in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts and she ended by sharing her own story of survival, “The Winter of Our Disconnect: How Three Totally Wired Teenagers (and a Mother Who Slept with Her iPhone) Pulled the Plug on Their Technology and Lived to Tell the Tale”. It is the sometimes humorous, always personal tale of her family’s journey “unplugged.”

Some of us have been there in the same place and we can understand the need to “unplug.” You’ve seen us in restaurants sitting across from each other with our eyes glued to tiny screens or our ears tapped into miniature speakers. In a desire to be always connected, it seems we disconnect from each other instead.

In “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other”, Sherry Turkle suggests that we avoid human contact by engaging with simulations of the people we think we are connecting with. Instead of closeness, we use tools that only give us the impression we are connecting. We’ve all heard the stories about teenagers or colleagues who IM each other sitting in the same room. There are hilarious times when I continue to talk to my husband on the cellphone as I walk into the house where we see each other face to face.

“Alone Together” is the third in a series of books by MIT professor, Ms. Turkle. “Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit” and “Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet” are the first and second books. Whether it is simply a sign of the times or a new world of alienation from reality, technology is here to stay and we need to learn to keep our human connections alive. Reading these books might give us the insight to keep ourselves and our families healthy in a future of technology.

Brian X. Chen is the author of “Always On: How the iPhone Unlocked the Anything – Anytime – Anywhere Future – and Locked Us In.” Who would have imagined that a combination phone, music player and handheld computer could become the gadget that it has. It’s indispensable to many of us, of course, but the negative implication is that it is nearly impossible to disconnect. Even more negative is what Chen implies is the sacrifice that we have made in this connection that has taken away our privacy and the role that Apple has played in it.

Nicholas Carr is the author of “The Big Switch” (2008) and the Atlantic Monthly essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid.” In 2010 he wrote "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”. Humans have intellectually progressed through history accompanied by the marvels of technology. Those amazing gadgets have included the alphabet and maps and such simple and complicated ones like the clock and printing press. And now we have the Internet and computers and these new gadgets are shaping a new human history.

While “Goodnight iPad” was a gift for my husband Gerry, an iPad-addict himself, I definitely got the bigger kick out of it. As a children’s book-lover at heart, I delight in the multilayered illustrations and the not-so-subtle satire on every page. In our life of iPhones, Kindles, screens and keyboards it is welcome relief to turn the pages and discover something new on every one of them. Maybe someday, in fact, I’ll take its message to heart.

“Goodnight buzzing. Goodnight beeps. Goodnight everybody who should be asleep. Goodnight pop stars. Goodnight MacBook Air. Goodnight gadgets everywhere.”

If you need help searching for any of the books mentioned in this column, please call our Reference or Information desks (781-769-0200) or visit the library in person.

The Sounds and Lights are Bright on Broadway

2012-01-20T12:21:00.000-05:00

Charlotte Canelli is Library Director at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.
From the Library - The Lights and Sounds are Bright on Broadway by Charlotte Canelli I’ve loved Broadway musicals since my beloved Aunt Gladys brought me on a three-night excursion to New York for my 19th birthday. In typical “Aunt Gladys style”, she treated me to not one, not two, but three live performances. I still remember each one vividly forty years later and I was simply enchanted by the lights and stars on Broadway.

Our first attendance during that weekend was the serious play, “Butterflies Are Free” which debuted on Broadway in 1969. In the play, which ran for 1128 performances, Don Baker (played by Keir Dullea) is a young blind man who falls in love with a free-spirited hippie (this WAS the era, after all). At first, his over-protective mother doesn’t like it one bit.

I loved everything about it. The other young actors were Michael Glaser and Blythe Danner (Gwyneth Paltrow’s mom). The play didn’t close at the Booth Theater until they had performed it 1128 times.

My second favorite event that night was being whisked by taxicab down the maze of New York streets to a late dinner at Mama Mia’s Italian restaurant. It was famous at the time but it doesn’t seem to exist any longer. (One of my favorite cookbooks as a young bride was the then popular “Mama Mia Italian Cookbook: The Home Book of Italian Cooking” by Angela Catanzaro. It’s nearly impossible to find. )

But I digress.

The next day of my birthday trip we saw a matinee of the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. I think I was most impressed by the size of the theater which seats nearly 6,000. In the early 1970s people still dressed magnificently for the theater and my second impression was of the glitz, glamour and furs around me. There was music and dancing and plenty of chorus-line kicks but no intimacy of the 500-seat theaters of Broadway.

Of course, my aunt wouldn’t have brought me to Broadway without introducing me to a musical on our last night in Manhattan. “Man of La Mancha” starred Richard Kiley as both Don Quixote and Cervantes and had just moved off Broadway to the Eden Theater in early 1971. Kiley was the first to sing and record "The Impossible Dream", the hit song from the show and the 2,329 performances of the musical were performed in the original run in New York City.

Growing up in California, my experiences of live performance, particularly musicals, had been limited to those in my high school cafetorium (a blend of cafeteria/auditorium). We sat on hard folding chairs surrounded by the lingering smells of institutional cuisine. Broadway was different altogether. When those velvet curtains at the Booth Theater on West 45th Street parted I was hooked forever on New York, New York.

Of course, everyone in my family knows I still love Broadway.

For Christmas, my youngest daughter and her fiancé gave us tickets to see “Avenue Q” at the New World Stages Complex just off Broadway at 50th Street. The musical ranks 21st as one of the longest running shows in Broadway’s history and stars the Muppet-like puppets animated and voiced by actors who are part of the stage-cast.

However, the resemblance to Sesame Street ends there – with the puppets. The bawdy, rowdy and somewhat irreverent production of “Avenue Q” is not for the faint of heart. I loved it, though, and the musical score was simply superb. Most of the song titles aren’t even appropriate for a family publication such as this one except for a few, like the opening number “What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?” (There is a high-school version of the musical, you should know, that censors the most offensive material.)

The trip to New York last week also included my musical gift to my husband, Gerry. It was three orchestra seat tickets to “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever”. I already knew much of the score but I was enthralled with the smoke-and-mirror choreography and crooning voice of one of our favorite artists, Harry Connick, Jr.

As a young girl, I grew up listening to the original cast soundtracks. While we never saw the live performances, my mother was a huge fan of Broadway and there was always a record on our living room turntable. We listened to “The Sound of Music”, the “Music Man”, “South Pacific” and a plethora of hit shows of the 50s and 60s. I think I listened to “Bye, Bye Birdie” so many times that the vinyl wore out.

Of course, you know you are addicted to musicals when you can’t wait to listen, and listen, and listen again. A few friends and I spent a weekend in New York with our daughters when they were teens and went to see the Broadway revival of “Chicago”. Navigating out of Manhattan, I diverted to a very busy Broadway Avenue, sending one of those teens into Tower Records to purchase the recording on CD. We sang the sassy lyrics over and over, imitating Roxie Hart, on our way back home to New England.

Nothing cheers me up more than a happy memory of my first experience of a live performance or watching my favorite musicals on film. Soundtracks of original musicals and movie-renditions are available at public libraries. We abandoned vinyl records years ago but our CD collections grow every month. Minuteman Library Network owns thousands of CDs of original cast recordings and movie soundtracks such as “Annie” and “Phantom of the Opera”, “Grease”, “Oliver” and “Godspell.”

You can find musical scores and recordings by name or simply use the keywords “original cast” or “soundtrack.” If you need help searching for any of them, please call our Reference or Information desks (781-769-0200) or visit the library in person.

Gold and Greed - A Family Story

2012-01-13T12:10:00.000-05:00

Shelby Warner is a Reference Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

From the Morrill Memorial Library - Gold and Greed: A Family Story by Written and read by Shelby Warner

My great-great grandfather discovered gold in Georgia twenty years before the more famous discovery in California. Benjamin Parks, himself, tells of how he crossed the Chestatee River up in northeast Georgia and stubbed his toe on a rock which, when examined more closely, revealed a nugget of gold.

Unfortunately for him, Benjamin did not own the land where the discovery was made. Even though he managed to obtain a 40 year lease from the pastor who owned it, he did not enjoy any of the riches which others were able to amass. Pastor Obar laughed at Benjamin when he asked for the lease, not believing it possible that gold was on the land. He was not laughing, when later, the area was invaded by people from all over the young country looking for wealth and riches. While in his nineties, Benjamin Parks recalled the scene in an article in the Atlanta Constitution, July 15, 1894:

"The news got abroad, and such excitement you never saw. It seemed within a few days as if the whole worldmust have heard of it, for men came from every state Ihad ever heard of. They came afoot, on horseback and in wagons, acting more like crazy men than anything else.All the way from where Dahlonega now stands to Nuckollsville [Auraria] there were men panning out of the branches and making holes in the hillsides."

Obar and his family attempted to reclaim the land but the Parks claim held up in court. Benjamin eventually sold the rights to Senator John Calhoun who later became Vice President of the United States. The Calhoun Gold Mine became "one of the highest producing gold mines in the region.”

This region of North Georgia was known as the Cherokee Nation and the people who lived there for centuries thought the gold belonged to them. The white men had other ideas and it wasn’t long before the Cherokees were forced onto “The Trail of Tears” and moved further West. Many accounts of their cruel treatment exist in books you can find in the library. To Benjamin’s credit, he was against the rulings that led to the displacement of the Indians. Legend has it that he loved a maiden who was daughter of a Cherokee chief. He even thought of marrying her, a match which he said the Indians would approve but "his family would not have accepted. Our children would have had no nation, so I did not marry her, but, dear me, how beautiful she was!"

Later, would-be historians have debunked the story of Benjamin stubbing his toe. One such writer said the tale only exists because Benny persisted in telling it for 70 years. But, like many other tales which have grown up around the history of this country, it lives on in oral history and family memories. Some of these stories are embroidered around a grain of truth and others are figments of the imagination. On the other hand, a lot of them depend on the perspective of the person telling the story. How often we hear of the rewriting of history to fit the opinion and beliefs of the author. Textbooks used in a particular area of the country reflect the prejudices of the locals - often a very parochial view of what has actually taken place. Author Phillip Williams, in writing about my hometown of Madison, Georgia, states ..."its love of history is ever present, and that love has occasionally been at the expense of truth." He is alluding to the account of why Madison was not burned when Sherman’s troops marched to Savannah during the Civil War but that is another story for another day.

There are many interesting books on the subject of writing history including "Historical Knowledge, Historical Error" by Allan Megill, "The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History" by Gordon S. Wood, "That’s Not in My American History Book" by Thomas Ayres, and on a more personal level, "Tell Me Your Story: How to Collect and Preserve the Life Stories of Your Family and Friends by Cynthia Hart and Lisa E. Samson. These books and others can be found at Morrill Memorial Library or through the Minuteman Library Network.

We know legends which have existed for decades can suddenly be declared untrue but somehow they live on in the hearts of people who have a connection to them. My great-great grandfather’s story, along with pictures and documentation, lives on in the Gold Museum in Dahlonega, Georgia. I wear a pair of gold earrings purchased there and each time I put them on, I think of Benjamin and his story – legend or reality, who can be sure?

A New Year of Reading Pleasures

2012-01-06T18:01:00.000-05:00

Charlotte Canelli is the Library Director at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin each week. From the Library - A New Year of Reading Pleasures by Charlotte CanelliI’m sure that no one will be surprised that books are some of this librarian’s favorite gifts – both to receive and to give. As a young child and through my teenage years my mother surprised me each Christmas and birthday with a book. I remember unwrapping Johanna Spyri’s classic “Heidi” in 1960 with incredible joy.

I eventually owned an entire bookshelf of hardcover Illustrated Junior Classics by Grosset and Dunlap. These included “The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew” and “Little Women” with a price of $6.95 on the inside cover. While the cost of books has skyrocketed in a half century, I can only imagine what an expense this was to my family at the time.

So it’s no wonder that these books remain some of my favorite gifts and that these books have always received a coveted place of honor on my bookshelves. And so books are always on my gift-giving list and this year was no different.

Our daughter, Jill, spent several years teaching children at various Audubon centers in New England and you might call her an “extreme animal softie”. She has also inherited her father’s love of birds. The “Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Eastern and Central North America” (2009) by Roger Tory Peterson was a perfect choice for Jill who currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Jill and Alyssa can spend their free time watching birds in their own backyard or in ours when they visit us in New England.

The librarian and curator of the Thoreau Institute at Walden Pond, Jeffrey Cramer, became a friend of mine after we served on the same executive board for a few years. When I first visited Jeff at his beautiful library in Lincoln, Massachusetts, I learned the correct pronunciation of Thoreau’s name (with the accent on the first syllable and rhyming with ‘furrow.’ Apparently, the Concord, Massachusetts schools drill this into students who live in the same town in which Thoreau did in the 19th century.)

My colleague, Jeff, is also an author and scholar of both Robert Frost and Henry David Thoreau. This year, then, a personally-autographed copy of Jeff Cramer’s latest book, “The Quotable Thoreau” was a perfect gift for our daughter-in-law Alyssa. The book is an annotated and exhaustive collection of Thoreau quotes from the most common, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately” to the more obscure, "I would exchange my immortality for a glass of small beer this hot weather”. Alyssa will have a complete range of quotations at her fingertips – from the witty to the profound – to add to her own writings in the years to come. I have a feeling she might remember that second quote someday in early summer in Hot’Lanta.

Our son Gerry, Jr. and our grandson, Colin like to fiddle with electric guitars. Both of them received an assortment of guitar and sheet music books. We have another practicing guitarist in our family, our soon-to-be son-in-law Pat and we gave him a very cool book called “The Dream Factory: Fender Custom Shop” by Tom Wheeler. Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Bruce Springsteen and others have all had one-of-a-kind guitars specially made by the Fender Custom Shop and this beautiful book illustrates them in full color. We caught Pat several times admiring his book rather than paying rapt attention to the other gifts being opened.

Our daughter, Ciara, is getting married this coming May and she loves to bake for her guitar-playing fiancé, Pat, and the numerous friends that visit their Hoboken apartment. While her cute kitchen might be better described as a closet, she prepares amazing desserts in that compact space. We picked out the “Baker’s Field Guide to Chocolate Chips” and the “Baker’s Field Guide to Cupcakes” knowing that she will put both of them to good use.

Our daughter Beth, a newlywed and graduate student at Harvard, finds baking and cooking a welcome diversion from the stresses of academia. Her sometimes hilarious, always insightful posts on her personal blog include tips on such things as making English muffins, herbalicious ice cream and fresh gnocchi from scratch. Her energy both enthuses and amuses us and our gift of choice to her this Christmas was “Cake Pops: Tips, Tricks, and Recipes for More Than 40 Irresistible Mini Treats” by Bakerella. Included, of course, were a cake pop baker and a multitude of cake pop sticks so that she can pass some of these yummy treats off to her relatives.

This past summer our large family was lucky enough to stay together in a lovely rental home on the Cape that the owner, Carol Gordon, used to run as a working bed and breakfast. While cooking in her kitchen one morning, I discovered that she had written a book, “Sleep on It: Prepare Delicious Meals the Night Before That You Can Pop In the Oven the Next Day!” We gave copies of the book to all of our daughters and look forward to them using the recipes on family vacations in years to come.

Our son-in-law Rob is the one of the animal lovers in our family and he has been a penguin fan since childhood. What better book for him, then, than a personally-autographed copy of “The Great Penguin Rescue: 40,000 Penguins, a Devastating Oil Spill, and the Inspiring Story of the World's Largest Animal Rescue” written by my friend, Dyan DeNapoli.

I’ve suggested many books that I gave as gifts to members of my family this year. Of course, family members all have different interests and thankfully there are thousands of books published each year. If you think someone you know will like one of the books above you can be assured that all of them are owned by our library or one of the libraries in the Minuteman Library Network. If you need help searching for any of them, please call our Reference or Information desks (781-769-0200) or visit the library in person. Happy New Year!

A Year in Books

2011-12-30T22:37:00.000-05:00

Charlotte Canelli is the Library Director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

Itmight seem like the Y2K craze was only a few years ago but we all have to admitthat it’s now been more than a decade. Before you ask yourself where 12 yearshave gone or how we’ve all become 12 years older let’s focus on the book-worthy events of the past year, 2011.

Non-fiction published in 2011 wasmuch-anticipated and some of it focused on sensational trials and crime. Twomurder cases had our attention, the Florida trial of Casey Anthony and thetrial in Perugia, Italy of American Amanda Knox. “Inside the Mind of CaseyAnthony: A Psychological Portrait” by Keith Ablow and “Imperfect Justice:Prosecuting Casey Anthony” by Jeff Ashton were just two books focusing on theFlorida mother of Kayley Anthony.

“The Fatal Gift of Beauty: TheTrials of Amanda Knox” by Nina Burleigh delves into not only the accusedmurderess but also Italian culture and justice.

In addition to crime, celebrity andpolitics make for interesting reading. At least a plethora of books werepublished in 2011. Those written by and about the Palins have mesmerizedreaders since the Alaskan governor nearly won the vice-presidency in 2008. Thisyear daughter Bristol Palin co-authored her own story with “Not Afraid of Life:My Journey So Far” with Nancy French. A few months later, the book “Deer in theHeadlights: My Life in Sarah Palin’s Crosshairs” by the father of Bristol’schild was published.

Some of the more uncomplimentarybooks about Sarah herself were published this year: “The Lies of Sarah Palin:The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power’ by Geoffrey Dunn, ‘BlindAllegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years” by Frank Bailey,and the much-anticipated “The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin” by JoeMcGinniss.

The couple-most-watched across theAtlantic, of course, was Kate Middleton and Prince William. Their weddingenthralled many of us and spawned a host of coffee-table photographic journeysin addition to “William and Catherine: Their Lives, Their Wedding” by AndrewMorton.

More important world events inspiredbooks written in 2011 and we can expect many more to be written about the ArabSpring in the coming year. “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across theIslamic World” by Robin Wright and “Generation Freedom: The Middle East Uprisingsand the Remaking of the Modern World” by Bruce Feiler. Feiler is the author of“Walking the Bible” and has lived fifteen years in the Middle East. Wright is aforeign correspondent who is watching a hopeful change in the region which isrejecting Islamic extremism and embracing liberation on many fronts.

After the death of Osama Bin Ladinin May, 2011 several books were published including “Wanted Dead or Alive:Manhunts from Geronimo to Bin Laden” by Benjamin Runkle and “SEAL TargetGeronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama bin Laden” by ChuckPfarrer. Novelist John Weismanwrote a fictional account, “KBL: Kill Bin Laden: A Novel Based on True Events.”

Anticipating the 10th anniversary ofthe tragedy of the Twin Towers and 9/11 brought us over a dozen books. “OneNation: America Remembers September 11, 2001, 10 Years Later” was written byjournalist Tom Brokaw. Some others were more poignant because they include thepersonal memories and experiences of those relatives and friends left behind.“The Legacy Letters: Messages of Life and Hope from 9/11 Family Members” wasedited by Brian Curtis and “A Decade of Hope: Stories of Grief and Endurancefrom 9/11 Family and Friends” was compiled by Dennis Smith and Deirdre Smith.

“The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of9/11” by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan explores every aspect of the day’sevents and the aftermath. In “Where You Left Me” author and widow, JenniferGardner Trulso, moves through the intense pain to find joy in her life again.

In 2011 the 12th edition of thehundred-year old Concise Oxford Dictionary was released. Over 400 new entrieswere added, including the words cyberbullying and sexting and the terms gastricband and slow food. Certainly when the 13th edition is released sooner or laterit may include new meanings for words like “occupy” and new concoctions likeRon Paul’s “Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan.”

April 2011 saw the release of localauthor Howie Carr’s book “Hitman: The Untold Story of Johnny Martorano: WhiteyBulger’s Enforcer and the Most Feared Gangster in the Underworld.” AfterWhitey’s arrest last June we can anticipate at least three books scheduled forpublication in 2012.

Many of other of the events of 2011have yet to hit the bookstands. Chicagoans Tony Rezko and Rod Blagojevich weresentenced to terms in prison. Rebecca Black’s Friday video went viral alongwith that of the Talking Twin Babies. The Iraq War ended and we learned of thedeaths of authors Vaclav Havel, Christopher Hitchens and Brian Jacques (of theRedwall series.)

Andy Rooney, Elizabeth Taylor, JackKevorkian and Joe Frazier were other notable losses of the year and we canexpect new biographies of their lives sometime in the next few years. Andcertainly the first months of 2012 might bring books about the scandal of JerrySandusky at Pennsylvania State University and Robert Wagner’s role in the deathof his wife, Natalie Woods.

If you need help searching for anybooks in the Morrill Memorial Library or the Minuteman Library Network, pleasecall our Reference or Information desks (781-769-0200) or visit the library.

The Best of the Worst Christmas Movies

2011-12-23T07:42:00.000-05:00

Charlotte Canelli is Library Director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

The movie version of “The PolarExpress” was much anticipated in 2004. Tom Hanks has six voiceover roles in thefilm that was inspired by Chris Van Allburg’s 1985 children’s book. I find some of the motion-capture animation abit creepy and the scary roller-coaster train ride somewhat dizzying. However,it has many beautiful scenes and the now-classic story has inspired ageneration of children.

I decided to finish my Christmaswrapping in one sitting this year and so I watched “The Polar Express” twicethrough before packing up my scissors, tape, gift tags and rolls of paper andplacing the last gift under our Christmas tree.

It came as a total surprise to me whenI found it on a list of the 50 Worst Christmas Movies of All time(TotalFilm.com). To my horror I found anothernine of my very favorite holiday movies on that list.

A few years ago, I forced my now-grownchildren to watch “Trapped in Paradise” on Christmas Eve with me. Theygroaned in protest. I didn’t get it. After all, we had watched it over and overwhen they were growing up in the 90s. The three bumbling crooks (Nicholas Cage,Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz) cavort with happy, naive townsfolk in Paradise,Pennsylvania and I find the film endearing and funny. I suppose it’s interesting to note that mychildren have outgrown the film while I haven’t.

Another on the Worst List is “TheFamily Stone” (2005) starring Diane Keaton and Sarah Jessica Parker. It includes a host of other favorite starslike Dermot Mulroney, Claire Danes and Craig Nelson. It’s a poignant story of a family, theirsecrets, love and loss and the movie takes place over two Christmasholidays. The ending always brings alump to my throat but it is also guaranteed to make me smile.

“Love Actually” (2003) is a movie Ionly discovered last year when I found out my daughter and her friends watchedit time and time again. With a cast of actors like Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman,Emma Thompson, Colin Firth and Liam Neeson the movie is a winner in mybook. It is especially poignant today, justtwo short years after the sudden death of Neeson’s wife, Natasha Richardson. Inthe end, Christmas miracles are plentiful and ‘love is all around’ in the tenstories which are happening at the same time.

A requirement for a Christmas movieis, of course, the timely setting of December 24. “Serendipity” (2001) stars John Cusack andKate Beckinsale who meet while shopping for gloves on Christmas Eve. Clichéd scenes of ice skating in Central Park,falling snowflakes and quintessential New York moments probably helped put iton the Worst List but those same elements make it one of my favorites. The theme that life is not simply a series ofmeaningless accidents makes for sappy romantic stuff and that seems to get me everytime.

Two beautiful actresses star in “TheHoliday”. Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet both find themselves at the end offailed relationships just before Christmas. They swap houses and, of course,discover that they find love when they aren’t looking. It’s another cliché, Iknow, but it works for me.

I was amazed when I saw Jim Carrey’s“How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (2000) on that Worst list. How can that bewhen the movie grossed $260,000,000? Someone’s a mean one, Mr. Grinch, but someone’svery rich for sure. The movie wasdirected by genius Ron Howard and Anthony Hopkins is rumored to have recordedall of the narration in one day. Thesound stage for Whoville measured around 30,000 square feet covered in fakesnow. Jim Carrey’s make-up took three hours to apply. Who couldn’t love a moviethat takes such pains to make us laugh?

“Prancer” (1989) stars ClorisLeachman and Sam Eliot and is the story of a motherless young girl who stillbelieves in Santa Claus. When she finds an injured reindeer her main wish is tonurse it back to health to return to Santa. Her father, a failing farmer, has other ideas. Of course, the movie ends with Christmasmagic and warms my heart each time.

Writer John Grisham took a breakfrom his suspense novels in 2001 and wrote “Skipping Christmas”. The movie based on the book, “Christmas withthe Kranks”, appeared just in time for the 2004 holiday season. Scrooge-like Tim Allen invites his wife,Jamie Lee Curtis to skip Christmas and it’s a hilarious romp watching them gettheir act together when their daughter decides to come home for Christmas atthe last minute.

If I were to watch a Christmas moviemarathon, the list would include the 1938 version of “A Christmas Carol”, “TheShop Around the Corner” (1940) starring Jimmy Stewart, “Christmas inConnecticut” (1945) with Barbara Stanwyck and “It Happened on 5^thAvenue” (1947). Only the last of the four made it to the Worst list and I can’tunderstand it. After all, it received anAcademy nomination for Best Story. Ahomeless New York man ends up spending Christmas as an uninvited guest in oneof the city’s mansions surrounded by friends. Who can’t love a holiday story like that one.

Whatever your taste, you’ll find allof the Best and the Worst at the Morrill Memorial Library or at another of theMinuteman Library Network libraries. If you need help finding a movie that wedon’t own, remember to call (781-769-0200) or visit the library.

A Gift For All

2011-12-15T15:21:00.002-05:00

Jean Todesca is a Children's Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

From the Library: A Gift for All by Written by Jean Todesca and read by Charlotte Canelli
This is the “Season of Giving”. Whether you celebrate during the holidays or not, the town of Norwood has a gift for you. It is wrapped in granite and sits on Walpole Street, the Morrill Memorial Library.

Peek inside and you will see the gift of entertainment. The library offers books, movies, and music, but let’s takes a look beyond our materials.

Another surprise tucked behind each desk is the gift of friendship. We, the library staff members forge strong bonds with our patrons. We celebrate the arrival of a new baby and watch our young patrons grow. We enjoy wedding photos and lend a gentle ear through illness and death.

The library presents you with the gift of community. At our Children’s programs, parents, caregivers and kids get the chance to meet and develop friendships. Over the years, I’ve seen high school students who met at storytime still hanging out together. The library offers the First Thursday Book Club where patrons engage in lively discussions and enjoy each other’s company. The Adult Services Department presents lectures and movies where all are invited. Check our website for activities.

The Outreach Department provides you with the gift of belonging. If you are unable to come to the library due to special needs, illness or disability, home delivery can be provided. Please contact the Outreach Department at (781-769-0200).

The final gift that I’d like to present is the education. We provide databases for research including the Boston Globe and Consumer Reports. Are you curious about Norwood? The library houses the Norwood Historical Records. The Literacy Department and its volunteers provide instruction to help people improve their reading, writing and conversational English skills.

So, please come and unwrap your present. You will discover something amazing too!

Cake Pops, Whoopie Pies and More!

2011-12-07T19:38:00.000-05:00

Charlotte Canelli is the Library Director at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood.

This is the year of the mini-dessert. Or it has been for some time now. I visited a cupcake store in Falmouth this past year and had one of the best mouthfuls of cupcake I’ve ever had. Half of it consisted of frosting but man, was it good. My daughter served cupcakes as the official cake at her wedding last spring.

The cupcake craze might have only started a few years back but I’ve heard that it’s now over and I’ve wondered what will happen to all those wonderful cupcake stores.

A few shops have smartly named themselves Happy Cakes, Crumbs, Sweet Dreams or Cup of Cake. They aren’t stuck with the cupcake theme and they now sell other sweet and up-and-coming treats like cake pops, whoopie pies and macarons.

Macarons have been around for awhile but in this country we’ve apparently just discovered this haute dessert item. Bon Appétit says that the macaron is more sophisticated than the cupcake and it has “challenged the cupcake’s crown”. Who knew but I’ve heard from my Manhattan-working daughter that crispy and slightly moist macarons are all the rage in the more sophisticated places like New York, Paris and London.

Don’t confuse the macaron or buttercream/jam-filled confectionery that is commonly made with egg whites and ground almonds for the coconut macaroon although the spelling is actually the same in English for both. The French macarons are artificially colored in a wide variety of colors, mainly pastels. Some have fillings with added liqueurs. No one really knows who first invented them although they could have arrived in France with Catherine d’Medici of Italy.

Cake pops are another new adventure in desserts. If you eat only one, you might think you’ve saved yourself some calories but there are as many cake pop variations as there are cupcakes and they are covered in sugary coatings and treats. If you want to envision a cake pop, think “whimsically-decorated donut hole on a stick”. Cake pops can actually be baked in a donut hole baker and this saves on the time-consuming rolling and baking technique or the calorie-rich fried donut hole technique.

Is it a cake, is it a pie or is it a cookie? Well, it’s a whoopie pie! These aren’t new to us New Englanders and they might not be original to Massachusetts, either. Pennsylvania also lays claim to the whoopie pie but Maine is the only state that has claimed it as their official ‘state treat.’ When we made whoopie pies years ago, we dropped thick chocolate cake batter onto cookie sheets and they took on a life of their own while baking. It never mattered what shape they were when filled with a sweet, creamy mixture. Today there are official whoopie pie baking pans for sale which bake uniform round shapes. For the past six year, the “What the Fluff” festival has been held in Somerville, home to Fluff where it was created in 1916 and each year the whoopie pie is honored at the festival where a best whoopie pie award is given.

Maybe you’d like to try your hand at creating some of these sweet treats (and possibly prove to your family and friends that you know that cupcakes are oh-so-no-longer-trendy). Or perhaps you’d like to put your whoopie pie up for an award in Somerville next year. There are many cookbooks to help you make whoopie pies, cake pops, macarons and other bite-sized desserts.

The covers on some baking books make you want to visit a bakery on the spot or learn how to perfect the art! “Cake Pops: Tips, Tricks, and Recipes for More than 40 Irresistible Mini Treats” (2010) by Angie Dudley, “Bake Me, I’m Yours … Cake Pops” (2011) by Carolyn White, “Crazy For Cake Pops: 50 All-New Delicious and Adorable Creations” (2011) by Molly Bakes, and “Pop Bakery: 25 Recipes for Delicious Little Cakes on Sticks” (2011) by Clare O’Connell are four of those books. Cake pops can also be molded out of crumbled cake that is mixed with frosting. Some of the more intricately-decorated pops are not for the faint of heart but with these books and some practice you might want to go into business.

The macaron business is certainly a colorful world. You’ll need to learn to create a varied and extensive palette with food dyes and use these books for recipes: “Macarons” (2011) by Berengere Abraham, “Macarons: Authentic French Cookie Recipes from the MacarOn Café” (2011) by Cecile Cannone, “Mad About Macarons: Make Macarons Like the French!” (2010) by Jill Colonna, and “Les Petits Macarons: Colorful French Confections to Make at Home” (2011) by Kathryn Gordon.

Whoopie pies don’t always have to be chocolate as evidenced in the plethora of baking books reserved just for them. Here are only four: “Whoopie Pies: Dozen of Mix ‘em, Match ‘em, Eat ‘em Up Recipes” (2010) by Sarah Billingsley, “Whoopies! Fabulous Mix-and-Match Recipes for Whoopie Pies” (2011) by Susanna Tee, “Making Whoopies: the Official Whoopie Pie Book” (2010) by Nancy Griffin, and “The Whoopie Pie Book: 60 Irresistible Recipes for Cake Sandwiches Classic and New” (2011) by Claire Ptak. Red velvet whoopie pies. Pumpkin filled with cream cheese. Oatmeal filled with maple-bacon? The choices and combinations are endless.

Remember if our book is not available or if we don’t have a copy, you may request any book from any of the 42 Minuteman libraries online. Reference librarians can find the book at other libraries within Massachusetts or New England. If you need help finding a book at the Morrill Memorial Library or within the Minuteman Library Network, please call the Reference or Information desks (781-769-0200) or visit the library in person.

The Birds and the Bees

2011-11-28T21:00:00.006-05:00

Charlotte Canelli is the Library Director at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood.

As my husband would say, it’s all about the birds and the bees. Okay, wait! Before you think that I’m revealing too much, we’re talking about Gerry Canelli’s hobbies. He has many of them, including photography, golf and wine. Yet both birds and bees are fun to talk or write about.

Soon after I met Gerry, I was introduced to his collection of carved wooden shorebirds lining the walls of his home. And, as you would guess, he had me at the Piping Plover.

I mean, there is something so endearing about a man who adores beautiful creatures, especially birds.

In May of last year, I wrote a From the Library column titled “Saving the World and Other Backyard Projects”. In it, I described Gerry’s first month as a beekeeper in 2010. Shortly after the column appeared, the several thousand bees in the hive multiplied to over sixty thousand. In the summer months our backyard hive was a buzzing frenzy of activity and an amazing adventure.

Clothed in his white beekeeper suit cinched at the ankles and wrists, Gerry tended his hive armed with a smoker, thick gloves and a netted bee hat. He began a blog and posted photos and videos of his bees in action. There were up-close and personal views of flying worker bees, pouches stuffed with mustard-yellow pollen. There were male drones twice the size of the female bees. And there was that fabulous queen.

A hive of 60,000-80,000 bees has only one queen. She is impregnated once by multiple drones but she remains fertile for life and lays up to 2000 eggs per day eight months of the year. She can live for 3-5 years.

The other female bees, or worker bees, live for only 6 weeks during the busy summer months and four to five months the rest of year. These worker bees take on important occupations. They clean house, dispose of the dead, guard the hive, build the honeycomb and nurse the young. Just 21 days into their careers, they begin to forage instead and to collect the pollen (food for the colony) and nectar (for honey) from up to eight miles away.

Nursing bees tend to the young in embryonic forms or as tiny, fully-formed baby bees. That summer Gerry shared amazingly clear photographs of the various first stages of the honeybee – first deposited in the cell as tiny as a broken grain of rice. Only days later it is plump and swollen, squeezed into every space of the cell. Soon, that larva is capped with wax to await development. This process takes about 21 days from egg to bee. (Queen bees take less and drones take longer.)

Gerry worked hard that first summer making sure the bees had water during the hottest August days. He peered out our window waiting for active flight after the first sun of the day had warmed up the sides of the wooden hive. Like a proud father he noted how many bees were still buzzing into the hive at sundown.

In late August 2010, Gerry took steps to fight off the dreaded Varroa mite – the scourge of honeybees. Yet, despite all of his dedication and hard work, sometime late in autumn Gerry lost his hive. It was a sad day when he finally realized that the hive had dwindled to a few thousand bees. It was most likely due to the loss of the queen – whether through accident, disease or parasite. We’ll never know. In the next couple of weeks in December the hive was empty of life.

A focused Gerry forged ahead this winter. Armed with more information, more supplies and a second hive, he installed two new crops of bees in our Norfolk backyard in early spring. Since April they have flourished under his loving care.

Mid-July we excitedly collected several pounds of delicious sweet amber. I was delighted to scrape aside the waxy comb and watch cups of honey drip in our kitchen. Later we harvested another twenty pounds. We are keeping our fingers crossed – in the last week of November, with mild and sunny days, the bees seem happy, active and ready for their winter rest.

No one quite knows what is happening to world’s honeybee population. Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD) was is a phenomenon that only became known to the world of beekeeping during the years 1996 through 2006. It has become depressingly widespread in the five years since. It varies around the world, but on average 40% of honeybees hives don’t survive the year.

Various theories include the deadly spread of the Varroa mite or our reliance on poisonous pesticides. Additionally, genetically-modified crops may be to blame. More likely, it is a deadly combination of all of these. No one knows for sure.

What we do know is how rewarding it is to raise bees. There are even rooftop beekeeping associations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx where some beekeepers have to break the law to keep hives.

The documentary DVD, “Queen of the Sun: What the Bees Are Telling Us” (2011) will arrive at the library sometime in January and we hope to screen it for interested patrons. This “engaging, alarming and ultimately uplifting film weaves together a dramatic story that uncovers the problems and solutions” to this crisis in nature.

Another documentary DVD, “Vanishing of the Bees” (2010) is available now at the library. It chronicles the demise of the honeybee, the relationship to honeybee commercial ventures in this country and the struggle of those who rely on the honeybee for their livelihood. Most of all, it informs us that we are all in trouble if the honeybee does not find its way back to health.

Remember if our DVD is not available or if we don’t have a copy, you may request it from any of the 42 Minuteman libraries online. Reference librarians can find most items at other libraries within Massachusetts or New England. If you need help finding materials at the Morrill Memorial Library or within the Minuteman Library Network, please call the Reference or Information desks (781-769-0200) or visit the library in person.

Organized!

2011-11-22T15:20:00.005-05:00

Diane Phillips is the Technical Services Library at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

I came home from work the other night and was greeted by a stack of mail on the kitchen counter and various family members’ shoes, coats and bags strewn on the floor and chairs. It didn’t get much better when I stepped into the living room. Toys were scattered on the floor, the tables and the couch. Magazines, newspapers and books were in multiple piles around the room. I went to seek refuge in my bedroom. I turned on the light and saw clean clothes piled on the chair, waiting to be put away, and laundry piled on the floor, overflowing from the clothes hamper. I couldn’t relax. All of the stuff was not just cluttering my house, but it was also preventing my mind from relaxing. I had to take action, a different kind of action than what I’d pursued before. Usually, I run around picking up everything and putting it somewhere. I needed to solve this problem once and for all. I needed to get organized and stop the clutter from coming back.

I started thinking, “I’m a librarian. I organize and categorize things for a living. I can do this. I have the knowledge and the skills to make this happen. I just need to apply what I know from work to our lives at home.” However, it’s not just my stuff or myself in the house. My husband and son live, work and play there too. They also possess some impressive organization skills, having sorted their Lego bricks by size and color. We’ve established that we have what it takes and that we want to do this; but how do we get started?

We needed some fresh ideas for how we can turn this chaos into order. We’d much rather spend our time together doing fun things rather than wasting so much time straightening up the house. I decided to take a look at the resources available at the library. So much has been written on the subject of organizing.

I got so excited by looking through the books in the library, I checked out all of the ones listed below! My husband, son and I snuggled up with the books, with cups of coffee and hot chocolate and began to read about how we can work together to organize our stuff and enjoy more spare time.

While reading through the books, a common suggestion was for the reader to tackle different areas of clutter one at a time. Trying to tackle everything is overwhelming and makes it nearly impossible to achieve your goal. A few areas I needed to deal with were the kitchen, living room and bedrooms. I focused on specific issues in each of these rooms rather than attacking everything at once.

In the kitchen, I decided to address the mess of the daily mail and how it can occupy my entire kitchen table. In The Organized Life: Secrets of an expert organizer, Stephanie Denton suggests getting an inbox to store new mail so that it all goes in one compact space. The inbox should be in a convenient location when you walk in the door. When you open the mail, you should ‘move the papers in some way’ and don’t just put it back to deal with it later. You can create two piles: ‘keep’ and ‘discard.’ Immediately review the ‘keep’ pile of papers and file them.

Another tip I gathered from multiple sources, which helped address the coat, shoe and bag mess, was to assess our storage space and create storage where we needed it. For instance, our coat closet wasn’t doing us much good because it’s by the front door and we use the side door. I got a coat rack and a storage bench to use by the side door. Now, coats are hung up and bags and shoes are stored in a convenient spot.

I moved on to the living room. Toys were strewn about the floor and furniture. We assessed our toy storage and got a shelving unit with cubbies and different colored bins. Each bin now contains a particular type of toy: red for toy cars, blue for stuffed animals, yellow for games, etc. One suggestion I read about in Pretty Neat: the buttoned up way to get organized and let go of perfection was to make a game out of cleaning up the toys. We had a race to see who could pick up ten things the fastest. Once we had the ten things, we worked together to put each toy in its proper bin.

The bedroom was the next stop. Clothes were everywhere. In Unclutter Your Life In One Week, Erin Rooney Doland advises a complete review of your closet. Take everything out and look at each piece of clothing to determine if you should keep it. Does it fit? Is it flattering? Do you wear it? She also suggests asking a friend to help since a lot of us have an emotional attachment to clothes and it’s hard to make a decision. During the review, you create three piles: keep, purge and undecided, which you may take more time to think about whether or not you’ll keep those items. After reviewing the contents, look at the closet itself to see if you need to add lighting, shelves, hooks or other sorting solution. The hardest suggestion to follow is to only keep what you can store in the space you have. I’m still working on this one!

For some good tips and motivation to get started, take a look at some of the titles below:

Lighten Up: Love what you have, have what you need, be happier with less, by Peter Walsh
One Year to an Organized Life, by Regina Leeds
The Organized Life: Secrets of an expert organizer, by Stephanie Denton
Organizing for Life: Declutter your mind to declutter your world, by Sandra Felton
Pretty Neat: the buttoned up way to get organized and let go of perfection, by Alicia Rockmore & Sarah Welch
Shed Your Stuff, Change Your Life: a four-step guide to getting unstuck, by Julie Morgenstern
Unclutter Your Life in One Week, by Erin Rooney Doland
Unstuff Your Life! Kick the clutter habit and completely organize your life for good, by Andrew J. Mellen

The library also has some great choices for children:

Clean Up, Grumpy Bunny! By Justine Korman Fontes
Frankie Pickle and the Closet of Doom, by Eric Wright
I Don’t Want to Clean My Room and Other Poems about Chores, by Hope Vestergard

Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dogs' Tails

2011-11-15T00:00:00.000-05:00

Charlotte Canelli is the Library Director at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood.

Frogs and snails and puppy-dogs' tails. That's what little boys are made of.
Popular nursery rhyme

If anyone had looked into a crystal ball and told me that I would be raising a teenage boy in my sixth decade I would have certainly laughed. I’d have surely protested and said “Oh, no, no! I’ve already raised my family of girls, thank you very much.”

Mothering my daughters in the 80s and 90s was an absolute delight. Oh, our lives were fraught with ballet carpools, a zillion sleepovers, bad hair days and wardrobe meltdowns. However, if you ask me, it was all a delicious piece of cake.

Please understand. It wasn’t that I didn’t WANT sons. I just didn’t give birth to any.

And so, the story goes, I met my second husband, a widower raising his then eight-year old grandson in 2006. And that is how five years ago I embraced this little boy as my own and promised him my love forever.

He was sweet and sometimes kind and he was hurting from the death of two very important women in his life within two years – both his mother and his grandmother. He had an impish but genuine smile and an adorable sense of humor and he stole my heart. He had me, quite simply, at hello.

And so, the next year he turned nine and then he turned ten and I managed to like some of his movies and he managed to make room for me on the family room couch and trust me with the remote. He turned eleven and then twelve and I learned to find books he liked to read and he learned to like my homemade macaroni and cheese, fresh-baked bread and quiche.

Then he turned thirteen.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I delight in watching his friends make disgusting noises especially when they laugh at all the wrong jokes. After sleepovers I clean up their left-behind dishes and soft drink cans. I wait for please and thank yous which might never come.

I patiently wait for him to remove the ear buds from his ears so that we can talk. I listen to the busy signal endlessly when I try to call home. I stand in the hallway and smile when he practices his electric guitar. Loud.

Both his grandfather, Gerry, and I train him every day. We coax him to hold doors open for adults, to shake hands on greeting and we remind him to wash his hands, brush his teeth and change his underwear.

We are not always successful. But we are on our way. Most of all, we remember that our mission in life is to help raise a young, noisy and awkward boy into a compassionate, educated and gracious young man.

If you need help raising a boy, there are more than enough books out there. For those of us with a sense of humor there is “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Raising Boys” by Laurie and Barron Helgoe. The Helgoes were parents of teenage boys when they wrote the book. In a positive tone they discuss the issues of discipline, puberty, bullies and girls. The Everything Guides includes one on raising boys, “The Everything Parent’s Guide to Raising Boys: A Complete Handbook to Develop Confidence, Promote Self-Esteem and Improve Communication” by Cheryl Erwin.

Many of these books written about raising boys have a spiritual theme. Among them is serious reading with a light-hearted twist such as Rachel Balducci’s own experiences mothering five, count ‘em, five boys in “How Do You Tuck in a Superhero?: And Other Delightful Mysteries of Raising Boys.” In “Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys”, Stephen James and David Thomas (and fathers of five boys) explain the five stages of boys, including the explorer, lover, wanderer, individual and warrior.

Well-known psychologist, James Dobson (founder of Focus on the Family) wrote one of his books focused on raising boys, “Bringing up Boys: Practical Advice and Encouragement for Those Shaping the Next Generation of Men.”

Michael Gurian is the founder of the Gurian Institute where his research and professional consulting has been focused on developmental characteristics of gender differences of childhood. He positively focuses on those differences when raising either boys or girls. Among his twenty-five books is a trilogy written between 2005 and 2010 including “The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons from Falling Behind in School and Life”, “The Wonder of Boys: What Parents, Mentors and Educators Can Do to Shape Boys into Exceptional Men” and “The Purpose of Boys: Helping Our Sons Find Meaning, Significance and Direction in Their Lives.”

In 1998 another clinical psychologist, William Pollack, wrote the bestseller “Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood” which gives parents practical advice on the emotional, psychological and physical needs of boys. In 2000 he added “Real Boys’ Voices”. In it, readers can hear boys “speak for themselves” and share their views on depression, girls, drug abuse, spirituality, school and parents among other things. In 2001 Pollack and Kathleen Cushman included a workbook which helps “crack the boy code.”

Other books to check out are “Raising Boys: Why Boys Are Different – and How to Help them Become Happy and Well-Balanced Men” by Steve Biddulph and Paul Stanish, “Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys” by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, “It’s a Boy!: Your Son’s Development from Birth to Age 18” by Michael Thompson and Teresa Barker and “Boys Should Be Boys: Seven Secrets to Raising Healthy Sons” by Margaret J. Meeker.

Remember if our book is not available or if we don’t have a copy, you may request any book from any of the 42 Minuteman libraries online. Reference librarians can find the book at other libraries within Massachusetts or New England. If you need help finding a book at the Morrill Memorial Library or within the Minuteman Library Network, please call the Reference or Information desks (781-769-0200) or visit the library in person.

Blogs, and Twitter, and Facebook, Oh My!

2011-11-03T17:35:00.001-04:00

Written by Kelly Unsworth, the Head of Children's Services at the Morrill Memorial Library

I have never been the life of the party, but I have always been reasonably adept at socializing. A few good friends, hiking partners for sporadic weekend activities, and the occasional running partner kept me busy. When my daughter was born, my socializing shifted to her circle of friends and interests, and I found myself hanging out with horsewomen and barn mothers, and spending long weekends in tents at 4-H shows.

My daughter is older now, and prefers to get together with her friends without her mother’s interference. This shift in position has led me to take a look at my social life and upon quick inspection, I have realized that much has changed in 15 years.

To begin with, I am quite possibly the only person I know who doesn’t belong to a book group. I know of book groups that have been meeting for 15 years, book groups for young moms, empty nesters, widowers, and my personal favorite, a wine and chocolate book group. But I have never found the time, or allowed myself the time to join one. I am a book group wanna be, and as I took stock of my social status, it only got worse…much…much…worse.

According to anyone younger than I, social status is defined by the number of followers on ones’ choice of social networking sites. I decided to jump on board, and tried twitter first. My username had the word “book” in it, and my first post mentioned both the library and laundry in the scant 140 words. It was my first, and last, tweet.

Next up were blogs. I know of a woman who met her best friend on one of the first chat rooms 14 years ago. They were comparing their symptoms and stories of pregnancy, as both were expecting their first child around the same time. They had much in common, including the day that they went into labor and had their first child. Every year since, they have gotten together for a birthday celebration, not the kids, just the 2 of them, reminiscing about one of the most important days of their lives.

So I tried blogging, and encountered 2 substantial roadblocks. The first is; I don’t have much to say. Ever. I prefer to speak when I have something reasonably important to say, and felt the same about blogging. I wasn’t interested in sharing small details about a topic, and found that I really didn’t care what “Debbie in Scituate” felt about the topic, or what loveybear2 had to add. I know it sounds harsh, but I just...didn’t…care…

On to Facebook. Everyone who is anyone uses Facebook, right? Wrong. Although I have seen wonderful use of the technology, mostly keeping in touch with family members that are in far corners of the earth, or simply out of weekly visiting range. Seeing the immediate picture of the most recent grandchild, priceless. But to post the live birth online, tacky. My new motto: just because you can share it doesn’t mean you should.

My daughter has most recently begun to use Tumblr and had a quick suggestion for me: forget it, it’s too complicated. All of this is not to suggest that I am computer illiterate; I use computers all day at work, I download eBooks, cook from recipes off my iPhone, voraciously text and email, shop and bank online, plan my vacations, found my pets online, search for medical information, and have been saved by the maps app on my phone too many times to mention. I have even made it to the second level of Angry Birds! But socially, I am an online misfit; awkward and confused.

Driving home the other day, I heard an ad on the radio for an online dating site. The ad stated that 1 in 6 married couples met their spouse using an online dating service. As a recent divorcee, I was horrified. Let me try to explain it this way, when some dogs see a TV, they will bark at the image of another animal. But most dogs do not recognize the image as a real dog; there is no scent, no physical social cues, no meet and greet. If I were a dog, I would be in the second group, for me a photo of a person with text just isn’t the same as a real meeting, or a real date. Besides, we all know that the photo was taken 15 years ago when the person was in much better physical shape and still had hair. For now, I will stick with the supermarket on Friday nights, the bookstore on Saturdays, and museums on Sundays and I’ll see if the statistics are as good as online dating.

If you are interested in finding out more about social networking sites, I recommend the following books, all of which can be found at the library.

I Love You, Let's Meet: Adventures in Online Dating by Virginia Vitzthum
Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob by Lee Siegel.
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other by Sherry Turkle.
Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger.
What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly.
You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier.
Facebook for Dummies by Carolyn Abram and Leah Pearlman.
Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser.
The Digital Mom Handbook: How to Blog, Vlog, Tweet, and Facebook Your Way to a Dream Career at Home by Audrey McClelland and Colleen Padilla.
How To Find a Job on Linkedin, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Other Social Networks by Brad and Debra Schepp.
I'm on Facebook, Now What???: How to Get Personal, Business and Professional Value from Facebook by Jason Alba and Jesse Stay.
Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, Universal Consciousness and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution by Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson.

Find Movie Magic at the Library

2011-10-27T17:43:00.002-04:00

Written by Khara Whitney-Marsh, a student at the Simmons College Graduate School of Library Science in Boston, who is interning at the Morrill Memorial Library this fall.

Alice Hoffman said that books are the only true magic, and I agree they are truly magic. But I must confess that I also love movies and have felt touched, even changed by their magic again and again.

The best explanation I’ve found for the effect movies can have was in an episode of “Northern Exposure.” Ed, the local movie buff, has been enlisted to create a film festival that will get Cicely, Alaska on the map. Leonard, a shaman played by Graham Greene, comes to town seeking the “healing stories” of white people. Though the townspeople are eager to assist him, the stories they bring range from Paul Bunyan and the Blue Ox to assorted urban myths, like the one about spiders nesting in a woman’s beehive hairdo. Leonard is confused by these fables that lack the healing properties of great mythology.

Meanwhile, Ed has decided to dedicate his film festival to Orson Welles, but it has him so stressed he develops stomach problems. A discouraged Leonard wanders into the local movie house and finds Ed watching an old print of “Citizen Kane.” He notices that Ed is enthralled with the movie and appears to have totally forgotten his ailment.

Leonard asks and Ed says his stomach is better. Then he asks, “You’ve seen this movie a number of times?” Ed says, of course. “Yet you want to see it again. Why?” Ed replies, “It’s a great story, it’s beautiful. It’s fearless. You know that quote in the beginning where Kane says it might be fun to run a newspaper? Well, I think that’s the way Orson Welles approached this. It might be fun to make a movie. He didn’t know what he was doing and yet he did something that was perfect. Makes you think about what’s possible.”

Leonard ponders Ed’s words. “Maybe this is it,” he says. “White medicine. Movies. They say it’s magic. Seems to have cured you.”

If you also love healing stories that come to us through the medium of film, I would like to share a few small jewels that are available at Morrill Memorial Library or through the Minuteman Library Network.

Director Anthony Minghella’s first film, “Truly, Madly, Deeply” starring Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson, is a moving and funny take on a young, recently widowed woman who cannot find a way to leave her grief behind and begin again, until her husband’s ghost returns, along with several pals from unknown time periods, to help her do so.

Minghella later became famous for “The English Patient,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” and “Cold Mountain,” but he wrote this story for himself while he was also writing the Inspector Morse mysteries for the BBC. Minghella wanted to see the sardonic, martini-dry Alan Rickman play a leading man just once. Professor Snape, we hardly knew ye. Available through Minuteman.

John Turturro is a virtuoso actor with a long list of credits, which include stand out performances in Coen Brothers movies, like “Oh, Brother Where Art Thou?” and “The Big Lebowski.” But he is also a multi-talented writer/director with several films under his belt.

Two of my favorites are “illuminata” and “Romance and Cigarettes.” Both films are beautifully crafted, brilliantly funny slices of strange and wonderful life. “Romance and Cigarettes” stars James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Christopher Walken, Mary Louise Parker, and Kate Winslett, among others. In this one, you want to see Christopher Walken’s Elvis impersonation. Did you know the Scary Guy is really a great song and dance man?

Walken does another turn in “Illuminata” as an Oscar Wildian theater critic trying to seduce rubber-faced Bill Irwin; Susan Sarandon chews up the scenery as an over-the hill Sarah Bernhardt wanna-be; and Rufus Sewell (“Zen” on Masterpiece Mystery) finds ways to make you adore the narcissistic leading man by playing him fearlessly. For a preview of “Illuminata” watch Turturro and Walken with Charlie Rose at http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/4149. Both movies available through Minuteman.

“The Station Agent” which stars Patricia Clarkson (“Goodnight and Good Luck”), along with Peter Drinklage and Bobby Cannavale, is about the gift of friendship and how it can get you through a lot, even when you never expected to find it. OK, I admit I had to see the movie for the line about librarians at the end, but it was everything that came before that I loved. Find it at Minuteman.

Finally, I wish everyone in the world could see “Snow Cake,” which is available here at Morrill Memorial Library. It stars Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver. Weaver, sans glamour and firepower, plays a high-functioning autistic woman who ultimately helps Rickman put his life back together. If you think it’s going to be mushy, think again. There’s a knife at the heart of this film that neatly slices yours open and lets in the most glorious light.

The Minuteman Library Network has the Masterpiece Mystery “Zen” and all 6 seasons of “Northern Exposure,” including the movie episode called “Rosebud” in the fifth season. Morrill Memorial Library also has “The English Patient,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “Cold Mountain,” “The Big Lebowski,” “Oh, Brother Where Art Thou?” “Good Night and Good Luck,” and “Citizen Kane.”

Making History in Norwood

2011-10-13T06:23:00.001-04:00

Written by Marie Lydon, a Reference librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.

A survey was sent out recently asking which libraries in the Minuteman Library Network have microfilm/microfiche readers that patrons can use. I guess I’m just old fashioned but cannot imagine our library being without one. A lady the other day traveled to Norwood to see if the Norwood Messenger on microfilm had the obituary of her relative who had lived in the town years ago. She was so excited when she found it. She must have repeated 3 or 4 times, “This is a really neat machine,” and departed saying she would be back sometime just to read the ads. Most people seem to really get hooked on the ads, once they start looking for something.

As a true library geek in high school and college, I always loved going through the bound copies of the old Life, Time and Look magazines, lost in the stacks, so to speak. We still have a few magazines and newspapers bound here but we long ago lost the space to accommodate the “real” Norwood newspapers from 1888 on so we started having them microfilmed. Different staff members started indexing the newspaper on index cards in 1955 and it has been an ongoing project ever since. With the help of the Ernie Boch grant and part time work at the Reference Desk, we have been able to go back to the beginning and are now up to 1894! It is a tedious and time consuming job working with the microfilm on the computer but our indexer-in-chief, Shelby Warner, says she enjoys it.

As the microfilm machine is right next to the Reference Desk, we get to know some of the people using it. There have been many committed volunteers who have researched their local churches and schools, usually when preparing for a special anniversary, and have given us copies of the fruits of their labors. A really dedicated patron is writing a history of her church and has started with the microfilm from the beginning. She said she really enjoys it and will miss it when she finishes. She has researched local history through newspapers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and finds the Norwood collection more complete than others she has seen. In her research, she came across an article by Win Everett, printed September 24, 1935, documenting a history of the town’s newspapers from the beginning and declaring that “the truest and best history of a town is written in its newspapers.” He spent a “busy and dirty day” in the library stacks and found a pretty complete file from 1887 to 1935, many donated by the Walpole library. He predicted that the library trustees would bind these older papers in book form. He published a checklist of the newspapers at the library and later the newspaper published a list of missing issues, asking residents to donate their own copies. His efforts have helped other Norwood researchers.

Before we moved back to our newly renovated library, Thomas Collins sat at an older, manual microfilm machine in a windowless room for hours compiling articles and obituaries of Norwood casualties of World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. The project filled two notebooks and he gave copies to the library where they have been used by family members and students doing research through the years. Dr. Bryant Tolles cranked through years of Norwood microfilm when he was commissioned to write a history of the town commemorating its 100^th anniversary in 1972.

Some representative memorable searches include:

-A grandfather looking up the newspaper article of his great play in a Norwood-Dedham High School Thanksgiving game in the ‘50s

-A woman with a ripped newspaper clipping of her parents’ wedding looking for the original picture for an anniversary celebration

-A Connecticut man requesting an article he remembers from childhood that his grandmother had about the death of her husband, a town worker, from a hornet’s sting in 1953

-A lady in Florida calling and requesting an article about a bank robbery in the 50’s that she remembers because she is writing an article about it

-The Boy Scouts looking up the newspapers of their birth dates

For me, this is what makes a library a special place in the community—that it keeps available and accessible the history of the town and its citizens and the memories that they wish they had kept for themselves and their children.

We also have people who come from the military and schools using the reader because some records are on microfiche or microfilm and they do not have the equipment to read them. But overwhelmingly, much of the use of the microfilm reader is for looking up obituaries for genealogical purposes and weather stories because of automobile accident claims.

A woman called recently from a Boston foundation looking for a picture of Arthur Pingree, a minister at the Congregational Church in the 1920s, because she needs pictures of all the donors and he was one of them. We had old newspaper clippings with pictures and also articles on microfilm about him.

Some day, maybe our local newspapers on microfilm will be digitized and online. It would be a costly project. In the meantime, we are fortunate that recently we have been able to subscribe to the “Historical Boston Globe 1872-1979” an online database. This can be a great resource for Norwood historical events and persons as well. It contained a lengthy article about Arthur Pingree’s drowning and pictures of the local girls he was trying to save. Just for fun, I looked up George Morrill, the benefactor of the library, and there was an article in the 1927 issue about his son, George Morrill, Jr. buying the first American made gasoline powered car, a Duryea, in 1896.

It’s a great time to be a researcher so come to our library and get lost in the microfilm of the old Norwood newspapers or go to the library’s website from home or in the library @ norwoodlibrary.org to access the “Historical Boston Globe 1872-1979” found under Databases for Research on the website.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

2011-10-05T06:37:00.005-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is Library Director at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin this week.

With autumn in full swing and with holidays descending on us, I am reminded of my repertoire of holiday films, those movies that warm my heart and tickle my funny bone.

One of my favorite movies of all-time is “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”, a comedy starring Steve Martin and John Candy. When the film was released in 1987, both of the actors were well-known comedians in their own right but neither was known a successful actor. Steve Martin was just 42 and John Candy was an even-younger 37. (Candy died in 1994 only seven years after the movie’s release.)

Yet “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” became one of the most critically-acclaimed movies of the 80s decade. Roger Ebert included it in his Great Movies Collection and Martin’s and Candy’s roles can probably be regarded as their best on film.

Martin plays Neal Page, a business man trying to get home by plane. Candy, as Del Griffith, is a bungling shower-ring salesman who inadvertently trips up everyone’s plans. Martin and Candy traverse the eastern United States desperately trying to get to Chicago for Thanksgiving and by movie’s end they’ve taken nearly every mode of transportation available, including a plane, a train and an automobile.

And just as you may have finally finished massaging the stitch in your side caused by laughing until you’ve cried, you are caught with a lump in your throat when are reminded what life is really all about.

And those happy thoughts bring me back to books so I’ve included some about trains, planes … and travel in automobiles.

“Conquering the Sky: The Secret Flights of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk” (2009) was written by Larry Tise. Oroville and Wilbur Wright were born four years apart in Dayton, Ohio and spent their lives as bachelors. They were in their thirties when they spent five years, under the radar, so to speak, experimenting with air flight and most especially, with the instruments to control that flight. Tise chronicles the critical eleven day period in 1908 when the brothers tried desperately to carry out their trials in secret. Somewhat unlike the 21st century, however, news traveled fast across the globe as the brothers scrambled to test their equipment and they made history at the same time.

In another book published in 2009, Jay Spencer begins much earlier than the Kitty Hawk trials in “The Airplane: How Ideas Gave Us Wings”. Sir George Cayley investigated flight in the last years of the 18th century and has been referred to as The Father of Aviation and Aerodynamics. Spencer includes not only complete history of the engineers and inventors involved but also of the machinery behind successful flight.

Another book about the race to give us faster and faster flight is “Jet Age: The Comet, the 707 and the Race the Shrink the World” (2010) by Sam Howe Verhovek. It includes the story of two jet aircraft, the British Comet and the Boeing 707 Jet Stratoliner, in a competition to provide jet travel across the Atlantic Ocean.

Railroads traversed the eastern part of the United States before the Civil War. Yet, there was no final connection to the west. Shortly before his death in 2002, historian Stephen Ambrose gave us “Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869” (2000). The newly-built Pacific Railroad finally connected San Francisco to Omaha and joined the railroad systems of the U.S.

The northerly route described in Ambrose’s book smacked of decisions that were made for political reasons rather than logical ones. A logical or practical route might have been in the southern part of the western U.S., a countryside free of snow. In “Rival Rails: The Race to Build America’s Greatest Transcontinental Railroad” (2011), American historian Walter Borneman tells the story of the two of the largest railroad companies, Southern Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe who ate bought up the smaller railroads in their contest to forcefully and vigorously build the southern route.

(For more, read “Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America” (2011) by Richard White.)

In 1935 a powerful hurricane destroyed the Florida East Coast Railway, an 153-mile rail line across the open ocean. It connected Florida’s east coast to Key West and it was built by Henry Flagler who began the project at the age of 74 years in 1905. Les Standiford chronicles the entire story in “Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean” (2002).

The railway to Key West was never rebuilt for many reasons and one of those was the rise of the interstate highway system. That story is portrayed by Earl Swift in “The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways” (2011).

The system of interstate highways in the United States has been attributed to President Eisenhower and is known as the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways which began in 1956 with the signing of the Federal Highway Aid Act and ended with the last leg of the journey thirty-five years later in 1991. Yet, Earl Swift tells a story that begins much earlier in the first part of the 20th century with a race-car driver who spread his enthusiasm for the Good Roads movement.

“Onramps and Overpasses: A Cultural History of Interstate Travel” (2009), written by Dianne Perrier, takes an exit from the fast-paced travel we have all made a part of our lives. Fast-food and service companies have made their name and their wealth right on our onramps and offramps. Many of our interstates are built right over the original paths that Americans in past centuries traveled and Perrier looks deeper than those modern logos and new American icons. Her stories include those of Davey Crockett and Horace Greeley.

For help finding these and other books at the Morrill Memorial Library or in the Minuteman Library Network catalog, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the library.

eBooks eLectrified!

2011-09-29T17:30:00.000-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood.

Over two years ago the Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, MA made headlines for a bold and controversial move to eliminate most traditional reading matter from its new school library. “Cushing Academy Library Goes Bookless!” the newspapers exclaimed.

Librarians across the country led the outcry of disbelief. Liz Gray of the Dana Hall School in Wellesley debated Cushing’s decision. “Focused, engaged reading is more likely to occur with printed books than with online material,” Gray wrote.

James Tracy, headmaster of the school, defended the school’s resolve. “Cushing Academy decided to … transform our library into a digital learning center. We wanted to create a … library that goes beyond stacks and stacks of underutilized books.” Tracy and his staff filled the school with eReaders and built a collection of electronic books which could be accessed by every student at the school.

In reality, there are still some “real” books in the Cushing Academy Library and much of the resulting chorus of disapproval was, I believe, emotionally-driven by the love of ‘the book.’

Who can blame them for this emotional response?

An online library can never, and will never, replace the browsing experience of scanning the shelves in a library, a bookstore or your own home. It is certain that the physical book will remain a part of our homes and libraries. Surely, a handwritten heartfelt inscription would be lost in the digital void of an eBook library. Where is the joy in a toddler turning the pages in an actual picture book? Many people will never cozy up to a hard plastic shell that masquerades as reading matter. Others will never accept an eReader, its phantom pages and strange e-Ink.

Author Anna Quindlen wrote: “I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.” How pure and true her sentiments are. Especially to me.

In our home much of our furniture would be bare, many of our walls would lack character, and most of our rooms would seem empty without our collections of books. Our children were raised with hundreds of books in the homes that we lived in. When our son-in-law moved into his new office he immediately sent a photo … of his newly-arranged bookshelves. Our daughter-in-law in Atlanta often has stacks of books on every surface of their home. A love of the physical books is central to our family’s lives.

And so, you might be surprised to learn that I have promoted eReaders at the Morrill Memorial Library, deciding this past year to invest in six of them for our patrons to check out. These are the Barnes and Noble Nooks and we have presented training sessions and encouraged their use. (Each Nook is preloaded with library titles.)

Like many of my friends, and several of my children, I own an Amazon Kindle. Until now my only option has been to purchase books for my Kindle and I’ve done so with great discretion. Kindle owners and Kindle app users have not had the option of borrowing library eBooks.

That all changed last week and we are very excited about it. Finally, Kindle owners can borrow library books.

Free Kindle eBook loans are now offered on the Minuteman OverDrive Digital Media catalog. Thousands of titles can be requested, borrowed and downloaded to a variety of devices. (There is no need to own a Kindle although the reading experience on the actual device is the best to be had. E-Ink displays are easier to read than any backlit displays and it is easier on the eyes than some paper.)

Free Kindle apps are available for a variety of electronic devices – personal computers, iPhones, SmartPhones and iPads among others. The only requirement for downloading aKindle app is an Amazon.com username and password.

Kindle eBooks can be borrowed for 7, 14 or 21 days. If a copy is out, the title can be requested and will be ready for download as soon as it is available. The download process is relatively easy compared to the other options available using the OverDrive Media Console. If the device is WiFi-enabled the transfer is immediate and basically effortless.

The library has scheduled two Kindle eBook information sessions on Wednesday, October 12 at 10 am and 7 pm. The drop-in sessions will run for two hours and patrons can bring their own devices to the library but registration is required. Staff and their families have a variety of devices and they will demonstrate the process. They will lead those interested through the process on assorted devices, especially on their own equipment. Patrons should have an Amazon.com account in advance of the training sessions and should be willing to download the Kindle app to their device or download to an actual Kindle.

Nook sessions were offered some months ago and we will schedule another special Nook Download training night in the future. This special Kindle eBook information session pertains only to downloading the Amazon Kindle eBooks in the Minuteman catalog.

We are very excited to be a member of the Minuteman Library Network and the new offerings on OverDrive. Be sure to register for a session.

If you have a Kindle or Kindle app you’ll find training modules and online help on our website. To sign up for the information sessions or get help in advance, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the library.

Epic

2011-09-21T10:33:00.003-04:00

Nancy Ling is an Outreach Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. She is also an author and a poet and loves working with children and teens and teaching poetry. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Record.

It’s official. Fall is here as of today. This is when we ask each other questions such as where did the time go? Or what was your favorite summer memory? Surprisingly one of my best memories took place at the library. I know. It’s hard to believe. After all I did venture off to see black bears and whales in Alaska. What could beat that?
Well, the Teen Poetry Club came close. I had the privilege of introducing teens to a variety of poetic forms and several award-winning poets for five weeks. True, I was wondering who would sign up for this club. I mean, there are trips to the beach, visits to grandparents. I found the answer to that question on the first day—teens who are passionate about writing, and who are really, really good at it, too.
That said, I thought it was only appropriate that I share some of their work (with their permission, of course). I do this for two reasons: first, so you can be thoroughly impressed with the caliber of young writers here in Norwood, and second, so you may think about signing up for this workshop next summer.
Each time we covered a different topic in our workshop. Here’s a poem that one student, Lauren Swank, wrote during our first meeting. We were discussing the use of dreams and special places to jump start our writing when Lauren penned the following:
Dreams

Loud voices come from the excited crowd,
all of these sounds seem so loud.
Will he cooperate throughout the course?
Will he be a good little horse?
I look ahead at the obstacles before me.
All I am thinking about is he
who needs support because his head is down.
I tell him softly “a smile is better than a frown.”
A big horse trots on by.
My little horse seems so shy.
My horse looks up for he is towered
by the horse who has over-powered
my poor shire who is all alone
when the whistle blows he stands like stone.
I softly say “Just take your time”
and after that he seemed just fine.
He did the course in two minutes flat.
We walked past the rest and said “Beat That!”
The judges gave us a First Place prize and
I then could not believe my eyes.
Loud noises came from the excited crowd
and those noises made my shire seem so proud.

Here’s another dream-inspired poem by Dina Delic. She brings her reader right into the strange and stirring place of a dream, or nightmare as the case may be.
Breathe

Light flickers through,
blue-white like an old film,
and I see her,
silently staring at a wall
that
doesn’t
exist.
And I can see her closed lids,
see her struggling to breathe,
because her bone corset is laced too tight.
Her wings are tied up, and she wants to fly,
to feel the air on her skin,
but
she
can’t.
She is laced too tight.
Her corset won’t let her breathe.
Society won’t let her breathe.
The heavy damask curtains won’t let her breathe.
She wants out,
but she can’t get out,
can’t loosen the ribbons restraining her freedom.
The light flickers out,
and I can still see her,
struggling to be free.
To breathe.
Just breathe.
Breathe.

This one is a pantoum by Sara Harder. The poet J. Lorraine Brown came to our club to discuss this particular form. In case you want to try writing one, a pantoum as defined by Merriam Webster is “a series of quatrains rhyming abab in which the second rhyme of a quatrain recurs as the first in the succeeding quatrain, each quatrain introduces a new second rhyme (as bcbc, cdcd).”

Cookies

Sweet and tasty
Crunchy and round
Chocolate chip and peanut butter
Sugar cookies and almond rounds

Crunchy and round
Sticky dough on a baking tray
Sugar cookies and almond rounds
With sugar and flour and butter

Sticky dough on a baking tray
Cooling on a wire rack
With sugar and flour and butter
Mixing in a mixing bowl

Cooling on a wire rack
Chocolate chip and peanut butter
Mixing in a mixing bowl
Cookies, sweet and tasty

Another local poet, Jean Tupper, inspired the teens to write a list poem. After all, everyone has some kind of list. I’ve made my To-Do lists into poems now and then.
Often Haiku can appear deceptively easy. Short and sweet, right? But the students learned from poet, Fran Witham, that there are several key elements to haiku, including a reference to nature. This example is by Lauren Swank.
Frolicking in dandelions
Her head held high
She is free
Our final class was on ekphrastic poetry. JoAnne Preiser showed us famous works of art as inspiration for our own poems. Meenu Ravi write this poem:

Those Who Are

Our sorrows are of worlds whose patina shed
The laughter and beauty of all long lifeless
The saber of new old battles, the coronal of new queens
And jolly and simple and downhearted sorrows of me

With melody in our hands ever- shall we dance
All are our family, the world is our home
Where the voice of the wind sings my wandering feet
Through the echoing woods and the echoing street

What love shall we sow, what peace shall we gather
The voice of the breeze is the voice of our future fate
No love wishes us dawdle, no peace wishes us wait
Where the wind sings our wandering footsteps we go

So yes, when someone asks me what my best summer memory is, I tell them about my teenage poetry club. What started as the seed of an idea, grew into a spectacular experience. As a matter of fact, I think the teens had a pretty good time, too. After all, I received the ultimate compliment from them. Not only did they ask if we could do this again next summer (yah!), but they told me it was “epic.” In teen lingo, that’s not too shabby. Then again, that’s something a few of us knew all along…poetry is definitely “epic!”

Browsing the Library Shelves

2011-09-15T22:25:00.000-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is the library director at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.

I’ve mentioned before that being a librarian is a little too much like being a kid in a candy shop. The cliché “too many books, not enough time” is the story of my life these days. Imagine spending your day surrounded by so much temptation and not enough time to do it. Add to that the fact that librarians often spend our time off reading about books so that we can make the best decisions for your reading pleasures.

There are many librarians here in Norwood who can recommend the very latest and the very best of books. Every first Friday of the month, many on the library staff meet on the uppermost floor of the library in the Trustees Meeting Room before the library has opened for the day. More than a dozen of us spend the hour before the library opens discussing the books that we have been reading. Those suggestions get passed down to you at the desks of the library. It’s simply what we do and what you should expect of your librarians.

I have the privilege of ordering many of the non-fiction books for the library. This is especially rewarding because most of my favorite books are non-fiction. Sports and crafts, cooking and music are subjects of book that I enjoy reading about. I love seeing them hit the shelves where that you can find them.

What can be more fun, however, is seeing the books in the categories I don’t order. It’s often like peeking under the Christmas wrap. Ah, I didn’t know about this book!

I was surprised when I came across“365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life” (2010). I was going to write this book! How had someone else jumped the gun? John Kralik, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, had much the same idea that I had had only he had the foresight and good sense to begin writing it several years earlier, to beat me to the punch and get it published. Kralik made it a practice to write one thank you note per day for a year to all of the people who had made a difference to his life. John Kralik includes a brief note about each thank you in his book along with an explanation of the motivation to write it.

Many of us have heard Tavis Smiley, a radio and television talk show host on public radio and television for over 20 years. In his latest book, “Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure” (2011), Smiley packages his best advice in twenty chapters. In Chapter 4, “You’re Always On” , Smiley relates the trouble with live mikes in which he relates his own weak moment of pomposity. The end of every chapter in his book ends with Tavis’s Takeway or some words to the wise. That particular chapter ends with this advice: “Even when you think you are off – you’re on. In the Internet Age, what’s private can instantly become public.” Other smart chapters are “Cheaters Never Win” and “Remain Dignified Even When You’re Justified.”

In “Just My Type: A Book About Fonts” (2010) Simon Garfield explains why fonts (which have been in existent since Gutenberg invented the printing press) have become so popular in recent years. Everyone has come across references to the typeface near the very ending of expensive books but they’ve more than often been ignored. Recently, however, fonts have become vogue. Who would have thought that Comic Sans could be so happily casual, or that Helvetica could ensure the success of corporate giants like The Gap, Verizon and American Airlines.

Next to fonts and typefaces, I love books on words and grammar. However, I can always use a good editor and I have several of them right in the library with me. Here we have copies of all of the dictionaries and the all-important “Elements of Style”. Some of us sometimes bow down to both Strunk and White. However, in a book by the Bureau Chiefs you might as well forget all about clear, concise writing techniques and learning to correct typographical errors. “Write More Good” (2011) is, to quote the source, “an absolutely phony guide” but it is always humorous, sometimes irreverent, and gives one something to think about writing in this Twitter, Facebook and texting age.

“The Pun Also Rises” (2011) or “How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics” is written by a former presidential speechwriter ,John Pollack. Pollack argues that the pun should rise to a higher level of linguistic honor. Puns have often been thought of as apologetic jokes and as a lowest form of humor. Pollack argues that puns are crucial to learning the relationship of language as a child. His book begins with a particularly laughable account of his winning the 18th Annual World Pun Championships in Austin, Texas.

On a more serious note, Peter Meyers and Shann Nix have written “As We Speak: How to Make Your Point and Have It Stick” (2011) to overcome your fears of public speaking and to win over an audience. No one really loves public speaking; some have become so good at it that they have mastered the fear and the obstacles. Meyers and Nix explain the three building blocks of learning to be self-confident and effective as a speaker: organize, deliver and perform.

All of the books mentioned above are available from our library and other Minuteman libraries. For help searching in the Minuteman catalog for these titles or for placing requests for all library materials please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

The Family Feud: Enlist Your Local Library

2011-09-10T08:41:00.002-04:00

April Cushing is the Adult Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.

I recently wrapped up a nasty fight with my new neighbors, the Formicidae family. While I had the undisputable size advantage, I was badly outnumbered. Grudgingly, I came to respect them for their dogged refusal to budge despite my best efforts to send them packing. I’m talking about the little black ants that took up residence in my backyard and systemically destroyed my grass.

I suffer from lawn envy. Walking the dog around the block I find myself battling the green-eyed monster while ogling thick carpets of turf. But I’m not the only one coveting my neighbor’s blades. Duffy delights in stopping for a roll in the lushest patch of grass we pass. Sometimes it’s all I can do not to join him.
I have a place on the Cape that once boasted a beautiful lawn. Over the years it’s suffered some benign neglect. Drawn to poor, sandy soil, the ants came marching in one day and decided to set up camp.

I headed to the local Agway for some insecticide but was overwhelmed by all the choices. It came down to the advertising. Who could resist the lure of “Season-Long Ant Control” or “Once & Done!” (hah). When I read the promise, “Kills on Contact,” I was sold.

Rather than broadcast the granules with a spreader as recommended, I decided to attack the tiny Tent Cities like the Navy SEALS who brought down Bin Laden--by going for the direct hit. By the way, if you want a riveting read about Operation Redwing, SEAL Team Ten’s ill-fated attempt to take out a prominent Taliban leader in Afghanistan in 2005, check out Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell. But back to the battle in my own backyard.

The morning after the blitzkrieg I sprang out of bed to count the casualties and declare victory. To my dismay I discovered my nomadic nemeses had simply packed up and moved, mere inches from their earlier campsites, multiplying in the process. I dumped more poison on the offending mounds and watched the little critters scurry around sounding the alarm.

The following weekend I returned to the scene of the crime only to find them rebuilding with renewed energy. It was clearly going to take more than a little Gamma-Cyhalothrin to bring them to their knees.

This was getting expensive—and exasperating. I tried another chemical combination from Ocean State Job Lot and actually followed the directions, more or less, even buying an insurance bag for spot treatments. This scenario continued until I’d experimented with virtually every insecticide on the market. The guilt over my egregiously ungreen behavior was taking its toll. There was so much poison on the premises I was surprised the dog was still alive, although it certainly didn’t seem to be bothering the ants. It was time to bring out the big guns.

There are several books at the Morrill Memorial Library on the subject, but I struck pay dirt with Natural Pest Control : Alternatives to Chemicals for the Home and Garden by Andrew Lopez. The first chapter spoke to me—“Dances With Ants: How to Control Ants Organically.” Organically? What a concept. Another eye-opener was Common-Sense Pest Control: Least Toxic Solutions for Your Home, Garden, Pets and Community by Olkowski and Daar. Did you know that ants are numerically the most abundant social insects around, with an estimated 1,000,000,000,000,000, or one quadrillion of them on earth at any given time? I wondered what percentage of that population lived on my property.

To crash their party, Paul Tukey suggests, in his Organic Lawn Care Manual, simply raking the “unsightly anthills that develop from time to time.” He also recommends pouring boiling water over the hills to “discourage the ants,” or, if you feel you need to eradicate them completely (I’m definitely feeling it) you can treat the area with a solution of boric acid and sugar which acts as a stomach poison in the ants. In The Truth About Garden Remedies: What Works, What Doesn’t and Why, Jeff Gillman says hot pepper sprays containing the compound capsaicin have been successful.

Continuing my quest for other eco-friendly ant killers, I consulted the American Horticultural Society’s Garden Problem Solver by Pippa Greenwood. Since it may be difficult to get adequate chemical into the nest to completely eliminate the ants, she advises opening up the nest first with a fork. She goes on to explain that anthills may loosen soil so much that the grass dies, (I noticed) “and are certainly not the best place to sit.” Thank you, Pippa.

I’m pleased to report that most of my six-legged neighbors have since relocated. The other day I noticed that three peach-colored coneflowers I’d just planted had been nibbled down to the nub. Horrified, I saw a cute little cottontail emerge from the garden and stare me down. The battle of the bunnies was officially on, and I knew just where to turn for help.

Hurricane Force

2011-09-06T06:05:00.000-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.

It wasn’t until 1953 that the National Hurricane Service began officially naming hurricanes in the scheme similar to today. In that year, they simply began with women’s names in alphabetical order. In 1979 the NHS included male names in the list.

And so, the New England Hurricane of 1938 had several names, among them the Great New England Hurricane and the Yankee Clipper. Amazingly, this hurricane was the first major hurricane to roar through New England in over half a century. (The last was the Saxby Gale in 1869.) The Great New England Hurricane was powerful, costly and deadly due to the intensity of its landfall (Category 3) and it reached far inland with its damage.

In Peterborough, NH there is a granite column marking the high water caused by the storm in 1938. It is outside of the Aquarius #1 Fire Museum on Summer Street, one block off Main Street and the downtown shops. The merging of the Contoocook River and the Nubansit Brook is only two blocks away. The marker is impressive because it is hard to imagine standing in that much water even if it was only waist high for a tall man.

However, it wasn’t the flooding that devastated Peterborough in September of 1938 even though ten bridges were also destroyed. It was the subsequent fire and the fact that the floodwaters prevented firefighters from getting to the blaze and putting it out. Much of the downtown burned, including the local newspaper offices due to the fire and the memories are forever etched in Peterborough’s history.

All of the states of New England were affected by that 1938 storm that spanned 1000 miles and reached from New Jersey to Quebec. Damage in Massachusetts reached far into the west in towns like Amherst and Pittsfield.

Our library owns a copy of “The 1938 Hurricane: An Historical and Pictorial Summary” published by the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory in 1988. This book is part of the library’s reference collection and you are welcome to read it while you are in the library – it is only 128 pages long and is filled with black and white photographs taken in the aftermath of the storm. The Blue Hill Observatory is located in East Milton, MA where the “second highest recorded wind gust in the world occurred” during the 1938 Hurricane.

In “Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938” (2003), R.A. Scotti describes a hurricane with winds as high as 186 miles an hour and an intensity that registered on seismographs in Alaska. In “The Great Hurricane – 1938” (2005) Cherie Burns tells a story of a storm that involved minimal forecasting or warning from the weather experts. There was, in fact, very little talk of weather on the late summer night of September 21. Unlike the preparation (and the media hype) of Hurricane Irene, the fast-moving hurricane struck with little warning, destroying fishing fleets and families and killing 700 people.

In 2005, the Images of America series published “The 1938 Hurricane along New England’s Coast” by Joseph P. Soares. If you are familiar with the pictorial accounts in the Images of America series you’ll know that there are hundreds of historic images included in the 127-page book.

“New England Hurricane: A Factual, Pictorial Record, 1938” is available in the library or it can be viewed online at the Internet Archive (www.archive.org). It was written and compiled in 1938 by members of the Federal writers’ project of the WPA in the New England States. The writers describe the hurricane this way: “3:50 at New Haven. 5:06 at Hadley, Massachusetts. Up through the heart of Vermont. Burlington at 8:00 pm.”

“Oliver’s Surprise” by Carol Newman Cronin is a fictionalized account of the 1938 written for middleschoolers but it includes facts about the storm and a glossary of nautical terms. Cronin wrote a second book about Oliver and hurricanes, this one about Hurricane Carol which hit the East Coast in 1954. That storm, described in “Cape Cod Surprise: Oliver Matches Wits with Hurricane Carol” blew down the spire of the Old North Church.

Once again, the Blue Hill Observatory and Science Center, compiled another hurricane history in the 2005 publication of “Carol at 50: Remembering Her Fury – A Historical and Pictorial Summary of Hurricane Carol” by Charles Orloff. The Great Blue Hill in Milton is home to the oldest continuous weather record in North America and includes the 12-year old Science Center. (Family membership includes free admission and tours of the observatory, science lectures and access to the weather records.)

Sebastian Junger’s “Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea” describes a storm that emerged from the remnants of Hurricane Grace and ended full force as the Halloween Nor’easter off the coast of the Massachusetts and Maine.

Other books record the history of notable hurricanes outside of New England. In “Category Five: the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane”, Thomas Neil Knowles documents “the first Category 5 hurricane to make landfall in the United States” off the coast of Florida. Erik Larson wrote ”Isaac’s Storm: A Man, A Time and the Deadliest Hurricane in History” (1999) about the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Also in our library’s collection is “Galveston and the 1900 Storm: Catastrophe and Catalyst” by Patricia Bellis Bixel.

There are well over 100 books in the Minuteman Library Network written about the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and an entire column could be devoted to those. One of the most recent is a book that focuses on the Coast Guard’s heroic efforts throughout Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in “In Katrina’s Wake: The U.S. Coast Guard and the Gulf Coast Hurricanes of 2005” by Donald L. Canney.

Several of the books mentioned above are available from other Minuteman libraries. For help searching in the Minuteman catalog for these titles or for placing requests for all library materials please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

Pearls of Wisdom: Books

2011-08-24T05:30:00.002-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.

Nancy Pearl has written half a dozen bestsellers, has appeared on national television and can be heard regularly on National Public Radio. Her appearances at local and national conferences and bookstores often draw standing-room only crowds. She certainly is not a household name, yet you could say that she’s a ‘rock star’ among her following of librarians and readers across the country. This year Library Journal, the publication for everyone involved in any aspect of libraries, chose her as the 2011 Librarian of the Year.

So who is Nancy Pearl and why does she have an action figure doll in her likeness?

Ms. Pearl is a voracious reader, an infectious and enthusiastic speaker, a bestselling author and a now-retired librarian. That description might be too simple, however, for such an amazing woman.

Ms. Pearl was a 48 year old librarian in Tulsa, Oklahoma when the Seattle Public Library lured her to Seattle, Washington to become deputy director. She had already earned two master’s degrees, had raised two daughters, had worked at a book store and as a librarian both in Detroit and in Tulsa. Nancy’s husband, in fact, did not join her in the Northwest until he retired four years later but they both knew she had made the perfect career choice.

In her fifth year in Seattle, and as Director of the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library, Nancy became well-known for developing and implementing the popular and successful “If All Seattle Read the Same Book” project. At the time, Pearl’s dream was deemed a pie-in-the-sky idea. 47 book discussion groups across the city were planned. 10,000 buttons were purchased and distributed to participating readers.

In the end, the project was a huge success, mainly due to Pearl’s hard work and enthusiasm. (Granted, the Center for the Book had received an $180,000 grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund to carry out its plan.) With the exception of the year 2000, Seattle has participated in what is now called Seattle Reads each year. This year they are reading “Little Bee” by Chris Cleave. The one-city, one-book scheme has now spread across the nation; it was Pearl’s original idea that has been copied and modeled in community after community.

Nancy Pearl won many awards for spreading the love of reading across the country, including the Humanities Washington Award in 2003 and others from the Women’s National Book Association and the American Library Association.

In 2003, Accoutrements, a Seattle company specializing in novelty products, designed an action-figure doll of their local celebrity, Nancy Pearl. (Accoutrements makes other quirky action figure dolls such as the Crazy Cat Lady complete with feral felines and the Lunch Lady complete with counter.)

With its hair in a bun and its ‘shushing’ finger, the doll was both loved and hated at the same time. Some librarians disliked the stereotypical representation of the Pearl, the quintessential librarian. Yet, the doll was a hit. Nancy herself commented that “the shushing aspect of the action figure would determine which librarians have a sense of humor”. Humor notwithstanding, 100,000 of the Nancy Pearl dolls have been sold.

Ms. Pearl’s appearances in libraries, book stores and at workshops and conferences are filled with laughter and smiles. Most important, however, they are filled with her love of reading and books. Her message is simple and that is that everyone should be reading books that they enjoy and everyone’s reading should be pleasurable and infectious. Pleasurable is the key word. At a conference I attended, Nancy shared with us all her Rule of 50: "If you still don't like a book after slogging through the first 50 pages, set it aside. If you're more than 50 years old, subtract your age from 100 and only grant it that many pages."

Ms. Pearl herself actually confesses that she starts 15 books for every book that she actually reads.

Pearl wrote her first book, “Book Lust: Reading Recommendations for Every Mood, Moment and Reason” in 2003 while she was still working for the public library. The book includes lists covering reading for every occasion and personality including lists of Techo-Thrillers to a list of those books Too Good to Miss. Her first book was a success because readers are hungry for recommendations.

In 2004 Pearl retired from the Seattle Public Library and began appearing more often across the country. She now continues to teach courses at the Information School at the University of Washington where she has endowed a scholarship for library students who will become public librarians.

In 2005, Pearl followed her earlier success with “More Book Lust” and in 2007 with “Book Crush For Kids and Teens”.

I love travel writing so late last year I was thrilled that she published “Book Lust to Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers”. What you’ll find in this book, however, are recommended reads for everyone who wants to travel the world in an armchair at home. These books either do the traveling for you, taking you on adventures or journeys around the world or accompanying you on your trip.

Nancy Pearl is a regular contributor to NPR and can be heard recommending books for summer, for the holidays or those that are “under the radar.” Her podcasts can be listened to or read at npr.org. She also has a website and blog at nancypearl.com.

Nancy admits that many of the books recommended on her Book Lust lists, are out of print. This makes for a great opportunity to visit your library. For help searching in the Minuteman catalog for these titles or for placing requests for all library materials please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

Nothing Too Cheesy about Cheese

2011-08-17T11:27:00.000-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her weekly column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.

I’m lucky that my youngest daughter works in Manhattan. I’m lucky enough to have another wonderful reason to visit one of my favorite cities and several times a year.

My shopping excursions in New York City always include a trip to the West Village and Murray’s Cheese Shop on Bleeker Street. Murray’s is a cheese lover’s Mecca. The store sits over a subterranean cheese cave where experts (or the French word, “fromageres”) are creating, checking, aging and storing cheese. (You can arrange for tours and classes at Murray’s and you can also visit their Grand Central Station store.)

A visit to Murray’s can’t be quick and there are several reasons why. A crowd of customers swarm in a relatively small space and there is nearly always a line at the cashier. The main reason, though, is that you need to take your time. Choosing and tasting a cheese or two or three can never be rushed.

Murray’s cheesemongers, or those who sell and advise about cheese, stand behind the cases and listen intently. You won’t find an impatient store clerk at Murray’s. Each of them will good-naturedly ask you if you like your cheese crumbly or soft, punchy or mild, firm or buttery. An example might be a choice between twenty odd blue cheeses which range from American Black River or Irish Cashel Blue.
Only after you are satisfied with a type and taste do you leave the cheese counter at Murray’s. On your way to the door you can choose olives, fruit, jams and crackers as perfect companions for your cheese.

On one my trips to Murray’s this year I picked up a 30-Minute Mozzarella Kit. We’ve been making fresh mozzarella every week in our house and there is nothing like it. Don’t plan on a rubbery chunk of grating cheese if you are making it fresh. This mozzarella is soft but sliceable and it also melts in your mouth. It will lose its shape within days, however, so it needs to be eaten on a regular basis. In the summer it melts yummingly over fresh garden tomatoes and basil when left to sit at room temperature. In the winter it can be baked on top of mushrooms or added to your favorite Italian dish. Homemade mozzarella is buttery, soft and sweet.

In “The Cheese Lover’s Companion: The Ultimate A-to-Z Cheese Guide” (2007), author Sharon Tyler Herbst explains that mozzarella was traditionally made from water buffalo’s milk and the cheese originated in southern Italy. Of course, immigrants from Naples and Rome did not find water buffalo milk plentiful in the United States but mozzarella made from cow’s milk became very popular in the US and has been known as “pizza cheese”. Herbst’s book contains over 1000 listings for cheese and even includes a pronunciation guide.

“The Cheese Bible” by Christian Teubner is coffee-table sized and includes hundreds of photographs, encyclopedic entries and recipes. I was given the book as a gift from my husband last Christmas and I searched for a copy for our library. It is a wonderful sourcebook. Another recent addition to the Morrill Memorial Library’s collection is the “World Cheese Book” edited by Juliet Harbutt. She includes tasting notes and suggestions for how to enjoy 750 cheeses.

“The Murray’s Cheese Handbook” written by Rob Kaufelt (owner of Murray’s Cheese) includes a description of my favorite blue cheese, Great Hill Blue, made nearby in Marion, MA. (You can get it locally in the gourmet cheese sections of the large supermarkets.) Try it topped with warmed fig jam on crackers. You’ll have a brand-new appreciation for blue cheese but be careful because it is addictive.

Love of cheese has turned many “cheese enthusiasts” into cheese makers. “Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge” (2010) is Gordon Edgar’s started out not knowing much about cheese (other than that people loved and would pay dearly for it.) He became an expert, selling it in a cooperative grocery in San Francisco. “The Cheese Chronicles: A Journey Through the Making and Selling of Cheese in America, from Field to Farm to Table” (2009) by Liz Thorpe is another definitive source and it is also enlightening and fun to read. Thorpe is second in command at, you guessed it, Murray’s Cheese in NYC.

A very funny read is “Immortal Milk: Adventures in Cheese” (2010) by Eric LeMay. LeMay and his girlfriend, Chuck, traveled the world appreciating cheese including fondue and Parisian chic. LeMay also includes explanations of the slang term, cheesy, which slowed up in the 19th Century to mean something “less than the best” or even “cheap” and “nasty.” Today it is used to mean “tacky” or “corny” among other things.

If you enjoy non-fiction, you’ll also like “The Year of the Goat”. Author Margaret Hathaway and photographer Karl Schatz leave the big-city behind and travel 40,000 miles across the United States in a “quest for the perfect goat cheese.”

Perhaps you’d like to try your hand at cheese making like me. Start with the simple recipes and borrow Ricky Carroll’s “Home Cheese Making” with instructions for delicious mozzarella and ricotta. (Carroll, or the Cheese Queen, lives in Western Massachusetts and teaches cheese making in day or weekend workshops in Ashfield. She also produces the kit that I bought in NY City.) Other great instructional books are “The Joy of Cheesemaking” by Jody Farnham and Marc Druart (2011), “Making Artisan Cheese” (2005) by Tim Smith and “The Complete Guide to making Cheese, Butter and Yogurt At Home” (2010) by Richard Helweg. Yogurt is another very easy and delicious dairy product that doesn’t have to be purchased at the grocery store but can be made daily or weekly at home.

For help searching in the Minuteman catalog for these titles or for placing requests for all library materials please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

Riding the Rails to the Boston Public Library

2011-08-12T06:30:00.003-04:00

Margot Sullivan is a reference librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin this week.

I am frequently amazed at the reluctance of some people to take the commuter rail train into Boston. It is so easy and provides a quick (about 22 minutes) ride into Back Bay or South Station. The upcoming stations are loudly announced so you won’t get off at the wrong stop (one excuse or fear I have heard). I suppose you would if you fell asleep!

I love looking at the people on the trains and being a librarian I am checking what they are reading or doing! My most recent trip included two magazine readers, several real book readers, computer users, a kindle reader, a knitter, and me! Young kids are great on trains and ask wonderful questions! A young boy was intrigued by the screeching of the brakes as the train pulled into each station. ”What is that?” he inquired. His father replied “those are the air brakes”. From then on every time the train stopped the little boy asked “How come I keep hearing the air brakes?” I loved the conversation between a mother and her young son. He constantly asked “Is this our station?” as each station was named. His mother patiently said no we have several more to go. When the conductor announced “Readville Station, Readville Station” the little boy said “Mom is that where all the people go to read?” I kid you not! I will admit I am totally annoyed listening to cell phone conversations on the train about just anything - shopping, mental health, gossip, and whatever. Everything under the sun is discussed often in a loud voice. Isn’t it ironic we are so concerned about privacy issues but so many could care less what the world hears while on their cell phones!

I get off at Back Bay. What a wonderful area of Boston to walk around in. A few blocks up Boylston Street and you are in the public gardens and during the summer I just sit on a bench and watch the swan boats – a Boston institution. People watching also goes with the territory! Trinity Church and the Old South Church welcome you to just come and rest and contemplate. Newbury Street is bustling with shops and some art galleries where I usually find some paintings of Maine! My target is always the Boston Public Library. I worked there many years ago and have great memories of the pre-computer/network/internet days when the huge card catalog was the source for locating books in the collection and reference departments housed many reference materials. The original McKim building is magnificent – a real Boston treasure. The building itself has been cleaned and the murals cleaned and restored. The courtyard is a cool oasis. The Map Room Café has luncheon items and beverages. The attached Johnson building opened in 1972 and houses most of the circulating materials and a lot of computers for public use. I sat for several hours reading a novel I was finishing for our summer Beach Reads session here at the Norwood library. Both buildings had interesting exhibits commemorating the 150 anniversary of the Civil War. I especially liked the Winslow Homer prints in the Wiggin Gallery. Homer did the prints for illustrated weeklies and they show rural life, the brutality of the Civil War, pastimes, and women’s roles all during the time period 1858-1873. The exhibits are still on display this summer!

Treat yourself to a day in Boston! It’s easy! It’s affordable! It’s fun!

For the Love of a Good Dog

2011-08-02T07:12:00.004-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin this week.

Please don’t get me wrong. I love my granddog as much as any grandparent would. I’ve proudly posted her photos in my Facebook updates. Her Christmas stocking hangs by our chimney with care. She cuddles with me on the couch even in shedding season. And I’ve watched her proudly play well with others at the dog park.

However, I admit that when one of our other children mentions bringing a puppy into their households I grimace. I mention the expensive veterinary visits that can absolutely break the budget. I introduce them to our hardworking rug shampooer. I advise them about the insane amount of money I’ve invested in doggie day care over the years to avoid using the rug shampooer. I advise them to think long and hard about getting a puppy.

I read “Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog” as soon as it was released in 2005. I was between dogs at the time. I had had to say a terribly painful goodbye to our ten-year old family dog in 2001. Perhaps it was because she was the perfect dog who was my constant companion for a decade of shuttling children from ballet to soccer. Or perhaps it was because it was concurrent with the last stages of my divorce and right before my youngest child left for college. It was the ultimate empty nest syndrome.

And so, four years later I braved John Grogan’s book about his lovable, laughable and untrainable Yellow Lab, Marley. I chuckled like an idiot throughout the story. During the last chapters I sobbed huge Labrador tears.

I should have known I was in deep trouble when I insisted we see the movie over the Christmas holiday in 2008. I’d read the book, after all! We had a new four-legged family friend in our own home. The movie teasers and trailers were hilarious and duhhhh! I already knew the ending. How sad could it be?

Sad. I was transfixed during the last five minutes of the movie on the big screen. I tried holding in the sobs in the dark of the theater. Tears streamed down my face. When I realized that there wasn’t a dry eye around me I finally succumbed. And it was a deluge of gut-wrenching sobs.

This weekend when I had a few minutes to bond with my television and household chores I found “Marley and Me” on one of our premium channels. This time I told myself that I really, really knew the ending. I’d been through this already. How bad could it be?

Bad. My own dog can’t stand to see me cry. She made the mistake of settling in with me that Saturday afternoon and she abandoned me and my tears. She only ventured near me when she heard my more happy voice speaking on the phone sometime later.

“Marley and Me” wasn’t the first dog story to make the big time. Dog stories have been a hit for centuries. John Grogan’s stories about Marley did reap an entirely new harvest of them. One of those is Dean Koontz’s “A Big Little Life: a Memoir of a Joyful Dog” (2009) which proves again that endings always come too fast for families and their dogs. Their dog, Trixie lived only twelve years even while teaching them a lifetime of lessons.

In “What the Dog Did: Tales from a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner”, Emily Yoffe’s favorite friend is a rescued beagle, as neurotic as they come. She writes of the appealing wretchedness of Sasha and chronicles the tale of saving her just hours before a scheduled euthanasia. Her story includes tales of other rescued beagles and her conversion from apathetic dog-avoider to lifetime dog-lover.

Julie Klam’s “You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness” convinces us furry creatures can often steal your heart as much as the human ones. Her first dog, Otto, a Boston Terrier taught her more about love and loving than any of her first thirty years had.

Stephen Foster’s “Walking Ollie: Or Winning the Love of a Difficult Dog” (2006) and “Fetching Dylan: The True Tale of Canine Domestication in Leaps and Bounds” (2008) are two more stories of the irresistible nature of dogs. Their aggravating antics are nearly always forgiven and their crazy appeal is universal.

In “Adventures with Ari: A Puppy, a Leash and Our Year Outdoors” (2009), Kathryn Miles chronicles her amazing year spent discovering both the love of her new best friend and the nature around her, from “roses to roadkill.”

I was planning to lecture you and those of our children who remain dog-less in this column.

I was going to warn you about the downside of owning dogs and mention “One National Under Dog: Adventures in the New World of Prozac-Popping Puppies, Dog-Park Politics and Organic Pet Food.”

I was going to educate you, at the very least, by mentioning books that could prepare you such as “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know” (2010) by Alexandra Horowitz or Stanley Cohen’s “Why Does My Dog Act That Way?: A Complete Guide to Your Dog’s Personality” (2006). Cohen is also the author of “Why We Love the Dogs We Do: How to Find the Dog That Matches Your Personality” (1998) and “Born to Bark: My Adventures with an Irrepressible and Unforgettable Dog” (2010). Yet, the numbers of books that retell the stories of dogs who love and are loved far outnumber the books that warn us about the pitfalls or possible pain of dog ownership.

In the end, I’ll just quote Agnes Sligh Turnbull who stated it perfectly. “Dogs’ lives are too short. Their only fault, really. “

For these and more titles about our love of dogs please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

Being Sensible about Jane

2011-07-26T14:35:00.003-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin this week.

Jane might be amazed.

Jane Austen died nearly two centuries ago. She was born in 1775, shortly before the Declaration of Independence was written in these far-away colonies. She was nearly 36 years old in 1811 when her first novel, “Sense and Sensibility”, was published. It was followed by “Pride and Prejudice" in 1813, “Mansfield Park” in 1814 and “Emma” in 1816.

Jane died in 1817 before “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion” were published. It is these six books that make up the collection of “Austen Scholarship.”

I wasn’t a teen but was in my mid-twenties when I discovered Jane Austen and read all of the six novels back-to-back. Today I know that I don’t have that kind of attention span. The only other one-author marathon I can think of was the summer I devoured Sue Grafton’s mysteries from A-G. I had to take a break at “H is for Homocide” and never quite picked up the pace again.

Jane Austen's books did sell well and she received favorable reviews during the few years that she was alive to see them published. The money she earned from them afforded her financial stability. However, I can’t believe that she would have dreamed that over two-centuries later that the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA.org) would have over 65 regional groups. Boston’s group is one of the most active. Annual general meetings of the JASNA groups have been held each year since 1979 and plans are underway for the 2012 meeting in New York with the theme “Sex, Money, and Power in Jane Austen’s Fiction”.

Yes, Jane might have been astounded.

In “Why Jane Austen?” published just last month, Rachel Brownstein has written part memoir, part explanation, and part history about Austen’s intrigue. In “A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter”, William Deresiewicz describes the lessons one can learn from reading them. He purports that they are not merely chick-lit. They are inspirational and insightful.

Readers crazy for Austen can read over seventy “spin-off” novels such as Maria Hamilton’s “Mr. Darcy and the Secret of Becoming a Gentleman”, “The Perfect Bride of Mr. Darcy” by Mary Lydon Simonsen and “Jane Austen Ruined My Life” by Beth Patillo. Others are “Writing Jane Austen” and “The Jane Austen Book Club.” These books hope to quench the thirst for more Austen than the six books that she wrote.

Jane might be awestruck

Of course, if you’ve never read Jane, you’ll need to start with the first of her books and my personal favorite, “Sense and Sensibility.” It’s also my favorite Austen movie and we won’t argue here why I love the 1995 version with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant. The first film adaptation of Austen’s book was in 1940 with the MGM production of Pride and Prejudice starring Laurence Olivier. BBCs television miniseries is arguably the best adaptation of her novels and millions of us have succumbed to Colin Firth’s charms.

And back to sensibility. I’ve written in my column before about how much I love to read annotated works. I prefer to read non-fiction and annotated works are a perfect blend for me. They include literary criticism, history, definitions and illustrations along with incredible works of literature.

David M. Shapard has published three volumes of annotated Jane Austen. He began with Pride and Prejudice in 2007, continued with Persuasion in 2010 and has just published Sense and Sensibility this year. “The Annotated Emma” will be published next year.

If you are curious as to what a pianoforte of the time looked like, you’ll find out in Shapard’s books which include about 100 black-and-white illustrations. Wondering how a country home might have been landscaped in the early 19th century in pastoral England? You’ll see several illustrations in the annotated works.

If you’d rather read just one book about Austen’s work, or perhaps take the Jane Austen Aptitude Test, then “The Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Jane Austen” by Carol Adams, Kelly Gesch and Douglas Buchanan is the book for you. (Other BBA Companions include Shakespeare, Agatha Christie and Dickens.)

Perhaps Jane herself would love to come back to life to read “A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen” edited by Susannah Carson or “Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World” by Claire Harman.

Jane Austen died in 1817 just after her 41st birthday. Her brother arranged for her last two books to be published as a set. This was the first time his sister, Jane Austen, was actually identified as the author. All four of her first novels were authored, rather cryptically, ‘By a Lady.” These last two novels sold fairly well for several years. However, all of her books were out of print for the next twelve years until they were published as the collected works in 1933.

Jane Austen might be astonished. They have never been out of print since.

If you’d like to read Jane Austen or read about her books, be sure to visit the Morrill Memorial Library. For help with finding books, movies or audiobooks, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

In a Tight Spot ... for Gardening

2011-07-18T08:20:00.002-04:00

Jenna Hecker is the Technology/Reference Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.

I am not the best candidate for a garden. I live on the second floor. I have no garden hose, and my backyard is paved over. The house where my apartment is located was built in 1875, and the lead paint that was used at that time is still present in any of the soil surrounding the house.

I felt like my desire for home-grown green beans was never going to overcome all of this adversity, until a friend suggested container gardening. Container gardening allows urban and lead-soil plagued New Englanders to grow food in small and unusual spaces. I decided to research container gardens before I began.

I checked out “Ortho’s All About Container Gardening” By Sally Roth and Pamela Pierce (635.96, Roth). The book gives step-by-step guidelines for new container gardeners, discussing which containers are best for different environments, and what to consider when you begin like portability, ease of watering, and protection from pests.

I chose several large, plastic pots and Tupperware tubs as my containers of choice, and got a friend to drill holes in the bottom for drainage. For a great guide on how to choose soil, put together a container, and choose plants for my garden, I swallowed my pride and grabbed “Container Gardening for Dummies” by Bill Marken. Typically, I won’t check out any book that I feel is insulting me with its title, but this “Dummies” book is well laid out, plainly written, and extremely informative when it comes to mixing soil, and choosing plants appropriate for containers.

I chose to plant a few varieties of tomatoes (For those of you who are curious: Ida Gold, Italian Grandmother’s Tomato, Roma Paste Tomato, Cherokee Purple, and Grandma Mary’s Paste), some small breeds of Japanese eggplant, green ‘provider’ bush beans, a variety of lettuces, alpine strawberries (a delicious, ever bearing, smaller variety of strawberries that are very prolific), sage, mint, a few varieties of basil.

To plan how to situate my pots on my fire escape – both for the best sun exposure and the least threat of tripping over them if there was a fire – I went to “The Patio Kitchen Garden,” by Daphne Ledward. Ledward’s book talks about the care and maintenance of specific container-grown vegetables.

With the help of the book and various gardening websites like davesgarden.com and thegardenhelper.com, I learned how to keep my strawberries from getting attacked by my cat, squirrels, and other furry and troublesome fire escape visitors.

I learned about companion planting from ghorganics.com, and co-located my marigolds and basil with my tomatoes to keep pesky insects away. Another resource that I found very useful for identifying garden pests and learning how to control them was “The Container Kitchen Garden,” by Anthony Atha. The book is a great all-around container gardening resource, bringing you from the planning stages of container gardening right through to the eating-and-enjoying piece. There are a number of great recipes based around plants that are typically grown in gardens in the back, as well as an index that describes interesting container based plants (like my alpine strawberries!), with a calendar explaining when to plant and pick them.

My garden is set up for function rather than aesthetics. There isn’t much space to walk around on my fire escape, and it’s not a particularly safe hang out spot. Many container gardeners, however, relish in the opportunity to create an aesthetically pleasing garden that is also moveable and therefore can change constantly.

“Contain Yourself,” by Kerstin Ouellet is a great guide to designing and planting floral containers. Oullette goes through ‘recipes’ for floral arrangements that work well together in containers, as well as which sorts of containers work best with which plants.

I don’t make my own containers. Gardening for me is about planting – I am just not artistic or handy. However, many people see container gardening as a way to combine a love of flowers and vegetables with a love of building and design. “Gardening with Containers” by George Carter is a great how-to guide for people interested in making their own garden containers, or designing containers using a variety of innovative and interesting materials. This book focuses on non-edible container gardening, but has amazing, creative project ideas for aesthetically pleasing and innovative container design.

Container gardening has become one of my most meditative, fulfilling, and delicious hobbies. My yield this summer has already been enough for salads, stir fries, and lots of healthy snacking. For more information on how you can start gardening in small spaces, head to the library to find the books I’ve mentioned, as well as many more!

The Cookbook Reader

2011-07-12T15:33:00.003-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin this week.

I’ve written in the past how much I love my job and how rewarding it is to work with the public. In addition, I’ve told our readers how much pride I have to work in such a beautiful building in the Town of Norwood. I’ve shared stories about attending Literary Lunches with the 6th graders at the Coakley Middle School and reading to children in the public schools during Read Across America week each spring. I’ve written about programs that we give at the library including our frequent film series, author nights, book discussions, Scrabble and Music Sundays. One of the joys of my job is encouraging our staff to offer these rich and diverse programs to adults and children in Norwood. These are some of our “finest hours” at the library and it gives us great pride to fill the Children’s Room or the Simoni Community Room.

I’ve also shared with you that one of the best parts of my job is ordering books for the non-fiction collection. As a non-fiction reader myself, I love to find out which books are coming out in future months. I like to keep you informed and I write about these in our eNews updates and post them to our website so that you can request them early from the library.

And that’s exactly how I’ve become a cookbook reader. I’ve loved cooking since I was a young adult and I’ve relied on friends, relatives, magazines or newspapers for their suggestions. I’ve collected my own library of cookbooks, purchased on whims or given to me as gifts. But it was only when I began to choose them for our library that I decided to make sure that my choices have been good ones. It’s my job to read cookbooks. Someone has to do it and I love it.

That’s how I discovered the “Beat This! Cookbook” by Ann Hodgman with a foreword by Elizabeth Berg. Berg herself loves reading and writing fiction (“Range of Motion” and “Year of Pleasures” are two of her many books) but when she has asked by National Public Radio to recommend a book, Berg chose Hodgman’s book. On that recommendation, I decided to bring newly-published “Beat This!” on vacation last week.

Was I hooked! I was halfway through reading the book on our first night away. Hodgman was a way of describing her choice of recipe, her enjoyment of the finished product and her family history that is quite simply delicious. She adds some of her advice in large quotations throughout the book and even those are fun to re-read.

“Chili is further proof of my rule that every recipe is better if you add sausage or bacon.”

Or “It’s so much more fun to bite into something triangular than something rectangular.”

Or how about “I try not to feel too embarrassed about relying on a convenience food during a major national holiday.”

I had already brought ingredients to cook for my household for nearly the entire week so when I finished the book on the beach I didn’t quite get to make any of the recipes in Hodgman’s book. However, I will be trying some of Hodgman’s recipes soon. “Pure, Rich, Great Caramels” and “Strawberry Gelato” sounded yummy to me.

Another book I took along on vacation was “At Elizabeth David’s Table: Classic Recipes and Timeless Kitchen Wisdom.” It is wonderfully entertaining and enlightening. Renowned food writer Ruth Reichl wrote the preface to the book and she describes chef David’s personality in and out of the kitchen. Included in the cookbook are Elizabeth David’s (1913-1992) chatty introduction to each recipe and the instructions are written in a knowledgeable go-to-it style. Try “Stewed White Beans” or “Chicken Baked with Green Pepper and Cinnamon Butter.”

I brought “Ancient Grains for Modern Meals” by Maria Speck and “Jekka’s Herb Cookbook” by Jekka McVicar for inspiration. They aren’t quite as irresistible to read but they are wonderful cookbooks full of healthy, delicious recipes.

This summer my husband and I chose to rent a former B&B to house our large brood which included our grandson, our grown children, their spouses or partners and friends for our week at the Cape. As our son-in-law put it, there were an “obscene amount of bathrooms.” One of the other great features was a spacious gourmet kitchen fit for our family of foodies.

I discovered that the owner had written her own cookbook. Tucked on a shelf in the bright, sunny kitchen was “Sleep On It” by Carol Gordon. It is a collection of recipes meant to be made the night or day before so that the host or hostess (in this case, bed-and-breakfast owner) can sleep in until at least 6 a.m. In fact, the subtitle of Ms. Gordon’s book is “Prepare Delicious Meals the Night Before that You Can Pop in the Oven the Next Day!” We had fun reading that cookbook and trying some of the easy appetizer recipes on our hungry, sunwashed crowd.

One of the best values at your library in Norwood is expensive non-fiction books like cookbooks that you can borrow, browse and read bits and pieces without purchasing them. If you can’t resist having them in on your own bedside table or kitchen counter you can always find them at a bookstore. But we have a wonderful cookbook collection that grows larger each month and we love to share it with you. Be sure to visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

Born in the USA

2011-07-04T18:27:00.003-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.

Although I have been known to have fun playing trivia games, I’m hardly an expert. Oh, I can hold my own in Arts and Literature categories and can guess and reason well in the areas of Geography and History. Science is mainly hit or miss and I’ve been known to perform dismally in entertainment. No, I can’t sing all the words to “Gilligan’s Island” because I barely remember all the characters.

Don’t get me started on my inadequacy in remembering the names of those Seven Dwarfs. Bashful and Doc don’t end in “y” and I always get stuck.

Sports. Well, sports trivia is simply not my area of expertise.

I do love books about trivia, though, especially history and politics. Luckily my career path has allowed me to work in a place where I am surrounded by books that contain facts. (I’ll admit that any of the twenty-four hours of my day will find me lost in Wikipedia or on the web while I follow a lead to a reference question or a column idea.)

And so this brings me to the 4th of July and this week’s column. Everyone knows that all United States presidents were born in this country. It is dictated by the Natural Born Citizen Clause in our Constitution.

But did you know that a United States president was born on the Fourth of July? If you did, then you’ll know that was Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States.

I actually learned that Coolidge was born on Independence Day in 1872 because for over several decades of summers my family has camped near the president’s birthplace in Coolidge State Park in Plymouth Junction, Vermont. This tiny town was the presidential “Summer White House” for several years and where he spent his birthday at that time. This was before the days when the Secret Service tightly buttoned-up the area around the president and before it became necessary for hundreds of agents to accompany the presidential family on its vacation. Believe me, Plymouth Junction couldn’t possibly hold that many agents and the press that accompany the current presidents on vacation.

The Coolidge Homestead itself is a very unassuming farmhouse built the year that Calvin was born in 1872. (Until 1992 President Coolidge’s surviving son, John, lived in Plymouth Junction and ran Plymouth Cheese -started by Calvin’s father in 1880 - before his death in 1998.)

I’ve known for years that two presidents died on the Fourth of July but did you know there was a third? John Adams, Thomas Jefferson breathed their last breaths on Independence Day in 1826. James Monroe died on July 4 only five years later in 1831.

You can read all these facts and more in “The Presidential Book of Lists, From Most to Least, Elected to Rejected, Worst to Cursed: Fascinating Facts about Our Chief Executives” by Ian Randal Strock.

Another tome over two inches thick is rich with trivia. It is the eighth edition of “Facts about the Presidents” and we learn in it that that President Coolidge’s son, Calvin Jr. was 16 when he died of blood poisoning he developed after not wearing socks while playing tennis. (A blister became infected and he died during his father’s campaign for reelection.)

If you get tired of reading about the men behind the highest office in the country, you might peruse the “Biographical Dictionary of First Ladies” where you will learn that James Monroe’s wife Elizabeth Monroe was very little known because before her death she ordered all of her papers burned. Monroe himself rarely mentioned Elizabeth in his official papers but protected her privacy.

Or that Thomas Jefferson’s first wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson died September 6, 1782. Jefferson mourned her throughout his life and never remarried.

Six of our presidents were widowers in office and others were actually bachelors for part of their time in office and presided with no official first lady. More presidential facts can be found in “The Big Book of American Trivia” by J. Stephen Lang. Great books for kids include “First Kids: The True Stories of All the Presidents’ Children” by Noah McCullough and “The Look-It-Up Book of Presidents” by Wyatt Blassingame.

My favorite all-time book about the presidents is “The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House” by James David Barber. From 1977 to 1995 Barber was a professor of political science at Duke University and became very well-known for his classifications of the presidents based on their family history and actions while in office. My own copy, the 2nd edition published in 1977, is held together with rubber bands.

When I first discovered this book during readings in a political science class, I poured over it and reread it many times. It is a highly readable and intriguing book in which Barber sorts all presidential performance into four types. The four personality types are dependent on five concepts – character, world view, style, power situation and climate of expectations.

Interestingly, the book includes Barber’s predictions on “presidential performance before Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush ever served.” The analysis ends with George H. Bush. The fourth and last edition of Barber’s book was published after his death in 2004 as one of the Longman Classics in Political Science.

For these and more titles about American presidents, political science, or simply facts and trivia please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

Interesting Lives Enriched by Books

2011-06-26T21:48:00.001-04:00

Bonnie Wyler is the Outreach/Literacy Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.

Since 1947, the Outreach Department of the Morrill Memorial Library has been delivering library materials to residents of Norwood who can’t come to the library because of special needs, illness or disability. One of the greatest pleasures of being an Outreach Librarian has been getting to know the many people who use the program and finding out about their lives. I’d like to tell you about two of our patrons whose experiences not only show us how important reading can be in an older person’s life, but whose lives themselves give us an interesting glimpse into the past.

Edna is 101. You may have read about her life in the May 27th Norwood Transcript article describing the Norwood Senior Center’s birthday party for those over 90. Born in England, Edna came to the U.S. in 1911 at 22 months of age. Her family is Jewish and she told me that her father who was from Edinburgh was bar mitzvahed in a kilt!

Edna recalls that times were very different then. In her entire childhood, she had only one doll. She grew up in the South End and remembers the ice man bringing blocks of ice to her house. Edna wasn’t a reader growing up, largely because there was no neighborhood library and books were expensive. As she got older, she would walk to the Boston Public Library whenever she needed to look up information for school. After graduating from high school, Edna did office work before marrying her husband Phillip. Shortly after she learned to drive the family Ford, she recalls coming to an intersection at the same time as a policeman on horseback, who reprimanded her by saying, “Don’t you know, horses have the right of way!”

Edna and her husband raised their daughter in West Roxbury before moving to Norwood in 1978. Reading was not a priority during the busy years of childrearing, or even later on when Edna was active in many clubs and organizations. During this period of her life, Edna and her husband traveled in the United States, though never abroad. Edna says that she became a reader by necessity in her 70’s because she needed something to occupy her mind as she got older. Now she loves to read books set in foreign countries – China, the Middle East, Afganistan – places she never traveled to, but can now visit via the books she reads. Even at 101, Edna still lives independently, cooks for herself, and maintains a lively interest in what’s going on in the world.

Another Outreach patron Grace, aged 82, has always loved to read. The youngest of nine siblings, Grace’s first language was French, which her parents spoke at home. But by the time she started school, she spoke both French and English. Grace attended Catholic schools in Salem where she grew up, and remembers that the nuns did not approve of her selection of books. She liked Dickens and Dumas, while they wanted her to read books about the saints or other religious topics. Her favorite book when she was young was The Count of Monte Cristo. Money was scarce because it was the depression and her mother told her not to spend money on books because she could always get them at the neighborhood library. She bought the book she wanted anyway. When she got in trouble with her mother, Grace said, “I know you will eventually stop being angry, and I will still have the book.” One of 19 students in her graduating class, Grace worked for Sylvania after high school and met her future husband at a dance. He was a science teacher in Westwood. They got married, moved to Norwood and had two daughters. There wasn’t much time to read when the children were growing up, although Grace did a lot of sewing, knitting and crocheting.

Grace has very definite tastes in books. She doesn’t like romance, war stories, science fiction or westerns. She loves mysteries, crime novels and “who dunnits.” . Grace reads so extensively in her favorite genres that she has devised a special system. She makes a very small squiggle on the back inside cover of every paperback she borrows from the library so she can remember which ones she has read. Grace says that books can take you everywhere and make you forget you’re alone. You can visit Paris, Istanbul, or anywhere in the world. Grace tells me she’d “go crazy with boredom” without books to read. Maybe the nuns from her early schooling had some influence after all because now her favorite reading is the Bible and books about faith, and she starts every day with devotional reading.

Edna and Grace are representative of the many people served by the Outreach Department, each of whom has a unique and interesting life story. They show us that it doesn’t matter when in your life you become a reader – it could be when you were a child or much later in life – and that books can play an essential role in keeping life stimulating and connecting you to the larger world. You probably know people like Edna and Grace who love to read and would enjoy having an Outreach volunteer bring them books and stop for a visit each month. We hope you will help us find these people so that they can enjoy the pleasures of reading. You can reach the Outreach Department by calling
781-769-0200, ext. 228.

Keeper of Thousands of Tales

2011-06-23T06:00:00.000-04:00

Samantha Sherburne is a Simmons College intern at the Memorial Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.

When I was a child, visiting my local library was a weekly event. I would carefully select which books and movies to bring home and spend the next week with. The library was a place filled with stories and I envied the Children’s Librarian, whom I viewed as the keeper of these thousands of tales.

As a teenager in high school the school library became a home base for me. I would find any excuse possible to spend time in the library - working on term papers, studying for tests, or reading. The librarian knew me well, and we would spend time discussing the latest book I was reading or he would suggest something for me to jump into next.

Despite these wonderful and positive experiences with libraries and the librarians who made such big impacts on my life, I didn’t take the steps towards becoming a librarian myself until I graduated from college. Now I am a student in the GSLIS program at Simmons College and will begin my final semester this September. My hope is to become a Children’s Librarian, working with young children and teenagers to help foster a love for reading and give them a safe and welcoming place to spend time in.

While I grew up frequenting my town’s public library, then spending time in the school library, and staying up late studying for finals in my college library, I still had no experience with working in a library. During my second semester at Simmons, in the summer of last year, I was enrolled in one of the core courses of my program, Principles of Management. A key assignment in this course was to contact the director of a library of your choice and then conduct an interview to learn more about the job of a library director and the various styles of management we were learning about in class.

The director I contacted was Charlotte Canelli, the director of the Morrill Memorial Library. The library in Norwood has been a favorite building of mine for the past few years, since I moved to the area. I was in awe the first time I recognized the last names of famed authors and poets engraved in the stone on the outside of the building. The inside of the library is just as lovely and the material collections have something for every type of reader. For these reasons, when I had to think of a library director to talk with, I immediately thought “Norwood!”

From my interview with Director Canelli I learned all about how the library runs and the amount of work that goes into providing as many materials as possible for as many people as possible. Following the interview, I was offered the opportunity to be an unpaid intern at the library. At the time, Simmons had yet to begin an official internship course, and I knew the experience I could gain by learning from the librarians in Norwood would be invaluable to me. For the past ten months I have been coming to the library every week to spend time in the many different departments that operate in the library.

Now I am enrolled in the internship course Simmons initiated this Spring, and will complete 120 hours at the library from May through July, working to further grow my understanding of the many responsibilities the librarians have here.

When I began interning last September I was amazed to learn how many departments exist in the Morrill Memorial Library, many that I hadn’t heard about before. For instance, I hadn’t known about Outreach Services, a department that brings books and other materials to patrons who are unable to come to the library on their own. I also hadn’t known about the Literacy Department, which pairs up volunteer tutors with adult learners who wish to improve their English skills or who are working towards their GED or Citizenship tests. I’ve learned the amount of care that goes into selecting books and songs for children’s storytimes, and the energy needed to carry them out. It seems that every day that I am at the library I am learning something new about a department, a specific job, or the building itself.

The librarians and staff members have been welcoming, knowledgeable, and open to share everything they know, experiences they have had, and answering any questions I have about how things are done in the library. Even before my internship, when I would come to the library as a patron, doing research for class or browsing the stacks for a good book to read, I felt very welcome, and the Reference librarians were always ready and willing to help me locate the materials I needed to complete school projects. If you have not yet been to the Morrill Memorial Library, or it has been a while since your last visit, I would recommend dropping in and enjoying the building, its resources, and the people who make it great.

Being a part of the library community in Norwood and working as an intern here has reminded me of those wonderful memories of a childhood spent in libraries and immersed in books, and has confirmed that I have chosen the absolute best career in the world to pursue.

Visit the library's website, www.norwoodlibrary.org, or visit the library in person at 33 Walpole Street, Norwood, MA

Celebrating the Gift of a Library

2011-06-14T05:30:00.004-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin. For photographs and excerpts from articles written about the building of the Morrill Memorial Library, visit the Digital Archive of the History of the Morrill Memorial Library.

When George Morrill lost his daughter to disease, he decided to build a monument in her memory. Sara Bond Morrill was a young woman of only 23 years. She was on a pleasure trip to Florida when she contracted typhoid and died on March 7, 1895. She was educated and refined. In George Morrill’s own words, she “was an intelligent and sensible woman.”

George Morrill did not merely plan to memorialize Sarah with a carved statue, a corner park or a stately boulevard. He built an entire institution in her name.

This esteemed building was and is the Morrill Memorial Library, a “grand and lofty place”. It was built near the junction of two main thoroughfares in Norwood - Washington and Walpole Streets. In 1895 the library sat directly in front of what was then Norwood’s high school and overlooked “one of the busiest and most prosperous manufacturing towns in New England.” To the left, its grounds adjoined the then Congregational Church.

“Located on a commanding eminence … it seems as if a better fit for a library building could hardly have been selected.” A broad sweeping lawn and curved walk led to the library steps from Walpole Street. (When first built, the library was half its current size. The front half of the building, its current entrance and side wings which bring it down to Walpole Street, was added in 1965.)

When George Morrill, a wealthy ink manufacturer in Norwood, decided to erect the library in Norwood in his daughter’s memory, I assume that he traveled to Augusta, Maine where architect Joseph Neal designed a library in that state’s capital. The library in Augusta was also built in the memory of someone with dreams of “study and mental improvement.” When local attorney and reader Llewellyn Lithgow died in 1881 he left a bequest of $20,000 to the city of Augusta. The trustees of the then Literary and Library Association in Augusta then began raising more funds. They hired architect Neal and the Lithgow Public Library was opened in 1895.

Unlike Augusta, however, the trustees and members of the Norwood Public Library did not have to raise any necessary funds. George Morrill himself simply hired Neal to design a library nearly identical to the beautiful Lithgow Library. He purchased land at Walpole and Beacon streets and construction began on that property. In January 1898 the lovely building was finished (at a cost of approximatelyl $75,000) and the library’s shelves were filled with approximately 10,000 books. It was opened officially on a cold and snowy day. In the atrocious weather, 200 people gathered as the library was dedicated as the Morrill Memorial Library in Sara Bond Morrill’s name.

State Representative Francis O. Winslow read from his speech that day. “Today we receive a library edifice, the gift of our honored townsman, George H. Morrill. Yesterday [the library] was his. Today it is ours. It is ours to possess as a sacred trust, for the use and benefit of those now living in the town and their children. It is given, without reservation and without limitation, except that it shall be ever devoted to literary and educational purposes. It is a gift of love to the people.”

Norwood’s public library was said, at the time (by the state librarian), to be “the finest of its size in the country.” It was erected of sturdy Norridgewock granite from Maine and the exterior was elaborately carved and etched with the names of ancient and contemporary authors and lovers of learning. Its interior was woodworked in mahogany. Exquisite transom lights in the large and spacious reading and book rooms were crafted of stained and leaded glass. Two elaborate bronze lamps graced the outside entrance and four beautiful fireplaces were placed on the center walls of four rooms. Morrill himself said “There was nothing shoddy about [my daughter, Sara] and there will be nothing shoddy about this building.”

For over half a century this fine building served its community well. Built to house 13,000 volumes it became far too small for its growing community. In 1928, a decade when the Norwood Town Hall and the Norwood High School were built, the three-story Plimpton wing was erected at the rear of the library. This was also a gift of the Morrill family, this time from another of George’s daughters, Alice Morrill Plimpton.

In the 1940s and 1950s attempts were made to enlarge the crowded and cramped building. Plans were successful in the next decade and in 1965 the building was doubled in size. (When the additions were built in 1928 and 1965, granite was once again secured from the same quarries in Maine.)

By the end of the 20th Century, the collection of over 100,000 books was once again too cramped, the library’s furnishings outdated and staffing stations inefficient and crowded. The trustees and supporters of the library planned a renovation that not only reallocated space but that restored the building to its original glory. (In 1965 and 2001 this was accomplished with state, town and foundation funding.) In June of 2001 the building was reopened and rededicated.

On June 26, 2011 the library will hold a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the 2001 renovation. The library will be closed for normal library services on that Sunday afternoon from 2-4 pm but will instead be open for visitors to join together for music and refreshment. Entertainment and crafts will be available in the children’s room and librarians will lead tours throughout the building’s three floors.

Much like those years of 1898, 1925, 1965 and 2001, visitors are welcome to the library to celebrate the Morrill Memorial Library, the original gift of an institution and building in which George Morrill would still take great pride.

A Second Chance

2011-06-10T18:52:00.001-04:00

Norma Logan is the Literacy Coordinator at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin on June 10.

It was just a normal day in the Literacy Volunteer Office at the Morrill Memorial Library. There were potential literacy students to meet and assess, phone and e-mail messages to retrieve and respond to, reports to write, materials to choose for literacy tutors and rooms to reserve for tutor/ student pairs.

A tutor stopped by and asked me if I had read “Life is So Good” by Richard Glaubman.

I had not, nor had I heard of it. She said, “Oh, you have to read it! It’s a true story about a 101 year old man who first learned to read when he was 98 yrs old. It’s just like what you tell us in the tutor training about functionally illiterate adults.” So, I made a mental note to find the book before I left for the day.

Minutes later, I answered the phone, and it was from a manager of a company who was training employees on safety procedures in the workplace. He had one employee who could not read the written materials that he had distributed. Clearly, he did not know where to begin to help him, and he was astonished that the man could not read. I told him that the phone call was a good beginning. “Is he a native English speaker?” I asked. “Yes, American!” he said in astonishment. I assured him that having worked in the Literacy Department at the Norwood Library for over 20 years it was not the first time I had heard about an adult struggling to read. He said, “Well, it’s a first for me.” He sounded like a take-charge manager who was used to having all the answers and yet this one left him dumbfounded. I complimented him on trying to help his employee and went on to discuss ways we could help him.

That night I started reading “Life is So Good”. It is as much about the optimistic philosophy of a black man, the grandson of slaves, who grew up on a farm in Texas as it is the story about a man who was illiterate his whole life. Literacy to George Dawson was

Knowing how to break- in a horse, run a farm and live off the land. He envied other children who did go to school, but he never felt the need to learn how to read until he was very much older. However, society does change over the course of years, and the definition of what it means to be a literate person changes, also.

Dawson said upon enrolling in a literacy program at 98 yrs. “Every morning I get up, and I wonder what I might learn that day. You just never know.” It turned out that he was not only helping himself, but encouraging and motivating other adult literacy students who were much younger than he.

Weeks later, I retrieved a phone message that started with a sigh and the words, “I don’t know where to start”. I listened as a young mother tearfully explained that she was recently divorced and never graduated from high school. She had always been able to find work without a high school diploma before she was married, but now needed to study for her GED test so she could get a job to support her and her child.

To be functionally illiterate is not to be able to read or write well enough to deal with the everyday requirements of life in one’s own society. The functionally illiterate wear many faces and have the invisible disability of being illiterate until the need arrives to get a good job, retain a job, go to school, help children with homework, and so on.

The same can be said for English as a Second Language adult learners who seek us out to improve conversational English skills in order to gain employment, become American citizens or just survive in this foreign culture.

The Literacy Program at the Morrill Memorial Library has provided free trained literacy volunteer tutors to help adults who need to speak, read and write English better to achieve their goals for over 20 years. If you know of someone who could benefit from this service or would like to be a volunteer tutor, please call the Literacy Program at 781-769-4599.

Memories of Summer Reading

2011-06-03T18:47:00.002-04:00

Kelly Unsworth is Head of Children's Services at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin on June 3 written in collaboration with librarians at the Norwood elementary schools: Mr. Reuland, Mrs. Roberts, Mrs. Lodge, Mrs. Miller and Mrs. McMullan.

Most of us can remember many things about our idyllic summer vacations while we were growing up. Swimming in a lake, riding bikes throughout the town, walking to the ice cream shop for cones or sundaes. But one thing that we have in common is that we all enjoyed reading over the summer.

For some of us, it was the only time we had to read the books we wanted to read instead of the books we were assigned.

“What I remember most is sitting on my front porch reading mystery stories. I did not live on a very busy street so there wasn’t much to distract me and I was often able to finish two or three books a week,” said Mrs. Miller, librarian at the Prescott and Willett schools. “There were always books in my house and the public library was a short bike ride away. I was fortunate that my mother loved to read just as much as I did, so trips to the library were frequent.”

“In the summer, my mother had to lock my brother and I outside so that we wouldn’t spend all day laying inside reading,” said Mr. Reuland, librarian at the Callahan and Willett schools. “Little did she know that all we did was hide under the branches of the pine tree on the side of the house and read under there. I loved spending all summer reading fantasy novels. I would read anything with a dragon on the cover.”

“The public library in my home town was about a half mile from my home and close to a small market,” said Mrs. Roberts, library teacher at the Balch and Willett schools. “My sisters and I would walk there several times a week and take as many books out as we could carry, after stopping for a treat at the market. I felt proud that I could walk there by myself when I wanted as well. I would often choose chapter books that my older sisters had read and recommended to me. Two of my favorites were ‘The Little Princess’ and ‘The Secret Garden’ by Francis Burnett.”

“We did not have a library in my elementary schools. Therefore, the public library was always of great importance to my family,” said Mrs. McMullen, library teacher at the Cleveland school. “We also moved several times when I was young - always during the summer. Registering for a library card was the first item on our family agenda after the big move! Luckily, the public library was always within walking distance of our homes. I would walk to the library, several times a week, to pick out the books I would devour at home. I can still remember the summer I read through every fairy tale book the library owned!”

“I was a serious bookworm when I was in elementary school (and I still am!)” says Mrs. Lodge, library teacher at the Oldham and Willett schools. “I always looked forward to the reading challenge we were given over summer vacation - to write down all the books you read over the summer. I would take out stacks of books from the public library and just devour them. It was rewarding to see my big, long list of books at the end of the summer!”

My summer days were long and hot, with little to do but eating Kool-Aid popsicles. Luckily, my father was a children’s librarian, so we always had plenty of books. We also had a small branch library that was in an old house. The children’s room was on the second floor, and you had to climb up a set of small narrow steps that were so steep they felt like a ladder. The librarian looked very stern, but there were lots of nooks to read in. We would always stop at the playground, which was next to the library, and then buy either a dill pickle or a pretzel stick for 5 cents at the deli for the walk home.

Take a trip to the library this summer and create your own memories. Sign up for the Summer Reading program at the Morrill Memorial library and start reading. The summer reading booklet, a list of suggested new titles, comes out the last week of school. It will also be posted online at the Elementary School Library website, and on the public library website at: www.norwoodlibrary.org. These are books that are not assigned, that there will be no tests on, and that you may actually like. There are fantasy, fairy tales, biographies, picture books, and possibly even a title with a dragon on the cover.

Sign up begins June 13th in the Children’s section of the library. For more information, call the library or talk to one of the elementary school library teachers.

Confessions of a Non-Reading Child

2011-05-25T18:49:00.002-04:00

Jean Todesca is a children's librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin on May 25.

If you ever told me that I would grow up to be a librarian, I would have looked at you cross-eyed. It is still hard for me to believe the profession that I have chosen and how much I love it.

Tomboy, “rough and tumble” and constant motion are the terms I use to describe my younger self. The thought of sitting down and reading seemed like such a waste of time.

My brothers and sisters loved to read and would easily spend as far as I was concerned a “LAZY” afternoon enjoying a good book. Why sit around when there was so much to do and see? I’d be outside riding my bike or throwing a ball. Maybe I’d read a comic book that my brother left on the bathroom floor, but that was the extent of my pleasure reading.

For school assignments, I would choose the shortest and easiest possible book for reports. I still remember I read almost every book in the series, What is a Pig?; What is a Dog?; What is a Cow?. I think they had only 40 pages tops and I was in the 5th grade! If there was an incentive reading chart in the classroom, as long as I had a few stars on it, I felt I had made the proper effort.

This is the background that I bring to my position of Children’s Librarian. Often parents will say their child won’t read and they’re frustrated. I totally understand: My Mom couldn’t get me to read either. There is a twist to this story. As an adult and young adult, I became an avid reader. It happened slowly over time. First with reading in bits and bytes, I read magazines, newspapers and comic books. In time, short stories in magazines caught my interest.

If I enjoyed a short story, I would look to see if the author had other works and soon I was on to novels. I remember reading The Shining by Stephen King on cloudy days while life guarding on the Cape, and being so engrossed that I hoped the weather wouldn’t clear up. So, parents I know it is hard, but do not fret.

Here is my advice for parents. Any reading is OK whether your child is reading magazines, cereal boxes, comics or small books. Always try to find a hook, something that will draw your child’s attention. Often I recommend a high interest graphic novel or comic which comes in a series for example The Adventures of TinTin because the reader always wants the next one. Once your child sees some value in reading, then he or she can be guided to try more complex works. Also, don’t forget nonfiction section, children love to read about real things.

There are many titles designed for casual reading with pictures and captions that will not overwhelm your reluctant reader. Be a positive role model, read for pleasure in front of your children. Just remember we all find our path to reading in many ways and if one thing doesn’t work try something else. Happy Reading! P.S. I’m currently reading 3 books at once. Not bad for a nonreader!

Book Clubs are Everywhere!

2011-05-19T07:57:00.003-04:00

Shelby Warner is a part-time Reference Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin on May 19.

Be alert! Book clubs are everywhere. In a world where so much information is so easily obtained through electronic devices, it sometimes surprises us to realize that many people still love to read. Many of those readers have found great enjoyment and mental stimulation by joining book clubs.

Oprah Winfrey gave a boost to such clubs when she began promoting books on her show. She invited viewers to read the selected books and talk about them with friends, then watch her show at a later date when the books would be discussed. The effort not only made viewers aware of “serious contemporary novels” but also gave them the confidence and skill to tackle more “formidable titles.”

Book clubs, of course, have been around for a long time. . My husband belongs to the Fugitive Bill Literary Society which has met monthly for 22 years. Members come and go but there is a core group who were charter members. They have amassed an impressive list of books, the first being The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas and the most recent being Something from the Oven by Laura Shapiro. My husband credits the long existence of this club to the fact that they have both men and women in the group. On the other hand, one of my colleagues belongs to a group which has met for 20 years and they are all women.

I am a member of the Blue/Gray Book Club, the brain child of my 17 year-old grandson who thought we should have a family book club. So, several of us said, “Choose a book.” He chose The Stranger by Albert Camus. Since then, we have read books by Faulkner, O’Connor and Hardy among others. Early in our reading, my sister in Georgia learned about the club on Facebook and asked if she could read along with us. We said, “Sure, why not?” Soon, a friend of hers in Florida asked to join, and eventually two of her friends became members. So, the Blue/Gray Book Club was born.. Much of our discussion is held online, but we have met in both the North and the South. It is great fun, especially our last meeting in Port St. Joe, Florida.

Each book club is unique and seems to develop its own personality. My sister-in-law in New York state belongs to a group brought together by a retired teacher. They meet monthly and books are chosen by concensus. Some of their recent selections have been Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand and The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic. The wine and snacks they once served have become full fledged dinners based on the book. The members come from varied backgrounds and political persuasions which makes for lively discussions. The primary question for them, however, seems to be, “Which is more important, the book or the meal?”

If you are interested in reading and discussing books, you might want to bring together your own group of friends, or participate in an established club. The First Thursday Book Discussion Group which meets at the library is led by reference librarian Margot Sullivan. It meets both morning and evening on the first Thursday of the month from October to May. Margot has many stories to tell regarding this club of 23 years, one of them being about an 80 year old member who has ridden her bike from Milton for 15-20 years in order to participate. They have enjoyed “excellent discussions” on classics like The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy and contemporary novels such as A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.

Norwood Young Professionals Book Club also meets at the library. Meetings begin with an hour of book trivia games followed by a second hour of book discussion. The last book read was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and the next selection is The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig. “This is a developing book group. Drop-ins are welcome!”

The library co-sponsors The Norwood Young Readers Award for 4th and 5th graders established seven years ago by Paula McMullen of the Norwood Schools. Books are chosen by a committee and discussed during meetings at the library. At the end of the year the children vote on their favorite book. They are enthusiastic about being a part of NYRA and, for some, participation has become a family tradition. Both teachers and librarians “feel fortunate to be a part of this annual reading program that extends and expands students’ reading interests and knowledge of different authors.” If you’d like to know more, talk to Kelly Unsworth, Children’s librarian.

As you can see, book clubs can be both fun and mentally stimulating. If this article whets your appetite for starting your own group, you can get help. Two helpful web sites are http://bestsellers.about.com/od/bookclubresources and www.readinggroupchoices.com. The first includes the article “How to Start a Book Club” by Erin Miller. The second has an excerpt from Rachel Jacobsohn’s The Reading Group Handbook: “Ten Tips for Starting and Running a Successful Book Club.” Let us help you get started on this venture with books and resources available in the library and through the Minuteman Library Network. Happy Reading!!

Must Reads: Non-Fiction

2011-05-12T22:16:00.001-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.

Every year in late December boxes and boxes of books arrive on the doorsteps of twelve dedicated (and perhaps masochistic) readers. They are the judges for the annual Massachusetts Center for the Book awards. There are three judges in each of four categories: fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s.

The criteria are simple for a book to be judged in one of those categories. It must be written about a Massachusetts topic and/or be written by a Massachusetts author during the previous year (in this case, 2010.)

It is amazing how many books each year center on a topic that relates to Massachusetts. It is equally amazing how many wonderful authors call Massachusetts home. Many of our colleges and universities boast scholars and professors who find a home base in our state. In addition, the lure of our coastline inspires many authors to nestle into a prolific existence and spend their days and nights writing fine literature and memoirs.

Over eighty non-fiction books were entered into consideration this year. A grueling process began as the books arrived, were read, discussed and compared. By the beginning of April only twelve could remain to make up the list of ‘Must Reads Non-Fiction 2011.’ These twelve books were announced at a reception at the annual Massachusetts Library Association conference in Danvers on April 26.

The books on the list include some impressive books of national acclaim. Perhaps the most highly reviewed is “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” by Pulitzer-Prize winner author Isabel Wilkerson. This is a narrative of the Great Migration, the journey of African Americans from the United States south to cities in the North and West in the early half of the twentieth century as told by three individual lives, those of Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling and Robert Foster.

Bruce Watson’s “Freedom Summer: The Savage Season that Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy” tells the story of hundreds of courageous black and white American citizens who struggled for the rights of the black voter in the South. The book creates a new face for the historical events of the summer of 1964.

“Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre” by University of Massachusetts professor Heather Cox Richardson also visits historical familiar territory. The 1890 massacre of 300 Lakota Sioux by United States soldiers is a series of events tragically affected by politics, unwise decisions, extreme rhetoric and yellow journalism.

“First Family: Abigail and John Adams” by Joseph Ellis is an historical and romantic narrative of a marriage and a family. Abigail Adams is not only the mother who raises John Adam’s children, but also the wife who longs for her husband. She was a woman who truly supported from afar this brilliant man who was devoted to the founding of the American nation.

“Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America” by Benjamin Carp examines relevant issues for both the English and the Colonists in the lead-up to the Boston Tea Party and the onset of the Revolutionary War. It is a well-known story told in new detail.

In 2007-2008 local author Sebastian Junger embedded himself with American soldiers in Afghanistan for 15 months. His book “War” is a powerful account of war as a conflict and personal experience.

Several memoirs were included in the final cut of Must Reads 2011. Motherhood sometimes includes grief with the joy, and trials with the pride. Marianne Leone’s Jesse: A Mother’s Story of Grief, Grace and Everyday Bliss describes the “challenges faced in a family raising an honor-roll student trapped by Cerebral Palsy in a quadriplegic body.”

Normal Mailer made his home in Provincetown during the last years of his life. Author Dwayne Raymond chronicles that story in a very intimate and loving view and he invites all of us to share in some of those tender moments at the end of the life of this man of great genius and intellect in “Mornings with Mailer".

My personal favorites included two books. “The Great Penguin Rescue: 40,000 Penguins, a Devastating Oil Spill, and the Inspiring Story of the World’s Largest Animal Rescue” was written by Dyan deNapoli who chronicles the amazing story of 75,000 dedicated volunteers. They not only rescued 19,000 oiled penguins but they also saved 20,000 more from sharing a similar fate after a tragic oil spill off the coast of Africa. “Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things” by Randy Frost and Gail Steketee is a fascinating account of the mental illness that affects “hoarders,” those unfortunate souls who lose their health, their families, their marriages and their lives to an obsession with collecting and storing things, no matter what the cost to quality of life.

The question at the center of “Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age” by William Powers is whether or not technology helps or “destroys civilization.” Included in this account are examinations of the Gutenberg printing press and present-day personal devices such as computers and smart phones.

The most beautiful book included on the list is “Schooner: Building a Wooden Boat on Martha's Vineyard.” In text by Tom Dunlop and photos by Alison Shaw, Schooner “introduces us to a small Massachusetts shipyard which builds boats in the traditional way.”

Later this summer after more circumspection and discussion, debate and argument only one of those 12 will be chosen as best of the Massachusetts Center for the Book Non Fiction

For help searching in the Minuteman catalog for these titles or for placing requests for all library materials please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

M is for Mother's Day

2011-05-05T17:28:00.002-04:00

Nancy Ling is an Outreach Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

Somehow it seems fitting that my debut article for the Norwood Transcript falls around Mother’s Day. While some folks love the treats and tricks of Halloween or the long stem roses of Valentine’s Day, I’d trade them all for a simple homemade card on Mother’s Day.

Like many of you I feel a special something for all the wonderful mothers out there. My hat goes off to them: working moms, stay-at-home moms, retired moms, adopted moms, foster moms, two- in-the-morning-wake-up-moms. Still I have a special place in my heart for the woman who is often forgotten this time of year—the not-yet mother. It’s during those waiting years that the not-yet mother wonders if her deepest desire will ever be fulfilled.

I’ll never forget the despondency a woman may feel when faced with a future without children. For five years I was that not-yet mother and Mother’s Day was one of the hardest holidays to endure. It became one of those dreaded Sundays when I felt surrounded by beaming parents who couldn’t relate to a childless couple. There was one Mother’s Day that stands out, however.

Fearing the typical church service paying homage to motherhood, while at the same time overwhelmed with guilt for such resentment, I hunkered down in the pew next to my husband. I knew what was coming.

That’s when Reverend Robert Davidson began preaching about Hannah—another not-yet mother. I was shocked. Someone had actually noticed my pain, and that someone had put aside the needs of the majority for the needs of one. It was as if a floodgate had been opened. My situation wasn’t new. There were women centuries ago who’d also endured the same.

It is sometimes in the darkest moments of life that rebirth comes. I had always loved to write, but suddenly I found a new voice. I didn’t have the energy for short stories or novels, but poetry poured from my soul. Writing became healing. While there was much I couldn’t control, I could write. My thoughts. The pen. The paper. Those were under my influence. I was so consumed with writing that before I knew it I had two births…one to a beautiful baby girl, the other to my first collection of poetry: Laughter in My Tent.

Peggy Orenstein can relate. In her memoir, Waiting for Daisy, she poignantly addresses the topic of infertility. Orenstein’s subtitle says it all: “A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, and Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night, and One Woman’s Quest to Become a Mother.” That title alone beckoned me to read this true to life love story. At times humorous and wrenching, Orenstein takes her readers through the courageous account of her journey to motherhood.

And no, after this long wait, none of us becomes perfect mothers. But hopefully, we become appreciative ones. There are things we’ll never forget: first steps, first teeth, first silly giggles at the water swirling down the drain, or bubbles in the sand box. Through a collection of essays Because I Love Her highlights the bond between mothers and daughters. These personal stories reveal life lessons imparted by mothers. One of my favorite essays is by Katherine Center. Entitled “Things to Remember Not to Forget.” These first lines will give you a taste of her humorous voice: “At our house, for our kids, who are two and five, everything is better with a big side order of Naked. Jumping on the bed is good, but Naked Jumping is better. Hiding in the closet is good, but Naked Hiding is better….The only thing, in fact, that’s not better naked is bathing, which is far better done with socks on.”

It’s a happy mother who embraces a sock bath. Eww. I believe pediatrician Meg Meeker, M.D., would approve. In her book The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers, Meeker encourages mothers to reclaim their passion, purpose and sanity. Is that possible? By the end of the book, you’ll be a believer too. As my wise Uncle Norman used to say, a habit is hard to break. If you take away the “H,” you still have “a bit.” Take away the “A,” you still have a “bit.” All the way down to the “it.” But Meeker delves into habits that are worth keeping. From faith to solitude, friendship to finance, Meeker shares practical steps to becoming a fulfilled mother.

And for all of those mothers who are able to find pockets of solitude, how about a light mystery? Mother's Day Murder (a Lucy Stone mystery), by Leslie Meier, might be just the right read to keep in your back pocket. According to Library Journal Review, “Small-town life in Maine should be quiet and safe, but feuding families, high-school bullying, and the murder of a missing 16-year-old girl makes Tinker's Cove residents overprotective of their children and suspicious of one other. Another murder places Lucy Stone, part-time reporter and mother of four, in the thick of things.”

As for me, I’ll be reading The Night Before Mother’s Day, by Natasha Wing, to my two daughters. You’re never too old for picture books, right? In this sweet story, a mother finds all she needs for a perfect holiday right at home: a homemade cake, a homemade spa treatment and lots of love. That is, after all, what I’m wishing for all the moms and future moms out there…a chance to stop, pause and embrace those moments in life worth treasuring. Happy Mother’s Day!

National Library Week!

2011-04-28T13:44:00.000-04:00

Kelly Unsworth is head of Children's Services at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

You might be a passionate library user if:
Every now and then, I meet a young person who seems destined to become a librarian. She might love technology, or he might enjoy reading and recommending books to patrons. These youngsters frequent the library, volunteer their services and utilize all that the library has to offer. But what truly sets them apart from the other library users is a passion for everything book related: new books, book clubs, movies from books, author visits, new technology, and the library in general.
Most often, I will suggest to these students that they might consider a career in Library Science, and I answer the slew of questions that are likely to follow. Although I realize that only a few of these children will enter the field of librarianship, many others will go on to become what I like to refer to as “passionate public library users.” Librarians know who these patrons are; they are in the library almost daily, they schedule their days around library visits, they bring their children to the library, they bring other people’s children to the library, they frequent library events, are aware of the technology available to them, they know how to place a reserve on a book that has not yet been published, and they are on a first name basis with the library staff. As librarians, it is our goal to create passionate library users and to satisfy the needs of these users. Many of you reading this article may recognize yourself in my description, but if you need more convincing, feel free to read the following list:
“You Might be a Passionate Library User if…
You come in to the library for a quick visit and you leave…4 hours later.
The first place you visit on vacation is the local library.
The number for Museum Passes is in your speed dial.
You would never, ever, consider joining Netflix: why pay money for movies when you can get them free at the library?
You peruse the shelves at Barnes & Noble, then head for the library to find the books.
You know the warmest/coldest/ loudest/quietest spots in the library.
You feel a jolt of excitement when the library e-news arrives.
You consider Movie Night at the library a “Date Night Out.”
You daydream about retiring and volunteering in the library.
You cancel your newspaper and magazine subscriptions because you can read them at the library.
You compulsively straighten bookshelves, at other people’s houses.
You approach your child’s research project as an exciting challenge.
You have your library card number and PIN committed to memory.
You don’t have to ask if Lucy the R.E.A.D. Dog is a real animal.
You are a stalker at the Speed Read shelf.
And lastly, you bring baked goods to the library staff during the holiday seasons!
So, in honor of National Library Week, the staff at your public library would like to extend a thank you to all of the “passionate public library users.” Keep coming in, and bring a few of your friends.

Free Parking! Go With the Pass!

2011-04-21T09:22:00.003-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column each week in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

I love to save money. Years ago I never grocery shopped without coupons. These days I can’t seem to keep them organized unless I cut them from the Sunday papers and run immediately with them to the local grocery stores or pharmacies. My husband is a big fan of Big Y’s savings coins and he’s never prouder than when he presents me with bouquets of flowers he’s purchased at a third of the cost. Several vases often overflow in our kitchen and he basks in the smell of huge savings while I pretend that he is being purely romantic.

I scour the Internet for online coupons for purchases from my favorite catalogs. My proudest moments are those when I manage free shipping and more than 75% discounts from some of my favorite clothing catalogs like Coldwater Creek and Chico’s. Whatever I’m buying, I always Google online discounts and more than half the time I find some kind of discount or free shipping offer.

More often, though, I like to save when we eat out at restaurants at least one night a week. I’ve become a huge fan of Groupon and Open Table and other online websites that offer 50% or more discounts at some of my favorite local restaurants. The catch is that you pay upfront and you must remember to use the savings coupons. Recently, Gerry and I got a check that was so low that we thought the server had made a mistake because it included our initial online payment.

Library passes are one of the best-kept secrets for savings. These library passes are often funded by Friends of the library groups or other groups in the community and they offer huge savings for those who reserve them.

The Morrill Memorial Library has discounted passes to museums and parks in the area and these include the Museum of Science, the Boston Aquarium, the Museum of Fine Arts and seven others such as the Franklin Park Zoo. Parents and grandparents often book these passes weeks in advance to save big for their families.

One of my favorite passes is the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) Parks Pass which provides free parking at many of the local state parks. These passes can save the borrower anywhere from $2 to $9 at the ocean beaches. Let’s face it, parking costs are usually annoying and there is nothing better on a family outing than to avoid grumbling. The passes provide unlimited day-use parking at any of the parks that charge a fee. The ParksPass is a plastic tag that hangs from your rearview window and it is good year-round. It can be checked out for the entire weekend so be sure to reserve it early.

There are state parks that charge parking in eastern Massachusetts and most of them, obviously, are the state’s beaches. If you travel north you might find Nantasket beach a welcome relief on a summer’s day. This destination has been a favorite for over a century and a half and it is home of the historic Paragon Carousel. A bit further up you’ll find the Lynn Shore and Nahant Beach Reservation where there are periodic interpretive programs including some in marine biology and natural history. Even further north is Salisbury Beach near the New Hampshire border.

Myles Standish State Forest is a local treasure. It stretches across parts of Plymouth and Carver and it is the “largest publicly-owned recreation area in southeastern Massachusetts.” It boasts miles of paved biking trails, equestrian trials and hiking trails through pine forests. There are sixteen ponds and several camping areas. The DCR pass is good for free parking at College Pond. There are interpretive walks along the ponds and cranberry bogs in the summer.

Demarest Lloyd State Park in Dartmouth is unknown to many Massachusetts residents. A perfect family spot, there is an 1800-foot beach with warm summer temperatures. Whether it is walking, bird watching, wave-splashing or picnicking, this beach is a great destination for families and is open Memorial Day through Labor Day. You’ll save the $7 parking fee with the pass.

Other beaches included in the DCR ParksPass are the South Cape Beach in Mashpee, Scusset Beach in Sandwich, Horseneck Beach in Westport Point and Watson Pond State Park in Taunton.

If it's nature you’re after instead of ocean or pond waters, there are many other state parks to explore. Hopkinton State Park and Cochituate are close by. Bradley Palmer and Pearl Hill state parks are further afield but great family outings for a day. Walden Pond and Great Brook Farm are closer by in Concord and Carlisle. They are wonderful historical trips through Massachusetts history. In the summer you can swim in Walden Pond or walk the trails that inspired Henry David Thoreau. At Great Brook Farm in Carlisle there are over 20 miles of trails for walker, hikers, mountain bikers and horseback riders and these become cross-country skiing trails in the winter.

There are many more parks in Massachusetts that offer free parking with the pass in the nearby Blackstone Valley or further west along the Mohawk Trail, Connecticut River Valley and in the Quabbin District. Visit the DCR site or the Museum Pass link on the library’s website, www.norwoodlibrary.org, for more information and be sure to explore a park in our wonderful state. Please visit the Morrill Memorial Library in person or call the Information Desk for help with placing a request for the Massachusetts State ParksPass or any library pass to local museums, zoos and parks.

Spring is in the Air

2011-04-13T05:16:00.002-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column each week in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Spring is in the air.

At our house we can tell because the snow has melted from even the snowiest, shadiest spots in the yard. We’ve dusted off our bikes and pumped the tires waiting for an early morning above 50 degrees. The snow shovels are stored optimistically high but pessimistically at an easy reach.

Spring is in the air. In our house we can tell because The Masters was on TV.

If you had told me years ago that I would spend a late spring afternoon keeping watch on a small white ball as it soars through the air and lands on the televised grass I would have told you that you were crazy. That was, of course, before I married a golfer.

And The Golf did not disappoint this latest spring weekend. The Masters, played in beautiful Augusta, Georgia with its zillions of amazing azaleas, was incredibly exciting. Within an hour of the end of the match, as shadows grew long and some golfers grew tired, the outcome was far from certain. It was a spectacular ride watching little-known South African Charl Schwartzel come from behind and win the tournament. It was sports at its unpredictable best.

Yes spring is in the air. And new sports books are flying into the library.

“True Boo: Gator Catchin', Orangutan Boxin', and My Wild Ride to the PGA Tour” by Boo Weekley is one book that arrived and quickly left the shelf. Weekley became obsessed with winning a PGA tournament and did so in 2007. He's earned his living on golf for a number of years and shares his crazy and honest tales in the book.

“Four Days in July: Tom Watson, the 2009 Open Championship and a Tournament for the Ages” by Jim Huber will be published this May. Watson was yet another golfer who mesmerized the sports world for a weekend two years ago. In professional golf, the Open is the oldest of the four major championships and it is played in Scotland or England. Tom Watson surprised the crowd as he very nearly won the match at the age of ‘very close to sixty’. It was a match that he had won five times before (the last twenty-six years before as a much-younger man.)

It isn’t just golf that is being written about.

ESPN, or the Entertainment Sports Programming Network, wasn’t always a household word. Back in 1979 some people thought the founders were crazy to launch a 24-hour television network devoted to sports and nothing but sports. Now ESPN dominates sports news along with all of its personalities. James Andrew Miller is the author of “Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN”, a book that will also be on the library shelf in May.

And spring wouldn’t be spring without baseball. (Thankfully, Red Sox fans have had some good news this past week.) There is a plethora of new baseball books just out or close to hitting the shelves.

“Baseball in the Garden of Eden: Secret History of the Early Game” by John Thorn reveals that while the beginnings of American baseball can be found in Pittsfield, Massachusetts as far back as 1791, baseball’s real history dates to ancient Egypt.

Zach Hample has written “The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals and Secrets Beneath the Stitches”. Answers to many questions about the ball and the sport can be found here. Hample himself has an incredible collection of baseballs all snagged at various major league games, 4,700 of them since 1990. (He now catches them for charity and offers advice on how to snag your own in the book and on his blog.)

In “Bottom of the 33^rd: Hope, Redemption and Baseball’s Longest Game”, New York Times columnist Dan Barry shares the story of a minor league baseball game played between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings in 1981. The game, which began mid-evening on a Saturday evening in Pawtucket did not end until just before dawn on the next morning, Easter. Among the players were Wade Boggs and Cal Ripken. (Bill Littlefield of NPR’s Only a Game has a wonderful podcast about the book which aired just this past month.) Rules for a curfew had been mysteriously omitted from the rule book that year and the game lasted eight long and grueling hours.

“The House that Ruth Built: A New Stadium, the First Yankees Championship and the Redemption of 1923” is written by Slate sports columnist Robert Weintraub. Weintraub’s story describes Ruth’s “bashing” style and “scientific baseball” favored by others and highlights the construction of the Yankee stadium and the 1923 World Series.

In “Knuckler: My Life with Baseball’s Most Confounding Pitch”, Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield describes the ball that “floats in slow motion” mystifying batters and spectators.

Other newly-published (or soon to be) baseball books to check out this spring and summer are “The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 MPH” by Major League All-Star Shawn Green, “Uppity: My Untold Story about the Games People Play” by Bill White, “Nobody’s Perfect: Two Men, One Call, and a Game for Baseball History” by Armando Galarrag, “the Greatest Game Ever Pitched: Juan Marichal, Warran Spahn, and the Pitching Duel of the Century” by Jim Kaplin, “Campy: The Two Lives of Roy Campenalla: by Neil Lanctot, “1961: The Inside Story of the Maris-Mantle Home Run Chase” by Phil Pepe and “Stan Musial and American Life” by George Vecsey.

And as life would have it, spring will give way to summer and summer to fall. “Play Like You Mean it: Passion, Laughs and Leadership in the World’s Most Beautiful Game” by Rex Ryan will get you ready for another season … and yet another ball, the football.

For help searching in the Minuteman catalog for these titles or for placing requests for all library materials please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

April is the Cruelest Month

2011-04-07T14:05:00.000-04:00

Marie Lydon is the head of the Reference Department at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

“April is the cruelest month,” as T. S. Eliot once wrote in his famous poem “The Waste Land.” Not to most of us who live in this part of the country. In this area, there is so much to look forward to and celebrate in April and books to lift the spirits after a long cruel winter. April is National Poetry month and at the library we have numerous books of “Pocket Poets” on subjects such as motherhood, friendship, fatherhood, love and marriage that are easy to carry with you when you need a poetry jolt. We also have “The Poets Laureate Anthology” edited by Elizabeth Schmidt as well as collections by our current Library of Congress Poet Laureate, W. S. Merwin, and current Pulitzer Prize winner Rae Armantrout, a new collection by Caroline Kennedy entitled “She Walks in Beauty: a Woman’s Journey through Poems,” as well as many other collections by old and new poets, most found in the 811 section of the library.

If sports and not poetry is your interest we have the opening of the Red Sox home season against the Yankees this weekend and many current and older books about our team and players to get you in the spirit when you are not watching the games. Among them are “Knuckler: My Life with Baseball’s Most Confounding Pitch” by Tim Wakefield with Tony Masarotti, “78: the Boston Red Sox, a Historic Game and a Divided City” by Bill Reynolds, and “Born to Play: My Life in the Game” by Dustin Pedroia with Edward Delaney.

If participatory rather than spectator sports are your thing, we have the excitement of the Boston Marathon next weekend and books about preparing and running in a Marathon if you are up to it. Among them are “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Marathon Training” by David Levine, “Boston Marathon: How to Qualify” by Jeff Galloway and “26 Miles to Boston” by Michael Connelly. You can also pick up a copy of “Runner’s World” magazine in the Reading Room. None of this will help, however, unless you are really determined or challenged to do it, which I can admire but would never attempt. We have watched from the sidelines often, usually in Natick, as our neighbor has run for years and a cousin came up from New Orleans one year to run. It was on our daughter’s “bucket list” and we were very proud of her when she accomplished her goal last year but she hasn’t mentioned it this year, content to do shorter fun road races.

Moving on, we celebrate the beginning of the Revolutionary War in Lexington and Concord with a state holiday. There are numerous books about the war and “Paul Revere’s Ride” by David Fischer in the 973.3 section of the library. If you want to relive this event, you can get up very early on April 18^th, as my husband, son and his friend did many years ago, and drive to Lexington to watch the annual reenactment. You have to be a history buff, which they were, to want to do this but it was memorable for the three of them and they still talk about it. My husband tells me that Maine also celebrates this holiday, as Maine was once part of Massachusetts. After checking this out in “Chase’s Calendar of Annual Events” I find that he is correct. You can also read about previous reenactments by checking it out on the recently acquired library database “Historical Boston Globe, 1872-1979” where you learn that at the April 20, 1894 commemoration, the speakers were hoping to make this a national holiday. This useful database can be found by going to www.norwoodlibrary.org and clicking on “Databases in the Library” where the databases are listed alphabetically. There you will find all sorts of interesting historical tidbits about long ago Marathons, baseball games, and even Norwood events and personalities.

In April we have our local elections and if you are a newly elected Town Meeting member we hope that you will come to the library to borrow a copy of the “Town Meeting Time: a Handbook of Parliamentary Law” to help you find your way. As we read in Shelby Warner’s column several months ago, there was a time in the early days of the town when women could only vote for the School Committee, using “tinted ballots.” Thank goodness we have come a long way from that. Congratulations to all!

And, last but not least, we at the library can celebrate the end of tax season, even if you cannot. We have instructions to use in the library, forms to take home or photocopy, or forms we can google for you if you don’t have a computer or printer at home and are still working on your taxes.

And then there is gardening, too many beautiful helpful books to mention. Visit the library, in person or online, for materials and programs. If the books you are looking for are not on the shelf, reserve them in person, online, or by calling the library. Forget about the winter, if you can, and have a great spring!

A Century after the Fire

2011-03-27T09:42:00.003-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column each week in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

In 1911 over one-thousand workers were killed in work-related accidents every week in the United States. Divided by the days of the week that number becomes over 140 people per day. As we know this was before the advent of strict child-labor laws and many of those workers were children.

March 25, 1911 was a single day in history when 146 workers died just on the Lower East Side of New York City. 146 workers in one building on one corner of Green and Washington Streets immediately lost their lives. It was the worst workplace disaster in New York State for ninety years until September 11, 2001.

The Triangle Waist Factory employed over 500 women and men on the top three floors of a 10-story building near Washington Square in Manhattan. These were mostly immigrants between the ages of 14 and 25 who worked in what we would today call a sweatshop.

There were 240 sewing machines on each of the 8^th and 9^th floors of this garment factory. The machines were closely packed side by side and the workers’ elbows nearly touched as they worked. Most of them worked 12 to 14 hours a day, six days a week for paltry wages. It was a greedy time and well-to-do men (immigrants themselves) were interested in the bottom line – profits.

The then-modern building was meant to survive a fire and it did. 146 workers didn’t.

Lit possibly by a cigarette, the fire exploded as it consumed small pieces of thread, fabric and tissue paper patterns that had been discarded on the floors and swept under tables. Large lengths of fabrics and huge spools of thread sat on every worker’s table. Hundreds of ‘Gibson Girl’ shirtwaists in fluttery fabrics were piled high in varying stages of assembly. The flames roared as they were fed by these dry goods. The inferno quickly engulfed the entire 8th floor.

Nearby fire engines raced to the scene and firefighters held high their hoses as they poured water on the building. Exit doors for escape were locked, presumably to keep the workers from taking breaks before closing time or to deter them from stealing fabric from the factory. There were no sprinklers in the building although they had been invented and were available. Building codes simply didn’t require them. Antiquated fire company ladders reached only to the sixth floor. As the fire traveled throughout the 8^th floor 80 of the young girls and boys, women and men escaped the flames and jumped to their deaths. Helpless onlookers looked on in horror. Another 66 more victims were burned as they were either unable or unwilling to jump.

The company’s owners, one of them being visited by his own young daughters, escaped to the roof along with all of the clerical staff. The tenth floor housed the factory’s offices and there were no locked doors on that floor.

The 100^th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was last week on March 25. HBO produced a powerful short documentary that premiered on March 21, 2011. The Department of Labor launched a website (m.dol.gov/shirtwaist) devoted to the fire complete with archival photographs and audio narration. Articles focusing on the Triangle Fire have been highlighted in nearly every major news website and newspaper this month.

History classes in elementary and junior high schools have examined the fire in studies of labor and social injustice. Many of the books written about the fire are written for elementary and junior high audiences. “Flesh & Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy” (2011) by Albert Martin is one such book written for young adults. I’ve written about my respect for non-fiction children’s books with their wonderful graphics that easily illustrate and text that is readable and interesting. Martin’s book is just that. After introducing the topic in the first chapter he continues with concise descriptions of the United States and New York just after the turn of the century. We begin to understand immigration and neighborhoods and struggle. We marvel at the resilience of the poor and we shake our heads at the greed of the rich. This book can be read in one or two sittings.

Many other authors have written about that famous fire. “Fragments from the Fire: Poems” written by Chris Llewellyn was awarded the Walt Whitman Award for 1986. “Triangle: The Fire that Changed America” by David Von Drehle was written for adults in 2004 and is available in large print format and unabridged audio book format. Historical fiction for both adults and children using the fire as a backdrop of the story includes Katherine Weber’s “Triangle” (2007). Fiction for young adults 12 and up includes “Uprising” by Margaret Peterson Haddix and “Threads and Flames” by Esther Freisner (2010).

There are many non-fiction children’s books including Katie Marsico’s “The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire: Its Legacy of Labor Rights” (2010), Donna Getzinger’s “The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire” (2009). A dozen more were published in the last decade alone.

Sometimes horrible events can be a catalyst to powerful change. The Triangle Fire was one such tragedy. One of the witnesses of the fire that day was Frances Perkins, a social worker and graduate of Mount Holyoke College. Ms. Perkins went on to become FDR’s secretary of labor and the first female member of a president’s cabinet. She was influential all of her life in helping the working poor. In Kirstin Downey’s biography of Frances Perkins, “The Woman behind the New Deal”, one chapter is devoted to the impact that the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire had on Ms. Perkins. It was that turning point in her career that inspired her to help transform the course of history after she had been so moved by heartbreak and social injustice.

Shooting the SuperMoon

2011-03-20T22:06:00.006-04:00

Charlotte Canelli is the Library Director of the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin each week.

I find I rarely use my ‘real’ camera these days. This is simply because I carry a camera with me at all times and that is the one in my mobile phone. The candid shots using my phone can be so easy and fun. I email them or post them in seconds to friends and family on Facebook. I also have a photo album (called the camera roll) on the iPhone with me everywhere I go.

There’s a photo of my daughter’s final wedding dress choice taken right in the dressing room of the bridal boutique. Another is of my grandson in his dapper brown suit right when he dashed out the door to his friend’s Bar Mitzvah. Yet more capture my family and friends and my life’s special and significant moments when a larger camera is too inconvenient to carry.

There are other photo opportunities, however, and they still require something more sophisticated. A case in point was this past Saturday night – March 19^th or the night of the SuperMoon.

According to Wikipedia, the term SuperMoon was first used in 1979 by an astrologer named Richard Nolle. A SuperMoon is when the Earth, Moon and Sun are lined up and when the Moon “is in its nearest approach to the Earth.” In scientific or astronomic circles this phenomenon is called perigee-syzygy meaning that the Moon is “full or new” (perigee) and the Moon is “closest in its orbit to the earth” (syzygy).

The term SuperMoon works just fine for me. What is especially exciting is that a SuperMoon appears to be up to 30% brighter and 13% larger than most of its other monthly appearances. Some people say that the moon is so bright that it actually generates power on the solar cells.

SuperMoons are actually not that rare. There are occurrences of “full” SuperMoons two or three times each year. We often see the Harvest Moon in October when the Moon is very large and close to the horizon.

What made this past weekend’s SuperMoon exciting was the crystal clear sky surrounding it and the fact that this SuperMoon was the closest it had been in 18 years. Well, close is relative. The Moon was only 221,565 miles away.

As my husband and I were driving home to Norfolk from dinner this past Saturday night we glimpsed this lovely moon out of the corner of our eyes. It peeked out now and again from behind the constant woods that are a part of our New England landscape. Determined to photograph it, we began to chase the moon. Laughing, we spent about fifteen minutes trying to find it undistracted by tree limbs, streetlights or woods. We finally did and I snapped the photo using my mobile phone.

In the end, to my surprise, my photo of an amazing Moon was a bit disappointing. It looked a bit like the streetlights we had tried to avoid!

Moments later after we arrived home I found Gerry digging into the closets and dragging his tripod, SLR digital camera and telephoto lenses out into the frosty backyard. Undaunted by the frigid temperatures, he was determined to capture this Moon. Ah, I thought. He’s trying to show me up with his fancy-schmancy photographic equipment. I rolled my eyes and sighed. Let’s see him capture this amazing phenomenon better than I have!

Moments later he arrived back inside with an astonishing photograph. The frosty and crystalline surface of the Moon with its dark and brooding craters was a sight to behold. The photograph was quite simply an untouched “supershot” of this SuperMoon. It was a photograph that could only be taken with an experienced eye and some rather sophisticated equipment.

If you’d like to learn more about photography, the Morrill Memorial Library has some great books on digital photography, SLR photography and Photoshop enhancements. In addition, we have a current subscription to the magazine, “Popular Photography”.

Scott Kelby’s “The Digital Photography Book: The Step-by-Step Secrets for How to Make Your Photos Look Like the Pros!” Kelby has written three volumes that won’t confuse you with the jargon of the experts. Instead, he gives you great advice on making all your shots better ones and buying equipment that meets your budget.

“The A-Z of Creative Digital Photography” by Lee Frost focuses on the creativity of your work with great tips for ‘touching up photos to adding special effects.” David Pogue is the writer of many ‘missing manuals’ – or the books that were not in the box. His book on digital photography (“David Pogue’s Digital Photography: The Missing Manual”) includes advice on buying a camera to creating better ones on your Mac or PC.

“Mastering Digital SLR Photography” by David D. Busch is subtitled “the serious photographer’s guide to high-quality digital photography.” It focuses on the photograph and not particularly the camera.

And, of course, Kodak turned us all into amateur shutterbugs years ago. I owned a Brownie Kodak camera when I was nine years old. Kodak has advice for us in this digital age in Paul Comon’s book “Kodak, the Art of Digital Photography: How to Compose Winning Pictures.” The focus of this book is on the composition of the photograph.

We have many more books on photography from “Creative Nature and Outdoor Photography” by Brenda Tharp and “The Everything Digital Photography Book: Shoot, Upload, and Enhance Photos Like a Pro” by Rick Doble. If it is Photoshop (CS5 or Elements) that you are interested in the library owns a dozen or more books with expert advice and training. These include titles such as “Digital Photography beyond the Camera: Expert Photoshop and Digital Know-How for Top Quality Images and Prints” by Ian Farrell and “Photoshop Elements 8 All-in-One for Dummies” by Barbara Obermeier.

For help searching in the Minuteman catalog for these titles or for placing requests for all library materials please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

Researching a New Car

2011-03-12T08:26:00.002-05:00

Jenna Hecker is the Technology Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library and also works as a Reference Librarian. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

This was a challenging winter for commuters. The bitterly cold wind threw my little Volkswagon Golf around. I got a flat tire driving over a pothole. There was a point in January when I was convinced it would never stop snowing. But my little car fought hard, making it through the treacherous weeks. The day the weather won came in late February. My nearly ten-year-old car slipped on a patch of ice on the highway, lost control, and hit a barrier. I knew the minute my front end slammed into the concrete that I would be looking for a new car. Luckily, the only thing I hurt was my pocketbook, and personal schedule.

Even for someone who researches professionally, a car search can seem daunting. Should I look for used cars or new cars? Where would I find pricing information? What was the best balance between safety and gas mileage? How small is too small? The anxiety of negotiating with dealers brought me to tears – after filling out an online form requesting free car quotes, I received three to thirteen voicemails daily and innumerable e-mails from dealers all over eastern New England. I was drowning in car information. I had to develop a system.

I began my information gathering at edmunds.com – one of the first auto information websites ever launched. Edmunds has two really good car pricing resources – a tool to determine True Market Value of a car (basically, what you should be paying for a car), and True Cost to Own (how much a car will cost you over five years, considering typical maintenance, miles per gallon of gasoline, etc…). It offers clear, easy-to-follow reviews, and good tools for price comparison. After collecting information from Edmund’s, I narrowed my search to four small hatchback cars with good safety ratings. Next, I used my library card to log in to Consumer Reports through www.norwoodlibrary.org to check what they recommended for subcompact hatchback cars. I read Car and Driver magazine in our reading room, and looked through NADA guides in our reference area.

Luckily the library has been a source of comfort. It offers a place to hang out when you are without a ride, and there are plenty of books here to inform your car search. Consumer Report’s New Car Buying Guide proved useful to a first time new car buyer like me. It includes ratings, reviews, and buying advice for over 200 new cars. Since this was my first car purchased in Massachusetts I checked out Car Smart: A Consumer’s Guide to Buying and Owning a Car in Massachusetts, by the Massachusetts Consumers Coalition, which proved helpful for learning the ins and outs of state-specific rules. For instance, my car will cost me 7% sales tax as a Rhode Islander buying a car in Massachusetts. If I had crashed my car in Rhode Island, part of that would be reimbursed, but since the crash was in Massachusetts that reimbursement was factored into my insurance payout. It is all enough to make one’s head spin, and to nearly convince me to make a move to the Bay State.

I was especially worried about going into a car dealership – a single girl alone in a sea of experienced car-selling older men. I had been duped and scared into unnecessary warranties, or into buying cars that leaked water from their sunroofs, or randomly caught on fire in the past. I just wanted to get this purchase right so I checked out In the Driver’s Seat: A Girl’s Guide to Her First Car by Erika Stalder. Stalder’s brightly colored guide focuses on the basics of car maintenance, but also gives great diagrams of things like rotors and calipers. The book is meant to empower female drivers and help teach them how to identify and fix basic car issues themselves.

When I felt confident enough to begin test driving, I had decided on one Ford model car based solely on my research. Based on test driving (and, of course, interior gadgets), I liked a Honda and a Hyundai better. After requesting quotes from area dealers – which fueled the already rampant e-mail and voicemail-based attack, I found the right car for what seemed like the right price. I wasn’t done dealing with the woes of car buying – my former lien holder sent my car title to the wrong address, I wrote the wrong amount on my down payment check and had to stand in line first thing in the morning at a bank to get a cashier’s check. I came in to the library one morning to my car dealer standing at the circulation desk– waiting for me to arrive to retrieve more papers. It seems the job of a car buyer is never done.

In the end I found a car that I liked that fulfilled all of my safety and fuel-efficiency needs, and for a fair price. All of the research I had done made me feel empowered at the dealerships – and helped me stand up for myself. If you are thinking of buying a new car, come to the library. We have lots of resources for both people who are clueless like me, and for car experts. Plus, we are in a pedestrian-friendly location!

Desperate for Dexter

2011-03-07T15:41:00.003-05:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

The first television I remember was black and white and very large. Its convex and shiny grey screen was surrounded by a wooden console and it sported two rabbit ears and several knobs the size of tiny tea cups. I have photographs of my older brother and I sitting transfixed in front of that screen when we were very young.

My family had strict viewing habits and so, during childhood I managed to miss much of what was televised. Like most typical American families we all watched together. After dinner on weeknights we watched Walter Cronkite. On Sunday nights we watched Ed Sullivan. On the off-chance I spent a day home sick I watched Romper Room with my younger brothers. An occasional treat was watching Jack Bailey’s Queen for the Day or Bill Cullen’s The Price is Right at my mother’s side.

My family didn’t watch many sitcoms or serialized television. It was simple. There was one television in the household and my father preferred war movies and westerns. Being a girl and a pacifist, I didn’t relate to war, guns, bows or arrows. I turned to more interesting things like sewing and reading and organizing my fabrics and bookshelves instead.

You might say that I missed out on an entire generation of American culture as it aired on neighboring television screens. Oh, I admit I found ways to sneak in an episode of Dobie Gillis or I Love Lucy somehow. I mean, I did manage to grow up normal. I often sat glued to my girlfriends’ sets like any deprived child would. In their homes I watched enough of The Fugitive and Flipper to satiate my appetite. But there are still huge gaps in my cultural education.

What was left out were most serialized TV shows. My philosophy is simple. If I can’t watch an entire series from first to last I simply do not want to watch at all. I guess it was a leftover from childhood when I experienced a TV land that seemed so out-of-sync.

It’s left me in the dark. At least a dark that has no trace of the glow of a TV screen.

So, now, how in the heck did I get mixed up with Dexter? At least Dexter: Seasons One through Four.

Sometime last spring I decided I was just too far out-of-the-loop. I was tired of missing out on all the great references to Charlotte on Sex in the City or to Jon Hamm, the handsome Mad Man. I asked this of my entire group of Facebook friends: “If you had to watch one series, which would it be?”

If you want to feel loved on Facebook, try this approach. Your cup will runneth over. Who knew there were so many series out there to follow? Who knew everybody else was watching them but me? Who knew so many people were so passionate about television!

Dexter was the number one suggestion. (If you know anything about Dexter you might wonder about my friends, by the way.) Dexter is also based on a book, “Darkly Dreaming Dexter” by Jeff Lindsay.

I took the bait and I got hooked. Luckily, most past seasons of all television shows (cable and otherwise) are available on DVD. There are many options for viewing. Premium cable channels offer them “on demand”. Netflix allows immediate streaming of some past seasons.

Best of all, most of them are available at your local library. Libraries in the Minuteman Library Network carry an impressive array of television series that are often available right on the shelf of your library or after a short wait once you’ve made the request. April Cushing, the Adult Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library has been trying to purchase the best and most-requested for our library. It’s impossible to keep up with all of them all but we try our best.

Given all of these viewing options, however, I found out the hard way that there is always a catch. Now that I’ve completed watching the first four seasons on DVD, I’ve found that Dexter’s clever producers have conspired against me. The fifth season (aired this past year) will not be released on DVD until this August right before the sixth season of Dexter is scheduled to be run on Showtime.

And so, I’m Desperate for Dexter. I’ve complained bitterly to friends and family who helped to get me hooked. “Oh, we understand,” they’ve all admitted. “But,” they cheerfully add, “this is the perfect time to get hooked on yet another series!” Oh great.

While I await the release of Dexter, Season Five (August 2011) I’m ready to ask my friends for a next suggestion. “But, please,” I’ll beg, “make sure all the seasons have already been released on DVD so that I can request them from my library!”

For help searching in the Minuteman catalog for these titles or for placing requests for all library materials including DVDs and television series, please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

Someone's in the Kitchen with Fido

2011-02-27T16:12:00.005-05:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

“Don’t ever feed human food to your dog!” It has always amused me when I read or hear that advice. Rubbish, I say! What, for goodness sake, did dogs eat in previous centuries before the advent of manufactured food in cans and bags?

Of course we hope that the family meal is not “shared” with your dog. No one likes a begging dog or one who perches at the table or eats from the counters. Dining in the same room with a canine can be equally unappetizing. My grandson Colin refuses to eat his breakfast while listening to our four-legged friend slurp hers. I don’t blame him because her manners are atrocious!

However, a well-balanced meal of “people food” can be healthy and even beneficial for your pet.

When my beautiful Boxer came to live with me in 2005, she was a sickly, skinny creature less than four months old. Had I known … famous last words, of course … that Boxer Colitis is deadly I might not have taken on such a tragic project. She very nearly died on me several times. Unfortunately, veterinarians at Tufts Animal Hospital suggested expensive procedures that promised nothing more than successful or unsuccessful canine research for the institution.

As a single, working woman I had several disadvantages. I simply couldn’t afford more of the costly hospitalizations at Tufts nor did I have the luxury of spending 24 hours a day trying to nurse her to health.

She was as cute-as-a-button. My Boxer pup had won me over as her champion within a few short weeks. I simply knew that I could not have her euthanized and so I took a radical approach. I enlisted the help of a terrific holistic vet, a caring and loving doggie daycare enterprise (Happy Tails in Franklin) and the kitchen in my own home.

It was obvious that the expensive, “scientifically-engineered” canned food was hindering my puppy’s improvement. Desperately, I turned to my grocery stores and their produce bins, meat counter and dairy aisles. I began with a simple diet of cooked rice, sweet potatoes and ground beef. Over the weeks and months I slowly added scrambled eggs, oatmeal and barley. Our holistic vet suggested the additions of yogurt and cottage cheese for calcium.

In the end it took more than two years and a proverbial village of humans to save this lovely animal. She simply wouldn’t have survived without a crew of over twenty dedicated staff at the doggie day care and with the caring veterinary professionals and their help. That village soon included my husband–to-be and his grandson who love our four-footed friend as much as I do. She greets our grandson on his way in the door each day and she is the buddy who craves playtime with my husband each night. Her tail wags crazily as I make her breakfast each morning and she is our delight.

So … if you are thinking I’m a bit crazy to cook for my dog you need to know that I’m not alone. Others have done the same and have even written the book, so to speak.

”Real Food for Dogs: 50 Vet-Approved Recipes to Please the Canine Gastronome” has an irresistible cover and cute illustrations but it also has some great recipes. Arden Moore is not a veterinarian but he includes plenty of food that stocks everyone’s shelves and refrigerators.

“Throw Me a Bone: 50 Healthy, Canine-Taste-Tested Recipes for Snacks, Meals and Treats” is rather surprisingly written by canine Cooper Gillespie as told to his companion, Susan Orleans. (Orlean is the celebrated author of the “Orchid Thief.”)

“Grrrrowlicious Food for Hungry Dogs” by Jamie Young includes recipes for Cheese and Bacon Cookies, Meatballs and Fried Rice. Young asserts that you’ll be stealing food from your dog’s dish!

In “The Everything Cooking for Dogs Book: 150 Quick and Healthy Recipes Your Dog Will Love” Lisa Fortunato promises recipes without salt, sugar, trans fats or preservatives. In actuality, none of those bad things appear in any dog food recipes. Health abounds and we can all take lessons from these cookbooks.

If you’re looking for treats you might try Stephanie Mehanna’s “PupSnacks: 35 Delicious and Healthy Recipes to Bark Home About”. Throwing a birthday bash for your pet? Check out “The Good Treats Cookbook for Dogs: 50 Home-Cooked Treats for Special Occasions Plus Everything You Need to Know to Throw a Dog Party!” by Barbara Burg. Involve the kids in the fun with “Cool Pet Treats: Easy Recipes for Kids to Bake” by Pam Price.

You don’t have dogs in your family? Well Andi Brown’s “The Whole Pet Diet: Eight Weeks to Great Health for Dogs and Cats” and “The Natural Pet Food Cookbook: Healthful Recipes for Dogs and Cats” by Wendy Nan Rees include the felines along with the canines.

If you’re not convinced that homemade food can help your pet be sure to read Mark Poveromo’s “To Your Dog’s Health!: Canine Nutrition and Recent Trends With the Pet Food Industry”, Michael Fox’s “Not Fit For a Dog!: The Truth About Manufactured Dog and Cat Food” or Marion Nestle’s “Feed Your Pet Right: The Authoritative Guide to Feeding Your Dog.”

Over the course of this sweet dog’s first two years, her digestive tract was healed of Colitis. Today, she is nearly six years old and she is the picture of health. We spend a mere hour each week cooking up her special recipe and store it in our refrigerator to use three times a day. We add a handful of quality dry dog food at dinnertime for “crunch”. Oh, and we always add a few special snacks for a special dog.

For help searching in the Minuteman catalog for these titles or for placing requests for books, please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

A Hallmark Holiday

2011-02-22T20:13:00.002-05:00

April Cushing is the Adult Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read April's entire column this week in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Valentine’s Day has, mercifully, come and gone. Not my finest hour. A veteran of more than a half century of this holiday, I proved it’s still possible to completely miss the point. In case you’re wondering, there is a connection to the Morrill Memorial Library here, however tenuous, which I promise I’ll get to.

To cut to the chase (if, like me, you love idioms, check out I’m Not Hanging Noodles On Your Ears: and Other Intriguing Idioms from Around the World (call #418 Bhalla), I was the victim of a Bad Valentine. After a routine Saturday at the Reference Desk, breaking for a convivial lunch at Conrad’s where my colleagues and I shared funny stories from our previous marriages, I reflected on my blessings: the library printer was fixed, the 1040 instruction booklets had finally arrived, I had successfully put two posts on our new website and gone to the gym. While I haven’t dropped a pound I’m pleased to report I can now pedal four miles without wanting to puke. Life was good.

Arriving home to answer Cupid’s call I found my significant other marinating steak tips and breaking open the Malbec. Two envelopes leaned suggestively against a vase of long-stemmed red roses. I tore open the first one—a cute card from Duffy, our favorite canine companion. (I’d gotten him the same one.) Smiling, I reached for the second envelope.

At the risk of violating copyright law I’ll quote here: “Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you…” A tiny red flag was starting to flutter but I soldiered on.

“…Oh yeah, now I remember, you put up with me!”

Just in case I’d missed something I reread it, silently.

I’ve known this man since our kids were in nursery school together—i.e. a long time. Since we’ve been a couple for several of those years it’s probably safe to say the initial bloom is off the rose. Even so, I was a little taken aback. Make that momentarily speechless.

“Of all the romantic, lovey-dovey cards at CVS you chose this one?” I hated the way I sounded but couldn’t help myself. Whether sappy or sexy, Valentine’s Day is all about schlock, right?

“I thought it was funny,” he replied lamely.

“Which part would that be?” I asked.

Without burdening you with the rest of the exchange, suffice to say the candlelit dinner never came off. I grabbed the leash, the flashlight and the dog, clearly the only resident male capable of picking a proper Valentine.

There’s nothing like a brisk march around the block to put things in perspective. Realizing how unfairly I’d behaved, I tucked my tail between my legs and prepared to apologize. Preferably over those chocolate-covered strawberries I’d seen in the fridge. Only my not-so-funny valentine wasn’t yet in the mood to make up. The fact that the floral arrangement was conspicuously absent was my first hint.

After reading the same paragraph three times in The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (FICTION O’Farrell), I tried again. Expecting to find my loved one pretending to watch some grim show about predators in the wild but feeling terrible, I tiptoed into the TV room. He was cracking up at Steve Carell in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” (DVD Forty FEATURE FILM).

Fast forward two days to February 14. We’re at Legal C Bar for dinner with my 86-year-old mother—I know, dumb move. The wait is too long, the music too loud, the lighting too low and I’m praying my pomegranate lemon drop martini arrives soon when I spot a large red envelope. I’ll spare you the details, but it was about as gaudy as they get.

“What utter schmaltz,” my mother declares.

I love every word, especially the handwritten note: “This is what I really meant. I love you, honey.”

When my college-age daughter called later I recited the first card to her, from memory. She started laughing. “It’s true, Mom, he does put up with you.” Gee, thanks.

“And you put up with him. That’s what relationships are all about. Besides, it’s just a stupid card. Think about all the nice things he does for you.” She’s 20, for chrissake (www.urbandictionary.com). Since when did she get so savvy about this stuff?

For further clarification on the subject I invite you to check out Fight Less, Love More: 5-Minute Conversations to Change Your Relationship without Blowing Up or Giving In by Laurie Puhn, Harvard-trained family law attorney and couples mediator (646.78 PUHN). “Learn how to identify bad verbal habits, short-circuit arguments, prevent overreactions (who, me?) and orchestrate the perfect apology, all in less time than it takes to have another fight.” Where the heck was this a week ago? Her sensible message is Stop Keeping Score and Start Loving More.

I can’t speak for you, but since I skimmed through the book last night I can honestly say we haven’t had a single blow-up. When my beloved told his buddy about our Valentine’s Day debacle his response was, “that’s why you’re so good for each other. You each have a lot of warts but you love each other in spite of them.”

Hallmark sentiments aside, isn’t that what Valentine’s Day is all about?

In Love with Penguins

2011-02-14T05:06:00.008-05:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column each Thursday in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

The penguin exhibit at the New England Aquarium is one of my favorite places. I could spend hours watching them. They are chatty, loyal, energetic and annoying and well, they are a lot like most of my friends.

On our trip to Atlanta two years ago we made sure not to miss the penguins at the Georgia Aquarium. There you view them through glass bubbles – nearly face-to-face.

It seems everyone loves penguins these days. When we found out our daughter’s fiance had a fascination with penguins as a child we began to find penguin-themed tchotchkes everywhere we looked. But while he gets at least one penguin in his stocking each year, we’ve been careful not to overdo. After all, we want him to join our family.

What I didn’t know about penguins until recently is that some can be loud, some can be fickle and all can be smelly. And they are very much at risk in the world, specifically off the coast of South Africa.

In 1910 it is estimated that there were 1.5 million penguins living off the South African coast. In the century since then commercial fishing has forced penguins to forage farther afield in an ocean polluted by the shipping industry. Additionally, for years humans removed precious penguin guano, or their nesting material, from the islands off the coast. Also, for years penguin eggs were removed and sold as a delicacy (until it became unlawful.)

Today, only 10% of the African penguin population remains.

In the forty years between 1966 and 2006 nearly fifty tankers have been damaged or have sunk off the coast of South Africa. Fifteen of these ships have caused major oil spills. Each of those spills has devastated some portion of the penguin population.

In 1994 a tanker named the Apollo Sea sank. The spill from that tragedy oiled about 10,000 penguins, half of which were lost.

In 2000 the MV Treasure, an iron ore tanker, sank between the Robben and Dassen islands. Nearly 40,000 penguins, in the midst of their breeding cycle, were affected. In the end 19,000 of the birds were cleaned and another 20,000 were temporarily moved out of danger.

41% of the world’s African penguin population was contaminated in that one oil spill. One tanker. 75,000 African penguins.

“The Great Penguin Rescue: 40,000 Penguins, a Devastating Oil Spill, and the Inspiring Story of the World’s Largest Animal Rescue” by Dyan deNapoli tells the story of their liberation.

This book, as they say, had me at “hello.” The very first chapter describes a penguin’s fight for survival from the moment his amazing coat of feathers comes in contact with oil from a tanker spill through his struggle for survival. It is a devastating read but a compelling one.

A penguin-educator and author, deNapoli got her start as a volunteer and intern at the New England Aquarium in the 1990s. She wasn’t always obsessed with penguins; she was more of a dolphin fanatic most of her childhood and young adulthood. Her parents gave her a special thirtieth birthday adventure in 1992 and she spent four weeks on an Earthwatch expedition in Hawaii where she chose to work with her favorite creature, dolphins.

Very soon after arriving home from her quest, deNapoli enrolled at Mount Ida College in Newton to pursue a bachelor’s degree in veterinary technology. She ended up at the NE Aquarium on an internship where 35 African penguins and 25 Rockhopper penguins changed her life.

In 2000, deNapoli was working as a staff member of the Penguin Department at the NE Aquarium when the call for help was sounded in June of 2000. The MV Treasure had spilled 1,300 gallons of oil off the coast of Cape Town. Within hours of the spill, experts volunteered from around the world and they arrived at a train repair warehouse in Cape Town to participate in one of the biggest rescue and rehab operations on the planet.

The rescue efforts were overseen by the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds. Organized in 1968, SANCCOB has rescued over 85,000 seabirds in the past 47 years.

deNapoli spent three months in Cape Town helping to rehabilitate the birds and reintroduce them to their wild environment. Today, she lives on the north shore and spends her time educating children and adults about this awesome African bird.

“Fraser’s Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antartica” by Fen Montaigne (2010) chronicles another type of penguin, the Adelie species. Author Montaigne spent five months with scientist Bill Fraser on the harsh and austere northwestern Antarctica peninsula. Climate change is affecting Antarctica faster than any other place on Earth and Fraser has seen it firsthand since he arrived there in 1974 to study the continent. Like dominos, the species in this part of the world are falling prey to the changes that global warming has brought. The Adelie penguin’s feeding grounds are diminishing and the Gentoo penguins are becoming the dominant species.

If you’d like to educate the youngest generations, those that will make the differences in years to come, there are many children’s books describing the lives and plight of penguins. For help searching in the Minuteman catalog for these titles or for placing requests for books, please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

Blizzardous

2011-02-07T12:43:00.003-05:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column each Thursday in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Unfortunately for everyone the Morrill Memorial Library has been closed several days this winter. While we make every attempt to stay open on snowy days we sometimes close in the best interest of our patrons and our staff. Icy roads or quickly-accumulating snow are two conditions which make for this determination because it simply isn’t always possible to keep our parking lot and walks safe.

Believe it or not, the online “know-it-all” Wikipedia already lists this month’s recent storm on February 2 as “The Ground Hog Day Blizzard of 2011”. The storm affected five provinces of Canada, a huge chunk of the United States and Northern Mexico.

By definition a blizzard is a snow storm with high winds and diminished visibility lasting three hours or more. Definitions aside, we know that a blizzard is a storm that cripples our snowplowing capabilities or the ability of the buses to get to school. It’s the kind of snow that causes a nightmare of a commute and one that takes hours to creep a few miles.

Besides their devastating effects, these mega-storms can be lucrative for snow blower sales, for handyman work and for the chiropractic business. They also make headlines, baby booms and good stories.

And so, February 2 was a snow day for both me and my 12-year old grandson. It was a perfect day to introduce Colin to one of my favorite movies, Ground Hog Day. That movie never ceases to make me smile and chuckle, to believe in romance and to marvel in brilliance of actor Bill Murray.

Screenwriters aren’t the only talented writers who use blizzards to their best advantage. Journalist-turned bestselling author Jon Katz included one is his story about a dog in “Rose in a Storm” (2010). Rose is a hard-working sheep dog who, in the midst of an epic blizzard, helps save a farm and every creature that lives there.

Another bestselling author, Richard Paul Evans, set his latest book, “Promise Me”, in the middle of a Christmas Day blizzard. He included all the elements – a widow, a sick child and the perfect stranger she runs into in a 7-eleven in the midst of a raging winter storm. These essentials also converge in Barbara Delinsky’s 2010 novel “Montana Man.” Single mom, infant daughter, handsome stranger. And a blizzard, of course.

It seems romance abounds in the middle of blizzards. In “Winter Lodge” by Susan Wiggs, Jenny Majesky is trapped with the local police chief in the middle of a crippling snowstorm. In “Chill Factor” Lilly Martin is stuck in a remote cabin with a handsome stranger unable to leave. Author Sandra Brown sets a scene where roads are impassable and Lilly has nowhere to go but spend time with the handsome stranger. Why the problem? He is the primary suspect in the disappearance of five local women.

Diana Palmer includes two stories in “The Winter Man.” In one of them, “Sutton’s Way”, we find a single dad, a beautiful city woman and a ranch. Oh yes, and the blizzard.

If you are looking for a realistic story, however, you can find one quite comical one in Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” in which the author writes of his attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail. One humorous chapter recounts the time when Bryson got caught hiking in a blizzard with his friend Katz. After the storm they woke to “the kind of stillness that makes you sit up and take your bearings.”

In “Ten Hours Until Dawn: the True Story of a Heroism and Tragedy Aboard the Can Do”, local author and Franklin resident Michael Tougias details the story of that small boat and its crew during the 1978 blizzard that assaulted the Massachusetts coast. Tougias reports the tragedy and the failed mission of the Can Do to assist two other boats. It sank only miles from the shore.

I was living in California at the time of the Massachusetts Blizzard of 1978 but I feel as if I lived through it due to the stories of my family and friends living here. Recollections of peaceful walks down the middle of the streets, cars abandoned on Route 128, high tides and pounding surf made memories for several generations of New Englanders. Michael Dukakis wrote the introduction to Alan R. Earl’s “Greater Boston’s Blizzard of 1978”. The book is illustrated with over 200 photographs and readers can relive the storm or experience it for the first time.

The Boston Globe published “Great New England Storms of the 20th Century”, edited by Janice Page. The book not only includes the infamous blizzard of ’78 but also the 1938 hurricane, devastating floods of 1936 and the “Perfect Storm” of 1991.

Larry B. Pletcher writes of the blizzard of 1888 which occurred nearly a century earlier before the one in 1978. Pletcher writes about other disasters such as Lizzy Borden, the Curse of the Bambino and the Cocoanut Grove Fire in his book, “It Happened in Massachusetts”.

Several more very complete accounts have been written about the 1888 blizzard commonly referred to as the School Children’s Blizzard. “Blizzard! The 1888 Whiteout” by Jacqueline A. Ball is one of them. Another is “Blizzard: The Storm that Changed America” by Jim Murphy. Murphy is the author of other wonderful books for middle-school readers such as “The Great Fire”. “American Epidemic”, “The Boys’ War”, and the “Long Road to Gettysburg, I often suggest reading non-fiction written for younger audiences and Murphy’s books are fine examples.

An adult version of the epic tragedy is “The Schoolchildren’s Blizzard” by Donald B. Lemke. This devastating prairie snowstorm killed hundreds of newly-arrived settlers in the western plains among them children who had walked to school that morning of January 12, 1888 without coats and gloves because the weather was very mild. Without much warning the storm approached and the rest, as they say, is the history of the deadliest blizzard to hit the American heartland.

For help searching in the Minuteman catalog for these titles or for placing requests for books, please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers

2011-02-04T04:52:00.002-05:00

Margot Sullivan is a retired Adult Services Librarian who still works part-time as a Reference Librarian and leads two popular book discussion groups. Read Margot Sullivan's in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Abraham Lincoln is my very favorite president! Why- you might ask? One reason is that I was born on his birthday, February 12^th! I always thought that day along with Washington’s birthday should also be a national holiday for him, of course, not me! The few times I have been to Washington D.C. my first destination is the Lincoln Memorial to contemplate a most remarkable man in our nation’s history. He guided this country through the divisive Civil War and his Proclamation Emancipation ending slavery is one of our most sacred documents. The library has a huge selection of materials on Abe Lincoln, his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, his family, the Civil War and his assassination. Three titles I highly recommend are Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals: the political genius of Abraham Lincoln” (973.7092), David Herbert Donald’s Pulitzer Prize biography “Lincoln” (B Lincoln), and Philip Kunhardt’s “Lincoln: an illustrated biography” (B Lincoln). I especially enjoy the last recommendation as photographs often can tell a story better than words!

Truthfully I thought I knew a lot about Abe Lincoln but just this year became aware of a real event in his life regarding his whiskers. Grace Bedell, an eleven year old child from Westfield, New York, wrote a letter to Mr. Lincoln part of which reads “if you will let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them (her brothers) to vote for you. You would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you”. Grace mails the letter hoping that Mr. Lincoln would answer and he did! A. Lincoln responds in part “As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affection if I were to begin now?” Abe Lincoln won the election and traveling to Washington stops in New York and Grace sees his whiskers. A wonderful picture book entitled “Mr. Lincoln’s Whiskers” by Karen Winnick is in the biography section of the children’s room! A facsimile of Grace’s letter is on the back pages of the book. The majority of the photos we see of Abraham Lincoln have his “whiskers”.

While researching material on Abe Lincoln for a cable show I came across the slender volume “Lincoln at Home: Two Glimpses of Abraham Lincoln’s Family Life” by David Herbert Donald. (B, Lincoln) and learned another wonderful snippet about Abe Lincoln in the White House! First of all Americans were trying to get use to children in the White House. Lincoln’s boys were active and venturesome. They especially loved two small goats Nanko and Nannie who were allowed around on the grounds and tended to destroy the gardens. But they also had the run of the White House! Mischievous Tad harnessed Nanko to a chair and gleefully interrupted a reception in the East Room as Nanko pulled him around on a sled in and out of the hoop skirts! Later Abraham writes to his wife Mary that “Nanny” disappeared probably much to the gardeners delight. I enjoyed reading about these antics of the children. I imagine Mary Lincoln had her hands full! Come to the library and read about Abraham Lincoln.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln!

Discover Yourself on a Bookshelf

2011-01-23T12:57:00.005-05:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin each Thursday.

When I married my husband in 2007 I decided that it was important to keep his grandson, Colin, in the only home he had ever known in his young nine years and the one that Gerry himself has lived in it for over a quarter of a century.

Combining households, however, was a “traumatic adventure” for both of us. I use the word “adventure” because it was a delightful beginning; a new life for Gerry who had lost a wife to cancer after many years of marriage. It was also a romantic fresh start for me after a painful divorce in 1999.

I use the word “traumatic” because we both brought utterly complete and cluttery lives to one combined house. It was an over-abundance of furniture and stuff, some of which we managed to give away and sell that first year. Most we crammed into available space.

On a whim this past weekend, Gerry and I decided to take a look at an antique farmhouse in Norfolk that had been on the market for some time. In the end, we decided against the farmhouse, but this impulsive peek at real estate and the reality of moving struck me with intense panic. I realized then that it will take us years to go through the houses, the garages, the basements and the attics of two homes in order to even begin the process of thinking of moving.

Arriving home that day I moved into position. Impulsive but refreshingly decisive, I decided to begin the process. And so it was that I started at a logical place, the bookshelves.

In “Howard’s End Is On the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home”, author Susan Hill recounts the story of spending a year reading through the countless books that filled her home. Some books had been long forgotten, some had never been read. Her journey includes memories of the libraries, the book-givers, the stories and the physical books that defined her life of over sixty years. Hill has advice for those of us who accumulate books. Sort out those travel books from trips completed or the definitive guide to owning a pet that has long-ago died. “Pass the thrillers on to a friend.” You rarely read a thriller twice. Keep those books that speak to you in some way - those that you simply can’t let go.

I had “weeded” my bookshelves many times in the past decade since selling my family home in 2001 and moving multiple times. Last week, however, I finally parted with thick volumes of encyclopedias of quotations and literature. I packed up bestselling current literature that I’d always hoped to have time to read and haven’t. I painfully removed books of Soviet history. Those books were simply old news and the world and I have both moved on. In addition, I work in a library surrounded by many of those same books. Given the whim, I can simply pluck the book from the shelves that are steps from my office.

More importantly, of course, this column must include the story of the books that I simply cannot let go. As a former children’s librarian, many of those books are children’s books and some of them are books from my own childhood.

My mother was given books for her birthdays and these were the Children of America Stories and Children of All Lands Stories published in the 1940s. The stories formed my love of adventure and the inscriptions inside the books include my mother’s name.

My mother began giving me the Illustrated Junior Library Classics when I was eight. The first was “The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew” and “Heidi” and “Little Women”. Many others joined those in the years that followed. My own daughters weren’t interested in those classics but I can’t part with them.

Years later I discovered The Whole Story series of classics which contain unabridged text, annotations and lavish illustrations. My favorites are “Around the World in 80 Days” and “Treasure Island” – stories I had somehow missed as a young girl.

Later on I fell in love with Maria Tatar’s and Michael Hearn’s richly annotated versions of the “Brothers Grimm”, the “Wizard of Oz” and “A Christmas Carol” and more. Reading those books on a lazy weekend (which are editions for adults) I can get endlessly lost.

Of course “Make Way for Ducklings” and “Goodnight Moon” will always stay on my shelves along with “Six by Seuss”, “Charlotte’s Web” and ten beautiful versions of “Alice and Wonderland”. I can’t part with any of the volumes of Lemony Snicket, the poetry of Shel Silverstein or a 1950 version of the “The Bobbsey Twins” that I ordered through a used-book dealer. When the book arrived I immediately read the first chapter for the umpteenth time. In it Freddie and Flossie furnish tiny houses made from cardboard boxes. I probably owe some of my imaginary sense to author Laura Lee Hope.

After a few hours I had packed 6 boxes and bags of books to donate to the Friends of the Library. These hardly made a dent on the shelves although most of my rearranged books seem to be breathing fresher air. I have temporarily loaned my collection of pop-up books to a display in the foyer of the library. They are marvels of paper engineering and they will forever intrigue me. They will remain there throughout the rest of January and the entire month of February.

Spend a day with your own bookshelves. You might discover yourself on them.

For help searching in the Minuteman catalog or for placing requests for books, please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.

Time Among Friends

2011-01-16T21:12:00.002-05:00

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin each Thursday.

In my childhood, sometime in the years of the first through the sixth grades, I began to find a special seat at lunchtime. I placed myself along the outer edge of the cafeteria at the LeConte Elementary School.

You see, this room doubled as the school library. What seemed like miles of book shelves lined the perimeter of this multi-purpose room.

I have always managed to multitask well. During lunch I often scanned the shelves for books that I had not yet read. I have an indelible visual memory. This is of finding one of my favorite childhood books on those shelves. Bottom shelf, halfway across the left side of the cafeteria beginning with authors A and B.

“Best Friends” was written by Mary Bard in 1955. It was a whimsical story that features a girl named Suzie and her best friend, CoCo who had moved from France to the house next door. Eventually, in this book, Suzie’s mother marries CoCo’s father and the best part of the story is about their blended family. A romantic at heart, and a child of a broken home, this story enchanted me.

When I was twelve years old we moved from the city to a new house in the suburbs. It was there where I found my best friend who lived in the house next door. Our parents never married – they had spouses of their own, of course. And neither of us was from an exotic place like France. We were the only girls in families of unruly boys. We became inseparable best friends within months, if not weeks.

As young teens we shared wardrobes, record albums and term papers. We complained bitterly about our brothers and we shared annoying babysitting jobs. As young adults we declared our loyalty with sisterly acts like standing up for each other in our respective weddings. We gave our firstborn daughters each other’s names. Over the years and throughout the ensuing decades we weathered life’s losses, we endured separations of thousands of miles and we reconnected again after a very painful, many-years friendship storm.

A few weeks ago, a colleague in the library recommended Gail Caldwell’s recent book, “Let’s Take the Long Walk Home.” In it Caldwell recounts her extremely close friendship with another author, Caroline Knapp. For many years Caldwell and Knapp walked together with their dogs through Massachusetts woods. They swam and rowed together on the Charles River. They confessed their deepest fears and hopes and shared the secrets and rituals of their lives. It is a memoir of life and death and a bittersweet tale of a friendship found and lost. Knapp, the author of “Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Their Dogs” died of lung cancer in 2002. Devastated, Caldwell works through her grief in this beautiful story of the journey of their attachment.

Last summer I was drawn to the book written by Martha Stewart’s estranged friend, Mariana Pasternak. “The Best of Friends: Martha and Me” is a poignant, sometimes rewarding but mostly bitter description of a twenty-year friendship which ended in a schism caused by Pasternak’s testimony in Stewart’s high-profile trial. It is, in the end, a long, tedious, painful and sad tale of friendship lost.

One of my favorite books about friendship was written in 2004 by Paul Newman and A. E. Hotchner. While “Shameless Exploitation In the Pursuit of the Common Good” is the story of the Newman’s Own brand of salad dressings and the testing and marketing of many gourmet grocery items, it is also about the story of a friendship. Paul Newman and writer A. E. Hotchner created a successful brand, made tons of money for charity and made miracles happen with their “Hole in the Wall Gang” camps for critically-ill children around the world. (Hotchner followed up with a memoir of this friendship in 2010 entitled “Paul and Me: Fifty-three Years of Adventures and Misadventures With My Pal Paul Newman.”)

Last October a book was published in which woman golfer Kris Tschetter recounts her deep friendship with golfing champion Ben Hogan. “Mr. Hogan, the Man I Knew: An LPGA Player Looks Back on an Amazing Friendship and Lessons She Learned From Golf’s Greatest Legend” is a lovely story. Beginning in 1980, when Kris was a collegiate golfer, her relationship with the formidable Mr. Hogan lasted several decades until his death in 1997.

In 2009 Jeffrey Zaslow, Wall Street Journal columnist, wrote about the power of the friendship of eleven childhood friends who grew up in Ames, Iowa. “The Girls From Ames” is the special story of young women who scattered across the country, who married, divorced and died, as one of them would. Bittersweet, tearful and witty, Zaslow successfully captures the amazing bond of women friends into their forties – especially those inspirational bonds which were formed in those tender years of youth.

On a recent trip to a conference in Southern California I was stranded due to the weather emergency that closed airports across the Midwest and East coast. It was my sister-friend, this bonded friend of childhood, who immediately purchased a ticket to Northern California and invited to me sit out my unfortunate layover in her home. It was her husband, my ‘brother-in-law’ by nature of our sisterly relationship, who made sure I had a confirmed flight home two days later. Nurtured and amused, the hours and minutes of my long sequestered time passed in comfort among the best of friends.

For help searching in the Minuteman catalog or for placing requests for books about special friendships, please visit the Morrill Memorial Library, call the Reference librarians (781-769-0200) or visit the Minuteman Library Catalog on our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org.