Hooked on Scrabble!

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.

Excerpt:

The cry of “bingo!” resounded through the 2nd floor Simoni Room as it does nearly every Tuesday night at the Norwood Library. A dozen or so adults of all ages and abilities meet weekly to match wits and pursue a passion for Scrabble.

For those unfamiliar with the lingo, a bingo occurs when a player uses all seven of his or her tiles simultaneously to form a word on the board, earning a 50-point bonus.

And, at the Morrill Memorial Library, usually a round of applause as well.

These folks take their Scrabble seriously.

Birds of a Feather Flock Together

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 entire column this week in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Excerpt:

Yes, birdwatchers are curious creatures aware of birds but often oblivious to the rest of the world around them. We had a friend who lived on the island who had taken a shower and walked naked through her living room not realizing the picture window shades were open. Did the birders notice or even bat an eyelash? Nope – they were obviously watching for some elusive gnatcatcher, or warbler, or wren in the bushes.

Poetry and Hums

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

Excerpt:That simple poem of mine was a celebration of pride, of sibling love and was an example of the pure delight in the miracles around me. A decade later, however, my poetry was full of girlhood angst and suggested an adolescence that was overflowing with the turmoil of the 1960s.
That po etry, nevertheless, helped to get me admitted to the best university in my universe, Cal Berkeley. It was the era just past Beatnik, halfway through the hippie-movement and full swing into California sun worship, college rioting and the Vietnam War. A poet’s heaven.
I’m grateful that my teachers and my family encouraged me to write poetry. In the years that followed, college papers and other communication replaced my poetic impulses. I often miss that rare extravagance of my childhood.

Living in a Foreign Language

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

Excerpt:

Several weeks ago, my eldest daughter had one of the most important interviews of her life. For 12 hours I stayed at the acceptable mother-distance (while somehow managing to hold my breath at the same time). When I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer, in my I’m-a-digital-not-overbearing-Mom kinda way, I sent her a simple text.

How’d it go, I asked.

Her reply? One word: “Meh.”

Meh? What did “meh” mean? Could it mean “my ego hyperventilates” or “Mom, enough hysteria?” I’ve been struggling with 21st Century acronyms for some time now. I’ve always thought I was tech-savvy. However, I found out that I was an undereducated digital immigrant over a decade ago when I thought LOL meant lots of love. I was finally told LOL meant laughing out loud by my youngest daughter who was, appropriately, laughing out loud.

So, what is meh, I asked my husband. Fortunately, he knew enough to consult the online Urban Dictionary to calm my fears and assuage my ego. Meh, he explained, is a verbal shrug of the shoulders which also means “eh, who cares?” Oh, okay, that explains it. Not.

Reading Dr. Seuss

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

Excerpt:

On March 2 of every year the NEA plans its Read Across America day and asks “every child to be reading in the company of a caring adult” at some point in the day. (The NEA hopes to create a nation of readers through that program it created in 1997. Read Across America is now in its thirteenth year and it is a year-round program that focuses on motivating children and teens to read.)

Writing Makes Memories Come Alive

Shelby Warner is a retired librarian who works part-time as a Reference Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library.

Read Shelby Warner's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

Another of my Dad’s stories was of a baby brother I never knew. “Your Mama and me hit a man up Athens way one Saturday. Didn’t hurt his car hardly atall, but we were young and didn’t know any better. He said we had to pay five dollars a month ‘til we had paid enough. When your brother, Billy, died...he was just three months old, we missed a payment. When the man came to get his money, we were living in a little one room house. He came in and saw us standing by the kitchen table. On it was Billy’s coffin, littlest wood coffin I ever saw. Well, the man, after looking at us and down at our little boy who looked just like he was asleep, never came again for his money.”

They lived through times of sorrow and it is good for children to know you can live through grief and survive.

From Printed Page to Silver Screen

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

This year two movies nominated for an Academy Award were just such movies. Bright Star is a film based on the last three years of the live of poet John Keats. The film Sherlock Holmes was, of course, a mystery romp with the character of Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson, both invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Searching For the Right Word

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

"As a children’s librarian, I always encourage families to create their own stories, which will eventually become their own family folklore. I would also like to suggest that families create and take note of their own “family words.” Every family has them; in our house “Boomala” was the place to go when my parents didn’t want to tell us where we where headed. It might be because the location would generate such excitement that they wanted to keep it a surprise for as long as possible to save their sanity. But it could also be a place that they didn’t want to mention because it was so detestable to the young at heart that they would never get us in the car."

A Bite of the Big Apple

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

This week we are spending the school vacation in New York and have brought along another 11 year old, a classmate of Colin’s. These sixth-grade boys aren’t going to be impressed with any high society tearoom, any amount of high-stepping dancers or any well-pressed and spotless cloth napkin at the Plaza Hotel. More up their alley are one of the biggest ToysRUs in the USA, the NYC Hard Rock Café and the impressive Museum of Natural History. With four days in New York I needed to find more suggestions geared to pre-teen boys.

A Valentine For YOU

Read Marie Lydon's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

Excerpt:

As this is Valentine’s week, I thought it would be nice to spotlight some of the people and things we love about working here. One is the job itself, which contrasts with the Jan. 5 news report in USA Today that “only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their work, the lowest level ever recorded in 22 years of surveys.”

This is depressing news and makes me think how unfulfilling it would be to go to a job every day that you did not enjoy or find interesting. The other is the people we meet, which brings home to me why many of us have been here much longer than we ever thought possible.

In Plain English

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column in the Norwood Bulletin and Transcript this week.

Excerpt:

The staff here at the library tolerates me. I toss down a publication or make webpage edits and my careless errors are scattered throughout. I humbly accept and make the suggested changes and vow time and time again that I will learn to be less careless. There are, however, always errors that get through and there are moments of regret. Sometimes I chuckle, but more often I cringe.

Dewey and the Kitchen Companion

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column in the Norwood Bulletin and Transcript this week.

Excerpt:

Today I would never have to cook if I didn’t want to and for the past few years I’ve spent very little time doing that. However, our kitchen renovation was completed this past December and you might say I’ve been reborn and have been rediscovering the joy. Long-forgotten recipes and specialty pans and utensils have come out of retirement and some interesting ingredients have been filling our pantry and refrigerator.
Part of the fun of a newly designed kitchen is having the space to cook together and that’s just what we’ve done. My household chef and husband was happily helping me chop various vegetables for a seafood bisque last weekend. Imagine my surprise, then, when I curiously inspected the cutting board and found tough, crunchy and bitter leek tops in with the tender dicings of onions and garlic. What could he have been thinking?

Let the Library Be Your Lifeline

Read Jenna Hecker's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

Excerpt:

"I am not a person who flourishes in an environment of uncertainty. I am not good at being unemployed. I went from having a hectic schedule to no schedule at all. I spent my first few days camping, traveling, and visiting historical homes, but soon panic set in, and obsessive job searching began.
In order to cope with the loneliness and frustration of job searching, I vowed to get out of the house every day. I packed up my laptop and headed to the library to work on job searching for a few hours each morning. I set up a professional email address (myname@gmail.com), I signed up for e-mail updates from professional associations, and I started following library job tweeters on twitter."

You Say You Want a Resolution

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column in the Norwood Bulletin and Transcript this week.

Excerpt:

I’ve never really been one for New Year resolutions. Oh, there have been years when I’ve made one or two and then merely forgotten about it within hours, days, or weeks. I actually believe more in what I might call the “gradual process resolution” or one that slowly transforms over the year from a good intention to something that might be called change for the better.
My own resolve seems to be in the form of change in a more spontaneous way. Bridget Jones (in Bridget Jones Diary by Helen Fielding) more aptly states “I think it would be much more sensible if resolutions began generally on January the second.” My sentiments exactly.

Most studies prove that merely 12 percent of New Year resolutions actually become habit over the course of the year … and that number is lower in the course of actual change over many years. Oscar Wilde wrote, “A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.”

Yet, it is the trying that is the heart of this matter. And studies also prove that sharing your resolution with others gets better results.

The ABCs of DVDs

Read April Cushing's entire article in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Excerpt:

"After a grueling day on the Reference Desk my ideal evening goes something like this. Duffy and I trot down to the park for our daily constitutional, then I hunker down in front of my new flat screen TV and indulge in the ultimate R&R: D&D, aka dinner and a DVD, with my significant other, Brad.

We’re closing in on 175 movies since we started keeping track in 2006. There are the classics like Rear Window, The African Queen, On the Waterfront, Casablanca, The Sting, Schindler’s List, and the Hangover. Ok, so maybe that last one isn’t technically a classic.

I put an asterisk next to Citizen Kane since I fell asleep before the end. There seem to be several starred titles on the list. If you’re really serious about seeing the credits, I wouldn’t recommend getting horizontal on a comfy couch, especially not after 9 p.m.

Then there are the feel-good films, besides the one renowned for the line “I’ll have what she’s having.” Love Actually, On Golden Pond, Hoosiers, Something’s Gotta Give, and Young at Heart come to mind. Oh, and Chocolat, with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, which my 21-year-old daughter and I watched last night, a bottle of wine and a box of truffles between us."