Volunteers Make a Difference

Norma Logan is the Literacy Coordinator at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read Norma Logan's column in the May 28, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Most people think of volunteerism in conjunction with hospitals, the Red Cross, animal shelters, or overseas agencies.  There are many more volunteer opportunities than these and varied reasons for people who seek them out.  I am interested in volunteerism because I train and work with literacy volunteers in the Literacy Volunteer Program at the Norwood Library, and I, myself, was once a volunteer tutor.

It's All in the News

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the May 21, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Most weekdays, I wake up to local, national and international news on the radio, specifically NPR.  It doesn’t take long to get an assessment of the state of the world if it’s changed overnight.  I don’t get a morning newspaper anymore. To be honest, I get most of my news from logging onto my tablet or phone.  From there, social media, blogs, posts and alerts update me throughout the day. The occasional times I am unplugged or out of range, it only takes an instant to figure out the state of things when I tune back in.

You Are My Sunshine

Margot Sullivan is a part-time reader's advisory and reference librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column as published in the May 14, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

My three and a third year old granddaughter is a joy.  She has an infectious laugh but when she is telling a joke and thinks she is pretty funny – the laughter changes and her Dad says “oh boy here we go again”! There are not enough words to describe her – loving,  independent, curious, stubborn, imaginative, bossy, caring, exuberant, fearless, and more.  Never did I think how wonderful it would be to watch this child grow ever so quickly.

The Library Needs YOU!

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the May 7, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

How are we doing? What could we do better? Those are the simple questions that the Morrill Memorial Library needs answers to and there are several ways you can let us know.  A quick and painless method is by completing the online survey.  It's available on our website at this easy URL: www.norwoodlibrary.org/survey. (You'll also be receiving this link to the survey in your Norwood Light bill this month.) Another way is to fill out a paper survey that is available at the library and several other places in Norwood. This month, we hope to get answers from over a thousand library users.

Number of Days Since Last Move: Zero

Liz Reed is the Adult and Information Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Liz's column in the April 30, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Since leaving my childhood home to attend college, I’ve never lived in a single location longer than 20 months. Sure, I’ve lived in Boston for three years, but in that time I’ve occupied three different apartments. In fact, I’ve moved a whopping 18 times since 2006. Ouch. Our current lease will be up at the end of August; we’ve chosen not to renew, bringing my grand total of single abode living to two years. Now it’s time to start the search process all over again.

History with a Little Bit of Murder

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the April 23, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Many readers, including librarians, have guilty pleasures. For more than one of the Norwood librarians, it’s cozy mysteries, specifically those about knitting or cats. Others are addicted to romances or chick-lit. Still others succumb to self-help books, including those written by what other librarians might call “self-promoting quacks.” For a few of us, true crime is the genre that always catches our fancy.

Librarians, of course, are like kids in a candy store – we have every imaginable title at our fingertips and well within our reach. Most of us rotate our guilty pleasures, those books that raise a few eyebrows of our colleagues, with other titles that are much more redeemable.

A Season of Hope

Nancy Ling is an Outreach Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read the published version of Nancy Ling's column in the April 16, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Spring. The word itself puts a bounce in our step. After this harsh winter, it might make us take flight. Besides being a seasonal change, spring gives us a sense of hope. Life is opening around us. The smell of soil and blossoms greet our mornings. We can hear the cardinal’s song again. Best of all, we are no longer rushing from car to house in order to avoid becoming a human icicle. We’ve started to shed a layer of two.

Old Wives' Tales in the Kitchen

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the April 9, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

“Feed a fever, starve a cold.”  I can never remember the correct version of this advice when I actually have a cold or a fever. Am I supposed to feed the fever or the cold?  When I’m sick and want a warm bowl of macaroni and cheese or a cold cup of sherbet, is this bad or is it good?

Guess what? It doesn’t matter because that’s not how the real old wives tale goes, anyway.

21st Century Parenting

Read Kate Tigue's column in the April 2, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin. Kate is a Children's Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library.

Social media.  Sharing.  Friending.  Following.  Trending.   We hear these words and phrases on an almost daily basis but what do they really mean?  Social media is simply a phrase used to describe websites or applications for mobile devices that allow us to connect and share with other people across the world in different ways via the Internet.  The most popular and recognizable of these are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.   Each of these services allows you to create an account and then see the information of other people who also use the service.  Facebook is a personal online bulletin board that allows you post messages, pictures, videos, and links to other websites.  Twitter allows each user to post a message under 140 characters long.  Instagram is an online photo album that encourages other users to view and comment on your pictures.

The Princess Bride - As I Wished It

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

My daughters were very young when the film version of The Princess Bride released in October of 1987. It had a Motion Picture Association of America rating of PG which warned that it might contain material that parents would not want for young audiences. A Parental Guidance rating usually means bad language, violence or frightening scenes not recommended for young children. And there might be kissing, of course.

My Husband is a Tapeworm

Read Alli Palmgren's column in the March 19, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin. Alli is the Technology Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library.

It is almost a foregone conclusion that most librarians are prolific readers and often surround themselves with others of a similar persuasion. From my experience, a love of reading is often passed down through the generations, so readers often come from families of bookworms. Additionally, many librarians seem to choose partners that share their passion for the written word.

Boston's Own Dr. Spock

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the March 12, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

 We’ve all taken our seats at the Mugar Omni Theater at Boston’s Museum of Science and settled in as the lights dim. The first thing we always hear is an explanation of the amazing visual and audio effects with its 180 screens and 360-degree speakers. It begins “this is a test” and during the three-minute introduction we listen to a familiar voice, that of Boston-born Leonard Nimoy. His voice has been testing “who put the bomp in the bomp, she’bomp, she’bomp” since the theater opened in 1987.

Nimoy grew up in Boston’s West End, an area between Beacon Hill and North Station. It was just three blocks from the museum, but sadly his childhood home is no longer there. His neighborhood of Italian and Jewish immigrants was razed to give way to urban renewal in the last half century. Nimoy speaks lovingly of his neighbors and friends and in a commencement speech at Boston University, he recalled trying often to find the spot where he lived on Chambers Street, but to no avail. It’s impossible in this new neighborhood of hospital buildings, parking garages, and high rises.

Nimoy moved to California long ago taking some acting classes at Boston College and deciding that acting was what he wanted to do. Nimoy’s father, a Jewish barber, believed that his son needed to fall back on a skill other than acting.  However, Leonard moved to California long ago after taking some acting classes at Boston College. His passion led eventually to his role as Spock in the three seasons of the original Star Trek series.

While I was never a Star Trek aficionado, I was once married to a Trekkie or Trekker and hence, my daughters were raised on Vulcan milk, so to speak. Reruns of the original series (1966-1969), the six Star Trek films (1979-1991), and all 178 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation were constantly on our television sets. Some of our pets were named after Star Trek characters (Klingon) or actors (Whoopi Goldberg). Starship Enterprise ornaments always hung from the branches of our Christmas trees, and we always teased one of our daughters about her Spock ear – a little sharp point at the top of one of them.

I sometimes blame my non-Trekkie tendencies on the fact that I could never give the Vulcan salute, (with its sentiment “Live Long and Prosper” – that of the four fingers of either hand separated by the middle and ring fingers into a V shape. I always figured this was a gift that one was born with – like being able to roll one’s tongue (a genetic trait).  It certainly is evidence of manual dexterity, and even some of the actors in Star Trek did have to preposition their fingers in the Vulcan salute because, they, like I, can’t seem to manage it.

            

That said, I soaked up Star Trek episodes through osmosis – either by walking through the room where Star Trek episodes or movies were playing  – or by being too lazy to get off the couch when episodes were always, inevitably tuned in. I always had great respect for Spock, half-Vulcan and half-human. Emotionless, yet logical and grounded, Spock had great respect for us, and us for him.

        

What I never knew about Leonard Nimoy, until his death at the age of 83 this past February 27, was that he was also a poet, a photographer, a film director, an author and a recording artist.  A search of the Minuteman Library catalog for Leonard Nimoy results in over 172 hits or thousands of items. These include all of the varied Star Trek movies and TV series, two autobiographies, voice-overs in various documentaries and movies, and his celebrated photographic series, “The Full Body Project” published in 2007. In addition, he wrote several books of poetry and sings baritone on his five pop albums that feature songs like “I Walk the Line” and “Proud Mary.”

           

I didn’t realize that in addition to directing two of the Star Trek films (III: The Search for Spock in 1984 and IV: The Voyage Home in 1986), he also directed Three Men and a Baby (1987) and The Good Mother (1988). Before creating his role as Spock in, he acted in television shows that include the gamut of popular television in the 50s and 60s: Dragnet, Highway Patrol, Sea Hunt, Wagon Train, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Virginian, Get Smart, Man from U.N.C.L.E. and dozens more.  He did voice overs for half a century, and after he had retired from Spock, he continued acting in television series such as The Fringe and The Big Bang Theory.

            

In 1975, Nimoy wrote his first autobiography, I Am Not Spock. It was partially an attempt to separate himself from the Spock role. In his second memoir, I Am Spock published twenty years later in 1995, he explained that he loved playing Spock and was very proud of it.

            

Nimoy’s long and productive life is to be admired. After taking those summer classes at Boston College after high school, Nimoy studies photography at UCLA.  He earned a master’s degree in education at Antioch University in Austin, Texas. Boston University and Antioch College both conferred Nimoy with honorary doctorate degrees. He wrote and spoke fluent Yiddish. Nimoy was much beloved by his five grandchildren. In 2009, another beloved Boston resident, Mayor Tom Menino, proclaimed November 14, 2009 as Leonard Nimoy Day in the City of Boston. He will always ‘live long and prosper’ in the hearts of Trekkies everywhere, especially in his hometown of Boston.

The Winter of My Discontent

Librarian April Cushing is head of Adult and Information Services at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column published in the March 5, 2015 issue of the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.

If you were to pick one title to sum up this much-maligned season, Hugo’s “Les Miserables” might come to mind. Or maybe “The Winter of Our Discontent.” I was pretty sure Shakespeare first penned those immortal words but to be sure, I did what any good Reference Librarian would do: I googled it. So begins the tragedy “Richard III”: “Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York.” I wondered if the future sovereign had survived a tough winter himself back in 1471 before “snow events” become commonplace, so I read on. It seems Will was waxing more metaphorical than meteorological.

Sweet Land - Tale from the Heartland

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the February 27, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

With the exception of a few years I spent living in such exotic places as Texas and Ireland, I spent the other 60 years of my life making my home on either the west or east coasts of the United States. I’ve lived within a drive to an ocean and sometimes had a bird’s eye view of a bay.

What about spacious skies, fruited plains, and waves of grain and the landscapes of The Great American Midwest? Besides a very quick drive (mostly at night) through the uppermost United States, the tall grasses of the prairies and the little houses in the big woods were simply foreign to me.
 
It wasn’t until I was fortunate enough in college to have a terrific American Lit professor that I was introduced to the short stories of Willa Cather. As it was a survey course covering many years, we concentrated on Wharton and Twain, Chopin and Hawthorne. It was the plain and simple language of Cather, however, that drew me in. I did, in fact, compare the grammatical construction of the short stories, “Neighbour Rosicky” by Cather and “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In my estimation, Cather won for the rhythms, the imagery, and emotion of her work.

Prints in the Snow

Read Jean Todesca's column in the February 20, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin. Jean is the Head of Children's Services at the Morrill Memorial Library.

Let’s just say, I live in the woods. Although my home is 17 miles southwest of Boston, you would think I lived in the Maine wilderness. Day to day, I forget the large amount of wildlife that surrounds me. With the current snowstorms that we have experienced, there are reminders everywhere. The many paths the deer created through the snow. The tiny white footprints impressions placed all over my driveway. The mounded tunnels running across the ground.

When my children were young, we identified many animal tracks using library books. We’ve seen deer, squirrel, opossum prints and many more. We watched tunnels develop that were created by voles and squirrels.

Animal tracking is a great outdoor activity for both adults and children. The Children’s Department has books to guide in the identification process. “Who Was Here? Discovering Wild Animal Tracks” by Mia Posada and “Wild Trackers! A Guide to Natures Footprints” by Jim Arnosky are nonfiction titles. “Who’s Been Here? A Tale in Tracks” by Fran Hodgkins and “Tracks in the Snow” by Wong Herbert Yee are picture book titles that will introduce the experience of tracking in story form.

As the animal population changed, I’ve returned to books to help identify coyote and fisher cat prints. As this snowy winter wears on, try animal tracking. You’ll never know what you might find in the “wilds” of Norwood.