Books to Film - 2011 Award Winners

Read Charlotte Canelli's column in the March 3, 2012 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. Podcasts are archived on the Voices from the Library page of the library website. Charlotte Canelli is the Library Director of the Morrill Memorial Library.   From the Library - Books to Film: 2011 Award Winners by Charlotte Canelli


            I am, at times, a bit compulsive. I like to begin new projects and if it weren’t for my compulsive need to see them through, I might never complete them.  What might look to some as expansive enthusiasm is sometimes simply born of an impulse to plan.

            This year I took on Oscar a few weeks before the awards would be televised.  What began as a simple desire to see more than just a few of the Oscar-nominated movies ended in a manic last-minute adventure. In the end, I watched over nine movies in as many days and saw at least fourteen of the 2011 nominated films.

            Two of my favorite films of 2011 and nominated for Best Picture, “The Artist” and “Midnight in Paris”, were written as original screenplays.  Six of the other nine nominated for the grand award were adapted from stories originally written as books.

            There was much buzz about the film, “The Descendants” based on the book by Kaui Hart Hemmins. It is the fictional account of descendants of Hawaiian royalty, the King family.  Matthew King, played by George Clooney, attempts to parent his children, say goodbye to his wife and examine his marriage and life.  The movie is somehow a poignant portrayal of life and death, and a journey of marriage and family, extended and otherwise.

            Another much-anticipated film, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, is based on the book of fiction by Jonathan Safran Foer. Nine-year old Oskar Schell loses his father in the World Trade Center attacks on 9-11.  Oskar’s deceased father is played by Tom Hanks; his mother by Sandra Bullock. Although it is the story about Oskar’s healing journey, I found the movie’s images of September 11 disturbing. During that tragedy in 2001 I had moved and hadn’t purchased cable service for my cable-ready television and only had viewing access to videos or DVDs. This self-imposed bubble was somewhat shattered by the film’s repeated images of the falling man. The story however, is sprinkled with enough humor, punning and wordplay to connect the heartbreaking story with powerful images of restoration and healing.

            I saw the film “The Help”, based on the book by Kathryn Stockett, in theaters last year.  It was a much-anticipated film after response to the book in 2009.  Having grown up in the 60s in the very liberal and very racially-diverse city of Berkeley, California, my experience was very far away from Mississippi. I never witnessed the type of discrimination Skeeter did as her life intersected with the lives of family maids, Abeline and Minny.  Even though my head knew the facts, my heart had been sheltered from that storm. I found the powerful story far more emotional on the big screen than on the pages in the book and I suspect that the audience around me held back or shed similar tears.

            One of my favorite nominated films of 2011 was “Moneyball” based on the book of the same name by Michael Lewis (author of “The Blind Side” and “The Big Short”).  I actually thought Brad Pitt should have won the best-actor award for this film. I’ve never been a sportswoman but I can get caught up in a championship game or in the story of players struggling to beat the odds and I was entranced.  The New York Times writes that Lewis “could have made a fortune in business. Instead, he makes a fortune writing about it.”  “Moneyball” is about how games are won and teams are made – with players who are each a piece of that winning puzzle.

             “War Horse” is based on a 1982 children's novel by Michael Morpurgo.  It is the fictional account of an English boy, Albert, whose beloved horse, Joey, is sold to the British cavalry.  Joey is sent off to fight in France, Albert enlists and the movie chronicles the tragedies of the Great War.  We saw the film in the theater when we were looking for a family film.  I thought it was an amazing cinematic feat, much like “Saving Private Ryan”, a film about another war. Watching it, though, I was struck with the idiocy of war in a way that other films have not affected me. (15 million lives were lost in World War I.)   The book and movie are based upon real and tragic events and they end on a high note. While war and death are not exactly “family topics”, it is, after all, a Disney film.

             “Hugo” (based on the children’s book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” by Brian Selznick) is another cinematic spectacle.  The film won five big academy awards, including Best Cinematography. I dragged two girlfriends to see this movie on the Sunday afternoon hours before the Academy Awards were televised and we were all a bit dismayed to realize that it was in 3D.  That said, it only took a few moments after the majestic opening scenes for my eyes and head to adjust. I was most disappointed when I realized that the character played by Jude Law was killed off moments into the film when he tragically dies in a fire. I found that the film dragged in parts but the happy ending and the compelling mystery and visual effects were winners in my book.

            Other films released in 2011 and based on fiction or non-fiction were “My Week with Marilyn” based on two books written by British director/producer Colin Clark; “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson; “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte; “Albert Nobbs” based on the Irish short story, “A Storyteller’s Holiday” by George Moore; “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” by JK Rowling; “Drive” by James Sallis; “We Need to Talk About Kevin” by Lionel Shriver; “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen; “The Big Year” by Mark Obmascik; “One Day” by David Nicholls; “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” by John LeCarre; and “The Lincoln Lawyer” by Michael Connelly.

            If you would like to reserve any of these titles in book or film version please call the Reference or Information desks of the library, 781-799-0200 or reserve them in the Minuteman Library catalog.

eBooks In the Library

Read Brian Samek's column in the February 24, 2012 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. Podcasts are archived on the Voices from the Library page of the library website. Brian is the Technology Librarian of the Morrill Memorial Library. eBooks in the Library by Brian Samek

In 1996 the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) told the Girl Scouts that it would have to pay for using copyrighted music at its summer camps. The Wall Street Journal reported that the penalty for singing any of ASCAP's 4million songs could be $5000 and six days in jail. These songs include "Puff the Magic Dragon," "God Bless America," and “Happy Birthday.”

Yes, even "Happy Birthday" is copyrighted,and any public performance of the song--say,at a children's event at the Norwood Library--requires permission from the rights-holder and the payment of royalties.

The law here seems extreme. The composer, Mildred Hill, died nearly a hundred years ago. Singing her song at your house isn't stealing from her,and it seems obvious that singing it anywhere else isn't stealing either. Indeed, in an article about the song George Washington University Law professor Robert Brauneis argues that although it brings in $2 million dollars a year, "it is almost certainly no longer under copyright" because the rights-holder didn't follow proper procedures and the lyricist is unknown.

Yet the music industry has a case for copyright. In a 2010 review of the literature, PeterTschmuck analyzed 22 studies of the effects of file sharing. Although the results are "ambiguous and full of contradictions,"14 of the 22 studies found that file sharing led to a decline in music revenues. This isn't the whole picture though. One study found that although the record companies may lose, bands which play concerts may in fact benefit; although their album sales decline, the increase in ticket sales more than makes up for the loss in royalties because royalties are a small fraction of their income.

In his book Free Culture, available at theNorwood Library, Lawrence Lessig argues that copyright can impede innovation.He explains, for example, how "The film industry of Hollywood was built by fleeing pirates. Creators and directors migrated from the East Coast to California in the early twentieth century in part to escape controls that patents granted the inventor of filmmaking,Thomas Edison . .. California was remote enough from Edison's reach that filmmakers could pirate his inventions without fear of the law." Under the East Coast copyright regime, Lessig argues, Hollywood would have been impossible. Piracy created our filmi ndustry.

Then, like today, the problem is not that there is a conspiracy of consumers to steal content. Instead the challenge comes from new technology. Take Downton Abbey, for instance. The show airs in the U.K. months before it airs in theU.S. A Salon.com journalist admitted to watching a pirated British version because he didn't want to wait for PBS. "PBS is free anyway! Who loses?" With services like Netflix and Spotify--more important, with consumers willing to pay for services like Netflix and Spotify, there is little excuse for producers being behind the technology curve. If you have content and users willing to pay for that content, it's time to embrace new methods of distribution.

Unfortunately, eBook publishers aren't quite there yet. Libraries want eBooks but can't get them.

In my eReader class two weeks ago, I showed our patrons how to download library eBooks for their eReaders. Downloading an eBook for the Kindle is seamless. After checking the book out from our online catalog at overdrive.minlib.net, you are redirected to the Amazon website. Click "Get library book,"and if you have a newer version of the Kindle and an Internet connection, the Kindle will download the book automatically.

Unfortunately, of the big six publishers, only Random House offers unrestricted access to eBooks to libraries. HarperCollins only allows 26 checkouts. Hachette,Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan don't offer eBooks to libraries at all. Penguin recently rescinded its contract with OverDrive, the most popular library eBook vendor.

Concern about OverDrive's relationship with Amazon is driven by several factors. Penguin seems uncomfortable with patrons going through Amazon's website, giving Amazon the ability to advertise other products. And Alison Lazarus, President of Sales at Macmillan, told Library Journal that she was concerned that borrowing might become"frictionless," that is, too easy.

What this misses, however, is that borrowing eBooks from the library almost always entails more friction than buying them. Most books in our OverDrive catalog are checked out. The more popular have long waiting lists.The Girl with theDragon Tattoo, for example, has more than a hundred patrons on the waiting list. The main way libraries have for reducing friction for their users is to purchase more eBooks. The tremendous interest in eBooks in Norwood has proven to us that buying eBooks is worthwhile for our patrons. Publishers stand to profit from distributing eBooks to libraries.

It's clear that copyright gives media companies too much power. Rather than being spurred to innovate, they can instead dig in their heels and continue to use old business models. Relying on onerous copyright restrictions to make it more difficult for library patrons to access eBooks will hurt consumers, authors, and publishers. The big six publishers are understandably concerned about being remunerated in an era of rampant online piracy, but librarians are worried that a failure to innovate could permanently prevent libraries from participating in the eBook market.

Magically Healing Through Reading

Read Charlotte Canelli's column in the February 17, 2012 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. Podcasts are archived on the Voices from the Library page of the library website. Charlotte Canelli is the Library Director of the Morrill Memorial Library.

            In a column several years ago (October 23, 2009, “A Year of Living, Literally”), I wrote about Nina Sankovitch, the blogger/writer/reader who made a vow in 2008 to read one book every day for 365 days.

            I wrote that I found Sankovitch a wee bit crazy and I also confessed that I was extremely jealous of all the ‘time’ she apparently had on her hands to read all day long.

            I gave her credit, however, for true commitment when I discovered that her quest was born of an emotional need to work through the grief of a sister lost to cancer and to heal during a year of reading. I also learned that she had four children (all boys, ages 7 through 15) and during that “magical” year she still managed to be a mother, a wife, a blogger and a friend.

            When I wrote my column, Sankovitch’s journey was nearing its end.  A few days later and at the end of that year she had read 365 books - one every single day.

            I’ve been told many times over the past thirty years that the loss of a child is the cruelest loss. I know that loss and so does my husband.   I am convinced, however, that no death is crueler than another. Losing a child, losing a parent, a wife, a husband, a brother, a sister or a beloved member of any family when it seems unfair is still that. Unfair and profoundly difficult. Death leaves entire families hurting.

            This is the devastating loss and bewildering pain that Sankovitch experienced when her eldest sister, Anne-Marie, passed away from bile-duct cancer in May 2005. “Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading” (2011) is Nina Sankovitch’s account of her year of working through her grief by reading those 365 books.  It is a testament to sisterly love.  It is a proof of an amazing commitment that Sankovitch declared for herself. It is also a wonderfully woven narration of the books she read and how they healed her.

            Three years after her sister died, Sankovitch was still bewildered and angry about the death. Life seemed unfair.  When she and her husband left for a weekend of rest and relaxation in the summer of 2008,  Sankovitch spent one lovely day reading while her husband took a windsurfing workshop. He arrived back much later than they had expected.  Nina was amazed that in a relaxed, unhurried and uninterrupted state she finished all four-hundred pages of “Dracula” by Bram Stoker. It was that next day that she told her husband of her intent to read a book a day for a year.

            Understandably, her husband was skeptical and so were her parents and most of her friends. The rules were that each book must be one she had never read before and an author could not be represented more than once in the year. The project also included posting a review of one book each day online. 

            Nina visited her library often to read or choose more books.  Each time she took home an armload of books, most were less than 400 pages long. The list (it is included at the end of the book and online) is impressive. Most were written by well-known authors and many were lesser-known works.

            In “Tolstoy and the Purple Chair”, Nina describes the depth of her relationship with her sister and how much Anne Marie would have liked each book. Anne Marie was wise and loving, older and aggravating. Throughout the book, Sankovitch admits that as a child she at times disliked, feared, respected and revered Anne Marie. As an adult she mainly adored her.

            Some of the most intriguing elements of the book are of the Sankovitch family’s history.  Memories of family trips, recollections of her parents’ former lives as Polish and Belarus immigrants, and stories of sisterly squabbles and angst are sprinkled throughout.  So are poignant memories of sisterly-love, parental wisdom and incredible loss.

            Every chapter of “Tolstoy and the Purple Chair” was compelling and enlightening to me and I found myself sometimes chuckling, sometimes overwhelmed with understanding. Sankovitch, an attorney, was raising her children and not working when she made the decision to read for a year.  She readily admits that she could not have done both.  As it was, she cut corners at home, assigning chores to her sons for the first time. Family time, however, was sacrosanct and Sankovitch spent her time once school was out through the bedtime hour attending to her family. It was often only after 9 pm that she sunk into her purple chair in a corner of her study to read under a good light.

            An understanding and supportive husband was, of course, a huge piece of the success of the year of reading.  Nina would carve out time to drop her husband, Jack, off at the train station near their Connecticut home for his trip to the city each day and she would sometimes race to the station to pick him up before dinner.  Yet, night after night he helped out with homework and smiled in disbelief that his wife was working her way through her goal.

            On the cover of the book, author Thrity Umrigar praises “Tolstoy and the Purple Chair” and declares that the memoir “reminds us of the most primal function of literature – to heal, to nurture, and to connect us to our truest selves.”  Sankovitch healed and her book and her work of literature nurtured me.  I have no doubt that in sharing her journey, many of its readers will connect to their truest selves.

            If you would like to reserve this book, or its large print version, please call the Reference or Information desks of the library, 781-799-0200.

The Madoff Affair: A Personal Tragedy

Read Charlotte Canelli's column in the February 10, 2012 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. Podcasts are archived on the Voices from the Library page of the library website. Charlotte Canelli is the Library Director of the Morrill Memorial Library. From the Library: The Bernie Madoff Tragedy by Charlotte Canelli

           There are times when personal tragedies catch us in a net of disbelief, rage or compassion.  Tragedy, like reality, is sometimes not dissimilar to passing a car wreck on the side of the road and willing oneself not to look. Yet, something hard to watch is also something hard 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 The Dating Game in the 70s and MTV’s Real World in the 90s.  Today we have The Bachelor.  Jersey Shore.  The Kardashians.

 They can be hard to watch but often too hard to turn away from. Ratings for reality shows have gone through the roof around the world.

            Personal tragedies often fascinate and puzzle us. Compelling personal accounts of loss or downfall often appeal to our compassion, our curiosity and our ire. The story of the Bernie Madoff family is one of them.

            It wasn’t long after Madoff’s confession amazed, enraged, confounded and shocked the world that books were published about the ruin and misfortune of a his family. “The Story of Bernard L. Madoff, The Man Who Swindled the World” by Deborah and Gerald Strober was rushed to print in early 2009, just months after Madoff’s own sons called authorities on December 10, 2008. 

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

            Adding to the farce, of course, was the story of “family-man” Bernie’s 16-year affair with Sheryl Weinstein.  “Madoff’s Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie and 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 scheme of Weinstein.  Today many believe the details of the sordid affair, a pitfall of egos and wallets large enough to get people into trouble.

            A senior writer at the New York Times, Diana B. Henriques covered the Madoff affair as it broke in December 2008 through the attempts to recover some of the lost billions for the innocent families who had invested their life savings with Bernie.  “Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust” was published in April of 2011 and describes the scandal from inside the financial world to inside the personal disasters of fractured families. 

            Of course, there were people who never believed Bernie Madoff’s luck with money early on.  Erin Arvedlund and Harry Markopolos were two of them.  Essays, exposes and insistence on investigation fell on deaf ears for over a decade and those frustrating versions are recounted in “Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff “(June 2009) by Erin Arvedlund and “No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller “(December 2009) by Harry Markopolos.

Many people in the world were caught up in disbelief when Bernie Madoff was proved to be a swindler, a hoax and a fraud.  Certainly, he caught his family by surprise.  Central to the tragedy of the Madoff family, was the crushing disappointment of the Madoff sons, Andrew and Mark.

             Published nearly simultaneously, “Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family” (2011) by Laurie Sandell and “The End of Normal: A Wife’s Anguish, A Widow’s New Life” (2011) by Stephanie Madoff Mack 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 a somewhat separate, somewhat connected firm that operated several floors above the Bernie Madoff Ponzi operation   “Truth and Consequences” explains the story from the younger brother, Andrew Madoff’s, point of view.  Author Sandell 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 impressions of Bernie Madoff conflicted with the real man behind the mask.

            Stephanie Madoff Mack was married to Mark, the eldest son of Bernie and Ruth Madoff. On the second anniversary of Bernie Madoff’s arrest, Mark tragically took his own life leaving his wife and four children from two marriages. The accusations and pressure of living with his father’s crimes weighed so heavily that Mark Madoff could no longer bear it.  Believing that he and his younger brother did the right thing in turning in their father, Mark could not believe it when they were accused for an opulent lifestyle supported by Madoff money from the day they were born.  . 

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

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

Library Lover's Month

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

From the Library - Library Lover's Month by Norma Logan and read by Charlotte Canelli
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

“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

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

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 world must have heard of it, for men came from every state I had 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

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 Canelli I’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

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

           It might seem like the Y2K craze was only a few years ago but we all have to admit that it’s now been more than a decade. Before you ask yourself where 12 years have 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 was much-anticipated and some of it focused on sensational trials and crime. Two murder cases had our attention, the Florida trial of Casey Anthony and the trial in Perugia, Italy of American Amanda Knox. “Inside the Mind of Casey Anthony: A Psychological Portrait” by Keith Ablow and “Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony” by Jeff Ashton were just two books focusing on the Florida mother of Kayley Anthony.

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

            In addition to crime, celebrity and politics make for interesting reading. At least a plethora of books were published in 2011. Those written by and about the Palins have mesmerized readers since the Alaskan governor nearly won the vice-presidency in 2008. This year 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 the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin’s Crosshairs” by the father of Bristol’s child was published.

            Some of the more uncomplimentary books about Sarah herself were published this year: “The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power’ by Geoffrey Dunn, ‘Blind Allegiance 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 Joe McGinniss.

            The couple-most-watched across the Atlantic, of course, was Kate Middleton and Prince William. Their wedding enthralled many of us and spawned a host of coffee-table photographic journeys in addition to “William and Catherine: Their Lives, Their Wedding” by Andrew Morton.

            More important world events inspired books written in 2011 and we can expect many more to be written about the Arab Spring in the coming year. “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World” by Robin Wright and “Generation Freedom: The Middle East Uprisings and 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 a foreign correspondent who is watching a hopeful change in the region which is rejecting Islamic extremism and embracing liberation on many fronts.

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

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

            “The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11” by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan explores every aspect of the day’s events and the aftermath. In “Where You Left Me” author and widow, Jennifer Gardner Trulso, moves through the intense pain to find joy in her life again.

            In 2011 the 12th edition of the hundred-year old Concise Oxford Dictionary was released. Over 400 new entries were added, including the words cyberbullying and sexting and the terms gastric band and slow food. Certainly when the 13th edition is released sooner or later it may include new meanings for words like “occupy” and new concoctions like Ron Paul’s “Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan.”

            April 2011 saw the release of local author Howie Carr’s book “Hitman: The Untold Story of Johnny Martorano: Whitey Bulger’s Enforcer and the Most Feared Gangster in the Underworld.” After Whitey’s arrest last June we can anticipate at least three books scheduled for publication in 2012.

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

            Andy Rooney, Elizabeth Taylor, Jack Kevorkian and Joe Frazier were other notable losses of the year and we can expect new biographies of their lives sometime in the next few years. And certainly the first months of 2012 might bring books about the scandal of Jerry Sandusky at Pennsylvania State University and Robert Wagner’s role in the death of his wife, Natalie Woods.

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

The Best of the Worst Christmas Movies

       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 Polar Express” was much anticipated in 2004. Tom Hanks has six voiceover roles in the film that was inspired by Chris Van Allburg’s 1985 children’s book.   I find some of the motion-capture animation a bit creepy and the scary roller-coaster train ride somewhat dizzying. However, it has many beautiful scenes and the now-classic story has inspired a generation of children.  

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

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

            A few years ago, I forced my now-grown children to watch “Trapped in Paradise” on Christmas Eve with me. They groaned in protest.  I didn’t get it.  After all, we had watched it over and over when 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 my children have outgrown the film while I haven’t.

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

            “Love Actually” (2003) is a movie I only discovered last year when I found out my daughter and her friends watched it 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 my book.  It is especially poignant today, just two short years after the sudden death of Neeson’s wife, Natasha Richardson. In the end, Christmas miracles are plentiful and ‘love is all around’ in the ten stories which are happening at the same time.

            A requirement for a Christmas movie is, of course, the timely setting of December 24.  “Serendipity” (2001) stars John Cusack and Kate 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 it on the Worst List but those same elements make it one of my favorites.  The theme that life is not simply a series of meaningless accidents makes for sappy romantic stuff and that seems to get me every time.

            Two beautiful actresses star in “The Holiday”. Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet both find themselves at the end of failed relationships just before Christmas. They swap houses and, of course, discover that they find love when they aren’t looking. It’s another cliché, I know, 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 be when the movie grossed $260,000,000? Someone’s a mean one, Mr. Grinch, but someone’s very rich for sure.  The movie was directed by genius Ron Howard and Anthony Hopkins is rumored to have recorded all of the narration in one day.  The sound stage for Whoville measured around 30,000 square feet covered in fake snow. Jim Carrey’s make-up took three hours to apply. Who couldn’t love a movie that takes such pains to make us laugh?

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

           

            Writer John Grisham took a break from his suspense novels in 2001 and wrote “Skipping Christmas”.  The movie based on the book, “Christmas with the 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 get their act together when their daughter decides to come home for Christmas at the last minute.            

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

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

A Gift For All

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!

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

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.