Your Family Tree

Nancy Ling is the Outreach Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts.  Read Nancy’s column in the July 25, 2019 issue of the Transcript and Bulletin.

I grew up with an awkward middle name. Lincoln. It wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of cool and hip. As a young child in the ‘70s when most of my friends had middle names like Ann and Marie and Jean, I was well-aware that Lincoln was not a name to be shared out loud if I could help it. The only folks who knew this secret information were the local bank teller and the pediatrician.

We've Come a Long Way Baby - In Women's Sports

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the July 18, 2019 edition of the Transcript & Bulletin. 

I am, perhaps, one of the most uncoordinated women on earth.  Oh, yes, I had the distinction of managing my seventh-grade softball team, but, in retrospect, I suspect my team gave me the job as a manager because voting me the position of manager kept me from either guarding a base or handling a bat. 

I have somehow accomplished a few sports during my lifetime. I learned to ice skate at the tender age of five on a meandering city park pond in the heart of Worcester. I managed to straighten my buckling ankles and have lovely childhood memories of taking care of my gorgeous pair of lace-up, white skates. I continued to skate for fun after we moved to the West Coast and into my preteens on the public indoor ice close to my neighborhood in Berkeley, CA. The San Francisco Bay Area was also where I learned to swim and play tennis in free summer camps.

I also roller-skated everywhere as a young girl, traveling on expandable metal roller skates with the skates’ key dangling from a piece of ribbon around my neck. Moving to the hilly suburbs, however, put a damper on that activity when, used to flat, city streets, the brakes were applied to my skating when I fell and broke my left arm for the third time.

As a high schooler, I learned to ski in the Sierra Mountains near Lake Tahoe. I continued for years, leading my young daughters down New England slopes. Yet, I soon lost my ski partners when they abandoned me to the double black diamonds on the slopes in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. I bought myself cross-country skis instead. I fell in love with the solitude of whispering pines and quieter, slower trails, but gave it up when falling became too threatening for 60-year old bones.

I had the distinction of earning a high school Varsity letter at the Senior Sports Banquet in June 1970. I received the honor because I had spent the season expertly, and proudly, handling my football statistician’s clipboard, while managing to send beaming smiles to my handsome Varsity team boyfriend.

Coincidentally, in the wake of a star-struck nation obsessed with the Women’s World Cup win, I was suddenly struck by the fact that none of my high school girlfriends had been members of a high school sports team, let alone a soccer team.

Happy Moving Day!

Liz Reed is an Adult and Information Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Liz’s column in the July 11, 2019 issue of the Transcript and Bulletin.

Have you ever had the experience of finding the exact right book at the exact wrong moment? And I don’t mean those times when you’re sure you put the book down somewhere where you knew you definitely wouldn’t forget it, and you know you’ll find it eventually but you’ve looked EVERYWHERE and have given it up for lost, so you finally pay the late fee at the library and get back in your car only to find it under the front seat.

Instead,  I mean those occasions when you don’t even know you should be looking for a book and the universe intervenes to drop into your hands the book that perfectly fits your situation...only about two days after it would have been really useful.

Now You're Playing with Power

Brian DeFelice is the Technology Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read his column in the July 3, 2019 edition of the Transcript & Bulletin.

My parents had just picked me up from my friend’s house that warm September night in 1989. When we got home and walked through the door, my parents told me I should go right to my room. “Huh?” I had thought to myseIf, “I didn't do anything bad (well...this time anyway). However being a six year old, and exhausted from a day of playing with my friend, I didn’t think too much about their request and headed up the staircase to my room.  When I opened the door, both of my brothers were smiling at me, and that's when I saw it...