Organized!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The library also has some great choices for children:

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

Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dogs' Tails

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then he turned thirteen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogs, and Twitter, and Facebook, Oh My!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Find Movie Magic at the Library

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making History in Norwood

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

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

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

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

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

Some representative memorable searches include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

eBooks eLectrified!

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

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

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

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

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

Who can blame them for this emotional response?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Epic

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

It’s official. Fall is here as of today. This is when we ask each other questions such as where did the time go? Or what was your favorite summer memory? Surprisingly one of my best memories took place at the library. I know. It’s hard to believe. After all I did venture off to see black bears and whales in Alaska. What could beat that?

Well, the Teen Poetry Club came close. I had the privilege of introducing teens to a variety of poetic forms and several award-winning poets for five weeks. True, I was wondering who would sign up for this club. I mean, there are trips to the beach, visits to grandparents. I found the answer to that question on the first day—teens who are passionate about writing, and who are really, really good at it, too.

That said, I thought it was only appropriate that I share some of their work (with their permission, of course). I do this for two reasons: first, so you can be thoroughly impressed with the caliber of young writers here in Norwood, and second, so you may think about signing up for this workshop next summer.

Each time we covered a different topic in our workshop. Here’s a poem that one student, Lauren Swank, wrote during our first meeting. We were discussing the use of dreams and special places to jump start our writing when Lauren penned the following:

Dreams

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

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

Breathe

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

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

Cookies

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

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

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

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

Another local poet, Jean Tupper, inspired the teens to write a list poem. After all, everyone has some kind of list. I’ve made my To-Do lists into poems now and then.
Often Haiku can appear deceptively easy. Short and sweet, right? But the students learned from poet, Fran Witham, that there are several key elements to haiku, including a reference to nature. This example is by Lauren Swank.

Frolicking in dandelions
Her head held high
She is free

Our final class was on ekphrastic poetry. JoAnne Preiser showed us famous works of art as inspiration for our own poems. Meenu Ravi write this poem:

Those Who Are

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

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

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

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

Browsing the Library Shelves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Family Feud: Enlist Your Local Library

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hurricane Force

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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