Do You Believe In Magic?

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

It all started when my 29-year-old called in a panic asking if I had her college diploma. Having accepted a job in London, she had quit her current job, sublet her Brooklyn apartment, and applied for a visa to work abroad. Now she needed to provide proof that she had actually graduated.

I was pretty sure the document was stashed in one of the boxes of Abby’s stuff I had saved, along with multiple containers of memorabilia from my other three girls. While not exactly a hoarder, I seem to be incapable of discarding anything that might turn out to have some sentimental value during my children’s lifetimes, or possibly their descendants'. You just never know.

Up North or Down East in Maine

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the August 13, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

    I moved away from Massachusetts as a young child and returned for a long visit at the age of 19. Here in New England as a young adult, the Boston Bruins and fried clams had me at hello. I also fell in love with a Boston boy, which I don’t entirely regret because he was the reason I returned to live in Massachusetts a year later.

    I quickly picked up New England slang and colloquiums like “packy” and “wicked” and “the Gahden.”  However, I never quite got the hang of “down Purity” or “down Zayre’s”.  It seemed a disgusting grammatical habit of my group of Bostonian relatives and friends to leave out the prepositions "to" or “at.” No one cared about my annoying complaints, though. Purity Supreme and Zayre’s eventually disappeared as they were swallowed up by competitors and the habit seemed to disappear with the 20th Century.

Wait! I Need to Finish Procrastinating

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the August 6, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

I don’t remember exactly when I recognized one of my most annoying behavioral traits, procrastination. In all likelihood, I picked the horrid habit up as a child or teenager. It wasn’t until I was in college, however, that I truly realized it was plaguing my life.

In college, most of us seemed to fall into two camps.  There were those who had their papers stacked up in advance all semester, ready to hand in on the due date.  And, there were those of us who wait until the last day, hour, or minute. I genuinely admired the first type and identified with the second.

Hearing the Call

Nancy Ling is an Outreach Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read the published version of Nancy Ling's column in the July 30, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

When my oldest daughter was four year’s old she informed us that she wanted to be an ornithologist when she grew up. I’m not sure where she learned that word, probably from her favorite television show at the time, Blue’s Clues, but I do know that she loved birds from early on. Soon her little sister caught the passion too. Rather than collecting American Girl or Barbie dolls, it was the Audubon toy birds that filled our house.

You’ve probably seen these stuffed birds in a variety of stores. My girls loved to squeeze each bird’s belly to hear its individual song. As parents, we never minded the girls saving their funds in order to add the next bird to add to their collection. At least they were learning about nature while playing. More than this, the reward came when walking outdoors together. When we heard a sound like birdie birdie birdie, our girls would turn their heads, invariably one of them saying “Mama, there’s the Cardinal.”

Monkey Bars and Rope Swings Just Got Real

Liz Reed is the Adult and Information Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Liz's column in the July 23, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

“Ah-roo!” “Ah-roo!” This is the call-and-response chant of modern day Spartans, as heard by yours truly several weeks ago in Barre, MA.  I accompanied my boyfriend to his first-ever Spartan race on a farm in Barre where he scaled greased walls, carried boulders, crawled under barbed wire, and ran about 8 miles with over 2,100 other racers. About 5,000 Spartans raced in Barre over the course of the weekend.

            Spartan Race is one form of Obstacle Course Race (OCR). Other popular OCR events include: Tough Mudder, and other mud runs; BattleFrog; CrossFit Games; Ironman; Ultraman; Peak Races; Death Race; and weekend warriors. The sport is growing in popularity so quickly that by the end of this summer, I wouldn’t be surprised to see new forms of OCR springing up. According to journalist Erin Beresini in her book about her immersion in the world of endurance racing, “Off Course: Inside the Mad, Muddy World of Obstacle Course Racing”: “Obstacle course racing is the fastest-growing sport in U.S. history. Every week, thousands of marathoners, CrossFitters, and casual weekend warriors shell out money to run through mud and fire, crawl under barbed wire, scramble over ten-foot walls, and dodge baton-wielding gladiators. They are a new wave of athlete for whom running thirteen or twenty-six miles just isn’t enough. They crave a primal challenge…”  The USA Obstacle Racing Association (www.obstacleusa.com) estimates that over 400 obstacle racing events are produced in the United States, and almost half that number are produced in other countries.

Tackling the Appalachian Trail

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the July 16, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

 This past weekend, an ultra-marathoner (41-year old Scott Jurek of Boulder, Colorado) finished “hiking” all 2,189 miles of the Appalachian Trail. His journey ended at Mount Katahdin in Baxter, State Park, Maine. Katahdin.

What makes his hike unusual is the fact that he finished in the fastest time ever – 46 days, 8 hours, and 8 minutes. He averaged 50 miles per day, beginning on Springer Mountain in Georgia on a day in mid-spring, May 27. Katahdin means “the greatest mountain” and the hike ends in Maine in what is called the One Hundred Mile Wilderness.

 I once fancied hiking the Appalachian Trail – an entirely unrealistic journey for me. It was fun dreaming, though, and I took books out of the library and briefly charted a course until I remembered that I didn’t really like to hike.

Hot and Steamy Reader's Advisory

Read Kate Tigue's column in the July 9, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin. Kate is a Children's Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library.

After a long and dreary winter, the hot weather we thought would never arrive is here!  It’s July and that means the dog days of summer are right around the corner.  And whether (get it?!?) or not we realize it, many of us change our reading habits with the change in weather (ha, I can’t stop!).  Some of us eschew heavier tomes and gravitate towards light beach reads.  Others (like myself) use the summer to catch up on books we’ve wanted to read, the ones we never seem to get to during the rest of the year.

First Place Ribbon!

We are proud to report that on May 4, 2015 the Morrill Memorial Library's submission to the Massachusetts Library Association 2013-2014 Public Relations Awards won first place in the "News" categories. A representative 24 columns from 2013 and 2014 were submitted. They were written by Marg Corjay, Shelby Warner, Nancy Ling, Diane Phillips, Brian Samek, Bonnie Wyler, Marie Lydon, Norma Logan, Allison Palmgren, April Cushing, Liz Reed, Kate Tigue, Jillian Goss, and Charlotte Canelli.

Little Golden Books Old and New Again

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the July 2, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

As a former children’s librarian, a mother to three daughters, and a grandmother to a brood of grandchildren, I can’t imagine life without shelves of books for children. Hundreds of picture books are published every year, and libraries have the challenge of fitting them on the shelves of their children’s rooms. In libraries like ours in Norwood, we often have to defer to a one-in, one-out policy which means “weeding out” the worn and unread books to fit the new. It sometimes breaks our hearts to withdraw a lovely book that hasn’t acquired the following that some of the newest books have.

As a very young child, my family treasured reading and books. I don’t remember my own experiences reading many picture books, though. Besides our well-worn copy of Make Way for Ducklings (published in 1941), and my mother’s own copies of Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy, not many children’s books made our family’s cross-country move with in the late 1950s.

Don't Use Your Face as a Brake Pad

Read Alli Palmgren's column in the June 25, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin. Alli is the Technology Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library.

Bicycles are my thing. For years, I raced almost every weekend from April to January in whatever discipline that season offered: road, cyclocross, XC mountain biking, and track. Racing has given me my friends, my health, my identity, and my husband (we met at a bike industry Christmas party, but that is a story for another day).

Sun Tzu and the Art of War

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the June 18, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

I love lists. I’m always drawn to lists like “The Ten Best Movies for a Rainy Afternoon” or “A Hundred Things to Organize Before You Retire.”

I especially like lists of books because, well, mainly because I’m a librarian, and that’s my job.

I’ve always been curious about a title that appears on most lists of “books you must not miss.” I read many classics as a child and college student, but I was never required to read, or never was introduced to, the military classic of all time. The Art of War, by military general and philosopher, Sun Tzu was written sometime around 522-496 B.C. I must confess, I managed to avoid reading The Art of War until this past year until it was assigned reading for a master’s of public administration course in strategic leadership.

A Little House in the Woods

Diane Phillips is the Technical Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library.  Read Diane's  column in the June 11, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

 A few months ago, on a chilly spring night, my family and I were looking for something interesting to watch on TV. We stumbled across Treehouse Masters with Pete Nelson and his crew. We’d never seen an episode before but were intrigued by the premise of a professional treehouse builder and curious to see what he’d build. After watching a few episodes, we were all having the same idea: we need a treehouse in our backyard!

50 Years Plus of Beatlemania

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the June 4, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

One day, a few years ago, I found my diary from 1965 and I chuckled at the entry from a day in late summer.

“Went to the movies and saw Help!  I LOVE Paul” it read.

That Paul, of course, was Paul McCartney, the cutest Beatle, in my opinion.

Volunteers Make a Difference

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

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

It's All in the News

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

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