There's Something for Everyone at Norwood's Library

Read Bonnie Wyler's entire column this week in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Excerpt:

" When I began working at the Morrill Memorial Library in 2001, I was struck by the unusual breadth and depth of the programs offered here.

Like many libraries, Norwood offers wonderful programs for children and adults in the community. In addition to these basic services, our library has two outstanding programs: Literacy and outreach, which address the needs of underserved populations in town.

The outreach program delivers library materials to residents of nursing homes and senior housing facilities, as well as to anyone unable to come to the library because of illness or disability.

The literacy program provides free tutoring to non-English speakers and people who wish to improve their language skills."

Bonnie Wyler is the outreach and reference librarian at Morrill Memorial Library.

Never Too Late to Learn

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column this week in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

St. Leo University is tucked into hills that roll across part of west central Florida. It is a small campus; only 1,000 students live and study there in buildings designed to look like a Spanish mission. 

Many more students at St. Leo are the non-traditional types who attend evening or weekend classes on campus or at satellite locations. Over 13,000 of St. Leo’s students finish their degrees in continuing education programs in seven states or through online learning. 

Most of these students have families and jobs that won’t allow them to pursue their education the old-fashioned way. Many of them return to school after hardship or initial educational failures. Whatever the reason, all of them are making their families proud.

Saving the World and Other Backyard Projects

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column this week in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Excerpt:

I was stung on the eyelid by a nasty yellow jacket as a young child. It was, as you might guess, a very traumatic experience. I remember lots of adults fussing about me and having to take blue medicine by the spoonful and I’ve been terrified ever since.
As a young(er) adult I avoided bees and wasps at all costs, actually nearly breaking my back on a fireplace pit as I stepped away in panic. Bees, as you might guess, wouldn’t be my choice of pet, companion or live-in guest. Or neighbor.

So, how exactly has this librarian become a beekeeper? Or perhaps, the wife of a beekeeper who happens to keep honeybees in OUR yard?

My beekeeping days began as a total skeptic. For one, I figured that my hobbyist husband would give up on his rather strange interest in raising honeybees. Golf, birds, photography, gardening – did he really need another obsession? Secondly, I figured that his wife (me) would never actually OK the idea. However, given time and knowledge, and my insatiable desire to feed my family’s reading needs and support their causes, here we are ... saving the world.

Use the Library to End the Day Happily

Jean Todesca is a Youth Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read Jean's entire column this week in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Excerpt:

The hectic day is finally winding down.

It’s 9:30, the pizza boxes are piled in the trash. Your 4- and 6-year-old children are finally bathed and in bed after a late Little League game, preceded by a Cub Scout meeting and a quick stop at the school art fair. You’ve just put your feet up when you hear a loud wail coming from your 9-year-old son who is working on his homework. “I need six facts about New Mexico!” he exclaims.

Your first thought is the library, but it’s already closed. You’re just too tired for a random Internet search. If you could only get to an almanac, encyclopedia or fact book, but you can’t!

Volcanic Interruption

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

Excerpt:

It seems woefully apropos to quote Robert Burns this week. In “To a Mouse”, Scotland’s national poet wrote this in 1785:

“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, oft go awry, an’ leave us nothing by grief and pain, for promis’d joy!" I am left wondering, perchance, if Poet Burns was ever disappointed by an Icelandic volcano named Eyjafjallajökull

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Hooked on Scrabble!

April Cushing is the Adult Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read April's entire column this week in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Excerpt:

The cry of “bingo!” resounded through the 2nd floor Simoni Room as it does nearly every Tuesday night at the Norwood Library. A dozen or so adults of all ages and abilities meet weekly to match wits and pursue a passion for Scrabble.

For those unfamiliar with the lingo, a bingo occurs when a player uses all seven of his or her tiles simultaneously to form a word on the board, earning a 50-point bonus.

And, at the Morrill Memorial Library, usually a round of applause as well.

These folks take their Scrabble seriously.

Birds of a Feather Flock Together

Margot Sullivan is a retired Adult Services Librarian who still works part-time as a Reference Librarian and leads two popular book discussion groups.
Read Margot Sullivan's entire column this week in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Excerpt:

Yes, birdwatchers are curious creatures aware of birds but often oblivious to the rest of the world around them. We had a friend who lived on the island who had taken a shower and walked naked through her living room not realizing the picture window shades were open. Did the birders notice or even bat an eyelash? Nope – they were obviously watching for some elusive gnatcatcher, or warbler, or wren in the bushes.

Poetry and Hums

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

Excerpt:That simple poem of mine was a celebration of pride, of sibling love and was an example of the pure delight in the miracles around me. A decade later, however, my poetry was full of girlhood angst and suggested an adolescence that was overflowing with the turmoil of the 1960s.
That po etry, nevertheless, helped to get me admitted to the best university in my universe, Cal Berkeley. It was the era just past Beatnik, halfway through the hippie-movement and full swing into California sun worship, college rioting and the Vietnam War. A poet’s heaven.
I’m grateful that my teachers and my family encouraged me to write poetry. In the years that followed, college papers and other communication replaced my poetic impulses. I often miss that rare extravagance of my childhood.

Living in a Foreign Language

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

Excerpt:

Several weeks ago, my eldest daughter had one of the most important interviews of her life. For 12 hours I stayed at the acceptable mother-distance (while somehow managing to hold my breath at the same time). When I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer, in my I’m-a-digital-not-overbearing-Mom kinda way, I sent her a simple text.

How’d it go, I asked.

Her reply? One word: “Meh.”

Meh? What did “meh” mean? Could it mean “my ego hyperventilates” or “Mom, enough hysteria?” I’ve been struggling with 21st Century acronyms for some time now. I’ve always thought I was tech-savvy. However, I found out that I was an undereducated digital immigrant over a decade ago when I thought LOL meant lots of love. I was finally told LOL meant laughing out loud by my youngest daughter who was, appropriately, laughing out loud.

So, what is meh, I asked my husband. Fortunately, he knew enough to consult the online Urban Dictionary to calm my fears and assuage my ego. Meh, he explained, is a verbal shrug of the shoulders which also means “eh, who cares?” Oh, okay, that explains it. Not.

Reading Dr. Seuss

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

Excerpt:

On March 2 of every year the NEA plans its Read Across America day and asks “every child to be reading in the company of a caring adult” at some point in the day. (The NEA hopes to create a nation of readers through that program it created in 1997. Read Across America is now in its thirteenth year and it is a year-round program that focuses on motivating children and teens to read.)

Writing Makes Memories Come Alive

Shelby Warner is a retired librarian who works part-time as a Reference Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library.

Read Shelby Warner's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

Another of my Dad’s stories was of a baby brother I never knew. “Your Mama and me hit a man up Athens way one Saturday. Didn’t hurt his car hardly atall, but we were young and didn’t know any better. He said we had to pay five dollars a month ‘til we had paid enough. When your brother, Billy, died...he was just three months old, we missed a payment. When the man came to get his money, we were living in a little one room house. He came in and saw us standing by the kitchen table. On it was Billy’s coffin, littlest wood coffin I ever saw. Well, the man, after looking at us and down at our little boy who looked just like he was asleep, never came again for his money.”

They lived through times of sorrow and it is good for children to know you can live through grief and survive.

From Printed Page to Silver Screen

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

This year two movies nominated for an Academy Award were just such movies. Bright Star is a film based on the last three years of the live of poet John Keats. The film Sherlock Holmes was, of course, a mystery romp with the character of Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson, both invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Searching For the Right Word

Kelly Unsworth is Head of Children's Services at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read her entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

"As a children’s librarian, I always encourage families to create their own stories, which will eventually become their own family folklore. I would also like to suggest that families create and take note of their own “family words.” Every family has them; in our house “Boomala” was the place to go when my parents didn’t want to tell us where we where headed. It might be because the location would generate such excitement that they wanted to keep it a surprise for as long as possible to save their sanity. But it could also be a place that they didn’t want to mention because it was so detestable to the young at heart that they would never get us in the car."

A Bite of the Big Apple

Read Charlotte Canelli's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

This week we are spending the school vacation in New York and have brought along another 11 year old, a classmate of Colin’s. These sixth-grade boys aren’t going to be impressed with any high society tearoom, any amount of high-stepping dancers or any well-pressed and spotless cloth napkin at the Plaza Hotel. More up their alley are one of the biggest ToysRUs in the USA, the NYC Hard Rock Café and the impressive Museum of Natural History. With four days in New York I needed to find more suggestions geared to pre-teen boys.

A Valentine For YOU

Read Marie Lydon's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

Excerpt:

As this is Valentine’s week, I thought it would be nice to spotlight some of the people and things we love about working here. One is the job itself, which contrasts with the Jan. 5 news report in USA Today that “only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their work, the lowest level ever recorded in 22 years of surveys.”

This is depressing news and makes me think how unfulfilling it would be to go to a job every day that you did not enjoy or find interesting. The other is the people we meet, which brings home to me why many of us have been here much longer than we ever thought possible.