Category Archives: From the Library – A Weekly Column

Magically Healing Through Reading – by Charlotte Canelli

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Canelli

Charlotte Canelli is the Library Director at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood.  Read her column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin published on Friday this week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Madoff Affair: A Personal Tragedy – by Charlotte Canelli

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Canelli

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

There are times when personal tragedies catch us in a net of disbelief, rage or compassion. Tragedy, like reality, is sometimes not dissimilar to passing a car wreck on the side of the road and willing oneself not to look. Yet, something hard to watch is also something hard to turn away from.

Perhaps watching the ‘car wrecks’ from the sidelines is even more compelling today in the era of television. We began broadcasting game shows like The Dating Game in the 70s and MTV’s Real World in the 90s. Today we have The Bachelor. Jersey Shore. The Kardashians.

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

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

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

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

Adding to the farce, of course, was the story of “family-man” Bernie’s 16-year affair with Sheryl Weinstein. “Madoff’s Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie and Me” (July 2009), is Weinstein’s account, published in the summer of 2009, only seven months after Madoff’s Ponzi scheme came crashing down. At first, many in the family chalked the book up to the fantasy and get-rich book scheme of Weinstein. Today many believe the details of the sordid affair, a pitfall of egos and wallets large enough to get people into trouble.

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

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

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

Published nearly simultaneously, “Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family” (2011) by Laurie Sandell and “The End of Normal: A Wife’s Anguish, A Widow’s New Life” (2011) by Stephanie Madoff Mack tell a nearly identical story but from two different viewpoints.

The Madoff had two sons, Mark and Andrew. Both sons graduated from college to jobs in the Madoff firm and a career in a somewhat separate, somewhat connected firm that operated several floors above the Bernie Madoff Ponzi operation “Truth and Consequences” explains the story from the younger brother, Andrew Madoff’s, point of view. Author Sandell chronicles the personal versions of Andrew and his girlfriend, Catherine and Bernie Madoff’s wife, Ruth. Their story sometimes conflicts with that of Stephanie Mack just as impressions of Bernie Madoff conflicted with the real man behind the mask.

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

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

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

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Celebrate Library Lover’s Month – by Norma Logan

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Canelli

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

February is upon us. The festivities of the holiday season are distant memories, and we are facing the second month of the New Year thinking of hearts and flowers for Valentine’s Day. However, there is something else to celebrate in February, and that is Library Lovers’ Month! If you are already a Library Lover, come celebrate your passion, but if you are not, come visit us and discover all the great and free things that adults and children can do and see at your library in 2012.

Come get a library card if you don’t have one. It will open many doors for you.
It will allow you to use the library computers, and get on the many databases on the Morrill Memorial Library website (www.norwoodlibrary.org). If you prefer to bring
your own laptop, you can connect to the internet for free. You can even sign up for a beginner level computer class or get museum passes for reduced entrance rates.

Come support Library programs. Become a Literacy Volunteer and help someone learn to speak, read or write English better, or be an Outreach Volunteer and deliver books to shut-ins. If you know someone who may need help speaking or reading English, send them to the library for free English tutoring. Join the Friends of the Library, and be involved in helping the library prosper.

Come to the library with your children or grandchildren and involve them in
story times. For a $15 donation, you can even celebrate a child’s birthday by choosing a newly ordered book on a cart, and having the child’s name and birth date put on a bookplate inside the book.

Come be entertained with Monday night at the movies, or learn something new at an educational program sponsored by the library. Come play in the Adult Scrabble Club on Tuesday evenings. Children in grades 3-8 can play in the Kids Scrabble Club.

If you can’t get to the library, did you know that
• you can download electronic books on that new Kindle or Nook you got for the holidays?
• you can visit the library’s website (www.norwoodlibrary.org), and explore the databases with your library card at home?
• Norwood residents unable to get to the library because of special needs, illness or
disability can have personal delivery of reading materials?

The library is here to serve your needs. In this time of budget cuts and financial worries, don’t let the library be taken for granted. Encourage your elected town officials to support the library and its needs. This is the time to acknowledge the value of libraries and to work to assure that our libraries will continue to serve.

In the words of Salman Rushdie, “If knowledge is power, then the public library system gives that power to anyone who wants it.”

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Goodnight Gadgets – by Charlotte Canelli

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Canelli

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

“Goodnight iPad” by Ann Droyd came out just in time for the holiday season. I imagine it was a gift under many Christmas trees as it was under mine. A fun book with great colorful illustrations and witty rhyming text, it parodies the children’s classic “Goodnight Moon” written by Margaret Wise Brown many years ago.

“Goodnight iPad” looks and feels very much like the children’s book it mimics except the large green room buzzes with iPads, Nooks, Angry Birds and screens of every type. Father rabbit holds remotes in each hand while he lounges before a huge LCD Wi-Fi HDTV which extends across one entire wall. A warren of tiny rabbit children wear 3D glasses, text their Facebook friends and play video games at the same time.

All the while a mother rabbit rocks in a chair by the fire and sleepily watches the activity through her polarized spectacles.

“And the bings, bongs, and beeps. Of e-mails and tweets. And a fed-up old woman. Who is trying to sleep.”

That’s it, she says. “Goodnight iPad. Goodnight remotes. And Netflix streams, Androids, apps, and glowing screens.” At the end of this story, she hushes her family off to bed, unhappily unplugged while she contentedly reads “Goodnight Moon” by flashlight to the cat.

Pulling the plug on technology might feel like amputation to most families today. When Australian mother Susan Maushart realized that her family was being torn apart by technology, she decided to pull all the plugs. “Torn apart” might be an exaggeration, of course, but dinnertime and family time with her three teenagers were constantly disrupted by text messaging, emails and Facebook updates. Ms. Maushart felt that technology had taken a toll on her family and so she finally said “no” to the iPhones, iPods, IMs and PCs. She herself slept with her iPhone and she knew that it was going to be a very difficult transition. For six months she insisted that her family would have absolutely no access to screen entertainment or communication in their home. This included computers, cellphones, PC gaming and television.

She began by rereading “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau, an account of his two-year experiment of solitude in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts and she ended by sharing her own story of survival, “The Winter of Our Disconnect: How Three Totally Wired Teenagers (and a Mother Who Slept with Her iPhone) Pulled the Plug on Their Technology and Lived to Tell the Tale”. It is the sometimes humorous, always personal tale of her family’s journey “unplugged.”

Some of us have been there in the same place and we can understand the need to “unplug.” You’ve seen us in restaurants sitting across from each other with our eyes glued to tiny screens or our ears tapped into miniature speakers. In a desire to be always connected, it seems we disconnect from each other instead.

In “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other”, Sherry Turkle suggests that we avoid human contact by engaging with simulations of the people we think we are connecting with. Instead of closeness, we use tools that only give us the impression we are connecting. We’ve all heard the stories about teenagers or colleagues who IM each other sitting in the same room. There are hilarious times when I continue to talk to my husband on the cellphone as I walk into the house where we see each other face to face.

“Alone Together” is the third in a series of books by MIT professor, Ms. Turkle. “Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit” and “Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet” are the first and second books. Whether it is simply a sign of the times or a new world of alienation from reality, technology is here to stay and we need to learn to keep our human connections alive. Reading these books might give us the insight to keep ourselves and our families healthy in a future of technology.

Brian X. Chen is the author of “Always On: How the iPhone Unlocked the Anything – Anytime – Anywhere Future – and Locked Us In.” Who would have imagined that a combination phone, music player and handheld computer could become the gadget that it has. It’s indispensable to many of us, of course, but the negative implication is that it is nearly impossible to disconnect. Even more negative is what Chen implies is the sacrifice that we have made in this connection that has taken away our privacy and the role that Apple has played in it.

Nicholas Carr is the author of “The Big Switch” (2008) and the Atlantic Monthly essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid.” In 2010 he wrote “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”. Humans have intellectually progressed through history accompanied by the marvels of technology. Those amazing gadgets have included the alphabet and maps and such simple and complicated ones like the clock and printing press. And now we have the Internet and computers and these new gadgets are shaping a new human history.

While “Goodnight iPad” was a gift for my husband Gerry, an iPad-addict himself, I definitely got the bigger kick out of it. As a children’s book-lover at heart, I delight in the multilayered illustrations and the not-so-subtle satire on every page. In our life of iPhones, Kindles, screens and keyboards it is welcome relief to turn the pages and discover something new on every one of them. Maybe someday, in fact, I’ll take its message to heart.

“Goodnight buzzing. Goodnight beeps. Goodnight everybody who should be asleep. Goodnight pop stars. Goodnight MacBook Air. Goodnight gadgets everywhere.”

If you need help searching for any of the books mentioned in this column, please call our Reference or Information desks (781-769-0200) or visit the library in person.

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