Category Archives: From the Library – A Weekly Column

Read the published version of Charlotte Canelli’s column in the March 15, 2013 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

I’ve written before that I don’t watch much television. I’m afraid it has something to do with my attention span. If something doesn’t grab me within the first ten minutes, I lose interest and have trouble trying it again.

I have what I might define as a distinctive taste in movies with a penchant for the quirky romance or a dark comedic drama. One of my favorite movies is Lars and the Real Girl starring Ryan Gosling (2007) and another is Very Bad Things with Cameron Diaz and Christian Slater (1998.) If you know those films, you’ll get my strange viewing habits. (more…)

Read Charlotte Canelli’s column in the March 8, 2013 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

At the first signs of the spring thaw, sometimes as early as late February, the maple sap harvesting begins. Buckets and tubing begin to show up along muddy back roads. March is the month when maple sugar festivals occur across the country in states like Oregon, Michigan and Massachusetts. It’s during this time that we hope we’re in for another sweet year.

Days must be warm and nights drop to freezing, or below, in order for the sap to flow. Most people know that it takes a lot of juice to make maple syrup – somewhere between 35-40 gallons of sap for one gallon of syrup. What might not be so well-known is that it takes about as many years (35-40) for a maple tree to be mature enough to be tapped.

One March Sunday over a decade ago, I went with a friend on a quest. We were rambling across northern Vermont very early that morning, winding over back roads wet with melting snow and hills dotted with small farms, cows and sheep. We watched as one plume of thick, billowing white smoke followed another on the horizon. We veered off our asphalt trail onto a dirt one leading into the woods. That road narrowed and became rutted and ended when we cut the engine in front of a working sugar house. (more…)

Read Shelby Warner’s column in the March 1, 2013 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

I went to Oxford, Mississippi to find William Faulkner or, more accurately, the statue erected in his honor by the town fathers to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birthday.

It was a cold and blustery day when I arrived. Flags were flapping and tourists scurried from store to store with upturned collars and hats held firmly on their heads. Most of them would end up at The Square Book Shop knowing they would find a warm welcome and a hot cup of coffee upstairs. I, however, was looking for something else.

I have a deep appreciation for the work of William Faulkner and had come to his home town hoping to better understand his writing and to soak up some of the images he had absorbed on the square. For those of you who are not familiar with Faulkner let me just say that he is one of the pre-eminent southern writers whose stories I had come to love and whose writings still speak to my literary soul.

(more…)

Read Charlotte Canelli’s column in the February 22, 2013 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

This fall we discovered a great little bakery on the southern Massachusetts coast where the Acushnet River flows into Buzzard’s Bay. The town of Fairhaven shares a harbor with what was once the most-famous whaling-era seaport, New Bedford. The south coast is a hidden gem of Massachusetts that our family is learning more and more about all the time.

The Flour Girls Baking Company just opened shop in Fairhaven, having moved from a start-up in-home bakery in another local town. The website for the bakery and café admits that the Flour Girls (with an s) is a misnomer. The bakery is really only managed by ‘one girl’, Jill Houck, who hails from Vermont. Ms. Houck took up baking for profit, having learned her skills from her parents who loved to bake themselves. One of the delightful things about the Flour Girl’s business is that Houck also owns a The Flour Girls Baking Company sweet truck that travels on demand throughout eastern Massachusetts.

If you haven’t heard, the recent phenomenon of food trucks is sweeping the state of Massachusetts (particularly in Boston) and the entire country from coast to coasts. From early morning through evening residents and visitors of big cities across the country see these mobile kitchens, or food trucks, parked along busy streets, in intersections or parking lots.

(more…)