(economic) woe is we

Tomorrow, Wednesday 2/4, Public Radio/WNYC's Brian Lehrer show will have on Maplewood head librarian to discuss how hard times are impacting libraries...specifically, ours - the one that serves moms with no other way to gather and meet, the one that gives refuge to kids when school lets out...take a listen tomorrow.
Here's the comment that planted the seed for the show, which states,

The library here in Maplewood, NJ has 8% more traffic in the last year. People are gathering there and using the internet access and computers to look for work. They are also checking out a lot more books instead of automatically visiting Amazon or big box stores. They are also taking advantage of the free children's story times and crafts and other programming. It's pretty amazing to see people actually utilizing the library for all the things it has provided all along. (This would be filed under "Bright Spot" except that the funding for the library will probably be slashed soon.)

Birth of a Midwife - Cara Muhlhahn on WNYC

Cara Muhlhahn, certified nurse midwife and the author of the memoir Labor of Love: A Widwife’s Memoir (Kaplan Publishing, 2008), discusses the issues around home births and what led her to become a midwife.

They also discuss the other side - the one in fourteen births that are now scheduled.

Motrin tweet

Wow - so the Motrin thing is big enough news that public radio station WNYC's Brian Lehrer had on NY Times columnist Virgina Heffernan on today to talk about the offending ad and the way that new technology (in this case, Twitter) is changing the way consumers and companies interact. Within hours of the ad, moms united, sent thousands of messages to the company and the ad was pulled. Apparently the company was likely marketing to an Urban Baby-type crowd (judged by Virginia Heffernan to be a bit more cynical, less "sincere" mothers who would respond well to the ad) but misjudged how other moms would take it. Here's a compilation of twitter tweets...

The interesting part (to me) was that what overwhelmingly came out of the whole thing was not that people don't like the product anymore or want to just come out as pro-sling, but rather that companies need "CMOMs" - ie., more mothers in high places in companies to give a mom perspective. Good point.