Do you own a hand truck? Little red wagon?
Location:22 n front to 221 n front
Time:8:05AM Saturday, February 27th

Do you own a hand truck? Little red wagon? Do you have 20 minutes on Saturday to help your favorite neighborhood bookstore?

Moving day is fast approaching! We have until March 9th to move 150,000 books from our present condemned location to storage. On Saturday February 27th we are going to do the bulk of the move!

We have rented the basement of 221 N. Front St for storage. It has a loading dock, off street access and is high, dry and secure. (It is the building to the right of Pender’s Café.) The route is ramped the whole way with no stairs. We will load your method of conveyance at the back door of 22 N. Front and we will unload it into storage at 221 N. Front – we are only asking you to walk (or if you have a pick up truck – drive) the 2 blocks in between. We will begin at 8 AM and go until dark.

In the morning we will have Coffee, at lunch time we will have pizza from Slice of Life and Front St. Brewery would like to thank you for helping us by inviting you over for a beer.

The back door of 22 N. Front is accessible through the parking deck. If you enter on Second St. you will see on your right hand side a drive way leading to the back of the building. If you enter on the Market St. side take the second right which puts you on the ground floor level and then a left to be behind Hell’s Kitchen.

Thank you for all your help! We (especially me!) are more grateful than you can imagine! THANK YOU!!!!!!

See you Saturday!

The Rohler Family

PS: Yes, we still need boxes for packing this week.

Mardi Gras Masquerade and Silent Auction

Local midwifery advocates seeking community support and a raging good party this Saturday, Feb. 20th at the Mardi Gras Masquerade and Silent Auction! No admission fee required. Complete with Jambalaya (and other culinary treats), non-stop Disco, and a silent auction filled with yet more fantastic reasons to support midwifery, Mardi Gras for Midwives will be one Mardi Gras party you don’t want to miss.

The fundraiser will benefit the local midwifery-advocate group Where’s My Midwife? and Midwives for Haiti, a non-profit organization designed to help meet the exponentially increasing need for midwives in Haiti.

Both groups are bringing important change to the world of birth and to the lives of families. Come out and show your support and appreciation! Join them this Saturday, Feb. 20th from 7:00pm – 10:00pm.

For more information go to:
www.wheresmymidwife.org
www.midwivesforhaiti.org

The North Carolina Arts Council has launched an online public survey to gather the opinions of New Hanover County and Wilmington-area residents on the role of the arts in the area and the importance of an arts council to the region.

The arts council seeks participants to complete the three-page online survey from now until March 1. Survey participants are asked to describe what they personally value most about the arts in Wilmington and New Hanover County and what they think the priorities of a local arts council should be. Among the list of priority options are marketing the region’s arts resources or providing resources and support to local artists and arts organizations.
Last fall, the N.C. Arts Council awarded a $15,000 grant to the Wilmington City Council to fund this research. The grant, which is part of the Arts Council’s Creative Economies program, will also inform the design of economic development strategies based on the areas’ arts and cultural traditions.

The arts council that previously served the area was called the Arts Council of the Lower Cape Fear. It closed its doors in 2002.

The survey can be accessed through http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TDFBR73

In Novemeber of 2009, Olivia Marshburn, a Certified Nurse Midwife and long time local opened the first legal home birth practice in the area since she can remember. “I don’t know of a legal homebirth practice here in my lifetime.” Marshburn said. There have been, she added, numerous CPMs (Certified Professional Midwives) working underground in and around Wilmington since the early 70’s.
Her Hampstead-based homebirth practice, Midwifery Services, Marshburn said, is one of four legal home birth practices in the state. Her staff includes assistant midwife, Meredith Christie, and midwife apprentice Antoinette Palmer.

Marshburn’s home-based office, designed and built by she and her husband, rambles from the front of the house to the back and is complete with a small desk near the entrance, a wooden massage table and an entire wall of books relating to women’s health, both current and historical texts. The office is facing south and welcomes the light through three windowed walls. Remnants of a robust summer garden can be seen from the back window. A wooden doll house and several other wooden toys lay next to the desk on the floor provided to entertain the children of clients.

After opening the French doors on the North side of the office revealing a spacious living room with vaulted ceilings that seem limitless, Marshburn said she always knew she’d return to homebirth. “I decided long ago that when I retired I would open a homebirth practice.” She said.

She entered midwifery in the early 80’s as a direct-entry midwife or lay midwife (known then as “granny” midwives). Later, as a single mother raising two young sons, Marshburn needed a more dependable income and decided to take her passion down a different road. She received her Nurse Midwifery certification from UCSan Fransisco in 1993 after six years of education and training. She has since worked as a midwife for the National Health Service Corp., for Dr. Helen Sandland – a former Wilmington obstetrician, and at the naval hospital at Camp Lejeune.

She would have retired from her CNM position at the Naval Hospital in August 2012. But her plans changed suddenly last summer when more than a hundred women in and around Wilmington found themselves without midwifery options. “Our only local homebirth practice ended suddenly and the void in available homebirth services was not acceptable to me,” Marshburn said. Then, in August, came the termination of Carolina OBGYN’s midwifery program. “Suddenly there were all these women without options. I couldn’t sit back and let that happen.” She said. “I chose to leave my job early because I believe women have a fundamental right to choose where, when and with whom they have their babies.”

Marshburn comes from a long line of similarly strong women who also played an active part in serving this community. Her grandmother was a midwife and a nurse, and her mother a nurse. Her drive to serve the underserved is likely rooted in the example of service her predecessors provided. “My grandmother lived in Sampson County in her younger years and the closest doctor was in Wallace. Back then, birth wasn’t an emergency. Birth was to be attended and my grandmother was there for many mothers who may have otherwise gone unattended,” Marshburn said.

Marshburn believes that the idea of “attending” women through the many transitions in their lives needs to be renewed. In over twenty years of birth experience she has invariably seen, she says, that there two polar categories of birth attendants. “There are those who love, honor and respect the process, and then there are those who want to control it, who are afraid of it, like it’s a train wreck waiting to happen.” This area, she says, needs more of the former.

Marshburn has been “approved to practice” by a supervising obstetrician currently practicing in North Carolina. North Carolina is one of only six states in the U.S. that requires midwife supervision. Midwives in most states are required to “collaborate, consult, and refer” with practicing physicians but are considered autonomous and are at liberty to practice independently.
In addition to frequent contact with her supervising physician, Marshburn has an open professional relationship with several other physicians. “I have the ability to informally consult with eight physicians in the state, three of whom practice in Wilmington.” Marshburn said.

Per a signed agreement between she and her supervising physician, Marshburn’s “evidence-based” practice follows protocols outlined in section 88 of New Zealand’s Public Health and Disability Act. Eighty percent of births in New Zealand are attended by midwives. New Zealand is statistically a great place to have a baby having better outcomes for mothers and babies than other developed nations including the United States.

The road ahead, she confides, has yet to be paved. “There will challenges regarding hospital transfer and other necessary collaboration with the local medical community,” Marshburn said. “But, there are challenges in every endeavor. If it’s the right thing to do, you just keep doing it.” Marshburn feels hopeful that, together, she and hospital care -providers will work out the kinks and enable women efficient, smooth transfer to a higher level of care by a hospital obstetrician or hospital-based midwife if the need should arise. “Wasting time due to fear and political concerns is not safe practice and cannot be tolerated or accepted by our local women and families.” She said.

Women deserve the right to choose, Marshburn said. “Women hold 99% of household leadership. They are largely in control of how their families enter the systems of society. If we let establishments – medical, religious, political – dictate how women use and share their personal power, then those establishments control the population,” she said.
Marshburn sees nothing but hope in the future of birth. “Things are changing,” she said. “Awareness is growing. I think more and more people are realizing that birth is not to be feared, but rather loved and celebrated.”

Related links

• Where’s My Midwife
• Midwifery Services
• Wilmington Homebirth Meetup Group

Detroit and the Carolinas: Economically Hard Hit Areas.

During White House talks this week on the deep economic problems being faced by millions of Americans, the Carolinas and Detroit were singled out as being particularly “hard hit areas.” To be lumped with Detroit for our economic ineptness should be a source of great frustration to all residents, taxpayers, and hard working business owners. As well, the prognosis should be an embarrassment and wake-up call to state & local elected officials, as well as the various visible and invisible economic development and jobs creation actors in the Region.

Detroit is a trail of tears, suffering the cumulative corrosive effects of Big Labor, repeated government bail-outs of the U.S. auto industry, and the fat-cat corporate bureaucracy which helped doom their competitiveness years ago. And then there is Detroit’s city government! The reign of their last mayor just ended. He served time in jail, with $8.4 million in city funds used to settle a sexual misconduct lawsuit. This was just one of several scandals which gutted both the city’s budget and its reputation.

The comparison of the Carolinas to Detroit might not be completely fair. But let’s be honest. In addition to the nearly cartoonish bad behavior of several South Carolina state and federal office holders during the past year, North Carolina has its own rogues gallery of elected officials who have been every bit as embarrassing! John Edwards, R.C Soles, Governor Easley and others from his tainted team, a recently jailed sheriff, and other unfolding local stories demonstrate how arrogance and cronyism hold back our collective regional identity as a viable participant in the 21st century national and global economy.

We’ve also seen Wilmington banks fail (bailed out with taxpayer money), and any number of commercial and residential developers (and their bankers) in deep financial trouble, remnants of the region being overbuilt and over-leveraged. Despite the known mistakes and bad dealings of so many of these ruling entities, it is all too rare for their questionable dealings and policies to be forcefully and publicly challenged by other so-called leaders in the business community….

The bicycles always get me, though. They’re parked at nearly every building, at odd angles, sometimes in a heap of metal, but most dutifully locked to a bike rack. Some are late models and look like they cost thousands of dollars, while others appear old, rusted and abandoned. Where are the owners, I wonder? Did they forget where they parked, like some octegenarian Alzheimer’s patient? Or do they say: “I know. I’ll leave my bike by Trask Coliseum and pick it up at the next basketball game.” Maybe this is some sort of share-a-ride program, and EVERYONE has keys to all the locks.

Anyway, this photo essay is courtesy of a curious wanderer.

In two years we’ve also learned a lot more about Titan Cement: 1) that it would be the dirtiest new cement plant in the U.S.; 2) that they’ve refused to include existing pollution control technology to make their plant cleaner; 3) that while they were telling our commissioners what great environmental stewards they were, their mining permit was being revoked by a Florida judge for impacts on the Everglades and Miami’s drinking water supply; 4) that they’ve done everything in their power to avoid a State Environmental Policy Act Review (SEPA), which applied to the project initially and then mysteriously was removed by state regulators after intensive lobbying by the company. Most recently we’ve learned that while Titan was lobbying state officials to remove SEPA, a local Titan officer paid twice the appraised price for an office building owned by two big-time fundraisers for former Governor Mike Easley—men with reputations for helping grease the skids for environmental permits. The State Bureau of Investigation is now investigating the Titan permit process for potential corruption and influence peddling.

It should be patently obvious by now that Titan Cement’s officers, lobbyists, and PR firm have grossly misrepresented this company to our county commissioners, to Wilmington Industrial Development, and to our community. But there are a few things the current county commissioners can do to rectify this mistake and help lift the cloud of controversy that now permeates the Titan project. 1) At a minimum, pass a resolution requesting Governor Perdue freeze all permits for Titan Cement until the SBI investigation is complete. 2) Better still, pass a resolution requesting that Governor Perdue require the Titan project be subject to the State Environmental Policy Act, which would hold all state permits until a comprehensive review of all the plant’s impacts is complete. And (3) most importantly, rescind the $4.2 million in incentives promised to Titan Cement. Some of the commissioners have expressed concern that rescinding the incentive would bring a lawsuit from Titan. It may, since we now know Titan has a reputation for suing anyone who stands in their way. But I bet that the majority of citizens in this county would much rather have their tax dollars used defending that decision than have one red cent go in the pocket of a company that not only has deceived us, but that would affect the health of our families, our economy, and our quality of life for the next 50 years.

The New Hanover County Commissioners have a simple choice. They can bury their heads in the sand, ignore the public, and hope someone else slays the dragon they invited here. By doing this they will continue to give the impression to the heavy polluting industries of the world that we are so desperate we’ll pay millions to whomever we can beg to come here–and bend whatever environmental regulations need bending. OR they can show some backbone and send a clear, powerful signal around the world that our future lies in the emerging multi-billion-dollar clean and green manufacturing and energy sectors, in the high-tech and health-tech sectors where we already excel, in the creative economy that we’ve said we want to incubate and where an increasing number of business leaders, such as those involved with the new Cape Fear Economic Development Council, want to take us. That’s a future that raises all boats, fuels our current economic engines, and that everyone can support. That’s a future that cherishes our coastal resources, our families, and communities, and makes them a powerful magnet for the businesses and industries of the 21st century—not a coal-burning, low-tech, heavy polluting industry of the past that will encase our economy and environment in cement overshoes for decades to come.

So gentleman, if you please, we’d like our money back.

Joel Bourne
President, Friends of the Lower Cape Fear/StopTitan.org
Ogden

Since moving to Greenfield Lake, we have longed for a good neighborhood bar.  Let’s face it, there are a lot of bars in and around Wilmington.  Since downtown is less than 4 miles away from my front door, any of the bars in downtown could theoretically be a contender.  But then I realized that the application of the word “good” was a qualitative one which raised an important question.  Aside from distance, how do you judge the quality of a neighborhood bar?  I got a call from a friend recently suggesting that I join him at the opening of a great new watering hole near the Lake.  I was indisposed that evening so I took a rain check.  I take recommendations very seriously, so a week later my wife, Tanya and I stopped by.  It was there that my question was answered.

120 Greenfield Street is an address with a history of community service.  For many years it served the residents of Nesbitt Court and beyond as a neighborhood market.  Veteran bar owner Dustin Ricks seized the opportunity to purchase the property in July 2009 and after working 14 hour days for 6 months reintroduced the understated brick building to the residents of Wilmington as Satellite Bar & Lounge, Wilmington’s latest best kept secret…until now.

The décor is hip and sophisticated but not pretentious, vintage but not junky; warm and inviting.  The nuances of the owner’s artistry shine in the chic use of automobile parts as bar stools and door handles.   A grab bar from a city bus extends along the front of the bar providing a foot rest.  The interior was completely gutted revealing massive timber trusses above and a surplus of wood products which were reused in large neo-medieval barn doors and bar surfaces.  A single bank of draft levers that emerge from off-the shelf pipe fittings are reflected in the heavily epoxied wood countertops along with the subdued light from exposed incandescent pendent lights.  The scene is somewhere between an early industrial warehouse and an Alpine ski lodge.  Comfortable reclaimed furniture provides an ample setting for lucid fellowship and best of all, there are no TVs!

A copious selection of 80 varieties of beer combine with a fully stocked bar to quench thirst on any budget.  Sunday afternoons are punctuated with live acoustic bluegrass and a build-your-own Bloody Mary bar.  Future improvements will include an outdoor movie garden and more live entertainment.

Satellite is truly a grass roots endeavor germinating from the salient values of comfort, fellowship, sophistication, and variety.  Most importantly, where gratitude is often lost in the vacuum of mediocre expectations, the owners have clearly stated its importance with a brightly lit yellow sign above the beer coolers; simply stated, “Thank you for shopping with us.”  Ricks sees this project as an asset to the community and is optimistic that it will be in operation well into the foreseeable future, setting a new precedent of quality for the ideal neighborhood bar.

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