Dear Loyal Reader:
In nearly five years of publication, Mama Says has been late innumerable times, but the only month we’ve ever completely missed was a July — in 1999. It’s easy to figure out why: all the excitement of a Cleveland summer is suddenly upon us, and who wants to take time to write about fun when we can be having it?
The truth is, it’s been getting harder and harder for me to take time away from family life in order to write about family life. It’s time to make a change.
I’ve been fishing around for someone to take over the editor/publisher job, but so far no one has bit down hard enough on the bait for me to hook ’em. So we’re going to try scaling back, instead. The upcoming August issue will be the last paper edition of Mama Says that we’ll publish. Beginning with the September issue, Mama Says will only appear as an email edition and a website. Although the paper edition has been popular with many of our neighbors, it also consumes the most resources of funding and staff time. It makes sense to economize in this way if it means keeping some form of the newsletter accessible to most of our readers.
Long ago in the days when our babies took naps, founding mother Kelly Kupcak got the bright idea to create a newsletter to help keep our neghborhood connected. We’re proud and gratified to say that the newsletter has succeeded in what it set out to do: it has helped to keep Near West families tuned in to opportunities for neighbors to get together, children to learn, and families to have fun right here in Cleveland. We hope that with this change, we’ll continue to do that.
Thanks to the many who have supported and contributed to Mama Says. We couldn’t do it without you.