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Alice Schiller, once the owner (with her husband Harry) of the Pink Pussycat nightclub on Santa Monica Boulevard, has died. This is from the LA Times obituary:

Opened in 1961, it was pink through and through, just like the inside of Schiller’s house and her entire wardrobe….Schiller and her husband drove a pink Cadillac and a pink Rolls-Royce, which bore the words “Follow Us to the Pink Pussycat.

I thought you might all like to see a picture of that Rolls before it was painted pink. That’s it, parked in front of our little stucco house in Orange County around 1960 or so. That’s my sister standing in front of it, ever so fashionable in her yellow raingear and red boots.

Somewhere I have a picture of the Rolls being unloaded off a ship in Long Beach before my father took possession of it. As you can imagine, this purchase was a boondoggle of the highest order, the car’s chief claim to fame being the fact that my brother was almost born in its back seat in 1961. But say this for it: it got everyone to St. Mary’s hospital just in time for a happy ending. The next year, we sold it to the Schillers, who painted it pink and eventually installed it in front of the nightclub.

At least, that’s my recollection of the story. My mother isn’t home right now, so I can’t swear to every detail. But that’s my connection to today’s news. Just thought I’d share.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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