November 29, 2013

Friday Cat Blogging – 29 November 2013


Today is a “Where’s Waldo” edition of Friday catblogging, except that Domino is a lot easier to find than Waldo. Our quilt this week is another double Irish chain. Thanks to poor planning on my part, nearly all of our Irish chain quilts got backloaded into the end of the year, which is why you’re seeing a bunch of them lately. And there’s still one to go. This one is machine pieced and hand quilted.

In other news, I’m reliably told that whatever else you may think of it, the Daily Mail is your go-to destination for pictures of cute cats and other animals. Also, judging from its front page, it’s the place to go for hyperbolic Black Friday News. Here is today’s top headline in the US edition: “Black Friday chaos sweeps America: Man shot for a TV and another is stabbed for a parking space as shoppers turn violent.” You may, if you wish, take this as a data point against my thesis that Black Friday is fading away.

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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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