A couple of years ago I bought some food coloring with the idea of dropping it into water and taking pictures of the swirls. Unfortunately, it turned out that I was missing a crucial piece to make this work and I ended up never going back to it. Yesterday morning, though, I opened a cupboard and happened to notice the package of food coloring. It was taunting me. So I got it out and finished the job.

In these pictures, Marian was the artistic technician, dropping the coloring into the water in ways that would hopefully make interesting patterns. I was the hired muscle, pressing the shutter button over and over to get a nice, large batch of photos. Here are four of them.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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