September 15, 2020

Lunchtime Photo

Milky Way season is just about over here in the Northern Hemisphere. I had planned to take a short trip this week to around Lake Tahoe, with some nighttime side trips into Nevada to try out some new kinds of Milky Way photography, but the wildfires killed that idea—and by the time the smoke subsides it’s unlikely I’ll be able to get a decent view. So for now I’ll go ahead and post the second picture I took in April during a visit to Anza Borrego: a panoramic view that shows not only a large section of the Milky Way, but also the house and the cross on the ground. It’s not a huge panorama, which I’d like to try someday, but that’s because the conditions weren’t good enough to see all that much of the Milky Way anyway. A good viewing night in the dark skies of Nevada would help a lot on that score. Maybe next year.

April 25, 2020 — Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California

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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.

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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.

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