Posts Tagged ‘fundraising’
Thinking Things
I hope you don’t mind that I haven’t asked you, dear readers, for money, and I haven’t splashed advertisements all over this virtual space, either. It’s not what I do. I consider myself lucky that I can get away with that. Obviously, asking for money is a reasonable thing to do when you have no other source of funding.
These thoughts have been triggered by two things. First, the multitude of activist organizations that are bombarding my inbox with messages emphatically spelling out all the atrocities occurring in our country that need to be stopped.
“Send us $9 monthly.”
“Donate now.”
It’s hard to argue with the craftily written paragraphs that imply the money I give will stymie all the threats to our democratic freedoms unfolding over the last three months. Alas, they are undone by the repetition of requests and the absolute nothing that happens to stop the horrors piling up by the day.
The second thing that has been irking me is the massively intrusive advertisements that a certain weekly documentary series mashes into its podcast format with overdone hype. I am grateful that this person is traveling far and wide to gather stories and employing a crew of staff to record sound and video, which costs a lot of money, I’m certain, but there must be other ways to finance the project.
The current method they use is making it hard to listen to their otherwise very interesting story.
I had a very interesting –read that “chilly”– bike ride yesterday afternoon. When I finished mucking about with various small projects, I was warm, and the air temperature was almost 60°F. I figured the exercise of cycling would naturally heat me up, so I didn’t put on long sleeves.
From our wonderfully nestled property, I did not perceive much in the way of wind. I also didn’t notice that the brief clearing in the sky we had been enjoying was over, and thick clouds were blocking the warm sunshine.
I soon discovered it was closer to 50 than 60°F and felt more like 30 when creating my own wind chill effect during rapid spurts down hills.
The route I selected was a short square that ended up putting me into a stiff headwind for the last miles to our driveway at a time when my arms were already uncomfortably cold.
Checking the wind speed when I got home verified why the neighbor’s flag was stiffly blowing straight at me as I passed. My weather app indicated a steady 15mph directly out of the north. Yeah, brrr.
I’m thinking I should have worn long sleeves.
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Trigger Pulled
We had a full day yesterday with some rewarding outcomes, starting with a vision appointment for me where I learned my eyes are in very good shape for my age. Who wouldn’t be happy to hear their eye doctor offering admiration for the measurements resulting from tests? He probably says that to all his patients.
While I was in Hudson, I was able to pick up an online order that Cyndie had placed with Fleet Farm and then I made a stop at Menard’s to pull the trigger on buying posts and hardware for our shade sail project. I have settled on a supplier for the canopy but haven’t locked in which size I will order.
The first version of shade sail I was considering was a very expensive commercial grade, but further research uncovered a similar technology at a fraction of the cost that I am excited about. They provided a free sample of their corner hardware for attaching to anchor points and swathes of all their color options.
The new posts will be delivered next week but I plan to wait until I have the shade sail to lay on the ground for verification of post locations before digging holes.
Late in the day, we received notice that there would be a pallet of grain feed bags delivered which would be a first to our location from a different supplier than in the past. It was a BIG truck.
Sure beats tossing 28 bags by hand. Unfortunately, the temporary fill-in driver ended up spinning his tires when trying to back away from the pallet and got himself stuck in the barn. Between the two of us, we used a couple of tricks to get the rig unstuck with minor disruption to the dirt floor.
That delivery shenanigans happened just as our streaming program of “Boomers vs. Zoomers” by Jane Fonda’s Climate PAC and MoveOn was beginning. We donated money to their cause which provided a ticket to watch celebrities struggle for answers in a trivia contest.
I joined the program already in progress.
Their contest might have worked well enough as a fundraiser but it didn’t prove to be a knockout for entertainment value. The inspirational talks by a few key people, of which Jane Fonda was one, were another reason they were doing this program but I felt it was just more “preaching to the choir.”
It’s hard for me to feel the efforts of people and organizations trying to rally support against the ongoing destruction of our government are accomplishing anything that actually interrupts the nefarious activities underway. It seems like they are just collecting money, which is what the crooks currently in the White House are busy doing as well.
Bad air just keeps going into this balloon and all that happens is people talk about how bad it is and maybe we can slow things down or in a couple of years make it harder to inflate. I’d prefer someone just put a pin in it right now and pop the damn thing.
It is not crying wolf to say that there is a fox in the henhouse, the sky is falling, and the Emporer has no clothes.
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Sad Truth
No matter which side of the current democracy debate happening in the U.S. is bombarding my inboxes, they share a common trait: it all comes down to the almighty dollar. Apparently, Elon Musk offered up $1 million to entice voters to pick the Republican party’s favored Wisconsin Supreme Court judge. At the same time, the latest email from MoveOn.org in the name of Robert Reich outlines “the most sweeping assault on the American mind in modern history.” It goes on to tell me “we need a massive movement” and then asks if I will help in the form of $5.00 a month.
So much for my dream of wandering in the wilderness for four years to avoid news of the most despicable people to ever gain control over every branch of our once reasonably sound government.
Since the current administration of evil-doers is rushing to slash funding of practically any government program you can think of that was created to help people, all those organizations that were barely functioning on what little money they received are now looking to the citizens for more cash. The occasional fund drive weeks of public radio and television will become full-time pleas.
The sad truth is that when Public Radio begs me one more time to give even more than my current amount of sustaining donations, I may need to tell them I can’t afford any amount if the Social Security program falls under the destructive cash-grab by the kleptocrats in office.
How many ethical judges will be able to survive the methods of achieving autocracies that have sadly been proven successful throughout history?
If only someone would have warned us this might happen and encouraged citizens to get to the polls and vote to save our democracy last November. I guess they should have also offered a cash incentive bonus.
To their credit, MoveOn did send me one protest effort that didn’t immediately ask for money. The “HANDS OFF” national day of action (Saturday, April 5) looks to rally thousands of people across the country for nonviolent protest of the brazen power grab underway. I fully support their intentions but don’t believe for one second that protests by the masses will worry the bullies in the White House one bit.
I’m not sure whose attention we need to get in order to turn this ship around. We can stop shopping at every big corporation’s retail businesses, but it seems like it’s the power holders in Russia who have control over the U.S. now. I don’t think they care one bit about the possible collapse of our economy. Wait. What am I thinking? That is probably an integral part of their plan.
They let the Orange-One and Musk think they are all powerful and getting wealthier by the minute while Putin sits back and watches Russia’s one-time nemesis of global order and Olympic competition wilt away into irrelevance. If I were Musk and his boss-in-crime, I’d be supremely cautious around high windows and flights of stairs in the presence of Putin’s goons. As far as theories go, seems plausible enough to me.
I wonder if goon is a high-paying position. Remember, it’s all about the money, and one probably needs to keep their goons contented to the extreme.
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Relative Something 