August 3, 2009

Tomato Woes

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A couple of months ago we bought one of those upside-down tomato planters you might have seen advertised on TV.  I like it.  It hangs right outside my window, so I get to watch it grow every day.

And it’s done well.  At least, we thought it was doing well until the first tomatoes ripened and we took a look at them.  The top halves are all fine, but the bottoms all look like the ones in the picture: convered with a gray, pulpy mass and basically ruined.  I’m not sure what causes this kind of thing.  Is it a bug?  A parasite?  Overwatering?  An alien nanobot infestation?  Something else?

I desperately need advice.  Are there any expert tomato farmers out there who can tell me what’s going on?

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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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