May 2, 2021

People Are Pulling Some Real Weird-Ass Shit Out of Rivers These Days

Featuring Florida, of course.

Happy Sunday. I’m pleased to inform you that people have been pulling some really weird things out of rivers.

In late April, the Fish and Wildlife Service caught—and swiftly released—a 240-pound, 6-foot-10-inch fish in the Detroit River. The female sturgeon is estimated to be more than a century old. “She likely hatched in the Detroit River around 1920 when Detroit became the 4th largest city in America,” the Alpena Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office wrote in a Facebook post about the catch.

Around the same time in Florida (why is it always Florida?), two scuba-diving amateur paleontologists discovered a 50-pound mammoth bone in the Peace River. They donated the bone to a local middle school, Fox News reports. 

In related news, anthropology students and their professor at the University of Tennesee at Chattanooga recently found bits of what they believe could be the USS Chattanooga, a Civil War-era boat, in the Tennessee River. “It’s a stark reminder of a period that is not unlike one that we are going through now, and that we are bitterly divided,” UTC anthropology professor Morgan Smith told the local news. “And there are a lot of lessons in that.”

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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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