These are the islands of Deenish (left) and Scariff (right). The picture was taken near the Coomakista Pass, on the Ring of Kerry between Caherdaniel and Waterville. If you judge scenic points by the size of the turnout provided for cars and tour buses, Coomakista is by far the biggest attraction in these parts.

There’s a statue of Mary at Coomakista, so I vaguely assumed that “kista” meant Christ. But vague assumptions aren’t enough for this blog, so I looked it up. This turned out to be surprisingly hard, but as near as I can tell, a coom is a hollow and kista means treasure or somesuch. According to the Irish Times, “The placename Coomakista, which means ‘the coom of the cash’, stems from a legend that 18th century French privateers stashed money in the mountain recess.”

In any case, it really is a stunning view, and it changes subtly every day depending on the weather. And yes, I do have a picture of the Madonna statue! You’ll see it one of these days.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist 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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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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