December 31, 2019

Lunchtime Photos: The Best of 2019

I narrowed this down to 16 and then got lazy. I suppose I could get it further down to a top ten, but why bother? It’s not like I pay by the pixel, after all. Besides, I figure each of you can pretty easily narrow it down yourself. In no particular order, here they are:

Barbed-wire fence

March 29, 2019 — Black Star Canyon, Orange County, California

Bogotá at night

August 6, 2019 — Monserrate, Bogotá, Colombia

Clouded sulpher butterfly in flight

May 8, 2019 — Near Milepost 170, Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia

Sea lion and kids at the Long Beach Aquarium

October 5, 2019 — Long Beach Aquarium, Long Beach, California

Chimney Rock overview on the Blue Ridge Parkway

May 7, 2019 — Chimney Rock Mountain overlook, Blue Ridge Parkway, Virgina

Pink trumpet tree

April 3, 2019 — Irvine, California

Mother and daughter at the Plaza Bolívar

August 4, 2019 — Plaza Bolívar, Bogotá, Colombia

Saddleback Mountain behind the clouds

March 24, 2019 — Irvine, California

Two horses near Blowing Rock

May 9, 2019 — Near Blowing Rock, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina

The Second Home exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

June 30, 2019 — Los Angeles, California

Sunset at Carroll Gap

May 8, 2019 — Carroll Gap, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina

School bells in Laurel Canyon

April 5, 2019 — Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, Orange County, California

Silverado Creek

March 24, 2019 — Santiago Canyon, Orange County, California

Haircut in La Candelaria

August 6, 2019 — La Candelaria, Bogotá, Colombia

Water off a duck

April 5, 2019 — Irvine, California

Waterfall at Yankee Horse Ridge

May 7, 2019 — Yankee Horse Ridge, Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia

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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.

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And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

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.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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