January 14, 2020

Lunchtime Photo

The top photo is a southern bush monkey flower and the bottom photo is a coastal bush monkey flower. These are allegedly called monkey flowers because they look like grinning monkeys—which I confess I don’t really see. I guess my imagination isn’t good enough.

There appear to be (a) lots of kinds of monkey flowers and (b) lots of different names for each one. I think I got these identifications right, but it’s hard to say for sure. And other people might use other common names for them anyhow. The only thing I can say with real confidence is that they are monkey flowers, and almost certainly bush monkey flowers.

April 20, 2019 — Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, Orange County, California

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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.

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