The ups and downs. The good and bad.

I went way off script for this one.   [Mother Jones]( MoJo Reader, Have you gotten Covid again? Asking for a friend. Who am I kidding, I’m asking for myself, huddled under a blanket in a hotel room far from home, because after traveling for work like normal the last few weeks, the virus got me (two days after I got the new vaccine). Also last week, Brian and I were talking about how we can best finish off our [vital]( fall fundraising push, and he asked if I could write something a bit more reflective than our normal fare. Notes like the one about [the turtle]( I keep at my desk in honor of my friend Bob, or how it’s important to remember we’re [not as divided]( as some would have us believe, have landed with folks before, and it’s a nice break from the earnest and [urgent requests for your donations](. About those: This campaign, like life, has had its ups and downs. We had a few much worse than expected days, right when things should have been picking up, and that put us at real risk of coming up shorter than seemed possible. We did see a nice uptick in giving with [Friday’s email]( addressing that, but we’re still looking at about $70,000 between where we are and where we need to be by Wednesday. Simply put: We need to see a huge, deadline-driven, [oh-crap-they-might-not-make-it surge in last-chance donations]( because coming up short would be brutal right now. It all feels like déjà vu, and not just for our fundraising or Covid. House Speaker meltdown—January 2023 or October 2023? Wildfire smoke—September 2023 or June 2023? Trump—any month, any time, in the last eight years? War in the Middle East—it’s too awful to even count the number of times. It’s enough to make anyone feel as if the news is churning up the same depressing stories over and over again. So you know what I did while huddling under my blanket? I looked for an antidote. I wanted to read stories about things moving forward. And I found so many of them. Just a sample: Spending on clean energy worldwide is [growing way faster]( than spending on fossil fuels. According to the International Energy Agency, some $2.8 trillion is expected to be invested in energy projects around the world this year—$1.7 trillion of that on renewables. Whoa. In Kentucky, more than eight times as many people [worked in clean energy]( last year than did in coal mines, and the number is still rising. Maine puffins [made a rebound]( in the last year after some really bad years for hatching chicks. The population is back up to 3,000 or so birds, a sustainable level. Humpback whales are also [coming back]( from the brink of extinction. That’s just a couple of climate-related stories. Granted, I was looking for that in particular, because, also during this involuntary quarantine, I was talking with people who are simply despairing. “Humanity is just going to be over in 50 years or so,” one young woman told me. When you’re despairing, how can you possibly take action? You just have to keep going. The same is true, in a much smaller way, in journalism. Newsrooms are essentially in the middle of an extinction event. In the US, we’re losing newspapers at a rate of two each week, and layoffs and cutbacks are everywhere. That’s not just happening in commercial media anymore. It’s also happening in nonprofits like National Public Radio and the Texas Tribune, and the rest of us are fighting like hell not to be next. But we also have a choice: focus just on the despair, or appreciate the moments of success, accountability, and progress that also happen. Just one tiny, perhaps weedy example: Last week, the campaign treasurer for serial political liar George Santos [pleaded guilty]( to defrauding the federal government. Key to the case that led to this was [the reporting]( MoJo’s Noah Lanard and David Corn did to document that many of Santos’ supposed political campaign donors had never given to him. Noah literally [knocked on doors]( all over Santos’ districts to find these folks. That was work the New York Times, the Washington Post, the television networks and others did not do. It made a difference. He kept on going. I had gotten this far in writing this email when I finally got cabin fever from my mini-quarantine. So I went for a walk in a park to clear my head. It was dark. I stumbled on a rail in the pathway, fell, rolled, and got up with a badly hurting elbow. Four hours at the ER later, I emerged with a brand-new shoulder-to-wrist cast, and now typing is hard and painful. A lot worse things happened to a lot of people today. There’s nothing whine-worthy about my mishap. I just wanted to share this with you because we all get hit by curveballs from time to time, and sometimes we feel really sorry for ourselves, the way I did when I left that ER. I was really worried about letting the team down by not 100 percent nailing this email, because it truly is an important one. We need [a huge surge in donations]( so badly right now. But then I remembered that keeping Mother Jones afloat is not determined on whether one email gets written or not—just like the future of the world, or a country, is not determined by any one bad event. The big picture has a lot of progress in it as well as setbacks. For Mother Jones, the progress is that we are still here, 47 years after starting down the bumpy and completely improbable path of nonprofit, independent, fearless journalism. So let’s end on that note today. If you can [pitch in](, please do, and I hope it’s because despite everything—and there’s a lot of everything—you believe in progress. If you can’t pitch in because you’ve had some extra curveballs yourself lately, I hope you bounce back soon. Thanks for reading, and for everything. Onward, [Monika Bauerlein, CEO] Monika Bauerlein, CEO Mother Jones [Donate](   [Mother Jones]( [Donate]( [Donate Monthly]( [Subscribe]( This message was sent to {EMAIL}. To change the messages you receive from us, you can [edit your email preferences]( or [unsubscribe from all mailings.]( For advertising opportunities see our online [media kit.]( Were you forwarded this email? [Sign up for Mother Jones' newsletters today.]( [www.MotherJones.com]( PO Box 8539, Big Sandy, TX 75755