An Embarrassed Request for October

Last updated on: October 20, 2019 at 1:41 pm by Mary Pezzulo

An Embarrassed Request for October 2019-10-20T13:41:33-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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It’s time once again for the most embarrassing part of blogging, the monthly awkward moment where I pass the hat and remind everyone that blogging is just online busking. I try to write just one of these per month except for emergencies. This month, it’s a bit more urgent.

As my veteran readers know, I blog here at Patheos because I think what I’m writing needs to be written. I think it’s extremely important to hold public figures in the Church and in the pro-life movement accountable when they commit public scandal, and I don’t see enough practicing Catholics doing that; I also want to keep speaking out about spiritual abuse, to make art and to write meditations that help us to pray with the Sunday Gospel because those things are worth doing. But I’m also doing this to support my family. I get a tiny paycheck based on clicks in the United States, and about 90% of what I earn is gratuities from readers who like what they read. These come through a button marked “donate” but they’re not charitable donations, just tips like you’d tip your waiter or Uber driver. Think of it as a magazine subscription where you pay what you think I’m worth and get to keep reading even if you can’t pay.

I know I’ve been boosting and re-sharing last month’s tin cup rattle a lot lately, on Facebook and on Twitter. It happens that we’re in a crunch this month with the biggest water bill I’ve ever seen. I didn’t know they printed numbers that high. We are extremely fortunate that, with what I’m making from the blog, we’ve rarely been in danger of shutoff in 2019– this is a miraculous improvement compared with a few years ago when we were headed for disaster every month. But it’s not easy. Sometimes I feel like the city of Steubenville utility department can sense a person’s fear and likes it, because they keep jacking up water prices and adding fees for the whole city every few months. We pay the minimum to prevent shutoff every month and the backlog keeps growing, and now that’s turned into a disaster. We’ve made up about half of the past due, but the other half is due tomorrow or things get exceptionally more complicated around here. And if that gets paid it will leave us with zero to buy anything else or pay the other bills the rest of the month. I’m out of most of my doctor-approved vitamin & remedy combo that Medicaid doesn’t cover that I use to keep the fibromyalgia fatigue at bay, but I’m trying to just do without them.

So, I’m sheepishly taking a moment to ask that if you meant to slip me a gratuity for my blogging, now would be an excellent time. Just go to our donate page here, click on the bright yellow button, and Paypal will walk you through the rest. There is also an option with PayPal to tip the same amount every month automatically like a Patreon if you’d rather; we do find our regular monthly tippers extremely helpful because we can actually budget instead of wondering what we’re going to make.

Thank you all very much for your patronage, and now back to posts worth reading!

(image via Pixabay)

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October 19, 2019

When God Himself Appears Unjust

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October 21, 2019 The Icons in the Tiber

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