A Personal Appeal

I brought our "blegathon," asking for donations, to Wednesday night's Matt Allen Show: Stream by clicking here, or download it.

Going on the radio regularly and participating in all of the events and activities that Anchor Rising affords us the opportunity to attend are unambiguous perks of the occupation. More than simple interest and enjoyment, observing interactions and personal behavior across a deep swath of human society is pricelessly edifying for somebody who, like me, should probably confess to being a writer before all else. This is not to suggest that those whom I meet should expect (or fear) to be recast as thinly disguised fictional characters in some future novel, but that a broad experience with humanity enhances authorial sympathy, enabling art to reflect life and the artist to perceive the brilliance of Creation.

Such familiarity cannot be gained, of course, without the periodically painful pinch of contrast. Rubbing shoulders with moguls and masters, politicians and professors, inheritors, icons tends to bring into sharp relief the poorly hidden stitches in one's own tattered suit. (No doubt, some of the aforementioned have noticed worn shoes and loose buttons.) My financial difficulties are mostly of my own doing. They are also edifying, in their way, and a sense of humor rooted in religious faith makes their burden not entirely bereft of enjoyment. But they exist and they require answer each month in a stack of unpayable bills.

The plain reality is that Anchor Rising now lacks the resources to free me from any more mornings or days away from the construction site. At my own current trajectory, 2010 may find me unable to afford the gasoline to traverse the state in the evening. It would not surprise me on any given morning to awake and find that the high-speed Internet that makes posting video a matter of minutes, not hours, has been cut off. That's just the way it is. It's embarrassing, to be sure, and it's perhaps too easy to find experiential value in such a state of being, as well. An author will always be inclined to have the most sympathy for his or her own situation. But as romantic as the notion might be, it simply wouldn't be plausible to pen Anchor Rising on assorted papers and hop upon cargo trains to travel from one event to the next. It's all well and good to jot the bulk of a blog post on a fingerjointed and preprimed scrap of one-by-ten, but if that's where the words remain, the storage costs would quickly become astronomical.

With that, we end our week of financial appeals. Please help it to have been a success.

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Those who would prefer the more direct route of checks or money orders can make them out to Anchor Rising and send them to:

Anchor Rising
P.O. Box 751
Portsmouth, RI 02871

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