Hand To Mouth

** Fall 2010 Fundraiser — Day Two **


Before I took up Counterjihad work, I was a computer programmer (and still am, on occasion). Before that I was a landscape artist. The painting above is an example of what I used to do before my eyes went bad and Dymphna’s illness compelled me to seek a line of work that actually involved getting paid.

For the last four years, since I quit working in Richmond in order to be close to home for Dymphna’s sake, we have been living in straitened circumstances. For the past year, since near-complete unemployment set in, we’ve been living hand-to-mouth.

Hand-to-mouth turns out not to be so hard, because it’s how we lived for the more than twenty years I spent painting pictures. I was able to sell virtually everything I painted, but never for very much, and we had to live frugally. Dymphna’s employment is what made my “career” as a painter possible, but social work is not a well-paying field, and we hovered at or near the poverty line for those twenty-odd years.

As a result, this is all too familiar territory. I gave up most of my desires for worldly goods decades ago, so it’s not hard to return to that state. Dymphna is already an expert at making gourmet meals on the cheap, among the many other skills of a thrifty housewife. I long ago learned to live without health insurance or significant savings. This is not the best way to live, but it’s doable, and it’s for a good cause.

In other words, we’ll be able to keep on going for the time being, thanks to the generosity (not to mention the gratifying moral support) of our readers.

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The first twenty-four hours of our fundraiser have seen donors from the following Stateside locations: Illinois, Kentucky, Montana, New Jersey, Texas, Virginia, and the U.S. Military (APO).

And we’ve heard from these countries in the Far Abroad: Australia, Denmark, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Slovakia, and the UK.

The current response is especially heartwarming, given that everyone else is living through the hard times we are. A couple of our donors are even living from hand to mouth themselves, so a gift from them is a “widow’s mite” indeed.

Many thanks to all of you for your contributions.


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