Jonathon Delacour the heart of things

Keep the Bird Burning

Burningbird’s en route from San Francisco with a car full of possessions, completing Stage 1 of what she calls her Moving Adventure. I woke up yesterday morning thinking that I’d write her an email saying simply: “You are greatly missed.” Only to find that she’d posted from SF while I was asleep.

Thanks for all the kind comments in the last post, and the offers of hosting help. They are appreciated. Chris/Stavros from EmptyBottle has found a new weblog home so he won’t be going dark at the end of the month. As for me, I might see if a friend’s offer of a host is still open. Bandwidth’s still an issue, though and it’s running late to make a change. Knock on wood.

I replied in her comments:

It’s time for someone to step up to the plate and organize a “Keep the Bird Burning” fund and it looks like that someone is me.

I’ve emailed Euan Semple to ask him about the dynamics of setting up a PayPal account (Euan organized the Mark Woods computer fund) and, as soon as I have it figured out, I’ll post an entry on my weblog.

Broke, tip-jar’d out, or cheap… it doesn’t really matter. I hate the thought of losing Shelley’s unique, powerful, generous presence and I trust that enough people agree with me to ensure that the flame is not extinguished but rather will continue to burn even more brightly than before.

To that end, I’ve set up a PayPal donation account called Keep the Bird Burning and I’m now officially soliciting donations. Clicking on the button below will take you to a PayPal Payment Details page displaying the details of the donation you are (hopefully) about to make. If you don’t have a PayPal account, you can quickly and easily set one up.

The donations will go to my PayPal account and I’ll progressively transfer the money to Shelley’s account. (Do I need to reassure anyone that this post has no fictional elements?)

As far as the target amount is concerned, I don’t have a clear sense of what a reasonable goal should be. The last twelve months have been tough for Shelley so I’d like to collect enough cash to secure her plenty of space on a reliable server with gobs of bandwidth for at least a year, preferably two.

Obviously I’d be grateful if you’d publicize the Keep the Bird Burning campaign on your own weblogs. If you’d like to add the donation button to your own site, you can either copy the code from my source or email me (jonathon[don’t forget the at symbol]delacour.net) and I’ll send it to you.

I’m well aware that we all have limited financial resources. I guess all I can say is that I’m hoping as many of us as possible will be able to give something back to Shelley, who has given so much of herself, in her passion, her commitment, and—most of all—her wonderful writing.

UPDATE: The campaign has now concluded. We raised just over $800 in 72 hours, thanks to the generosity of everyone who supported the project with cash or by publicizing it on their blogs or both.

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