A New Decent Car!
Donation protected
Hi folks,
As many of you know, Joshua and I travel all over the place teaching on a variety of subjects. Sometimes we teach for a small fee (usually set up by an organizer), sometimes for whatever gas-money donation people can manage, and sometimes at conferences for free (or a free hotel room and gas money). We do dozens of gigs each year and reach hundreds of people, many who couldn’t afford to see us any other way.
Since we don’t have much money - I’m a disabled writer living on book royalties and a Patreon account, and Joshua’s main job is taking care of me - we do it in whatever used beater car we can get for under two thousand dollars, with an additional thousand to register, inspect, and insure whatever we can find on Craigslist. At the rate that we put miles on them, they only tend to last a couple of years, and then we have to start the whole process over. We need cars that have a lot of cargo space for books, tools, and three weeks of supplies (since we bring our own food everywhere due to my medical dietary restrictions) and get really good gas mileage for their size, so we tend to favor sensible, frugal Subaru station wagons.
Well, on this last teaching trip, where we taught in four different states for multiple groups and drove something like 1800 miles (or would have if we’d made it home in that car) our current Subaru station wagon, Adelaide, blew her engine and stranded us in rural Ohio. We loved Adelaide and hoped she’d last longer, and now this leaves us without a vehicle to do the next round of traveling. The rental car to get us home ate much of our profits from the trip, and we haven’t saved up enough to get the next used car.
So we’re asking folks to donate to help us get a station wagon that is maybe a little younger than the last few ones! It’s for a good cause - it will be driven all over the northeast quarter of America and probably up into Canada; we go as far west as Michigan and as far south as North Carolina, and it’s likely that many of you will see us at some point in the next year. We want to keep doing this work at the same accessible rates, because it’s important, but we need the means to do it … and we need it soon, because we start again with presenting in another couple of weeks.
So please consider throwing us a few bucks toward another car and the means to register and insure it. What kind of car are we going to get? That depends on how much money people throw us in the next week. Yes, one week - that’s how much time we have before we need to find, buy, register, inspect, and insure another car. We can’t afford another rental at this point, and we want to keep up the work! (I’ll be presenting at the Changing Times, Changing Worlds conference in two weeks, and at Harvard University for their queer conference the week after that!) So how much you can give us right now will depend on how ancient a car we’ll get, and how fast we can get back on the road and keep the Work moving! Lost of people will thank you, not just us. Tell your friends who read our books, send it around - we’re counting on a miracle here.
Thank you all,
Raven and Joshua
As many of you know, Joshua and I travel all over the place teaching on a variety of subjects. Sometimes we teach for a small fee (usually set up by an organizer), sometimes for whatever gas-money donation people can manage, and sometimes at conferences for free (or a free hotel room and gas money). We do dozens of gigs each year and reach hundreds of people, many who couldn’t afford to see us any other way.
Since we don’t have much money - I’m a disabled writer living on book royalties and a Patreon account, and Joshua’s main job is taking care of me - we do it in whatever used beater car we can get for under two thousand dollars, with an additional thousand to register, inspect, and insure whatever we can find on Craigslist. At the rate that we put miles on them, they only tend to last a couple of years, and then we have to start the whole process over. We need cars that have a lot of cargo space for books, tools, and three weeks of supplies (since we bring our own food everywhere due to my medical dietary restrictions) and get really good gas mileage for their size, so we tend to favor sensible, frugal Subaru station wagons.
Well, on this last teaching trip, where we taught in four different states for multiple groups and drove something like 1800 miles (or would have if we’d made it home in that car) our current Subaru station wagon, Adelaide, blew her engine and stranded us in rural Ohio. We loved Adelaide and hoped she’d last longer, and now this leaves us without a vehicle to do the next round of traveling. The rental car to get us home ate much of our profits from the trip, and we haven’t saved up enough to get the next used car.
So we’re asking folks to donate to help us get a station wagon that is maybe a little younger than the last few ones! It’s for a good cause - it will be driven all over the northeast quarter of America and probably up into Canada; we go as far west as Michigan and as far south as North Carolina, and it’s likely that many of you will see us at some point in the next year. We want to keep doing this work at the same accessible rates, because it’s important, but we need the means to do it … and we need it soon, because we start again with presenting in another couple of weeks.
So please consider throwing us a few bucks toward another car and the means to register and insure it. What kind of car are we going to get? That depends on how much money people throw us in the next week. Yes, one week - that’s how much time we have before we need to find, buy, register, inspect, and insure another car. We can’t afford another rental at this point, and we want to keep up the work! (I’ll be presenting at the Changing Times, Changing Worlds conference in two weeks, and at Harvard University for their queer conference the week after that!) So how much you can give us right now will depend on how ancient a car we’ll get, and how fast we can get back on the road and keep the Work moving! Lost of people will thank you, not just us. Tell your friends who read our books, send it around - we’re counting on a miracle here.
Thank you all,
Raven and Joshua
Organiser
Joshua Tenpenny
Organiser
Hubbardston, MA
