I’ve wanted to avoid this since the festival began in March 2020, and I’m still in favor of keeping this festival free.

My festival-related expenses have gone up, at the same time as my personal expenses have begun eating more and more of my fixed income. Groceries and restaurants have tripled (or worse) these past few years.

We’ve been doing a lot of videotaping the past year, and storage costs are now about $11 a month. This will get better once we have time to get all that video up on youtube and erase it from storage. So that’s $132 a year. It’s another $175 for the Zoom account. I’m paying out $183.24 a year to youtube for their account upgrade, which speeds things up a little, I think. And there’s the big thing: the macbookpro I use to host the festival is 7 years old, and the fan is acting up. It may need repair, replacement, or worse. And I just don’t have money for that. Worse is a new macbook, starting around $1600.00.

The festival itself remains free, but if people would donate enough to cover these expenses, and maybe a good cheeseburger, it would be nice. Because right now I’m up to my elbows in taxes. Income tax. Property tax. It’s getting to a point….