At the B&B I stayed at on Tuesday night, the owner told me to be sure I kept a lookout for wild yellow and orange azalea. Ordinary garden azalea, she assured me, was mostly pinkish and white, so the orange variety was an unusual sight and it had just started to bloom.

Now, I wouldn’t know an azalea if I ran over one. I only hear about them once a year, when CBS sportscasters inform me in hushed tones that Augusta National is truly a special place in April when the azaleas and the dogwood are blooming.

Whatever. Around here it’s all over the place. And as I was hiking down the trail to the Cascades, a National Park Service sign told me that I was standing right beside a flame azalea bush. So naturally I took a picture.

May 8, 2019 — Cascades Trail, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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