It is never easy for me to ask other people for money, but life has its ideas about what is appropriate and necessary, and there is no way I can continue my work with the Army Of Good if I don’t also seek support for my blog and my work.

This seems the right time to ask for help. This request is not a drama; it’s just how I balance my life with the work I am doing and loving. The blog makes it happen.

I was a best-selling book author for years, my publishing world vanished in the Great Recession and has never returned. But life provides in its way.

In 2016, I found a new calling, along with the Army Of Good we began doing good rather than fighting about what good is.

I have to be honest; it was the best decision of my life. I ended up doing what I should be doing.

The significant advances and royalty checks have vanished, but in the curious way of life, I have ended up doing what I ought to be doing, and am called to do. I have never been happier.

But my blog, my farm, my photography is not without obligation and is rarely cheap.

The blog is the mother ship, the engine of all that we do. It needs care and tending

The Mansion and Bishop Maginn High School have given me and many of you a gift, a way to be grounded, to feel good, to do good. They are symbols of bigger things, we can’t help everyone, but we can help some. I believe we are a new and radical movement to bring compassion and empathy back to public view.

We are not political; we don’t hate people who disagree with us, we don’t fight about our values online, we are not a voice for the left or the right. We just commit small acts of great kindness.

We eschew labels and think for ourselves. We’ve done an awful lot of good. I want to keep it going.

The blog makes all of this possible, and I am writing, as I do several times a year, to ask for your support: for the blog, for my photography, for the amount of time and work it takes to figure out who to help and how to help them.

I believe we are helping to keep love and compassion alive in a cruel and polarized time. We are part of a deepening Circle of Love.

For me, it’s somewhat selfish; I have never felt better about myself or found more meaning in life.

So I’m asking for your support so I can keep this going, pay my bills and feed all of these donkeys, sheep, and dogs. I will continue to share my life openly and as authentically as I can. Whenever I can, I contribute some of my own money to the small acts of kindness we practice.

The people we help – the advanced elderly, the refugee children – face many obstacles and need our help. It’s through the blog that this becomes possible. Without the blog, none of our many good deeds would have come to life.

There would be no Zinnia, no therapy dog work.

There are different ways to help. You can support the blog on a monthly or annual basis, you can send a one-time contribution in any amount via Paypal, [email protected], or you can post a check to me, Jon Katz, Blog Support,  P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

There are donate and contribute buttons at the end of every blog post.

I want to emphasize that the blog is and will remain free to anyone who wants to read it. Contributions and donations are very welcome but not required. I will never quit on the people who have never quit on me.

Also, no financial information of any kind is stored on my blog or on the servers I use. I have two advanced security programs protecting my site. Should some brilliant hacker ever get through, all he will get are lots of photos of dogs and donkeys, and those are free anyway.

Because I’m never comfortable asking for money for myself when there is so much need, I usually wait too long. But I need to get paid for my work also, so here it is, another Chrismas, another year looms, and I’m requesting support, if you can offer it, for the work I do, and for the blog that makes it happen.

I’m still paying off $4,000 for the recent blog upgrading, as well as maintenance and security fees, and photography is not cheap either. I spent $2,000 trying to help the people who got somehow cut off in the recent transition to a new blog feed program.

The blog feed is free to everyone who wants it, but the program is not free for me.

Please support the blog if you can, and if you can’t, you are very welcome to be here, and I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.

I love you all, as curious as our connections sometimes are.