Over the past few days I've been engaged in a fair amount of behind-the-scenes conversation with blog readers who are arguing with me about my donation-button discomforts. Uniformly these disparate readers tell me, "Put the donation button back up."

One friend told me about a guy who runs a podcast whom he occasionally donates to. "I want him to go to his wife and say 'some guy in NYC just gave me $200.' Maybe he will take her to dinner and she will see that the world thinks there's something special about her husband. Money is a way to express that for me. Money is communication." He also told me directly: "You are smart enough to know you are creating mental barriers that need not exist if they don't serve your goals. So let them go. What's the worst that can happen?"

My goals are to be a good writer and a good human being; but as I said to my friend, "the Quaker poison" is always leaching in; the voice of Selfless Duty is constantly intoning, "Give of yourself, work for others." I believe what it says, but I also recognize that I have to fix the broken dryer and do something about the wretched worn-out sofa and support my children and put gas in the car. Those are goals too, and the six years I've spent writing posts for this blog have not contributed a dime to them.

So here's how I am going to deal with donation-button issue. I've added the link to the page list at the top of the blog, and I'm going to ask you to think of it as a musician's tip jar. Toss in some change if you feel like it; ignore it if you don't. Either way, I will love you and I will keep playing, until my hands start seizing up.

Tomorrow morning we'll start the Tu Fu reading project