A Plea

I hate to do this. Moreover, I hate to beg. But, as many of you know, late last week I learned that my grant from the University for the Silk Road project had been cancelled. It has been a hard blow to take. I have pinched every extra penny I possibly could over the last several months. My fiancee even agreed to push our honeymoon back for this trip. Now 50% of my funding has been revoked because of 'Federal and State funding problems.' Two people here in town have agreed to give me some money but I am still short.

If only 100 people were to donate $25 each it would allow me to go on the trip, do the research and write the book. It won't make up for the loss of the grant. But it will allow me to write the book I have always dreamed of writing. Furthermore, I will be blogging the entire trip. I will set up a site at www.agonist.org/silkroad for those interested.
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I just sent Sean-Paul $35.00. Check out his The Silk Road Journal, A Weblog Of Central Asian Adventure, for his itinerary. He will be traveling though a part of the world we know little about. The US is becoming increasingly active in Central Asia and I'm very interested in what he will see. And he really does need to get out more often, so send him some money. The above post has details on how you can do that through the miracle of PayPal.