In the past seven years the lightmind/lightgate website has taken off wonderfully, and continues to grow, both in traffic and in usefulness as a resource.

I'm sure everyone has a slightly different view of the community that has come together here. My own opinion is that this was something that was not only needed -- it was inevitable. I am happy to have helped bring the site into existence. Like the owner of the local apple orchard once told me, I feel I am playing a caretaker role here, and I know that after awhile that job will pass on to others.

I still feel very strongly, after seven years of this experiment, that intellectual communities like ours are the soul and future of the internet. These communities are based on freedom of speech and the "right of assembly" granted by the U.S. Constitution. They provide a stage, in the midst of a vast new mind-space, on which everyone can share their thoughts and inspirations -- and where the Spirit itself can speak, free of the old ways in which to speak at all involved either belonging to an "organization", or submitting your well-chosen words to an editor, a publisher, and a marketplace swamped with ideas.

Yes, things can get chaotic here -- even anarchic at times. But a little judicious oversight keeps the conversation humming along -- as it obviously has for the last seven years!

The one "negative" has been the accumulated cost of running this website. Despite a steady stream of small donations, we are still a couple thousand dollars in the red. My goal, from the beginning, was to make the website pay for itself. Among other things, this including experimenting with the use of an Amazon "Associate" button. People who wanted to buy a book would click on our Amazon link, which would take them to the Amazon website. If they made a purchase, Amazon would return to us a small portion of the cost of the book (usually 5% -- occasionally as much as 15%). These Amazon Associate payments peaked in 2003 at about $200 for the year. Unfortunately for us and many other sites, the folks who designed the popular "music sharing" software included a hidden program (often called parasiteware) to intercept and reassign these Amazon referrals. So some of our tiny fees actually got siphoned off by thieves!

The other thing we did to support the site was hold a "PBS style fundraiser". Our initial appeal, three years ago, was relatively successful, paying our overhead for 2001-2002 and bringing in a steady trickle of donations thereafter.

Now we are going to try something new. The website will send a gift book, of your choice, in return for your donation. The list price or out-of-print value of each book, plus the shipping costs, are nearly the same as the value of your donation. So, unlike PBS and others who have tried a similar "gift for donation" approach, our fundraiser will operate on a "value for value" basis. Moreover, these are all brand new books, without the defacement of the infamous "remainder marks".

Of course it takes a lot more than Internet Provider fees to run a website. Labor and equipment costs are ongoing. Labor alone can be extensive, and I have been content to donate my own energies for the past seven years. Fortunately the sheer enjoyment, and sometimes great profundity, of all these discussions keeps my enthusiasm at a high. That said, as a further way of supporting the site, in the near future I will open a scholarly and out-of-print bookstore here, specializing in comparative religion, travels & exploration, and history books.