Read time: 3 min.

You and I must share some weird and wonderful interests if you’re reading this. Between old schoolhouses, historic courthouses, flowing wells, Revolutionary War Patriots, abandoned retail, and whatever else catches my attention, I rarely meet people in everyday life who get excited about the same obscure corners of history that we do! Your comments, messages, and shares have meant a lot, and your Ko-fi donations helped keep me going when money was scarce and life kept piling on. Thank you.

Spending hours tracking down the history of some obscure relic for fun, then discovering that someone else found the story worth reading, is rewarding. Better yet is when something I’ve written sends you down a rabbit hole of your own! That’s one of the things I’ve tried to build this blog around, and it’s why I value every person who reads, comments, shares a post, sends me a message, or simply keeps coming back.

This blog is a passion project I freely share with you, and I never want anyone to feel like reading comes with some obligatory payment. I deplore gatekeeping through things like paywalls, and keeping up my blogging schedule takes too much time to write even more for something like a Patreon.

Every now and then, though, someone’s kind enough to ask if there’s another way to support what I do. Your presence is valuable enough, but there’s a “Buy me a coffee” button at the end of every post for those who want to contribute something more. It links to Ko-fi, where you can leave a $3 tip.

Buying me a “coffee” means a lot, but meant more after I was laid off in December. In 2026 alone, Ko-fi donations have contributed nearly $600 to running this blog- an all-time high. During a stretch when I had to think twice about every unnecessary expense, your support paid for research subscriptions, put some gas in the tank when a story took me away from home, and covered the basic costs of keeping this site online. In other words, it helped keep Hiding in Plain Sight survive. It still does.

To everyone who has bought me a coffee, thank you! I don’t take a single one of your donations for granted. At the same time, I’m just as glad that you’re here if you’ve never donated a dime. If you’ve shared something I wrote with a friend, added a memory or piece of new info in the comments, pointed me toward something I should investigate, or simply clicked because some forgotten schoolhouse looked interesting, you’ve already helped make this place what it is.

I’ve been at this blog since 2022, and we’re slowly building a community together. Ko-fi may help pay for the practical side of keeping this blog going, but you -and the rest of my readers- are the reason I keep doing it. Knowing you’re out there is what makes all those hours of research worthwhile.

Whether you’ve bought me a coffee, left a comment, shared a post, sent me a tip, or simply spent a few minutes reading something I wrote, I’m humbled. I’m glad we’re exploring these arcane corners of history together!