This week, ETS! begins a biweekly schedule which will last through the summer. There will be no June 16 issue; we'll appear on June 23, July 7, and so on. Between now and Labor Day, ETS! will appear every other week; after Labor Day we'll be back to the regular weekly schedule. (Mail subscribers will have their missing issues added to the length of their subscriptions.) The summer break will help us (we hope!) ease our financial distress, and also give a bit of a break to those of us who've been doing this week in, week out, on a volunteer basis, for three years.

Not to bore you with old news, but ETS! is, as usual, in a precarious financial situation. We had planned, when we went to newsprint a year ago, that the extra operating expenses would be covered by accepting paid advertising. That hasn't panned out; we've had a lot of difficulty, even with commissions, getting people who are interested in selling ads. (Volunteers?) We need to either step it up or find other sources of income to remain viable as a publication. We had relatively few donations and subscriptions in May, and unfortunately we don't have much of a cushion to absorb the inevitable slow months. We assume--perhaps wrongly--that the ETS! audience is not a cash-rich bunch of folks. But we know you can help us tap the resources that are out there in Seattle to support this sort of alternative media project, and we need your help to do that: ads, flyers, benefits, merchandise, donations, whatever!

None of this should overshadow the great job our volunteers have been doing putting out a weekly paper. We've had more editorial material than ever recently, from more sources, for which we are grateful. And, as we've said before, the equation is simple: the more resources we have, the more we can print and distribute. Please pitch in.

One more note: once again this year we'll be doing the fabulous Eat The State! Wall Calendar for 2000. Our 1999 calendar sold out! If you have artwork--comics, drawings, photos--you'd like to have considered, please send it along to ETS! at PO Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145. The deadline is July 15.