Possibly the first thing that Randy said to me when I arrived in Nashville to start my year as a Jesuit Volunteer was that in organizing, personal relationships are everything. It was a maxim that I'd heard before and it couldn't be more true. What I didn't realize is that personal relationships mean "Thank You" cards. On my first full day in the office, I wrote two personal thank yous, and I haven't slowed down since. But the end of the year (and the holiday season) offer a special opportunity for personal relationship thank yous.

You see here at TCASK, and I imagine many other Southern abolition organizations, we don't have a tremendously huge budget or donor base, so what we have, we want to keep. Each individual contribution makes a difference to us, and we know a lot of the individuals who give us a little of their hard-earned money personally. It's all nice and rosy. Nice and rosy thank you cards. That's right, at the end of the year, we end personalized, hand-written thank yous to each and every person who donated to TCASK in the previous year. It's a lot of card writing, I don't mind telling you, but it comes at a good time of year, since there isn't a huge amount of organizing work to be done; no one wants to take on a new project right before Christmas. So instead of calling churches, I write cards (with the occasional typing break to work the cramps out of my hand). And though it may seem silly, we've been doing it for years, and I notice that annual donations of individual members are continually on the rise. They're important to us and it's only right that we tell them so.

Merry Christmas to all!