Letter From the Desert: Oh, Amargosa

A spring feeding the Amargosa River in Tecopa, CA. CC Photo

Before we start, a note: I know that it’s sometimes jarring to get email from a list to which you’ve subscribed using the free option and find that there’s a paywall after some at least theoretically intriguing prose. Since I launched the paid weekly version of Letters From the Desert in January, I’ve been sending one such email to all my free subscribers each week. I don’t intend to make that a common practice. This is, in fact, the last issue of LFtD in which I plan to do that.

There are email newsletter development people who will tell you that one should do what I’m apologizing for, because it pays to send every free subscriber constant reminders that there’s a paid version with more content. There is a horrible logic to this approach, and yet there is something in me that really doesn’t want to annoy people inadvertently. On purpose, yes. But not accidentally.

The reason I’ve done this tantalizing/annoying thing for the last three issues is this: Not everyone reads every single issue of LFtD they get. I figured that repeating the message a few times would keep people who missed a few issues from wondering what happened, and, to be frank, would give that proportion of those people who want to send me money more than that single opportunity to do so.

And because this is an open kitchen kind of newsletter, I figured I’d explain that. Thanks for sticking with me so far: fewer than one percent of LFtD subscribers ended their free subscriptions in the last month, which is barely above background noise. Statistically speaking, it’s clear that I’m more or less consistently annoying.

So anyway. Here’s the full explanation of the setup: paid subscribers get a weekly issue, and free subscribers get a monthly issue, which is still more than y’all were getting during much of the pandemic. Subscribe, free or paid, with this button:

Oh, and the Mid-February episode of the 90 Miles from Needles podcast features the Great Basin Water Network’s Kyle Roerink talking to Alicia and me about climate change and oversubscription in the Colorado River water system. That’s here. Reply to this email if you have questions. Mind the paywall.