::fools rush in::

Probably shouldn't say anything here, but most forum readers here know that "glowsticks pro and con" has been debated endlessly in the past and would not be a popular topic for a new thread.

Lots of people like glowsticks/glowstick wars at Phish shows. Enough so that since Phish's return, GSW's contribution of 10% of its sales has resulted in over $10,000 in donations to the Mockingbird Foundation's efforts to support music education programs for underprivileged kids and the awesome non-profit work of this site, Phish.net, in archiving setlist and performance information online.

Phish.net incurs considerable costs to allow up to 30,000 users to access this site at the same time during shows without "crashing", and provides somewhere on the order of a million pageviews per month during Phish's tours. These are impressive statistics for any website, even "corporate" or "commercial" sites.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but speaking personally as a Foundation director, I'd challenge anyone above who made negative comments above (or on Twitter or our FB page) especially rather rude and "opinionated" ones, to go to Phish.net's home page, or mbird.org, and click on the "Donate" button and make a PayPal donation to support the site of even a modest amount, say $10 or more (roughly the undiscounted cost of one tube of 100 glowsticks).

Paste your "don't like glowsticks, etc." comments in the "comments" box and whether you'd like to be acknowledged here by name or amount or be anonymous. All Paypal contributors, as always, will be acknowledged in a letter and the contributions are tax-deductible, as we are a 501-c-3 charity.

Or buy a t shirt or some other merch at the Phish.net store...there are some items there that would be great Christmas gifts for your tour friends. Sales of our logo merch through our Port Merchandise store (access through our homepage top menu) also benefit the Foundation and the operation of this site.

You should do this especially if you've never donated to us before (as most users, unfortunately haven't, other than perhaps indirectly through the portion of LivePhish download profits Phish, Inc. has generously donated to the Mockingbird Foundation since that service went online in 2002).

In other words, "talk is cheap", but perhaps if you want your opinion to really count with us, "put your money where your mouth is". I'll post the results of this "challenge" to the blog sometime after Christmas and before the MSG run.

These opinions about glowsticks are my personal opinions; as an officer of the Foundation and member of the .net site team, some of us differ on them, but all of us agree that the Foundation does some awesome charity work including operating this site since 1994, and should be supported by all Phish fans.

I will get back to you here as to how many people rise to this challenge and support their negative opinions about glowsticks with contributions to our good works.

Thanks for reading.

With all respect to each of you reading this, and my best wishes for the holidays and an enjoyable Phish NYE run.