1. Dave McAdow, 2. Mike McCarthy

Sunday at the Fair was much slower but still a good day. I’ve posted those who wore BHM T-shirts.

We made some important business contacts while out here. Besides having dinner with the Belangers of Countyside and Small Stock Journal, we met with our list manager, Mike McCarthy, who guides us in buying mail lists to whom we send Backwoods Home Magazine subscription solicitations, and Dave McAdow, our contact at Journal Printing, the company that prints our solicitation fliers. These are very important middlemen for magazines, helping us to spend our money wisely in the never ending search for new subscribers.

1. Ashref Alqassab, 2. Greg Stark, 3. John Stopa, 4. Mike Loiselle, 5. Steve Peterson

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Saturday was another terrific day at the MREA Fair. Mercifully, it rained just as the fair opened at 9 a.m., cooling everything off to weather I can tolerate better. It may have been another record day for attendance. I’ve posted most of the people who wore a BHM T-shirt. Unfortunately I misplaced Joe Talbot’s photo. Sorry Joe.

Two lifetime subscribers have visited the show so far. One was Dan Hensel, who bought a lifetime subscription Friday. It was before I thought to take photos so I have no photo of him. The other was Don Bice, who just dropped by the booth to say hi Saturday.

Very gratifying show. A lot of people drove a hundred miles or so just to visit the BHM booth. I am humbled by their appreciation of the magazine, and it makes me want to work that much harder to keep the quality up. The biggest thrill I get at these shows is putting faces on the readers of BHM. It’s one thing to put out a magazine for an anonymous audience, but it is really magical to meet readers up close, especially readers who have been getting the magazine for years. It’s like one big family.

I got a big kick out of Mike Wilson showing up with a hand-painted (maybe he used magic markers) BHM T-shirt. On the back he put “Duffy for President in 2008.”

We’ll finish up the show Sunday, then head to Colorado right afterwards to see Don Childers, BHM’s longtime artist who moved to Colorado Springs a few year ago.

From top, left to right:

1. Sue Berry, 2. Roy Butler, 3. Rick Fricke, 4. Rich Rezny, 5. Rebecca Strand, 6. Ralph Vernig, 7. Paul Sperbeck, 8. Mike Wilson 2, 9. Mike Wilson, 10. Mark and Austin Babbitt, 11. Lori Hein, 12. Lois Melegari, 13. Laura Williams, 14. Laura and James Bump, 15. Kathleen Anderson, 16. Gregory Sedbrook, 17. Gordie Seefeldt, 18. Frank Jachimiak, 19. Dave Schalow, 20. Corey and Linda Gage, 21. Chuck Merten, 22. Chris Gerend, 23. Brad Kleemann, 24. Bill Plonski

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It was a big Friday at the MREA Fair. It may have even set an attendance record. But it was hot (93 degrees) and humid. We were melting inside the big tent where our booth is located. The first day was loads of fun anyway with the boys trading with other vendors for solar fan hats and other stuff, and me getting to sign lots of “Stupid People” books.

I’ve posted photos of some of the people who came to the show wearing their BHM T-shirts. I didn’t think to take any photos until later in the day. I’ll take photos of everyone who wears a T-shirt Saturday and post them on this weblog.

After the show we went to dinner with Dave and Elaine Belanger of Countryside and Small Stock Journal, then came back to swim and crash at the motel pool. The boys swam, while Lenie crashed (she’s exhausted), and I watched the U.S. Open highlights while uploading this post. Great first day that should get even busier tomorrow. It’s sometime after midnight Central time. I’m pretty tired too.

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After visiting with Lenie’s Aunt Gert, 90, and Uncle Seth, 85, shown in the photos, we made it to the MREA Fair in Custer, Wisconsin after a total of 2600 miles driving. We set up our exhibitor’s booth last night, then went to a free outdoor networking dinner that featured free beer–some delicious local brews. They must have known an important Irishman was coming. We’ve got a terrific booth with high visibility, and we expect a good show. Last year, the show had 19,000 people come though, which is a lot more than the 12-15,000 it was getting three to four years ago when we last attended.

Now we get the luxury of spending three nights in the same motel. We’re all tired. This is a nifty suite with a room for the boys and a room for Lenie and me. All the motels now have free high speed internet so I can write these posts. Indoor pool too. Unfortunately I’ll have no time to watch the U.S. Open, which began yesterday. Darn. I like golf, and I especially like watching the major championships.

We had a great time at the Duluth motel. It had a four-story waterslide that wore me out. You do down like a bullet through a tube. Total darkness inside much of the tube. You shoot out of the mouth into a pool. Ton of fun. Even sold beer at poolside.

 I’m trying to keep in mind that once this trip is over–about two weeks from now–we go back to Oregon and deadline for another issue of the print magazine. I’m working with Lisa, my editorial coordinator, via emails to contact writers who are preparing articles. She’s busy setting other articles. John Silveira, who is house-sitting for us, is also reviewing new submissions between drinking all of my booze. Annie is also busy setting articles, plus setting up Jackie Clay’s new weblog. It’s nice to be able to coordinate things through emails.

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Another 532 miles Monday and we made it out of Montana. Stopped in Bismark, North Dakota to wade in the Missouri River, and ended up staying the night in Jamestown. North Dakota is another beautiful state with many great places to live, judging from what I could see from the main Interstate. Tuesday we drove the remaining 400 miles to Duluth, Minnesota to visit Lenie’s cousin, Myra, and her 90-year-old Aunt Gert and 85-year-old Uncle Seth. Duluth has a population of 80,000 and is on a series of hills overlooking Lake Superior, which is 160 miles wide by 350 miles long.

We’ll head to the MREA Fair to set up Thursday. The Fair is Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We’re bringing about 50 T-shirts and 50 hats to sell. Wear either to the Fair, and I’ll give you a free autographed copy of my book, Can America be Saved from Stupid People. I don’t think it can, but that’s another story. For now, I’ll enjoy the Energy Fair. Lots of old friends, subscribers, and advertisers to say hello to. We’ll have dinner with the Belangers, publishers of Countryside and Small Stock Journal, Saturday night. Bryan Welch, publisher of Mother Earth News, said in an email he’ll join us if he makes it to the Fair.

I don’t know Bryan Welch very well, but Dave Belanger is a brilliant young businessman who could make a financial success of any business. Every time we talk on the phone I feel I learn a lot about the business aspects of publishing. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a businessman. While I’ve kept BHM financially strong, Dave has taken the magazine he inherited from his father, JD Belanger, and quadrupled its size. JD, now retired, is a writer more like me. Maybe someday one of my kids will be able to grow the heck out of BHM.

Our motel has a view of the freeway and Lake Superior beyond. Lake Superior is very cold at 40 degrees. Compare that to the high 40s of the Pacific Ocean off our Oregon Coast, and our Oregon Coast is good fishing because of its cold upwelling from the deeper Pacific. The air temperature in Duluth is in the low 60s due to the moderating mass of Lake Superior. Compare that to the mid-80s we’ve been driving through for the past two days. Conditions are similar to our Oregon Coast where the Pacific keeps the Gold Beach air temperature in the low 60s while just a few miles inland it soars to the 80s and 90s. Lake Superior is similar to an an ocean in other ways. For example, waves can reach a height of 31 feet, according to a brochure in our motel room. NOAA reports waves that high off our Oregon coast during heavy seas.

Meanwhile, we heard yesterday that Annie’s husband, Erik, has gotten orders for North Carolina. He’ll join the 2nd Battalion 9th Marine Regiment at Camp Lejeune, which is being reformed. Annie and Erik are very excited to be leaving 29 Palms’s Mojave Desert with its 115-degree heat, but I think this transfer is a prelude to sending him back to Iraq.

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We drove through Montana’s wide open spaces all day, never quite making it to North Dakota but staying in the big city of Billings (120,000 population) instead. Lenie found a coupon at a rest stop that got us a big room on the 17th floor of the Crowne Plaza for $65. You can stay at some classy motels at affordable rates if you’ve got a smart wife.

Montana is absolutely beautiful. Lots of rolling hills and forests of all sorts. Not as lush as my Oregon coast but magnificent in a different sort of way. Most people from cities like New York and Los Angeles can’t even imagine these types of places. Then again, I suppose most people from Montana can’t imagine a place like New York City. Having lived many years in both the city (Boston) and the remote country (Oregon), I can attest to the vast superiority of the remote country.

Jackie Clay, BHM’s most popular writer, used to live in Montana but now lives north of Duluth, Minnesota. We’ll help her launch her own blog on the BHM website in coming days–perhaps as much as a week or two from now. My daughter, Annie, whose own blog is BrambleStitches, is our blog administrator and has to work out a few details. We’ll do away with Jackie’s online “Ask Jackie” column and replace it with a Jackie Clay blog.

Other blogs we’ll launch in the near future will be by John Silveira (politics, the state of freedom in America, etc.), Ilene Duffy (cooking and recipes), and building and energy blogs by people who have yet to be convinced to write them. The goal is to get a variety of useful self-reliant blogs collected in one convenient spot on the BHM website. It’s as exciting as heck to take BHM in this new direction of taking advantage of the available technology, almost as exciting as when I launched the first issue of BHM back in 1989.

1989 was much harder, though. I had to do everything myself until Lenie came along after the second issue. Now I have Lenie taking care of all business aspects of the magazine, while Annie (BHM’s blog administrator), Oliver Del Signore (BHM’s webmaster), and Joe and Tom McDonald (genius internet geeks from Vpop Technologies) help me with the internet stuff.

See you at the Energy Fair June 15-17.

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Another 400 miles driving and we made it to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho to a Holiday Inn Express. We stay at Holiday Inn Express a lot when we travel because rooms are always nice, good free breakfast, internet accesss, exercise room, and usually an indoor pool for my three kids. Lenie always finds a good price through the internet or in travel coupons she finds at rest stops.

Watched the Deadliest Catch on the Disovery Channel to relax after driving all day. It’s about crab fishermen in the Bering Sea off Alaska. If I wasn’t a publisher, I always thought I’d be a commecial fisherman. But crabbing sure looks super hard, freezing, and dangeous work. They make more money than me though. My boys and I went fishing on my boat a few days before we left on this trip. We caught nine big blacks (black rock fish), which taste good if you bleed them out properly by cutting their throat or gills.

Preliminary copies of the new issue–No. 106, July/August 2007–came in just before we left. They’re being shipped to subscribers now and some of the articles will make it to the website a couple of weeks after that. We always reward the paid subscribers by sending them their print issue two weeks before any of the articles go online. It’s a strong issue, with the right mix of building, gardening, food, and commentary.

Today we’ll drive through Montana and into North Dakota. The goal is Duluth, Minnesota to visit Lenie’s relatives before we head down to Custer, Wisconsin for the Enegy Show June 13.

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You’re right, Terminus. A weblog is a great step forward for this magazine. Is blog to weblog like Frisco is to San Francisco? I remember once while visiting someone on my first trip to San Francisco that I referred to the city as Frisco. I got a cold stare and was sternly corrected. A Similar thing happened when I got to Oregon. I pronounced the state name as OR-UH-GONE, with the accent on both first and last syllables. My neighbor told me that if I was going to live here I might as well learn to pronounce the name of the state. It is OR-UH-GIN, with the accent only on the first syllable.

We don’t really avoid politics in the magazine. Almost all my “My View” columns are about the abuses of Big Government, as are many of John Silveira’s “Last Word” columns. We are committed small government Libertarians, and no doubt this weblog will hit on politics. But talking a lot about behind-the-scenes publishing contributes to the freedom discussion. I think the internet is already the greatest freedom tool of all time, and learning how to publish freedom ideas correctly, so they have impact and wide appeal, will help the cause of freedom.

After all, when you think about it, Backwoods Home Magazine is really a magazine about freedom first, with all the how-to articles necessary adjuncts for the individual to achieve maximum freedom. There is more than one way to achieve freedom and roll back the abuses of Government. Publishing BHM, with its mix of commentary and how-to ideas, is a very effective, very subtle way to champion the cause of freedom. Look at the wide audience we reach. People don’t have to read an editorial about freedom to get a lesson in freedom. An article about installing a photovoltaic energy system or building your own home can teach that same lesson in a less direct way. The inculcation of self-reliance topics is an effective way to teach freedom and individualism over the long term. I think more people should do what I do: couch freedom ideas into a very digestible format. The direct approach is too hard to take for a lot of people; they are too busy with their lives to listen to a sermon. So I give them something to do while I discuss freedom over their shoulder.

I’m on the road, and just spent the night with my family at a motel in Troutdale, Oregon, which is east of Portland. We’ve got 2,000 miles more to go to get to the Energy Fair in Custer, Wisconsin June 13. The Fair, the largest energy event in the country, runs June 13-15. I have a feeling I’ll be posting on this weblog more often than Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the time being.

– Dave

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Launching this blog has to be one of the most frustratingly difficult things I have done in my life. It is a perfect example of the chasm that now exists in American society between an older generation like me who is not comfortable on the internet and a younger generation, like most of you who are now reading this blog, who are comfortable with it.

This blog is intended to help bring BHM into the 21st century. At age 63, I may not feel at home on this instantaneous-feedback medium, but I can see it represents the future of magazines, while a paper magazine such as I now publish will probably join other print relics of history before my lifetime ends. It’s all happening so damn fast!

Near as I can tell, about one-third of Backwoods Home Magazine’s print issue subscribers do not do the internet, and they likely never will. I feel for them. I empathize with them. I publish my magazine for them, and I go only grudgingly into this new medium because two-thirds of BHM’s print issue readership is as comfortable here as they are with the print issue. I have no choice unless I want to be left behind.

I am a hybrid, with one foot in the old print world and the other stepping lightly into the internet. Next month the internet will be even more revolutionary than it is today. And next year it will be unimaginably newer. I doubt society has ever been transformed so quickly, and so frequently.

But I have seen the future for a long time. That’s why I’ve worked with BHM’s webmaster, Oliver Del Signore, this past decade developing our large and well organized website, www.backwoodshome.com. And now I’ll hop aboard in a more personal way and try and give you a publisher’s personal view of what it’s like to found and direct a print issue magazine for 18 years, then transition to the internet over maybe another 18. I have a lot of insight, I think, but obviously I have a lot to learn with this new technology.

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