It’s 10 o’clock at night on Sunday, Nov. 15. Deadline for the new issue of the magazine is tomorrow at noon. So why aren’t I at the office working like a dog as I have been for the past 19 1/2 years. The answer is simple: My daughter Annie has taken over as managing editor and she and my wife, Ilene, are at the office working like dogs. What a wonderful life!

I’m at home sipping Drambuie, having put the grandkids to bed and instructed my three teenaged sons that they are on their own for supper. I think I’ll continue reading Mas Ayoob’s new book, Concealed Carry. It’s terrific; I’ve learned a lot just from the first three chapters, and today went out and bought myself a pair of pants two sizes bigger than I normally wear. Why didn’t I think of that? Mas answers questions I didn’t think to ask. BHM will, of course, be selling the book in the new issue. But don’t wait for us. Go out and buy yourself a copy if you carry concealed.

Annie enjoys her job as ME. She was made for it. Immense talent! I’ll hone the edges a bit. It’s a big job she’s taken on, full of details and behind-the-scenes tasks. A good issue happens because the in-charge editor makes it happen. This issue is all hers. Wait til you see it! I’m so delighted and so proud of her. It’s like seeing me in my prime 19 1/2 years ago. I’ll have Lenie take a pic and email it to me so I can post it here.

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We’re on deadline for the next issue — Issue No. 115. It’s another big issue, expanded from 100 to 116 pages. We are having a little difficulty selecting bullets for the cover since many of the articles are so good you could hang entire issues on them. It’s a problem publishers love to have — sort of like having too much business for your small company.

The cover is spectacular. It will rival Issue No. 111 (the hand holding a quivering world globe) in its ability to attract newsstand buyers. Annie Tuttle (my daughter and new managing editor) and I are working mostly from our home offices but we’ll be in the Gold Beach office all this week until “drop-dead-deadline” day Monday, Nov. 17. Annie has lined up babysitters for the grandkids to cover us until then.

We’ll shoot a video of this deadline and post it on either Annie’s or my blog this week.

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I’ve been accused many times in the past of being the Eternal Optimist, and I don’t deny it. I can see the bright side of any situation, whether it is the election to President of someone whose ideas I disagree with or whether it is the onset of a severe recession, possibly a new Great Depression.

If the election of Barack Obama does nothing but show African-Americans once and for all that in America you can become anything so long as you try hard enough, then I’ll accept his election as a positive thing. It may mean that poor blacks will stop complaining and start working, individually, towards achieving the American dream. That would be good for America.

Also, if African-Americans can realize their dream of seeing a black man elected President, maybe Libertarians like me can realize our dream of seeing a freedom-loving Libertarian become President someday. If Obama’s ascendancy to the Presidency has the long lasting effect of showing that America is indeed a special place where opportunity is there for all its citizens, maybe more and more people will come to realize that it is the maximum freedom we have as citizens that makes this possible.

Also, the onset of this economic Depression will not be stopped. If Obama makes moves similar to what FDR made during the last Great Depression of the 30s, it will worsen this economic downturn. Maybe people will learn from these new mistakes that capitalism and economic freedom are the only ways to gradually get the country back out of a severe economic downturn. In the end, it could mean a political plus for the value of capitalism as a political system.

I hope Obama does not try to turn America into a socialist country or restrict gun rights. And I hope he and the Democrat-controlled Congress do not try to put a free-speech-restricting law like the Fairness Doctrine in place to restrict conservative talk radio. I am optimistic that he will fail in those attempts because too many Americans like me will resist him.

For readers of Backwoods Home Magazine, I think we are prepared for any eventuality. We tend to mind our own business and keep working at our personal lives no matter what. We will whether even a socialist political wave in America, and we will certainly do fine in this looming Depression. We are prepared, and the future is bright for us because we have confidence in ourselves.

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