It snowed today, and the forecast is for snow through the weekend. The kids made a snowman.

And Annie worked — on three computers.

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Got a proposal from a company today to put out our e-issue for us — entirely! We’d simply deliver pdf files to them and they’d take care of everything, including billing. Financial terms are laughable, though. It’s an attempt to institute the old paper magazine distribution scheme on the internet, with the distributor getting all the money and the publisher getting a pittance. A lot of magazine publishers — many big names –have already signed 5-year contracts with this company. They DO offer an impressive marketing capability, especially to overseas markets, but it’s a trap for magazine publishers. We’ll go our own way, as we do with the print issue, to distribute and market our upcoming e-issue by ourselves. We are internet savvy, unlike many small publishers.

Experimenting with a twitter account.

BHM now has a twitter account. It allows me or other editors and staff at BHM to write up to 140 characters (a couple of sentences) on things that are occurring in real time at the magazine. It is instantly posted online. Joe McDonald suggested we give it a shot as a way for readers, or anyone, to get a glimpse of conversations going on behind the scenes at the magazine. If you’d like to listen in, click here, or type into your browser: http://twitter.com/backwoodshome.

You can also set up your own twitter account and have an ongoing conversation with your friends.

Lots of interesting things like twitter are happening on the internet. Wonder where all this technology will head? With my daughter taking over as Managing Editor of BHM, it gives me the time to explore new things like twitter that may, or may not, prove to be ultimately useful to the magazine and its readers.

The Big 3 (GM) bailout

I see in the news that President Bush may take it upon himself to bail out the Big 3 automakers with some of the $700 billion set aside in October to bail out Wall Street. Only last night his own Republican Party killed the $14 billion auto bailout. Let me apologize again for voting for Bush last election.

Here’s what he and the Democrats (many Republicans too) in Congress want to bail out: GM’s labor cost per hour is $69, compared to $48 for Toyota. (That includes wages and benefits.) Toyota makes a better vehicle, by any measure you can apply against them. The only possible conclusion I can draw is that GM needs to file for bankruptcy, renegotiate its contracts with the UAW, and learn to make a better vehicle. Bankruptcy protection will allow them to do that. A lot of UAW pensioners won’t like it, but they set themselves up for it by extorting their fat pensions years ago.

I would like to pay my employees $69 an hour, or $59, or $49, or $39, or $29, but I would go bankrupt if I paid even myself that much money. And I provide a good product! GM needs to fold. Ford, I think, will survive, even though their labor costs are high, because they make a good truck. (I’d buy a Ford pickup.) Chrysler I don’t know; they’re on the edge. Let GM, at least, go bankrupt, and let Ford pick up the slack. I feel for the pensioners, but they dug their own grave with their past greed when they felt they could “hold up” the American consumer with their exorbitant demands for wages and pensions. Now the rest of us have to make a living during a recession, and we can’t afford to carry UAW pensioners on our backs.

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Another bailout — this time for the Big 3 automakers. Another little joke on the taxpayers. I wonder if the Senate republicans will finally find the courage to stand against yet another foolish and corrupt throw-away of our money. I doubt it!

Let companies go bankrupt when they cannot build products consumers want, rather than flush $14 billion down the toilet only to have them go bankrupt later. What this new bailout really is is a quick payoff by the Democrats to the UAW.

But I digress. This blog post is about BHM’s upcoming e-issue. We are making good progress and may have an e-issue out by next issue.

Imagine having a story written by Jackie Clay, and you have the capability to touch a photo in the story and have it come to life with Jackie walking around and talking, or showing you how to can beans?

Or imagine having an editorial by me about Government corruption and stupidity, and you touch my photo and I come off the page in a rage, yelling in your ear? You will, of course, be able to click the photo once more and shut me up.

We’re working on technical details now. Eric Ragsdale, Jay Stoler, Oliver Del Signore, and Joe McDonald — four techno geeks from three different states — are brainstorming the problems.

Exciting times we live in!

Jackie Clay’s upcoming book is also coming along fine. It is tentatively titled, “Growing and Canning Your Own Food.” This will be BHM’s first non-anthology book. It’s a real big deal for both Jackie and BHM, and I think readers will love it. More on that as we progress.

As you can see, we’re not lying around drinking beer here.

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My older brother, Hugh, visited from Maryland over Thanksgiving week. Great time kicking back and shooting the bull. Hugh is a lawyer and I hired him to write a “readable” contract that Jackie Clay and I will sign for her upcoming book, tentatively titled, “Grow it, Can it!” “Readable” is the operative legal word. As well as being a good lawyer, Hugh writes in plain English, rather than in legalize. It’s a talent I’ve discovered in only a few lawyers.

The website and I are getting a bit overwhelmed with email asking questions about various topics. The only writers we have to answer questions are Jackie Clay at her blog and Jeff Yago on his Get Powered Up energy section on the Home Page. If you’ve asked a question about a particular subject or have asked for more info about a topic contained in a past article, and you haven’t gotten an answer, it’s because we don’t have anyone available to answer it. Use the BHM articles as a baseline and try doing your own research. We’ve got an online index to help you out.

I’ve been kind of busy with a special issue, an upcoming Jackie Clay book, rssearch on a potential e-zine version of BHM, a book I’m writing myself, and other magazine tasks, so I haven’t had much time to even make blog posts. Not to mention I’m involved in a home remodeling job in our kitchen and living room. I need to go fishing for a break!

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