My daughter, Annie, is getting a good taste of what it means to be the managing editor of BHM. Her husband, Erik, is home on a two-week leave from the Marine Corps, but she has already spent the first week on deadline, working many, many hours trying to get this issue ready for print. We should finish up late tonight.
This is the 132-page issue I wrote about last post. It’s very good. Although I wasn’t involved much with the work of deadline, I did write a 12-page article about the history of BHM. It came out pretty good, and we’ve lead the issue with it. Long-time readers will especially like the behind-the-scenes goings-on of the first few years.
It also looks like this special anniversary issue will be in Borders bookstores for the first time in several issues. An agent of Borders has been calling me for about a month in an effort to get BHM back into their stores. I had cancelled BHM’s contract with Source Interlink, which has the sole right to supply magazines to Borders, after Source filed for bankruptcy. Borders got a reorganized Source to offer me a real nice contract, with better payment terms and a lot more security, so I signed for one year, rather than the usual two or three years. Part of the deal is that Borders offered to give BHM a free “pocket” for this issue, which is a special display in their stores’ newsracks that will highlight our magazine. I thought it was an exceptional offer, so I signed.
Lenie in Fort Collins for a Show
Lenie missed this last day of deadline by flying to Fort Collins, Colorado, early this morning to display the magazine at a Sustainable Living Fair this weekend. If you’re in the area, drop by and say hi and tell her we’re working hard here. I just got her “safe arrival” phone call from the motel. The Rocky Mountain Sustainable Living Association has been doing this show for 10 years, and we’ve always meant to go but it always seemed to confict with deadline. It should be pretty busy since a lot of folks there probably never heard of BHM.
Golf in Klamath Falls
I’m going to celebrate finishing this deadline by taking three members of the Backwoods Home Youth Golf Team over to Klamath Falls tomorrow and treating them to a round of golf at the Running Y, which may be the prettiest golf course in Oregon. We’ll stay at the Olympic Inn, a motel that costs $119 but includes a big free breakfast, soup and sandwiches in the late afternoon, and fresh cookies in the evening. That pays for the motel room for these big eaters.
I got a couple of new Bobby Jones wedges in the mail the other day. My first shot with the sand wedge (56 degrees) put the ball within two feet of the pin from 50 yards.
Back to work!
