The employees of our longtime printer, Ripon Printers of Ripon, Wisconsin, sent us a signed megaposter the other day congratulating us on our 20th anniversary issue. Many of Ripon’s 300 plus employees signed it. In the center of the poster is a photo of the employees gathered outside their Wisconsin plant. They also sent us a framed copy of our 20th issue cover.

Super nice! That’s why I’ve done business with Ripon for more than a decade. Not only is Ripon and its employees very good at what they do, but it’s a family owned company in a small town and they’ve treated us over the years like we’re part of their family. My wife and I recognize quite a few of the names on the poster.

Just this past summer Annie and I visited the Ripon plant and got a tour from Tom Welk and Joe Putzer, two of our principal contacts there. Huge plant with state-of-the-art equipment. They are very conscious of quality control and have worked with us over the years saving a little money here, a little there without sacrificing the quality of the magazine. I’ve always felt like they are an extension of my own staff.

Thank you Ripon! You’ve made Backwoods Home Magazine look good for years, you’ve helped us control costs, and you’ve minimized all the printing, sorting, and mailing mistakes that inevitably creep into the magazine publication process. May we continue to prosper together.

Ever have a kidney stone tear through one of your kidneys? I have!

The first time I was 22 and in the U.S. Army stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado. I was hospitalized for two days and given morphine until I passed it in my urine. Anyone who has ever tried to pass a kidney stone will tell you you need something like morphine to manage the pain. Some people liken it to a woman giving birth.

The second time was 12 years ago, just after I moved the magazine to Gold Beach, Oregon. I forget what drug they gave me when I went to the hospital, but I needed it. It took only a day to pass that one.

Yesterday morning I doubled over in pain from what I suspected was my third stone. I knew I had several stones lodged in my left kidney after a CT scan accidentally detected them last August while I was being checked for possible broken ribs after I fell through my living room ceiling while putting up insulation. (I live dangerously!) So I suspected that one day one or more of the new stones would give me a nasty surprise. Yesterday morning was it.

But old guys like me tune out pain pretty well because you get all kinds of new pains as you age. So I waited until this afternoon to see a doctor. By then the pain had subsided, and a urine sample showed trace amounts of blood, which indicates a kidney stone had been passed, and an x-ray revealed the stones discovered in August were no longer present in my left kidney.

That means I passed the new stones without pain medication. How tough is that!

Since I have three teenage sons, I’ve found over the years that we can keep track of work gloves better if they all get thrown into the same drawer in the garage after work projects. But I’ve noticed that left-handed gloves in the drawer have always outnumbered right-handed ones, and I’ve often wondered why.

Today, while tending my first wood stove fire of the season, I burned the tip of the middle finger on my right hand while opening the wood stove door because there was a hole in the glove I used to operate the stove’s door handle. I threw the glove away, went to the garage drawer to get another, and found only six gloves there, all left-handed. It suddenly occurred to me where all the right-handed gloves had gone.

Since I’m still searching for some H1N1 flu vaccine for my pregnant daughter, I thought I’d pass on some information I’ve researched.

Even the U.S. Senate is voicing dismay at the shortage of swine flu vaccine while swine flu begins to peak in the U.S. I can’t find any in Oregon. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) site had a “Flu Vaccine Locator” section on the site yesterday, but I couldn’t find it on the site today. I had checked all the Oregon locations listed anyway, but none of them had the vaccine so the locator was not accurate.

According to a study conducted by Purdue University, the vaccine will arrive too late for most people.

Here’s a statement of advice from the CDC site:

What can I do to protect myself, my baby and my family?

The seasonal flu shot has been given to millions of pregnant women over many years. Flu shots have not been shown to cause harm to pregnant women or their babies.  The 2009 H1N1 flu shot is made in the same way and in the same places as the seasonal flu shot.  It is very important for pregnant women to get both the seasonal flu shot and the 2009 H1N1 flu shot.  Please see http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/vaccination/ to learn more.

Here’s an important study underway for pregnant women and the swine flu vaccine: http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/news/QA/H1N1pregnanttrials.htm.

The religious character of the debate

Like many things in society, the swine flu vaccine debate has taken on an atmosphere resembling a religious dispute: Some people are vehemently against any type of vaccine, including this one, for a variety of reasons: It supposedly causes autism and other problems in kids, it’s a government plot to kill people, etc. The internet is full of “supposed” evidence backing up these claims, but I find the evidence is typically anecdotal, therefore faulty. It simply does not hold up to scientific scrutiny.

Those people who insist the H1N1 epidemic is nothing to worry about, and that the swine flu vaccine is more dangerous than the flu it is intended to prevent, have a good chance of being able to brag about being correct when this swine flu scare is all over. That is because few diseases ever reach their full potential to be truly lethal to mankind, especially in this modern age of health prevention and care. The same is true for swine flu: Chances are it will pass, illnesses will continue to be mild, and the anti-vaccine crowd will say, “See, I told you so!.”

The problem is that this is like running stop lights all over town. Chances are you’ll get away with running stop lights for quite a while, but one day you’ll run a stop light and get hit broadside by a big truck. Then you’ll wish you had stopped at all the stop lights to make sure it’s safe to cross.

The history of humanity is the history of diseases ravaging human populations, often displacing entire populations. It happened in this country with “old world” diseases killing off 95% of native populations in the 100 years after the arrival of Columbus in 1492. And it happened repeatedly in Europe and Asia and Africa before that time. This is where a study of history is so valuable, but most people do not read history. Only a couple of hundred years ago, George Washington saved the Continental Army by vaccinating his troops (an early crude method) against smallpox at Valley Forge so they could come out of their winter quarters and be an effective force against the British. As recently as 1918 a flu killed millions of Americans because we had no protection against it.

Now we have a method — vaccination — of preventing diseases from killing us. It’s not perfect, we are often wrong about which disease poses a significant risk, and sometimes various vaccines have side effects, but it’s a method I bet the Indians wished they had when Columbus arrived. But there are so many people in our society who have no idea of what has happened in the past, and who have little understanding what constitutes reasonable scientific evidence, that they willingly believe the dubious anti-vaccine literature that pollutes the internet.

I’m merely trying to find a way to keep my pregnant daughter and my other children and grandkids safe, but I have to wade through piles of intellectual rubbish as I search the internet.