I have a confession to make: A few days ago I got an email from Facebook reminding me I have a dozen or so people who want to be my friend on Facebook. I recognize a few of the names, but most I don’t. I don’t know how to use Facebook, and I don’t want to learn.

Even though I got on the Facebook account Annie set up (for the magazine, I think) once or twice a few months ago, I still don’t know how to get back on it, use it, or anything. And I don’t want to learn. Same with Twitter. I don’t want to learn anything new about computers.

I’m not a real social person, anyway, even though I run a magazine. This blog is about as social as I want to get. I hate learning new computer stuff, no matter how “easy” it is. Always have! It took me forever to learn Quark Xpress to launch the magazine, and Annie converted BHM to Adobe CS4 InDesign at least six issues ago and I still haven’t learned that. She creates a template for me and I write my editorial in it. For 20 years the magazine has been using Photoshop to put pictures in the magazine, and I still know next to nothing about that computer program.

So how’s that! I’m the next best thing to a computer idiot and I like it that way!

Measures 66 and 67

Massachusetts offered hope for the future of politics the other day by electing Scott Brown to fill the late Ted Kennedy’s senate seat, but here in the much more thinly populated state of Oregon, where Backwoods Home Magazine is located, we cast gloom on our future by passing Ballot Measures 66 and 67. These measures ostensibly tax only the rich (individuals making more than $125,000, couples making more than $250,000) and corporations, but in actuality they will likely lead to between 40,000 and 70,000 job losses in the next couple of years.

It was sold to voters as a “make the rich pay their fair share” tax. Unfortunately, those rich folks (if you call someone making $125,000 a year rich) employ everyone else. Measure 66 taxes the rich folks, while Measure 67  dramatically increase taxes on “C” corporations, which are the corporations who provide most of the jobs. BHM is an “S” corporation so is relatively unhurt. They’ll probably go after us next time around.

Oregon suffers from having only one big city — Portland — and it is full of liberals who like big government and are willing to vote for these job-killing tax increases. Most of the rest of Oregon is composed of Libertarians like me or conservatives, but we are often outvoted by the Portland morons.

Lenie is the volunteer pianist for our high school and middle school choirs. She’s learning Great Balls of Fire to accompany the middle school choir for their next concert. Here’s Jerry Lee Lewis’s original version of this great song.

When Lenie performs with the choir, I’ll try and remember to post their version of the song. She’s looking forward to this.

I’m preparing the 19th year anthology in which Issue No. 111 is contained. No. 111 became our biggest selling issue ever.  Anticipating its popularity, I had ordered an extra 10,000 copies from the printer, rather than our usual 1500 extra copies. It sold off the newsstand in three days, and the extra issues sold within weeks.

An astute observer could see the recession coming. In the issue before, No. 110, my editorial stated:

“You been watching the campaigns for the Democratic and Republican primaries? Scary, huh? One of these bozos is going to be our next President. Makes me want to double the size of my pantry and garden, stock up on fuel and supplies, and batten down the hatches.

“. . . Another bozo while we have a recession looming on the horizon. Some economists say it may already be here. All the talk from people like me about protecting our freedoms from Government will soon turn to protecting our butts from economic disaster made worse by Government with another bozo in charge.

“Has anyone noticed that the politicians seeking to be President don’t even talk about the looming recession? Economists do, but the candidates don’t. They pretend it’s not there. It’s almost surreal! . . .

“. . . A bozo in the White House and a recession. What an unfortunate and foreboding combination. I’d better order up a new shipment of our Emergency Preparedness and Survival Guide book. People are going to want practical survival information more than ever.”

So for No. 111 (Silveira wrote the editorial), when many readers sensed the oncoming recession, I developed this cover by holding a wad of paper in my hand and having Lisa Nourse take a photo of it in the office a few days before deadline. I quick emailed it to Don Childers in Colorado and told him, “Make that wad of paper the earth and have it and my hand shaking.”

I was in perfect sync with the readership, and Childers, my artist for 20 years, painted a cover that projected the story powerfully. We were far ahead of the politicians on the economic state of the nation. BHM subsequently had a run on the EPSG book, and I had to reprint it.

This 19th year anthology is not likely to go to the printer for another year, unless we sell a ton of preorders for Nos. 15 and 16, in which case I may send all the anthologies out to the printer, right up through No. 20, which I’ll begin working on tomorrow.

Everything depends on money coming in and money going out. Why can’t politicians figure that out?

While Massachusetts was up to important business the last couple of weeks, I have been also by preparing several new BHM anthologies for the printer. In the upcoming issue, we’re advertising the 15th and 16th year anthologies by offering them for presale for $30 for both. The idea is to raise some of the money to pay for the printing of the big books.

Annie is now working on the technical part of turning the 15th and 16th anthologies into the format the printer requires, and we expect to send them to the printer next week. That means we should get back the completed shipments of the books by the middle of February, which means that readers who take advantage of the preorder offer will not have to wait very long at all to get the new anthologies. (Update on Jan 23: Lenie said this is far too optimistic, that the ship date from our office will be more like the middle of March.)

My job is to pick the article chronology for the new anthologies, which can be tricky because I’m deleting ads, Letters to the Editor, and the few articles that don’t fit for one reason or another. I’m leaving in 95% of the articles, mainly in their original formats, which is the tricky part.

Today I completed the chronology for the 17th year anthology, which we hadn’t advertised in the upcoming issue but which I am thinking of sending to the printer anyway. Many of our readers own anthologies 1 through 14, having bought The Whole Sheebang, so the new anthologies will be a very welcome set of books for them.

Anyway, I’m not just playing golf and fishing all the time. I’m working!