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07/17/2003 Archived Entry: "New CW article on Backwoods Home"

BACKWOODS HOME'S WEB EDITION HAS JUST PUBLISHED A NEW ARTICLE OF MINE, "The Quisling Effect." And publisher Dave Duffy tells me another article, "Credit Card Monte," will be featured in BHM's upcoming print 'zine. "Credit Card Monte" is about the devious doo doo plastic peddlers do to their customers and how to counteract it.

It's been a long dry spell and some folks were asking whether I was still writing for BHM. (Translation: "Has she flaked out of another publication???")

The three-month break from the Web edition was my own. I was too busy finishing "Innocents Betrayed" and prepping for the Grand Western Conference of the Free State Project to get an article written.

My absence from the print 'zine is more complex. I suspect Dave and his charming, poetic cohort John Silveira weren't quite sure from the beginning how my stuff fit into their magazine. Then late last year Dave asked me to write a comparison between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. I think (although I don't know) that Dave expected me to conclude, "Well W may suck, but he doesn't suck as bad as Bill, especially because he's protecting us against terrorism." That's not exactly the conclusion I arrived at. ;-) Dave bravely printed the article, even though he disagreed with it. Unfortunately, he printed it just as Bush attacked Iraq -- and a lot of readers wrote really furious messages about my, and by extension poor Dave's, lack of patriotism. (I deserve the charge and accept it proudly; Dave, who supported the war, ended up getting tarred with the brush intended for me.)

Anyway, that and other factors have prompted Dave to take the print version of BHM back to its rural do-it-yourself roots. I'll still write politically oriented pieces for the Web edition of BHM. But we're trying to figure out just where my stuff fits into the de-politicized, back-to-basics print magazine. I completely support Dave's decision to take the magazine back to its roots. We've just got to figure how I can go along.

Posted by Claire @ 02:59 PM CST
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