“Backwoods Home” Banned by Solar Festival
In an editorial in the latest issue of Backwoods Home Magazine online, editor and publisher Dave Duffy was surprised by the following admission by a board member of the MREA Midwest Renewable Energy Fair:
“He [MREA Fair’s Mick Sagrillo] said the Board meeting to ban BHM did occur (he was at it), but that it was only coincidental that it took place after the 2001 editorial appeared.”
Excerpt from the 2001 editorial in question, which looks like friendly, constructive advice to me:
“Let me give the solar industry a marketing tip: the American rural countryside, which is ideal for home installations of solar energy systems, is populated mainly by conservative people who want to raise their families without crime or government intrusion…If you want to sell to the rural market, appeal to us. Leave your ideology behind, as it only nauseates us, and we have difficulty reaching for our wallets when nauseated.”
Continuing the excerpt from this month’s editorial:
“Instead, he said, the Board considered banning BHM because we carried articles about guns, and at the same meeting they considered banning the group, Earth First, because it sold a pamphlet about how to make bombs, presumably to be used to further their far left environmental goals.”
If event security is in place, censoring publications should be avoided. Perhaps they could have a disclaimer that the opinions of vendors or groups are not necessarily those of the organizers.
Maybe BHM, Earth First! Journal and Fifth Estate are dangerous lunatics, but at least they’re not bland and threatening to bore us to death.
Off-grid power vendors should heed the message of the late Robert Anton Wilson’s Guns and Dope Party: “I’ll tolerate your hobbies if you’ll tolerate mine!”
