Dream Weaver : A Ventura-based magazine offers tips to help readers fulfill their back-to-the-land visions of American life.

It’s the Fourth of July. Time to kick back and pull the tab on a can of beer. That’s what Dave Duffy, Ventura-based publisher of Backwoods Home Magazine, would like to be doing today. Instead, he’s on the national home show circuit and going to events like ecology expositions, promoting his back-to-the-land periodical.

Duffy did manage to celebrate a holiday--sort of--before he hit the road. At least he had a can of beer and a good soak in the tub. I know because there’s a photo of this homey scene in his office, where I met Ilene, his business manager and wife.

Ilene Duffy helped me sort through some of the letters to the editor that arrive from all over the United States. Most seem to be magazine renewal requests. There are also fan letters. It turns out that our county has spawned a popular “alternative lifestyle” magazine. But Duffy’s magazine, which comes out every other month, is not tie-dyed and starry-eyed.

In a feature article titled “How One Man Made the American Dream Come True” the illustration is not of a John Lennon look-alike but of a Teddy Roosevelt type.

He’s standing in the snow in front of the log cabin he’s just built with his own hands. And he’s put in photovoltaic cells to generate his own electricity and solar panels for hot water. Another illustration is captioned “The Windows Cost $1.50 Each.” Get the idea?

With articles ranging from “The Next Time You Take a Vacation Why Not Mix Business with Pleasure” to “Tips on Dealing with Mosquitoes” the magazine has managed to get itself a circulation of 40,000. That’s up from 6,000 when Duffy started the magazine 10 issues ago in 1989.

“I had moved to the country and built my own home and started my own business, so I thought I could show others how to do it,” Duffy told me before he began his travels.

“My audience wants how-to information, not philosophy and hype about the awful conditions in society,” said Duffy, a former Oregonian who was once a Boston police reporter. “They’re not so much interested in solving the problems of society as they are in improving daily life for themselves and their families.”

And then, shrewdly acknowledging that this column would be coming out on the Fourth of July, he continued: “My readers tend to be go-getters and doers. The type of people who are good for a community but who want to live outside of a community. I think they are the backbone of America.”

So, while this eager beaver editor-publisher was away working this holiday week, I decided to find out if this “backbone of America” stuff checked out.

Those skyrocketing circulation figures might all have been from Marin County or from one of those New England states that used to have a coiled snake on its flag with a motto like “Don’t Tread on Me” or “Live Free or Die.”

But no. The correspondence was from real “backbone” places like Indiana, Texas, Minnesota, South Carolina, Illinois and throughout California. There was even a note from a subscriber in British Columbia. It contained a curious--and to me potentially infuriating--observation: “I must admit I hesitated at a country how-to magazine from Ventura, CA, but I’m glad I took the bait. . . . “

Harrumph. My local chauvinism was salved right away, however, by the sight of renewals from many servicemen in places as remote as Iceland and Saudi Arabia. By the way, Duffy does a brisk business in back issues because of the how-to aspect of the publication. Bookstores as tony as Brentano’s in New York and chain stores like K mart and Vons carry it too.

There’s a sociological study to be done on Duffy’s readership. How, when they see the magazine, people get into it and stay.

Twenty years ago there was a “back-to-the-land” rush. I did it myself. But the boom of the ‘80s made my efforts look ridiculous and ineffectual. In those days, “Mother Earth News,” published in the East, was the periodical guru. It has ceased publication, although there are rumors it might be revived.

Duffy has inherited the mantle, sort of. He got a letter from the founder of “Mother Earth News,” John Shuttleworth, which in a way, solemnized the transfer of what Shuttleworth calls “home power” to Duffy’s magazine.

“Just don’t take what you’re doing as seriously as I did. . . . I believed too strongly that we could make a difference,” the letter states in part. “And we did make a difference . . . but then again, everything, the pollution in the air, the destruction of the forests, numbers of endangered species, etc. . . . is worse than it was 20 years ago when I started. However, Good For You. You’re doing really nice work. You have ‘Home Power’ and you’re doin’ it right. I did my part 10-20 years ago and it’s your turn now.”

Well, Duffy has taken all this to heart. We know already that he’s capable of kicking back and relaxing while pushing circulation and still maintaining “home power.” And I must salute him for the neat trick of appealing to the ecology-minded and the patriotic at the same time.

But let me close by noting the most heartening aspect of this story. Duffy is a man who believes in the future of this country and this county. Having just started a magazine, he and Ilene are starting a family--she delivers in September. You gotta hand it to a guy. Happy Fourth of July. Have a beer.

FYI

To subscribe to Backwoods Home Magazine, call 647-9341, or write to P. O. Box 2630, Ventura, 93002.