Gayle and I created this website to market our wares in an effort to pay for some of our creative escapades and financial follies. Frankly, I'm not happy unless I have a project and retirement provides the time to tinker with the things I enjoy. Music and writing are on the top of my list. Gayle's marvelous artistic talents add to the mix and, as a result, I thought it was time for this old guy to join the modern age of technology and build a website.

We invite you to check out all of the sections on this site to see if there is something you might find interesting.




...........
What's it all about, Alfie?

Writing normally comes easy to me unless it's about myself. I don't know what I should say in this section, unless it's to provide some professional credibility for the website and the projects we are offering. I'd rather write about my beautiful daughters, Shannon and Juliane, my brilliant grandsons, Gabriel and Joshua, and my new granddaughter, AvaSophia. My daughter Shannon worked in the tech industry in Silicon Valley, but is now a "stay-at-home" mom, and Juliane is a teacher in San Jose.

Yep. writing about grandkids would be more fun, but I guess I'll provide an overview of business related stuff.

Upon reflection, I guess my life has been a series of creative projects and learning experiences. Some were successful and some weren't, but I seemed to seek challenges in areas about which I knew nothing. That may not be the right way to live if you're interested in a career, but I was more interested in new challenges and learning new things.

Life seemed like a buffet table offering more interesting adventures than I had time to pursue and I had no interest in settling for one thing. After a challenge had been met, I lost interest. Unfortunately, when a business began to make money, I sold it to someone else, which is not the smart thing to do. But I was less interested in money than in ideas and new projects.

For example, I taught high school for five years while doing post graduate work at night, playing trumpet in clubs on weekends, writing music books, and a building a restaurant out of a feed store during one summer. I think there were other projects during those five years too.

My first job after graduating from college, was working for my former football coach, who owned a number of athletic clubs. My first assignment was to turn a golf course and its related recreational facilities into a funtioning country club. I then moved from club manager to selling property in the subdivision surrounding the club.

My next challenge was as a publisher and owner of Westcoast Publications, publishing two magazines each month, one in Santa Clara County and one in Monterey County.

I've started and owned a number of businesses from publishing companies, a restaurant, a limo/courier service, playground manufacturing company (featured in Sunset Books), and other ventures. I bought a gas station/ minimart/carwash/deli for something to do during retirement. That wasn't my "cup of tea" and I eventually sold it and built spec houses.

As a high school teacher I co-authored an international best selling textbook, which opened the door to writing for major music publishers. I left teaching after an offer to do a series of books for the Walt Disney Company. Although this project didn't materialize due to licensing problems, I continued to work on other interesting books for Hansen Publications.

I ended up with roughly 80 books through publishers like Belwin Mills, Columbia Pictures/Warner Bros., A & M Records (Herb Alpert's company in Hollywood) and other publishers. I was contacted out of the blue by Frank Sinatra's publishing company in Nashville and signed a contract on a couple of songs I had written. That was a surprise. I was also a partner in an educational software development company, where we received national recognition for interactive products we developed.

I've also been a newspaper columnist, a professional musician, a realtor, novelist, and enough stuff to prove beyond a doubt that I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I still don't know, but I haven't grown up yet.

Enough of all of this. "Much ado about nothing..." Let me tell you about Gayle.

Gayle too, is blessed with a son and daughter and four fantastic grand children. Daughter Carrie, a graphic designer, is the mother of the four. Vanessa is a journalist living in San Francisco, Emily works for a design firm in San Francisco, Luke is a student at Los Gatos High School, and Seth is a student at Hillbrook School.

Gayle's son Greg works for USPS in the Bay Area. Interestingly, granddaughter Emily graduated from Los Gatos High exactly 50 years after her grandmother (Gayle) and I graduated from the same school. This time we sat in a different section without robes.

Gayle is an exceptional artist. She was a partner in Dimensional Decor and Design, which was a company that designed and manufactured trade show exhibits for major international companies, such as the Japanese company, Hitachi, and others.

Gayle's primary function was the design of tradeshow exhibits and over-seeing the manufacturing process in her facilities in Silicon Valley. She is better with a screwdriver and a wrench than most men I know. She sold that business, retired, married me and got back to painting and drawing.

Gayle normally works on commission, which means that a client commissions her to do a portrait of an animal, a person or a scene. I'm always amazed at Gayle's ability to capture the personality and the essence of a subject in a portrait. It's one thing to produce a painting of an animal, but it's quite another to give that animal a personality that comes alive through the eyes and the subtle nuances that so many artists are unable to capture. There is vibrant life in her portraits.

After a very long and snowy winter and the publication of my latest book, we decided to build a website and offer some of our projects to anyone who might be interested. Gayle will be doing portraits, some examples of which are on the art page. For anyone who might want to have a beautiful portrait, I encourage you to contact Gayle through this site.

Check out the site and drop us a note. And feel free to buy a book or commission some art.