GaryNMaine Blog

This blog will serve no particular purpose. I do not have an agenda, nor do I ascribe to any particular political ideology. My apologies, before I start writing this “About” page for all of the “I”s. I guess it is to be expected since, I would think, an “About” page for a personal blog should tell the reader a little bit about the person writing the blog. This might help you understand where I get the views I have on things.

I (you see, this “About” page will be full of these references) was born in 1953 grew up in a medium-sized mill town in Washington State–Longview. It was a good place to grow up and my parents did not restrict me from doing some very adventurous things, nor did they spend an inordinate amount of time trying to indoctrinate me into any particular religious faith. I was, however, brought up as a Catholic, but did not continue my affiliation with that religion outside of my childhood churchgoing that was mandatory until I was in my early teens.

I was not a particularly good student. My school years up through high school did not show much promise. Didn’t garner much more than average grades, except in the subjects I enjoyed, i.e., history, mathematics, art and some creative writing (which was rare when I attended school).

My father and mother were good people, though my father could have cut out the racist shit. He grew up in North Dakota and spend most of his adult life in the very same mill town that I did. It was almost exclusively white, so there was no reason for the bigotry, except for possibly the television news and entertainment that probably spent too much time in those days in the 60s and 70s doing a disservice to the black community, gays, or whatever was the “other” of the moment.

Once I graduated from high school, I went to work for Weyerhaueser Timber Company. It did not take me long to figure out that I was not cut out to be a mill worker, but it did take me a long time to figure out that working for “the man” was something I would need to avoid.

Eventually, I went to college, but I had to wait until things got so bad in Longview that I had to take a job at the local community college as a janitor. While there, I did take advantage of the free classes and graduated magna cum laude. Even though I had a lackluster career in my formative school years, I have never to this day thought that education was a waste of time. Indeed, I do have an enormous reserve of intellectual curiosity and consider myself pretty good at a lot of things.

I have always loved history and do feel that a good grounding in history helps a person wade through current events in a way that builds incredible awareness of human society and behavior that can be enormously helpful. I would also consider myself a well-above-average photographer, computer programmer (especially database applications), carpenter, tennis player, guitar player and, I think, I can even write a bit. I would also consider myself pretty creative–I can easily think outside of the box.

Eventually, in the late 80s, I was led to Seattle by my ex-wife, where the employment situation was much better than in Longview. I got a job in a law firm, and two jobs beyond this first job in Seattle, I had settled in as a paralegal at a pretty decent law firm, again, in Seattle. This firm had a pretty liberal grounding, which was probably because of its field of Native American law. We worked with Indian tribes throughout America on, typically, governance issues.

During my stint there, which was quite a number of pretty happy years, I met my present best friend, the woman I love, and my excellent business partner–Betty. When I left the firm, which was after Betty had already left to start her own business, Betty and I got together and started working on some business ideas of our own. The business she started was a very local brick and mortar business that was doing okay, but was not something that would ever make for a comfortable living.

At this time it was getting to the mid-1990s and the Internet was starting to get a little play as possibly a platform where someone with some entrepreneurial drive might be able to get something interesting started and, worth mentioning over and over again, a national/international market.

At the time, we had made some advances into the business side of the local business Betty was in and got involved in the national association for that type of business. We developed that associations first web site, and started developing database software for that industry. That was a long time ago, but we still have clients using our software and have plans, still, to do more for the people in this industry.

But, we also got involved with an idea I had on my mind. I wanted to open an Internet store where we could sell merchandise to a national/international audience. Anyway, this aspect of our business now is about 70 percent of our income, but occupies way too much of our time, which does limit what we can do entrepreneurially in other areas.

After spending our businesses’ formative years in the Seattle area, we moved our businesses to Tempe, Arizona. We had determined that our costs for leasing space to run our business would decrease by about 30 percent as Seattle is very expensive. We both wanted a change of venue anyway. We spent three years in Tempe and then got the itch again. We were right, though, our three years in Tempe were good for our businesses’ bottom line.

So, we packed it all up again, got a trucking company to move all of our stuff to Maine. This time, however, there were no leases. We purchases a very nice house with plenty of room for us to do our business right from home, and to live here comfortably. What a joy this is!

That is about it for me. What is the purpose of this blog?

I am here to write. Yes, maybe some business-related stuff but, I would suspect, mostly not. I am more likely to write on political issues, maybe some tech stuff, and lots of other things that may, or may not, be of interest to anyone but myself.