About the sunflower road journal
written by: Tim Gallagher
February 13, 2000

In 1989, my brother James and I started a small independent magazine entitled "The Pleasant Alternative." Completely non-profit, the magazine was supported by neither advertising nor subscription fees. It truly was a labor of love, doing what the two of us really enjoy; expressing ourselves creatively. For me, it was the graphic design and artistic presentation, for James, it was the expression of ideas with the written word.

To give a polished and professional image to the magazine, we chose to do business as (DBA) Pleasant Publications. Pleasant Publications never existed as a corporation, or in any other form except this: PP was James and Tim Gallagher DBA Pleasant Publications.

As stated above, the financial support of the magazine was completely borne by James and me (mostly by James) and therefore as the magazine grew, it became increasingly difficult to produce a magazine regularly. The issues were mailed first class, and at a cost of over one dollar, seventy-five cents per subscription, the costs were growing to over $250 per issue for printing and postage. The financial issues combined with me going to college served to put the magazine on what we both thought at the time was a temporary hiatus. It turned out to be permanent. 

At one point, the circulation grew to approximately 175 subscriptions. Considering that this was done without any advertising budget whatsoever, this is quite a feat. The only advertising we did was to post posters at the Cornerstone Music Festival first at Grayslake, then at Bushnell, IL. We received at least one letter a week and a subscription request approximately every week-and-a-half.

Just as many things are, TPA was fated to perish. In our money driven world and lives, making time for such an enterprise was both too costly ($$) and too time consuming. The last issue was sent out sometime in 1995.

Sometime during the fall of 1998, I started putting some of the old content online. I had started my own web-site design company in April of 1998, which was called Sunflower Road Internet Services, Incorporated, had registered the name www.sunflowerroad.com, so therefore it made sense to try to place the website under that name. I created a sub folder called journal, and The Sunflower Road Journal was born.

It is much cheaper to create this "publication" online, and makes it easier to add content as we create it. We have been discussing taking some of the poetry and essays and creating a printed booklet from them. If you would be interested in buying such a book, please let us know; it would help our decision making a lot.

The Pleasant Alternative may be gone, but The Sunflower Road Journal is still here, and is alive and well.

- Tim Gallagher treehousetim@gmail.com
   February 13, 2000




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