kokoslist

From Jayne Gall: 

I recently started kokoslist.com to share my enthusiasm and intense interest in local arts activities and farmers markets, and to spread the word and create interest in the concept of Community Supported Agriculture in collaboration with our local, independent farmers.  

Along the way, my focus grew out of focus and spread to ever so many other complementary areas including my personal favorite cause for delight, the brain.  My interest in brain research and how we do, in fact, impact the health of our brains, emotions, and quality of life by the choices we make, has encouraged me to continue exploring the community for activities that align themselves with growing and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.  I try to promote the connectors, that is, choices that include good food, appropriate stimulants (art, music, dance, challenging games) and activities that put us all in a better place.  Kokoslist contains links to research that proves these activities are good and necessary for all of us.

My goal is to encourage people to get out.  To try new things.  Support their neighbors and community.  Eat well, locally and organic.    Support the arts, interact, smile and be smiled at.

In my attempt to keep it simple to kokoslist followers, I have made it complex in its offerings.  This is a good thing.  It has become quite comprehensive and inclusive in areas of learning and socializing.  The result has become a snapshot of our community;  all the fun and education and art and food and nature and wine and trains we can get to.  (All things trains being another love)

Also along the way, I realized that I was accomplishing a goal to publish an on-line service benefitting my community, but was limited in my knowledge of how to promote myself, kokoslist’s attributes, and run a business in general.  A friend of mine suggested SCORE as a resource since he had had a great experience when he worked through it with his business.  It was easy to get involved with SCORE by going to the website and filling out a simple questionnaire.  I am still awed by the prompt response and the quality of the business professional assigned by SCORE. 

I am benefiting greatly from my relationship with the SCORE counselor who is working with me on improving my image and moving forward in marketing myself and my on-line business. 

After only a few days, through his innate ability to identify direction and create manageable steps to attain goals, he has increased my confidence level and improved my professional approach to marketing and managing my business.  He is highly organized, very knowledgeable, articulate, and encouraging, and, as a result, I am learning to efficiently and effectively organize my efforts and align my goals.  

He is also generous with his talents. I look forward to our continued business relationship.  He is a wonderful resource and effective coach who has the talent to propel a business to the next level quickly, with little stress, while encouraging the transition to success to be a fun adventure.  

I am continuously expanding and improving the content and outreach of kokoslist while giving back to the community through the various promotions.  I am proud of my efforts.  I believe it is natural for people to want to interact, learn new things, develop and inspire our creativity, explore our world.  At kokoslist.com, I am doing what I love and living my story. 

Please go to http://www.kokoslist.com/ and check us out. To reach me for comment, please email jayne@kokoslist.com.

Jayne Gall, Marketing Director, kokoslist

United in Song

The following article about the Life Impact Productions appeared in the Wilmington News Journal, Clinton County section, by Gary Huffenberger, ghuffenberger@wnewsj.com:

It might just be in the realm of possibility that on March 27, 2010, the roof of Wilmington College’s Hermann Court will soar up into the sky from the power of song and the unified sound of a 500-voice choir rising to a crescendo during its presentation of “How Great Thou Art.”

Whether or not the roof is literally raised, the mass choir concert is bound to be memorable for participants and audience members alike, Life Impact Productions executive director of music Timothy Larrick said Friday as he took a break from work at McCarty Gardens in Sabina.

“It’s something a lot of people like to be involved in. And once you’ve sung in a choir that large, you never forget that experience and the sound that it makes,” Larrick said.

The “One Voice” mass choir concert will be the climax of a two-day clinic and rehearsal experience with composer, arranger and concert pianist Mark Hayes. Hayes’ personal catalog includes more than 650 compositions and arrangements, distributed by several leading publishers.

Hayes first conducted his “Te Deum and Magnificat“ at Carnegie Hall in May 2007, and will conduct the world premier of his “Requiem” at Lincoln Center on July 5, 2010.

But for two days in late March, Hayes will be in Wilmington for a mass choir concert.

There are mass choir festivals all over the United States and certain places are known for doing it every year, Larrick said.

Already, organizers are well on the way to reaching the goal of a 500-member choir, Larrick said.

When there are 500 voices in a choir — more than double the size of the 200-voice Mormon Tabernacle Choir — the “dynamics can be amazing,” he said.

There is no auditioning for the mass choir.

“These are everyday people who sing in church choirs, in the bathtub, in the car driving down the road. You come and be involved, learn something from Mark, maybe learn a little bit about yourself and how to sing in a choir,” Larrick said.

This choir concert will focus more on sacred than secular music, Larrick said. Among the titles planned are Hayes’ arrangements of “How Great Thou Art,” the American folk song “Oh Shenandoah,” “Swinging with the Saints,” “Here I am Lord” and “The Father Will Dance.” The theme song will be “One Voice” written by Barry Manilow.

The 45-year-old Larrick is organist at the Wilmington United Methodist Church and said they do a lot of Mark Hayes’ arrangements.

For the 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 27 concert, Life Impact Productions is bringing in lighting and sound and a stage and grand piano.

At one point in the concert, Hayes will play a set that he described to Larrick as kind of jazz-gospel that he arranged. It will be just him at the piano. “He’s a fabulous piano player,” Larrick said.

Audience capacity is expected to be about 1,500. With a 500-voice choir, tickets could be hard to come by if, for example, each choir member averages three family members or friends in the audience. “I wouldn’t put off buying tickets, and we are signing up participants now, as well,” Larrick said.

If interested in participating or being part of the audience, contact Rob Jaehnig (shown) of Life Impact Productions at 937-728-6557 or e-mail him atrljaehnig@yahoo.com. There is a cost to be in the choir and be part of the two-day clinic and rehearsals leading up to the concert.

Note:

Rob is a victim of the DHL closing and a councilman of the City of Wilmington. SCORE provided advice and counsel in business formulation, ownership structure, organization and certain financial matters.

If I Were President, Part 3 …

Vote for me based on the following plank in my platform:

Domestic Affairs

We covered an important component of our domestic program when we earlier discussed energy policy. Let’s now discuss other domestic issues.

“It’s the economy, stupid” was the mantra in Bill Clinton’s first and successful run for the presidency. I think James Carville was the one who coined the phrase.

It’s that time again. I will meet with specialists on tax policy and develop a consensus of what is an appropriate and fair tax program. My sense is that the new system should bring in more revenues than the current tangle of regulations, many of them favoring special interest groups, many favoring groups that no longer need the favor (farmers, oil companies). I have probably now lost the farm belt and oil patch votes.

Still, the new code must not be anti-business in any way. The U.S. got to be the dominant economy in the world by encouraging investment and allowing handsome rewards to the successful. Perhaps more of these rewards can be taxed in some way, but that is for the experts to discuss.

Then there’s that pesky foreclosure problem. Current congressional proposals for addressing the problem are strictly election-year politics, ways to strengthen the images of incumbents, particularly those in seriously contested races. These proposals reward irresponsible lenders and irresponsible borrowers.

And we need to do something about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Their profits go to shareholders while losses are picked up by the Feds (meaning us). This is almost un-American! Let the investors take their lumps in a down market like the rest of us have to.

Why do government supports, subsidies, and other goodies go exclusively to the rich? I am not suggesting re-distribution of wealth, simply fair play and common sense.

That’s where I stand. Are we in good hands?

If I Were President, Part 2 …

Vote for me, based on the following plank in my platform:

Foreign Affairs

For more then a half-century the U.S. has been the greatest power, military and economic, in the world. This has made the U.S. the source of a great deal of largesse, from sending aid and sending troops, for various reasons, to many of the world’s trouble sites.

It is time that we recognize that times have changed. Why should a nation trillions of dollars in debt and running deficits in the hundreds of billions be expected to take on obligations outside our country? It will be tough many of Americans, but we have a short term financial problem, and have to tighten our budget.

Foreign aid has been given to many countries for various reasons, some good some bad. The types of aid include everything from AIDS vaccines to Africa (good) to propping up the militaries of several countries, including Egypt and Israel (bad).

It is time to stop all forms of foreign aid. We can have a staged withdrawal, perhaps 25% a year for my four years in office. Then each case can be treated on its own merits, if we even care to return to cash giveaways to other countries.

Even while we remain the world’s only remaining superpower, wars have changed from conflicts between countries to “retail” wars of counterinsurgency. Nuclear weapons are proliferating; countries that are on the verge of having nuclear capability include even members of the “axis of evil.”

My proposal is that, for my first term, all military intervention is suspended. This requires a rapid withdrawal of troops for Iraq, and allows for strengthening our force in Afghanistan. Exceptional situations may cause us to deviate from this policy, but only after careful consideration by the President and Congress.

In addition we are calling in all our military from South Korea and other countries that are manned for the former type of wars, and from NATO activities. We may need to keep some troops in Germany to maintain some European presence.

Is this too nationalistic? I suppose, but the world is better off with the financial stability of the United States, and we need a breather.

If I Were President, Part 1 …

Vote for me, based on the following plank in my platform:

Energy Policy

Like it or not, despite all the projections of how much alternative energy we will be using over various time periods, our need for oil will be here for decades. There are those who say that today’s projects will not produce a drop of oil for 7-10 years. Well, if we had undertaken these projects 7-10 years ago we would be selling oil to the Middle East by now. If not, 7-10 years from now we will be having the same argument.

I consider myself an environmentalist, though some might disagree. Sure, this proposal might retard development of renewable energy, but we can level that out with tax subsidies to the alternative fuel developers while phasing out subsidies to the oil industry.

This approach might extend our dependence on oil, but at least it won’t be foreign oil. Still, attempts to make alternative energy economically feasible will go on, and when they succeed, the marketplace will show its preference for the “greener” source of energy.

Costs and risks involved, and problems of handling resulting waste will prevent any new nuclear power plants being built. Conservation will reduce some of our dependence on oil, but as an old mentor of mine said he’ll believe in the seriousness of the movement when the parking lot of a Sierra Club meeting is full of only bicycles.

This all may sound cynical, but it is realistic. Starting the process of producing more oil is sound from a national security standpoint, and from an economic standpoint.

I am from Louisiana so I have seen oil rigs from the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. Newer techniques vastly reduce the unattractiveness of these rigs. Some of these techniques also remove the requirement that a rig be directly over the source of the oil.

So let’s produce a balanced approach to producing the oil where it is most plentiful. Even ANWR should be on the table.

Wait! I have one more major plank. Oh well, maybe next time.