Never Again

I am one man – 66 years of age and partially paralyzed in my right leg from a 1966 motorcycle-automobile accident in Atlantic City, NJ. I was a varsity swimmer, high school rower and summer lifeguard when my right knee was struck by a moving automobile driven by an elderly woman who made a left turn across two lanes of oncoming vehicles on a damp, gray October afternoon. One of those oncoming vehicles at the front of the line of traffic that had initiated its forward progress from the previous block after the light had turned to green was the motorcycle I was riding. On impact, I was tossed into the air and flipped over her moving automobile and onto the asphalt road surface of the opposite flow of traffic.

My life changed radically from that moment and my pursuit of my studies in the arts has been a driving force and almost overwhelming passion as my creativity replaced my athletics as my career path and quality of life embraced a new design and new purpose-driven focus. I have entertained this ambulatory challenge for 51 of my 66 years so far. I am a single father whose daughter had died in 2011 at 37 years of age. I had graduated from film school 6 months after my daughter was born in June, 1974. I received my BFA with Honors in filmmaking and my BA in developmental psychology from Stockton University in December, 1974, and am certified to teach art and special education in secondary school in New Jersey and in elementary and secondary school in Florida. I had filmed my ex-wife’s pregnancy and filmed my daughter’s birth at Shore Memorial Hospital in Somers Point, NJ on June 6, 1974 and continued to film my daughter’s growth and development through the first 18 months of her life outside of the womb, and alongside our domestic white cat, Justin Time, a 32-inches long, 18-pound all-white furry lion of a male tomcat with blue eyes that became my daughter’s side-kick and protector for her first few years as a human being walking on this planet Earth.

I now have my life alone to create and produce the media arts projects that express the wisdom I paid to obtain as I help others who cross my path who may be less fortunate and seeking help to change a failing life plan of action or the lack thereof. I do my best to educate the ignorant toward a better design for living with each other on this shared planet with a severely damaged ecosystem and an infrastructure in a significant state of disrepair. For me, nothing I do ever is about the money BUT I DO KNOW MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO ‘ROUND.

My home has been developed as a full-service boutique A-V, fine art and design services studio and I have been a visual artist my entire life, but my first major professional fine art exhibit and show also occurred in December, 1974. That was a very good and very bad year for my family and me, all things considered. More of my story if and as we get to know each other. I created the Patreon partnership patron platform with the Patreon Community to raise funds to do what I do – after researching the several crowd-funding platforms, this one, the Patreon platform, is best suited for ongoing production costs as a creator with consistent monthly automatic payments through an operating account without a minimum goal to meet or funds are not released. This is not a per-project fund-raising program yet I do include special per-project opportunities to raise additional capital. Basically, I am executive producer and creative director, grip, PA, caterer, logistics coordinator and every other job a film production requires and that is why I now am coming to peers such as you whose work excites me and with whom I think could work well with me to address these two vital issues in creative and unique ways to enhance the quality of life we entertain against the war theater that currently envelopes everyone around the world, one explosion and one cut-throat and one directed moving vehicle at a time from nightclub to beachfront to sidewalk to the Temple Mount to the Boston Marathon to the Sinai Peninsula to the China Sea.

My name is Jeff. Just Jeff… Where do we go from here?

THE BACK STORY/ELEVATOR “PITCH”:

I was a grant award-winning disabled artist and entrepreneur in 2004 who was presenting how the Internet was critical for success and self-sufficiency for disabled entrepreneurs and creative enterprises. My presentation described the relationship between assistive technology and physical disability for people with high intellectual achievement and academic excellence whose production frustration stems from geographic isolation or the inability to leave one’s residence, and posed the question, “How can I work with other artists and creators around the world via the World Wide Web if the current dial-up and DSL service networks were too small to handle large data packets?” The theme at that time was about file-sharing, the load that complex software brought to the desktop and server systems, collaborations in real-time and what we could and would develop in the future and when would it be available. Off-the-desktop software applications were at the infant stage and complex audio and video mixing applications were a distant target at that time. Global litigation requirements, SEC requirements and International web-based commerce were the priority for cloud-based application development.

Today, 13 years after I first posed that question, most people take file-sharing from the World Wide Web for granted as something that always was and always will be without ever understanding or comprehending what was involved to accomplish this “easy access” to the world’s information by a complex system of transmitters, receivers and satellites. What we dreamed and imagined in 2004 is a very real component of the arts and entertainment industry today. This is true for every other business in today’s global marketplace. If you are reading my words now, I am sure you are aware of this – we utilize IT/ISP as a matter of fact every day as a “take it for granted” aspect of our daily lives, and we take the self-indulgent luxury of anger when upload and download speed slows or throttles or overloads on the World Wide Web. The privileged problems of contemporary civilizations that have grown accustomed to fully functional Internet access.