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Sunday, December 20, 2009

Cepia Club--2009--Holding Fast and Melding Fortune's Future

From The Cepia Club LLC

2009—Holding Fast and Melding Fortune's Future
December 15, 2009

As a report year-in-review for The Cepia Club LLC, we title part of this article—or rather articles of faith, fidelity, friendship and fellowship—“holding fast;” because the prime element that makes the Club alive and everything that it is and can become indeed held fast in the turmoil of private lives and and global business upheaval. That irreplaceable and gratefully recognized gravity of our inner-universe, for CepiaClub's success past, present and future, is the living, breathful, vibrant and vocal help of people who worked hard for so much idealism to become realized. There is more for which CepiaClub can be grateful beyond those specific individuals who performed service, or who dedicated means by which our achievements reached the better possible outcomes. The underlined strength of CepiaClub—as both a “new model” business for liberty, prosperity, and justice—rests on the solid foundation THOSE who believe in CepiaClub.

Not only tacit words of encouragement or the implicit acts of service by many brought us to a verging year of 2010 success. For every CepiaClub participant or Cepiaglobal Associate, a band of others stands behind each one of them. And it surfaces more apparent from the dark, stormy sea line, that a future ship of civilization can be righted and set on more pacific course if all citizens in all countries stand to be recognized and counted among the humanity crying “peace and prosperity for all.” We as a species can end the insanity and bring a better world if, and only if, we all live by the principles which make for right, good, honest and fair living. Pursuing the goals of awareness and activism for such inner, self-evident goals for happiness; in freedom from fear and want; via freedom for conscience and speech; all of it in a simple sum comprise the intent and work of CepiaClub, for the short-time and the long-term.

The achievements of CepiaClub as a business in 2009 were multiple in number, diverse in character, positive in approach and productive in purpose.

First, after last winter, a desk office space was rented from Cepia Trade Bazaar located inside the Planet Supply of St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. The Cepia Trade Bazaar is a mobile kiosk and a separate, but kindred, entity from The Cepia Club LLC. The trade bazaar has a month-by-month rent contract for its space in the Planet Supply, but as far as connecting within the Planet Supply mini-community and the larger and vibrant City of St. Croix Falls, the arrangement works profoundly well for all concerned. The display space for Cepia Trade Bazaar and the The Cepia Club LLC's desk within the space solved several daunting problems learned in the first year of CepiaClub's company-under-management as an LLC from 2008. Also, as part of the traveling Cepia Trade Bazaar display space at other locations, CepiaClub benefits from the greater promotion and presence under the desk-rental contract. As both workspace and meet-up space, the location within Planet Supply was a great boon since April 2009 and will continue as of this writing indefinitely, into 2010.

In late May, as our second event of note in 2009, CepiaClub took a 9-day road tour of Wisconsin, to the central and southeast parts. Not extensive in itself but covering 700 miles by car with film gear and the cameras rolling, CepiaClub asked friends and associates to ask into the camera a question they wanted answered, about life, the world, or the nature of things in general. The film, Underground Freeway, may never be edited and completed, but the trip-log, “Notes from the Underground,” written during and following the tour, can be read in the May and June 2009 portions of the CepiaClub's social-cultural blog at www.myspace.com/cepiaclub .

In July, after six months of preparation and work, CepiaClub's production and management of the music concert at Centuria's Memory Days festival was our third significant accomplishment of 2009. Sandy Bishop and her son, Henry Bishop, played an afternoon children's variety theater. The Juggernauts of Planet Supply and Polk County, Wisconsin, fame, played the mid-afternoon show. Polk County's funk-punk favorites, Squib, graced the festival that early Saturday evening with their last concert to date to a crowd that exceeded 125. And finally for the main concert, to the wild and welcome reception and fun of 400-plus concert-goers (counted at 10 PM, with scores more coming and going until the concert ended at 1:30 AM), Club-friend and favorite, Javier Trejo and his band, The Javier Trejo Trio, gave Centuria a profoundly entertaining and fun show.

CepiaClub's fourth favored success of 2009 arrived in two parts in one weekend. The combined parts were the Friday, September 25th CepiaClub Annual Dinner (our second) and the following day's St. Croix Falls Autumn Festival. The dinner on the Friday evening rebounded with great food prepared jointly by Mrs. Krenz and CepiaClub's own certified executive chef, Mr. Ross G., assisted by his able wife, Mrs. Kellie G.. The meal was Italian fare, and up to the standard of unabashed excellence on the part of the entire cooking team. All twenty-one guests voiced extreme pleasure in the great food and fellowship, the content of discourse and friendly chatter, and the open-minded, sober exchange of ideas. The event was non-business as it was just a plain old dinner party, but a dinner party that can hardly be equaled.

The Autumn Fest the next day, on the morning and afternoon of a glorious and sunny Saturday, was a dual affair for CepiaClub for the second year continuing. CepiaClub, while not involved in the event promotions, ran our own section of the Cepia Trade Bazaar kiosk in the #1 preferred vending tent. In addition, CepiaClub also had been responsible beforehand and on the day of the festival for the coordination of the live music and dance entertainment. Overall, CepiaClub's outreach at the Autumn Festival brought great dividends to us in several ways in the months since. The dividends will hopefully rebound to us in 2010 as well.

These four notable achievements in the narrow respects of The Cepia Club LLC's business accomplished several important needs for us. Among the needs fulfilled, the most important took the form of those pricey assets we gained at a remarkable low- and efficient-cost: We promoted our image and our professional competencies by performing our business and our friendship principles and commitments. Everyone involved at every step, with special commendation for Charles M. Barnard and Pwajdeur Stage, proved the entire club's competence to plan and execute difficult event and promotional services. CepiaClub, furthermore, improved our internal efficiency and cost-control procedures and management policies. We as CepiaClub profited more in goodwill than we earned in revenue, but all of these peculiar commodities and trade-offs netted our business organization out-sized gains to expenses in labor, thought, and moral capital. We evened out on our capital capacity, and now we can set better heights to soar toward goals in 2010 for growth in numbers and image, and especially for revenue.

Most critical of all the above mentioned, and to the intent and design of CepiaClub, the people involved in CepiaClub, whether volunteers, collaborators, contractors or Participants and Associates, everyone we can reach with our messages built on the themes of liberty, freedom, justice and community, all understand the underside of the ideal, the deep foundation upon which CepiaClub stands. WE associate together for the common purpose, the human need for some fulfillment, to work toward finding in ourselves the reasons to be useful to ourselves, useful for one another, to be useful to the world. Most important of all, we build from within the efforts, whatever character or function they exist, the friendships and tolerance between us; to learn and teach each other the lessons and wisdoms endowed through hard experience or by the Nature of goodness that rests inside each and every person, if all and everyone looked inside and released that goodness for others.

In other aspects of business, CepiaClub held fast on the core enterprises of public media operations. CepiaClub's friends and personnel kept that vital center alive in our broadcasting and production efforts, in our publishing enterprise, and within and without concerning the Cepiaglobal Associated Membership Program (CAMP).

This year, the PiK. Media enterprise of The Cepia Club LLC, with the able cinematography help of Mr. Erik Barstow, filmed two episodes of our flagship tv-web show, Freedom Affairs. The first guest, Ms. Mandy Hathaway told her story of her 2008 photo-journalism contract job in which she toured Tajikistan, which lies along the northern border of Afghanistan. The tv show has so far proved one of the best film projects CepiaClub has ever done, in terms of its content and skilled professionalism. The episode's theme of “Awareness Beyond Media” exemplified how people's perspectives of war and peace can change when we look into even the photographed faces and eyes of people anywhere living normal life. In the normal chores of hero-ship, Ms. Hathaway's photos of baking and breaking bread with the people of Central Asia tell a lot of how our perceptions—even CepiaClub's—can shift; one looks at different peoples in different parts of the earth not as something to be feared, but something within all of us with which we can identify in others.

(The second Freedom Affairs episode filmed this summer shall remain un-described for this article. We hope not to implode anticipation).

Also, on the PiK. Media projects, progress has gone far on the Pikzl Vision, web-casting TV home page, located at www.pikzl.com . All of our own shows, and other individual movie projects by CepiaClub throughout the past 8 years, either are already posted or will be posted in time, including some commercial advertisements we have made. Pikzl Vision contains a rather diverse mix of entertaining, informative, commercialized, and community content.

One of CepiaClub's new show launches in 2009 is the series St. Croix Valley Liberty Beacons. These feature projects provide less editorial comment and more unrevised, and raw, formats of ideas. The three SCVL Beacons completed so far since June 2009 highlight speakers appearing at the April 2009 Libertarian Party of Wisconsin's annual convention. Speaker and former Libertarian Party Vice Presidential candidate Mr. Richard V. Campagna discusses his philosophies of libertarianism, existentialism, and judicial realism. LP Congressional candidate Mr. Timothy Nerenz gives a solid introduction to his 2010 campaign. On another track, green-activist Ben Manski talks with much knowledge about the “Bring the Guard Home” effort, an attempt to limit future militarization of US foreign policy and an accompanying plan for civilian-based, active but non-provocative, defense. In the final show completed 2009 (Nerenz and Manski appeared in the same episode, Volume 2), Mr. Gary F. Storck reports on the need for and potential legalization of medical marijuana. The final show of the SCVL Beacons from the 2009 Libertarian Party convention, to be released shortly, stars speaker Mr. John Witte as he explains the status and the great potential for alternative education as a way to rectify a growing crisis in education in the United States. Watch all of these shows and more on www.pikzl.com .

On the last of the film news announcements for the 2009 year-in-review, PiK. Media in this coming Winter of 2010 plans to debut its Cepia Local News casting, formatted to show the way to a stronger community through local-based broadcast media efforts. The first newscast is slated to show some of the highlights of this 2009 report.

Last in terms of the overall PiK. Media enterprise, but on the Radio Mira web-radio pod-cast service, the expansion of the global-local entertainment and ideas by CepiaClub continue slow but steady. Already, radio links to both the BBC and NPR radio services exist on Radio Mira. But Radio Mira is also expanding its pod-cast barter and exchange with local bands, and other audio-artists, to get better exposure and more profit for all involved. For CepiaClub, yes, and the artists in particular. Not to overlook it, the CepiaClub Diablog will continue into 2010 with special readings and discussions. Stay tuned on the Radio Mira web page at www.cepiaclub.com to see its present status and future progress. Finally in regards to Radio Mira, CepiaClub still works toward the eventual goal for an open-air, licensed, low-powered radio station to cover some small part of western Wisconsin. This may be an ambitious goal, but fortune's fate will make it happen if it is meant to happen. We will keep our progress posted to all.

The other area where CepiaClub held fast and advanced in a tough economic year took place in the publishing enterprise. As seen in the pages of recent issues of Feedom-Zine America (the original publication format for this 2009 report), much has developed and improved for the zine itself, with narrower and focused content, a different presentation, a new and expanding marketing policy (for emailed, print and library copies). We hope some editorial decisions that we have taken will allow CepiaClub to promote and expand even more the Freedom-Zine America. Inside the pages of the zine, we shall make every attempt to produce the most active and widest base for “community ending public ignorance and apathy.” These are goals and CepiaClub accompanies them with a promise: To continue to do our best to serve peace and prosperity with positive ideas for productive solutions.

A premium subscription-only news and views service, Cepiaglobal (and the Cepiaglobal Associated Membership Program—CAMP) and its very own newsletter, Cepiaglobal Futures Report (CgFR), is available by invite or petition to join. As a publication centered for exclusive subscribers, Cepiaglobal published three of the futures reports in 2009, which was our target goal. Relating to current events and proprietary information on The Cepia Club LLC, CgFReports publishes important information on geo-politics and economics and assessments of the events relating to these topics. To provide the newsletter with some some solutions for subscribers, the summary of the reports always at least tries to relate the trends and forecasting of major events to the societal and cultural impacts they will have. Informed is empowered for activism. As much of what CepiaClub provides for thoughts and leadership in community efforts for peace and prosperity is generally free and available to the public, customers and clients, Cepiaglobal Futures Reports is reserved for those accepted into the associated membership program. (For details on Cepiaglobal and Cepiaglobal Futures Reports, visit www.cepiaclub.com and the Cepiaglobal web-page, or inquire at cepiaglobal@cepiaclub.com .

To CepiaClub's only chagrin for 2009, we delayed the re-introduction of our flagship policy journal, The Cepia Club Strategy Review. The last issue was in Winter 2008. As a policy journal for the general interest of humanity's peace and prosperity, it still retains a place in our publishing enterprise. CepiaClub already works on a planned reintroduction of Strategy Review (which, it might be recalled, was formerly Strategy Gazette). If CepiaClub is the average person's think-tank and meant to challenge the pre-conceived notions of foreign, defense, security and internal policy proffered by more elite institutions, Strategy Review will continue to be available on-line, in limited print copies and in any school or public library that accepts the service of copy donations offered.

As this report article on The Cepia Club LLC, and all that relates to it, comes to the conclusion, the year of 2009 really proved one of holding fast. But we do not doubt that our “fortune's fate,” moral and not necessarily financial fortune, will help us transform a little club into a mighty and powerful local resource for peace on earth and goodwill for all. Thank you, friends, or your support.

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