You Write What You Read

I read sports blogs. I read tech blogs. I read blogs about Israel and politics, but I write a blog about launching a cancer charity project, Pioneers For A Cure.

Here we are on the first day of February, 2009. The Pioneers For A Cure "launch" has entered it's final stretch. For a while, we thought we'd be out for the Holidays of '08, just in time for the year end donation cycle. Production cycles prevailed over other considerations, and we firmly set our sites on January 29th, 2009.

Israel's 61st Independence Day will be April, 29th, 2009. We wanted to launch 90 days prior, in order to set our quarterly distribution of funds to the receiving cancer organizations so that the first monies would be distributed on Yom Ha'atzmaut. Recently I realized that January, 29th was also the anniversary of my Uncle's passing. This made the date even more fitting for Pioneers For A Cure.

So now that day has passed, and our "Web Donation Store" isn't exactly, or in any other form, ready. The songs are ready, mastered and sounding great. The hats, tees, wristbands, etc... are ready, pink, blue and khaki motifs abound. What's not ready is the actual donation transaction mechanism. It's like a shopping cart, but for non-profits. You're not buying music. You're making a tax deductible donation to a non-profit, Joodayoh Arts. You get music as our gift in return for your donation. A database has to track which songs correspond to the charities selected by the artist to get the benefit from their song.

So, ultimately, this blog continues to chronicle the process of launching a cancer charity project, Pioneers For A Cure. Here we write about all the aspects of the music, the artists, the portraits by Mira Sasson, the iPhone Apps, the people who've inspired us to try this novel approach to fundraising.

Sometimes you just write what you read... (isn't there a football game today?)

3 Years Gone...

Three years ago today my dear Uncle Arie, (Z'L') passed away after his struggle with Pancreatic Cancer. He lived about a year and a half after the diagnosis and ensuing Whipple procedure. That's more than twice as long as most, and we were grateful for each day.

His legacy is huge. He supported many charities and had a policy that anyone who brings themself to ask for help should not be turned away empty handed. Perhaps they weren't completely satisfied, but they always got something for their trouble.

Arie taught me so much. My only Uncle, he taught me how to put on Tefilin as my Bar Mitzvah approached. As an adult, he taught me about business, especially not to waste and how to negotiate respectfully. He encouraged and supported me as I learned how to manage our family business. He once looked at a clock I had made, which demonstrated the stages of building a home. He told me that before I had that clock made there hadn't been such a thing in the world, and now there was. That simple support meant a lot.

This is why Pioneers For A Cure exists. A tribute to a wonderful person who appreciated his family very much. Before the Pioneers project, there might not have been a place for these old songs to raise money for cancer charities selected by each artist. There might not have been iPhone Apps to raise money for cancer charities. Now there are, pending Apple's approval.

Rest well Arie. We're still hard at work, as I sit now at the very desk he used so well for so long.

Pioneer Postcards

Here's a peak at our postcards formatted for the Pioneers For A Cure project.

We're working on many of these, one for each artist & song. We hope this will help tell the story of these artists putting their stamp on these songs to fight cancer.

We've been working to get ready for our launch in two weeks. So many news stories have overwhelmed the headlines recently.
We planned all along to wait until after Barack Obama's inauguration as our next President. The news of war from Israel and Gaza has us wondering about the timing of these pioneer songs. People who are against Israel wouldn't be our audience anyway, and people who support Israel's defense of it's population might appreciate our Am Yisroel Chai. All this and a miracle landing on the Hudson have overtaken the headlines. That truly was an amazing story of heroics and heavenly intervention.

Please join us as we forge ahead in 2009 to raise funds for these artist selected cancer charities and organizations.

Hail to the Chief

Congratulations to our new President-elect. Getting past this election cycle is such a relief in and of itself. Now we can all move forward together, and we should focus on healing our society and finding a cure for cancer.

Election night was special at the Pioneer Studio because we happened to get our "mastered"  14 track Limited Preview Edition in for approval before CD's are made. These tracks sound even better now. Very special thanks to Rob Paustian, Mastering Engineer extraordinaire!