Los Angeles, CA – Gorgeous instrumental album, Aum Akua, the latest from Grammy-winning slack-key and 40-year “Weird” Al guitarist Jim “Kimo” West and Billboard New Age Chart-topper Joss Jaffe, will be released by Be Why Music on all platforms tomorrow. (Press only listening link here. All public links are here.)

The album presents a never-heard combination of unique instrumentation, including Indian tablas, Hawaiian percussion, African Ngoni (harp), custom and rare guitars, and ambient soundscapes. The music at times feels like a tapestry of dreamy ambiance, Hawaiian music, African kora music, jazz, and world music reminiscent of the 70’s band Shakti with John McLaughlin and Zakir Hussein, who the tabla player Jaffe counts as one of his primary teachers and with whom he has performed en ensemble.

West, respected in his own right with a 2021 Grammy win for More Guitar Stories, is also well known as the lead guitarist with “Weird” Al Yankovic for over 40 years. In fact, he is currently on 130+ date tour with Weird Al! Additionally, West will be portrayed in an upcoming Weird Al feature biopic starring Daniel Radcliffe coming out this fall.

Jaffe is a Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist known for his ambient album Meditation Music, which reached number 3 on Billboard’s New Age Chart in 2019. He has toured the world, performing at premier yoga events and transformational festivals.

The album opener “Blossom” was also the lead single released late last year. The inspiration for this song was to open the album with a light, sunny, happy, upbeat track. The guitar evokes the descending and ascending melodic runs of a kora (African harp). The instrumentation includes Ngoni, playing a fun 6/8 ostinato with an African high-life feel. The tabla brings in world instrumentation with an uplifting, lilting groove that brings to mind a flower opening to the sun.

If Blossom is bright and sunny, the next track, “Open Ocean,” also released as a single last year, is more profound, more lunar, and moodier. A very different type of 6/8 groove creates a deeply meditative feel. Percussion comes from an Ipu Heke Hawaiian gourd with layers of shakers for a trance-like vibe. The middle section brings in the Bansuri bamboo flute from India. The ending ride out opens up into a major key refrain with a longing, hopeful energy, like clouds parting over the sea.

The album’s central track, “Free Float,” and third single, released this year, has been described by West as, “The most relaxing song I’ve ever recorded.” It features Joss’ vocalization to create an ambient pad with slow, meditative washes of notes surrounded by Ngoni and guitar for a dreamy atmosphere. This song is perfect for spa, massage, floatation therapy, and savasana.

“Kauai Daydream,” the album’s most recent single, invites you to picture yourself in Hanalei Bay on the North Shore of Kauai, looking out across the water to the green cliffs and mountains running off to the Nāpali Coast of Hawaii. You see clouds dance over the blue sky, idyllic, peaceful, and restful. It’s as relaxing as an afternoon daydream on the garden isle.

The focus track for the album release is “River,” which evokes the famous jazz/Indian classical/world fusion album Meeting by The River by Ry Cooder and VM Bhatt. “River” has a driving tabla beat that speeds up to a crescendo with slide guitar and layers that at times sound like blues, jazz, world, and classical Indian music.

Other tracks on the album include “No Rain No Rainbows,” from an expression popular in Hawaii that is similar to the Buddhist saying “No mud no lotus.” It speaks to the beauty that emerges from what’s dark, cloudy, or challenging; “Path Through The Bamboo” is a short interlude evoking the feeling of walking through a peaceful, tropical bamboo grove with the wind rustling above and the bamboo drifting around you; the album’s penultimate track “Voyaging” is dreamy ambient piece evoking the lilting, rolling waves of the open sea; the album closes with “White Sand Blue Waves,” a gentle, soothing ambient piece that is perfect for savasana, yoga, meditation, or just relaxation.

Not on the album, but a bit of a bonus single on all platforms, Jaffe and West cover John Lennon’s classic “Imagine.” The track is a benefit for Seeds of Peace, an organization that equips exceptional youth and educators with the skills and relationships to work in solidarity across lines of difference to create more just and inclusive societies. For info on this single, please go here.

Listeners are sure to enjoy this sonic trip to Hawaii by way of India and Africa! Aum Akua is released by Be Why Music, the California-based record label dedicated to music that uplifts humanity and known for its three Best New Age Album Grammy winners.

A WRETCH LIKE ME: The Shocking and Beautiful Story of Judy Ray Herzog
A new book by Emmy award-winning author Heidi Siegmund Cuda and veteran politico Marcia Fritz, the first release from their new publishing imprint

 

What People Are Saying About “A Wretch Like Me”

“This book serves as a reminder to be kinder.”
Rosie O’Donnell, actor/activist

“A visceral and devastating exploration of poverty and male violence, that plunges you into a half-forgotten world of hungry, Depression-era America. The power in ‘A Wretch Like Me’ is not only in its depiction of suffering and pain but in its bringing to life one woman’s strength and determination to make her own life.”
Sian Norris, Byline Times

Los Angeles, California–March 7, 2022. The brand-new non-fiction book, “A Wretch Like Me: The Shocking and Beautiful Story of Judy Ray Herzog” began receiving five-star reviews just days after authors Heidi Siegmund Cuda and Marcia Fritz released it on Amazon under their new publishing imprint, Coral Winds Media, and now has 40 of them, along with being a #1 bestseller in five categories – Depression, Co-dependency, Personality Disorders, Sexual Abuse, and Domestic Partner Abuse.

Cuda and Fritz are now excited to announce they will be hosting a virtual book reading and panel on Friday March 25 at 2pm PT/3pm MT/5pm ET/10pm GMT where they and the book’s subject, Judy Ray Herzog, will read from the book, and also have a panel discussion with the three of them along with noted British domestic abuse and sexual violence activist and survivor Anna MacGregor of the organization Safer Spaces.

Cuda notes, “when we met Anna, we felt an immediate kinship despite the distance, as domestic violence and sexual abuse effect women across the planet, sadly it’s a universal issue.” Like Herzog, MacGregor is a survivor of domestic abuse who has come out on the other side, and is an inspiration to women looking to leave abusive relationships.

Coral Winds will split the revenue on all sales of the book from March 25-27 with Safer Spaces. To attend the event, please RSVP to info@coralwindsmedia.com with your Zoom name/handle and an email address so we can verify your info and get an accurate head count. Zoom link will be shared upon RSVP. The room can only hold 100 people, and we will be opening the room at 1:50 pm PT on first come basis.

Told in a series of short story vignettes, “A Wretch Like Me” is the gripping real-life account of Judy Ray Herzog, a survivor of hunger, incest, and intense transgenerational trauma. Like the hard-knock life chanteuse Edith Piaf, Judy openly shares the details of her childhood, the intense hunger, physical abuse, and the secrets that took place in her family’s one-room shack in the mining town of Kemmerer, Wyoming.

Hailed internationally as the first book to delve into “hunger porn”—the intersection of hunger and sex—Cuda and Fritz knew they could not look away from Judy’s truth. To ignore Judy’s story would be to force the genie back into the bottle for the discomfort it may cause.

They believed Judy’s story had to be told in all its complex horror and beauty, and at times, uproariously macabre humor. From its complicated interracial elements and the religiousness that had her caught between two faiths, Mormonism and Catholicism, to the poverty and incest that scarred her early life, “A Wretch Like Me” is as brutal as it is honest. Her story is bleak, but it’s not without hope. Despite its darkest moments, Judy makes it through this thing called life, finding exquisite joy through her love for her children and dancing on each teardrop.

The book chronicles her unflinching description of hunger, of a childhood spent dreaming of food and scheming ways to find food. Whether it was cooking worms on an old soup can lid, prowling for food scraps in a neighbor’s dog bowl, or crawling under rows of theater seats to find popcorn or candy on the floor, Judy did what she had to do to try to cure her hunger pains.

Born in 1942, Judy was rejected and marginalized by the white community in which she was born; they dismissed her as a “dirty Mexican.” Even though her lineage was far more complicated, she and her siblings were the proverbial angels with dirty faces.

They had no shoes, no underwear, and no showers except for the monthly bath they received at the Southern Hotel, a brothel where a kindly prostitute let them scrub the dirt off one child at a time until the water was black. Judy recalled trying to scrub the brown from her skin to be like the other girls.

In “A Wretch Like Me,” the authors depict the trauma that took place in Judy’s home—her father Logan Herzog’s relentless and reckless pursuit of sex: his constant sexual demands of Judy’s mother; his repeated molesting of Judy—the only times she experienced affection from her father; and his notorious deviant sexual behavior in the dance halls of Wyoming and Utah in the ‘40s and ‘50s. That he was as charismatic as he was evil makes the telling of this story even more compelling. After his release for incarceration because of a 1957 felony conviction for “lewd and lascivious” behavior toward a nine-year-old girl in a movie theater in Nevada, 44-year-old Logan Herzog prowled the gin joints one time too many; he preyed on the wrong woman in the wrong bar. On May 7, 1961, he was murdered in cold blood while sleeping in his car. The key suspect was a jealous husband, but the crime was never solved.

As Cuda and Fritz investigated Judy’s world, they learned that the subject matter addressed and exposed was more common than they realized, and they dedicated the book to those who might still be suffering the ravages of their unhealed past:

“To the hungry, the marginalized, and to anyone feeling they are unloved, you are not alone. Let this book be your safe space to release any anguish you might still harbor and to celebrate the complex pain and beauty of life.”

The book’s title was taken from the Christian hymn, Amazing Grace (1779): “Amazing grace, How sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now I’m found, Was blind, but now I see.”

The lyrics began to haunt the authors as they listened to Judy list her hardships as a girl and young woman, an awful example of the way society treats those on the margins.

With minimal narration, Judy speaks directly to readers, sharing her blunt, unfiltered truth, which could only be told by lived experience. “A Wretch Like Me” is the unvarnished reality of the unsafe, the unseen, the marginalized, and the unfed.

In her witty way, Judy quips: “She should have been a chorus girl,” her love of dancing is celebrated throughout the book. Rather than become a chorus girl, she survives one abusive marriage after another to ultimately become a nurse’s assistant, and be put in charge of an entire psych ward, which as Judy notes in her iconic humorous way, she’d been preparing for her whole life.

The authors’ goal, as Rosie O’Donnell noted, is to encourage a kinder world, to emerge as better people having read Judy’s story.

As Cuda and Fritz write in the book’s forward, “This is a book that reveals why people love monsters. Sometimes, they are closer than you think.”

And as the book’s readers have noted, “A Wretch Like Me” will linger in your heart, long after you have turned the final page.

Judy, who still dreams of being a dancer, says it’s her goal to be an angel. We think she already is one.

****

More quotes on “A Wretch Like Me”:

“Judy sounds like an angel on earth,” Darlene Ortiz, co-author with Heidi Cuda of “Definition of Down: My Life with Ice T and the Birth of Hip Hop.”.

“A vivid, engrossing, and poetic story that gets more unpredictable by the page. A Wretch Like Me goes where most authors won’t, and the world is a less lonely place for it.”—Ben Apatoff, reporter, educator, and author of “Metallica: The $24.95 Book” (Bloomsbury).

****

Quotes by Judy Ray Herzog:

On hunger:
“It was a lifetime of hunger. It was a hunger every day. When you’re in that situation, you don’t think of anything, the future, the past; you’re just in that moment, trying to survive.”

On her father:
“The only time he touched me was when he was molesting me.”

On hope:
“I always managed to find my own sunshine; beyond the clouds, there was always a little hope there.”

On life goals:
“I think I am on this earth going through all this because I’m working to be an angel.”

****

About the Authors:

Authors Heidi Siegmund Cuda and Marcia Fritz have been teaming up for a decade to tell hard stories with unflinching realism. Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an Emmy award-winning investigative reporter and activist, who has authored more than a half dozen books. Marcia Fritz is a nationally renowned political consultant on public finance whose experience as a retired C.P.A. makes her particularly adept at forensic reporting and understanding the challenges for those living on the margins, that struggle the most with life’s transitions. This is the first book on their new imprint, Coral Winds Media.

A Wretch Like Me:
The Shocking and Beautiful Story of Judy Ray Herzog
by Heidi Siegmund Cuda and Marcia Fritz
Coral Winds Media |January 23, 2022. Available as e-book and paperback.
ISBN 979-8406239353

A WRETCH LIKE ME: The Shocking and Beautiful Story of Judy Ray Herzog

 

What People Are Saying About “A Wretch Like Me”

“This book serves as a reminder to be kinder.”
Rosie O’Donnell, actor/activist

“A visceral and devastating exploration of poverty and male violence, that plunges you into a half-forgotten world of hungry, Depression-era America. The power in ‘A Wretch Like Me’ is not only in its depiction of suffering and pain but in its bringing to life one woman’s strength and determination to make her own life.”
Sian Norris, Byline Times

Los Angeles, California–February 14, 2022. The brand-new non-fiction book, “A Wretch Like Me: The Shocking and Beautiful Story of Judy Ray Herzog” began receiving five-star reviews just days after authors Heidi Siegmund Cuda and Marcia Fritz released it on Amazon under their new publishing imprint, Coral Winds Media.

Told in a series of short story vignettes, “A Wretch Like Me” is the gripping real-life account of Judy Ray Herzog, a survivor of hunger, incest, and intense transgenerational trauma. Like the hard-knock life chanteuse Edith Piaf, Judy openly shares the details of her childhood, the intense hunger, physical abuse, and the secrets that took place in her family’s one-room shack in the mining town of Kemmerer, Wyoming.

Hailed internationally as the first book to delve into “hunger porn”—the intersection of hunger and sex—Cuda and Fritz knew they could not look away from Judy’s truth. To ignore Judy’s story would be to force the genie back into the bottle for the discomfort it may cause.

They believed Judy’s story had to be told in all its complex horror and beauty, and at times, uproariously macabre humor. From its complicated interracial elements and the religiousness that had her caught between two faiths, Mormonism and Catholicism, to the poverty and incest that scarred her early life, “A Wretch Like Me” is as brutal as it is honest. Her story is bleak, but it’s not without hope. Despite its darkest moments, Judy makes it through this thing called life, finding exquisite joy through her love for her children and dancing on each teardrop.

The book chronicles her unflinching description of hunger, of a childhood spent dreaming of food and scheming ways to find food. Whether it was cooking worms on an old soup can lid, prowling for food scraps in a neighbor’s dog bowl, or crawling under rows of theater seats to find popcorn or candy on the floor, Judy did what she had to do to try to cure her hunger pains.

Born in 1942, Judy was rejected and marginalized by the white community in which she was born; they dismissed her as a “dirty Mexican.” Even though her lineage was far more complicated, she and her siblings were the proverbial angels with dirty faces.

They had no shoes, no underwear, and no showers except for the monthly bath they received at the Southern Hotel, a brothel where a kindly prostitute let them scrub the dirt off one child at a time until the water was black. Judy recalled trying to scrub the brown from her skin to be like the other girls.

In “A Wretch Like Me,” the authors depict the trauma that took place in Judy’s home—her father Logan Herzog’s relentless and reckless pursuit of sex: his constant sexual demands of Judy’s mother; his repeated molesting of Judy—the only times she experienced affection from her father; and his notorious deviant sexual behavior in the dance halls of Wyoming and Utah in the ‘40s and ‘50s. That he was as charismatic as he was evil makes the telling of this story even more compelling. After his release for incarceration because of a 1957 felony conviction for “lewd and lascivious” behavior toward a nine-year-old girl in a movie theater in Nevada, 44-year-old Logan Herzog prowled the gin joints one time too many; he preyed on the wrong woman in the wrong bar. On May 7, 1961, he was murdered in cold blood while sleeping in his car. The key suspect was a jealous husband, but the crime was never solved.

As Cuda and Fritz investigated Judy’s world, they learned that the subject matter addressed and exposed was more common than they realized, and they dedicated the book to those who might still be suffering the ravages of their unhealed past:

“To the hungry, the marginalized, and to anyone feeling they are unloved, you are not alone. Let this book be your safe space to release any anguish you might still harbor and to celebrate the complex pain and beauty of life.”

The book’s title was taken from the Christian hymn, Amazing Grace (1779): “Amazing grace, How sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now I’m found, Was blind, but now I see.”

The lyrics began to haunt the authors as they listened to Judy list her hardships as a girl and young woman, an awful example of the way society treats those on the margins.

With minimal narration, Judy speaks directly to readers, sharing her blunt, unfiltered truth, which could only be told by lived experience. “A Wretch Like Me” is the unvarnished reality of the unsafe, the unseen, the marginalized, and the unfed.

In her witty way, Judy quips: “She should have been a chorus girl,” her love of dancing is celebrated throughout the book. Rather than become a chorus girl, she survives one abusive marriage after another to ultimately become a nurse’s assistant, and be put in charge of an entire psych ward, which as Judy notes in her iconic humorous way, she’d been preparing for her whole life.

The authors’ goal, as Rosie O’Donnell noted, is to encourage a kinder world, to emerge as better people having read Judy’s story.

As Cuda and Fritz write in the book’s forward, “This is a book that reveals why people love monsters. Sometimes, they are closer than you think.”

And as the book’s readers have noted, “A Wretch Like Me” will linger in your heart, long after you have turned the final page.

Judy, who still dreams of being a dancer, says it’s her goal to be an angel. We think she already is one.

****

More quotes on “A Wretch Like Me”:

“Judy sounds like an angel on earth,” Darlene Ortiz, co-author with Heidi Cuda of “Definition of Down: My Life with Ice T and the Birth of Hip Hop.”.

“A vivid, engrossing, and poetic story that gets more unpredictable by the page. A Wretch Like Me goes where most authors won’t, and the world is a less lonely place for it.”—Ben Apatoff, reporter, educator, and author of “Metallica: The $24.95 Book” (Bloomsbury).

****

Quotes by Judy Ray Herzog:

On hunger:
“It was a lifetime of hunger. It was a hunger every day. When you’re in that situation, you don’t think of anything, the future, the past; you’re just in that moment, trying to survive.”

On her father:
“The only time he touched me was when he was molesting me.”

On hope:
“I always managed to find my own sunshine; beyond the clouds, there was always a little hope there.”

On life goals:
“I think I am on this earth going through all this because I’m working to be an angel.”

****

About the Authors:

Authors Heidi Siegmund Cuda and Marcia Fritz have been teaming up for a decade to tell hard stories with unflinching realism. Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an Emmy award-winning investigative reporter and activist, who has authored more than a half dozen books. Marcia Fritz is a nationally renowned political consultant on public finance whose experience as a retired C.P.A. makes her particularly adept at forensic reporting and understanding the challenges for those living on the margins, that struggle the most with life’s transitions. This is the first book on their new imprint, Coral Winds Media.

A Wretch Like Me:
The Shocking and Beautiful Story of Judy Ray Herzog
by Heidi Siegmund Cuda and Marcia Fritz
Coral Winds Media |January 23, 2022. Available as e-book and paperback.
ISBN 979-8406239353

Forte tells the story of three soloists balancing their lives with competitive music careers

A new ensemble cast documentary, Forte, featuring three successful women navigating the challenging classical music careers, will debut online for the month of March, and will stream for free in honor of International Women’s Day on March 8, 2021. The film premiered a year ago at the Kennedy Center Justice Forum in Washington, D.C., but the remaining international tour dates were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The film stars Russian-born prodigy Tatiana Berman, manager and entrepreneur Anastasia Boudanoque, composer and pianist Lucia Caruso, and burgeoning Norweigen violinist Elbjorg Hemsing — with appearances by Oscar-winner Tan Dun, Grammy-winner Joann Faletta, and Grammy-winner Paavo Jarvi. The film is directed by internationally acclaimed-filmmaker David Donnelly (Maestro) and produced by Donnelly and Boudanoque.

The issues raised in the film, particularly Berman’s story, have been exacerbated by the pandemic over the last year, as women, especially mothers, have been disproportionately impacted by quarantine measures. Soloists who embark on a traditional path are expected to perform more than 100 concerts a year, forcing many women soloists to choose between motherhood and their career.

Forte is available to stream throughout the month of March, but in honor of International Women’s Day, will be available for free on March 8, 2021, with the passcode WOMEN at www.fortefilm.com. Producer Anastasia Boudanoque is eager to share the film with an American audience, “I think this film is more timely than ever.”

A must-see for musicians and non-musicians alike, Forte is a family-friendly journey detailing perseverance in the globally competitive field of musical performance.

Maui, Hawaii – December 17, 2020 – Ei.Ventures, the latest enterprise to be started by successful Silicon Valley and worldwide entrepreneur and investor David Nikzad, is currently running an equity crowdfund on FundMe to enable any investor to get into the psychedelic medicine revolution at the leading edge of this emerging trend. Early-stage investors are more likely to get in on “unicorns,” a unicorn is a term used in the venture capital industry to describe a privately held startup company with a value of over $1 billion. As a venture capitalist, David has invested in numerous unicorns including Betterment, Talkable, Vidyard, WeFunder, and Airbnb.

David notes, “As I’ve had such investment success with early-stage companies, I’ve long tried to figure out ways to enable smaller investors to get in on world-changing trends early, including investing in WeFunder in 2012. Now that the SEC has enabled equity crowdfunding, we are using FundMe to enable my wellness and psychedelic medicine company Ei.Ventures. I am excited that all levels of investors will be able to get in on the psychedelic medicine revolution at such an early stage, enabling all to potentially see the kinds of gains previously only available to the largest accredited investors.”

The current equity crowdfund raise has exceeded the minimum funding target in just about a week and is currently headed to 200% of the target by January 1, 2021. It is likely the company will extend the raise into 2021 to raise the full amount allowed by the SEC, 1,000,700.

Ei.Ventures is a leading life and plant sciences company focused on bringing botanical psychedelic therapies and medicinal mushroom nutraceuticals to market with a bold mission – to create the new standard of mental wellness. To this end, Ei.Ventures’ botanical psychedelic therapeutics and medicinal mushroom nutraceutical solutions are designed to radically shift mental wellness treatment protocols.

EI.Ventures are focused on developing botanical active pharmaceutical ingredients for the psychedelic supply chain, novel psychedelic compounds for various indications, unique delivery mechanisms and treatment protocols, and medicinal mushroom nutraceuticals for improving well-being and health.

Ultimately, EI.Ventures intend to create a revolution when it comes to mental health and wellness. The aim is to open the pathway to the billion+ people worldwide who need to receive these life-changing treatments and natural solutions.

Some of the exciting work Ei.Ventures are doing to create the new standard of wellness include:

• Developing the ‘Psychedelic Farmers Market’, as the first link in the psychedelic therapeutics supply chain
• Control of intellectual property for three botanical novel psychedelic formulations. Psilly™️, MY-D™️, MY-MDMA™️
• A Canadian contract research organization and lab partnerships for the development of psychedelic active pharmaceutical ingredients and novel compounds like Psilly™️
• Developing mental wellness and health app partnerships for launch in 2021
• Launching MANA™️ medicinal mushroom nutraceuticals in Q1 of 2021 into a $15 billion a year market

The market opportunity for Ei.Ventures are enormous as:

• 322 million people suffer from depression worldwide
• 300 million people suffer from PTSD worldwide
• 164 million people suffer from substance abuse worldwide
• 1 in 5 American adults suffer from a form of mental illness
• $1 trillion is the estimated cost of depression to the global economy
• $6 trillion is the estimated cost of mental health conditions in 2030
• 115 people die every day from opioid abuse

One issue that Ei.Ventures help solve is “the treatment gap” which has huge economic implications. For one, the larger pharmaceutical companies have all but walked away from researching and developing new treatments for mental health disorders. Drugs like Prozac were once hailed as “wonder drugs” when they first came to market. Now, after 30 years of use, their efficacy is in doubt. Needless to say, the world is in desperate need of next-generation revolutionary treatments focused on solving the growing mental health problem.

A second issue is synthetics vs. botanicals. Synthetic molecules and compounds created in pharmaceutical laboratories tend to be chemically pure, crystalline products. They can create highly potent and targeted effects, but the consequences of these effects are often poorly understood by medical science. Modern psychiatric drugs are among the least understood drugs on the market. With decades of study, we still don’t fully understand how many of these drugs work. Many patients experience little improvement and unfortunate side effects like weight gain, sexual dysfunction, and personality muting.

By contrast, in some applications, the use of naturally derived compounds offers distinct advantages. In some cases, naturally derived medicines – particularly those with psychoactive properties – have evolved alongside their use in humans, being selected over the course of generations to provide health benefits to the user.

Rather than isolating or synthesizing a single molecule or a simple compound, any formulation Ei.Ventures develops will start with a standardized and well-characterized natural product, manufactured and formulated to be consistent and reproducible from crop to crop and batch to batch. Our proprietary extraction process preserves the unique complex constituency of a natural product producing a broad spectrum entheogenic extract that can be combined with other complementary ingredients in our formulations enhancing positive pharmacological effects. This synergistic formulation can potentially create medicinal effects that are simultaneously more efficacious and more well tolerated with fewer side effects than many synthetic crystalline compounds prescribed today.

Our unique extraction, formulation, and clinical development process are what separates Ei.Ventures from our synthetic competitors. By working with naturally derived ingredients, our formulations are able to leverage synergies between primary active ingredients and other essential constituents which contribute an overall effect that is “greater than the sum of its parts.” This extraction and formulation process integrates an innovative blend of organic and biochemistry. The end goal is to create superior and much more cost-effective ways to produce both psychoactive and nutraceutical medicinal formulations. Psychedelic medicine is the next frontier in the treatment of mental health disorders.

Ei.Ventures plan is to address the treatment gap left by Big Pharma and create botanical psychedelic therapeutics which we define as non-synthetic derived from the whole mushroom fungi and non-psychedelic nutraceutical formulations. This positions EI.Ventures as the leader in lowering mental healthcare costs globally, while providing patients with a long-term mental health solution. It also positions EI.Ventures as a leader in the emerging psychoactive treatment space. Our compounds and solutions may even save lives. A resurgence of interest in psychedelic treatments for mental health disorders is paving the way for the third generation of pharmaceutical treatments.

The case for investing in psychedelic research and development for the treatment of mental health disorders is growing. In October of 2018, the FDA gave Psilocybin the coveted ‘Breakthrough Therapy’ designation stating that, “Preliminary clinical evidence indicates the drug may demonstrate substantial improvement over existing therapies to treat a serious or life-threatening disease or condition.”

At Ei.Ventures, we believe natural psychedelic therapeutics and botanical nootropics, and nutraceuticals are this solution.

Deal highlights for Ei.Ventures FundMe include:

• Offering Type: Regulation CF
• Minimum Investment: $1,000
• Issuer: EI.Ventures, Inc.
• Issue Type: SAFE
• Jurisdiction: USA
• Valuation Cap: $111 million

July 30, 2020 – San Marcos, Texas – Noted Icelandic wind-based renewable energy company IceWind is pleased to announce their launch in the United States today. IceWind’s groundbreaking products, the Freya (pictured above) is for residential uses, while their Njord line (pictured below) is available for commercial applications such as powering telecommunication towers, outdoor advertising, on-site office trailers, and more.

IceWind’s CEO Sæþór Ásgeirsson notes, “we are excited to bring our turbines to America. With a blustery midsection, gusty extremities, and an overall interest in renewable energy, we are looking forward to America embracing our unique wind turbines for both residential and commercial applications.” He added, “our recent demo event on the Texas coast over the Independence Day weekend proved that there is great interest among Americans for a robust individual solution to renewable energy.”

The US operation will be based out of San Marcos, Texas, and helmed by Daryl Losaw, a modular home builder, investor, consultant, and entrepreneur. Losaw notes, “when I first saw the IceWind turbines in Iceland, I knew I had to bring them to market in the US. They are perfectly complementary with solar, a great stand-alone solution for very windy places, and a handy answer for small energy outdoor applications that will cut down on carbon from generators, diesel engines, and maintenance calls.”

The current residential model, the Freya, is useful as a supplementary power source, so it will cut users’ power usage and costs, but not fully power the average home. Should customers want or require a complete wind solution, two to three Freyas will power most average small-scale residential power needs excepting central air conditioning for a price comparable to installing photovoltaics (solar). Other residential applications include powering small vacation cabins, separately metered home offices and small additional dwelling units (ADUs), and backup emergency power when needed. IceWind’s Freya is an excellent solution for residential renewable power as they are silent, aesthetically pleasing, have a 25-30-year lifespan, can work both on and off-grid, require negligible operation and maintenance costs, and can generate power at wind speeds as low as 7.8 mph, a gentle breeze.

The Njord commercial models are ideal for many applications – powering telecommunication towers, electricity for outdoor advertising (lighting, mechanical features), replacing generators used at construction sites and other remote offices, and more. The beauty of IceWind’s products is how sustainable and hardy they are in challenging conditions. Unlike the diesel generators used in these applications, they never need refueling, rarely need maintenance, and have no carbon footprint.

IceWind’s turbines are built to withstand blizzards, dust storms, hurricanes, sleet, heavy rain, and much more. IceWind’s proprietary generator seal protects foreign particles such as dust, ice, water, or dirt from entering the generator and interfering with the gearbox. The generator seal also prevents water from entering the gearbox and freezing gears, a massive problem in cold climates. The turbine is coated with a hydrophobic deicing agent to protect against ice, preventing freezing and ice buildup. IceWind turbines utilize excellent material selection, including heat-treated aluminum outer blades and stainless steel inner blades that provide a long material lifetime, with superb strength and stress resistance. To compare – many commercial Vertical Axis Wind Turbines and Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines are made of nylon fiber, steel, plastic, and fiberglass, significantly inferior materials than those used by IceWind.

IceWind’s US project manager Samuel Gerbus who spent several months in Iceland with the IceWind team last year notes, “We are so thrilled to bring the power, beauty, and reliability of IceWind’s turbines to the US, and know that this will be just the start of a new pillar of renewable energy in the US, home installed wind power.”

Will there be an encore of 2016’s UFO Sightings?

Indian Wells, CA – Interest in Contact in the Desert, the largest UFO conference in the world, is surging due to a recent story in the New York Times detailing some of the findings of a “mysterious UFO program,” that included video of a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet encountering an unknown flying object. The video was released by the Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, an initiative funded from 2007 to 2012 by then Senate majority leader Harry Reid. The article details a 22 million-dollar program hidden deep within the Pentagon budget with the expressed intent “to investigate aerial threats,” including what the military preferred to call “unidentified aerial phenomena” or simply “objects.” The story explains that this is big news as the United States military had announced in 1969 that UFOs were not worth studying.

CONTACT in the DESERT holds its 6th annual event at a new location, the Renaissance Resort and Hotel in Indian Wells, California. There on June 1 – 4, CONTACT in the DESERT will bring together an all-star team of experts to discuss the latest developments in the field, including the recently disclosed secret Pentagon UFO program. More than a conference the event is a portal through which attendees can gain knowledge and the most up-to-date info on UFOs and ancient alien studies.

This will be an epic weekend of adventure where several concurrent tracks will focus on the science of UFOs & extraterrestrial life, ancient aliens, human origins, crop circles, government disclosure, UFO sightings, proof of alien visitation, interplanetary living, contact & abduction experiences, and the “need to know,” featuring 46 lectures, 34 workshops, 8 panels, and 14 intensives.

Close to 100 people attending the annual CONTACT in the DESERT event in 2016 witnessed several UFOs at close range. This might have been dismissed as anecdotal except that a documentary film crew captured the incident. Reportage and video of the sighting was covered in the Daily Express, Coast to Coast AM, and other outlets. Also in 2016, in Indian Wells, the conferences’ new home, dozens of bright star-like orbs moving together rapidly across the sky, were observed on July 23. Will there be a sighting at this new location for the event’s 6th year?

CONTACT in the DESERT features the strongest speaker lineup ever assembled in the UFO field, from FBI, NASA, military, and government officials, to ancient alien researchers and scientists, as well as archeologists and cosmologists. Expected speakers include CONTACT IN the DESERT returnees Chariots of the Gods author Erich von Daniken; Ancient Aliens star Giorgio A. Tsoukalos; George Noory host of Coast to Coast AM; South African researcher Michael Tellinger; Pentagon Papers/Watergate/Silkwood lawyer Daniel Sheehan; British Government Ministry of Defense specialist Nick Pope, and best-selling author/screenwriter of the Communion series and film, Whitley Strieber.

New, highly anticipated speakers for 2018 include two-term Utah Congressman Merrill Cook, bestselling author and popular speaker Freddy Silva, and Secret Space Program veteran Corey Goode.

Presented as a serious investigation, CONTACT in the DESERT’s powerful weekend lineup of leading UFO and Ancient Aliens speakers will also feature Linda Moulton Howe, David Wilcock, Robert Schoch, Michael Salla, Jacques Vallee, Richard Dolan, Mike Bara, Nassim Haramein, Richard Cassaro, Paul Stonehill, James Gilliland, Stephen Bassett, Grant Cameron, Hugh Newman, Peter Levenda, Laura Eisenhower, Jimmy Church, Clyde Lewis, Yvonne Smith, Brian Foerster, John Desouza, Clifford Mahooty, JJ and Desiree Hurtac, Carl Lehrbuger, Jeremy Corbell, Joel “Doc” Wallach, Sasha and Janet Lessin, Steve Murillo, and many more.

In addition to the panels, lectures, meet and greets, film screenings, special events, and use of the hotel’s pool and spa (services extra), included with a weekend pass, attendees are also able to purchase tickets for more than 30 workshops presented by top UFO experts, including David Wilcock, Erich von Däniken, Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, Michael Tellinger, Michael Salla, Jacques Valle, Linda Moulton-Howe and Richard Dolan. Night vision and fieldwork experiences will be available, and on Monday June 4th, thirteen of the presenters will each offer a three-hour intensive on their area of expertise.

The Renaissance Indian Wells Resort & Spa is the perfect setting for CONTACT in the DESERT. Set against the backdrop of the beautiful Coachella Valley, the resort is a restful sanctuary for weekend getaways and family vacations and offers a variety of meal-plan options right on site. On-site accommodations are nearly sold out, but plenty of nearby hotels in Indian Wells, Palm Desert, and Palm Springs offer special rates for attendees.

Early-bird tickets for the event are $225 ($410 per couple) until March 14th. After that, advanced tickets are $250 ($450 per couple). Tickets and workshop passes are available at http://contactinthedesert.com/tickets/passes/.

Los Angeles, Ca. – How do you explain the inexplicable? You don’t, you just go with it.

Ever since singer, songwriter and adventurer Rick Schuler wore his first pair of round glasses at 13, the murmurs began. It was undeniable, he looked like John Denver, an artist he’d never heard of until that moment.

It was during an era when the music of John Denver permeated the airwaves with sweetness and sunshine, a salve to the wounded and weary soldiers returning home unloved from an unpopular war.

“John Denver was the biggest star in the world, and I didn’t have any idea who he was,” says Schuler, who quickly discovered that Denver was the guy on the radio whose music he loved. “I was a very shy kid and John and I kind of became bonded. I taught myself to play guitar and it grew from there.”

Nearly four decades later, Schuler has emerged as the leading performer of John Denver’s music. His Rocky Mountain High Experience® is just that, a true experience. Even John’s own bandmates sing his praises as the spiritual embodiment of their brilliant friend.

Schuler not only sings, sounds, and looks like Denver, he shares his humanitarian spirit and incorporates his global works into the show. He performs in front of thousands of Denver fans at such wide-ranging venues as performing art centers, theatres, and outdoor festival stages, and has been featured on nationally syndicated television and radio shows.

Fans can catch him in May as he performs with members of Denver’s original band, among them, banjo player Jim Connor (writer of Denver’s hit “Grandma’s Feather Bed”) who joins Schuler May 7 at Bernhardt Winery in Plantersville, Texas; and on May 14, at “Conejo Valley Days” in Camarillo, California, with his longtime pal Buster Akrey, a former member of Steely Dan, on Hammond organ.

FAITH IN CAVES

In addition to his musical endeavors, Schuler is part of a core team of international and interfaith archaeologists who just discovered the twelfth Dead Sea Scroll Cave. The team is led by Dr. Oren Gutfeld, Hebrew University, and Dr. Randall Price, Liberty University in Virginia, who are among the scholars who started excavating the Qumran Plateau in 2002 and moved into the caves this year.

Schuler says each member of the team is united by a desire to find more Dead Sea Scrolls. And somehow, the music of John Denver has become a muse for the mission. It’s an easy equation, says Schuler.

“The longing for home, love, and for God through nature are resonant themes found in the Scrolls and in John’s hit songs. They strike the same eternal chord together uniting humanity of the past, present, and future.

“I can be in any part of the world and if I start to play a note of ‘Country Roads’ or ‘Rocky Mountain High’ everyone joins in. I feel like the pied piper everywhere I go. People sing along with me to these really beautiful, harmonious songs of love and healing. Regardless of their language of origin, they sing-a-long in English.”

Schuler says critics didn’t understand John when he was alive.

“They thought he was Pollyanna and superficial, but what they didn’t grasp is the deep, deep soulfulness in his music. He had a lot of pain in his life, and he expressed that pain in such beautiful melodies, tapping into other people’s pain too, speaking to the pain of a generation. Of all the songs of his I sing it’s ‘Sunshine’ that makes more people cry than any of them.”

In addition, in the lyrics of “Rocky Mountain High,” there are whispers of a protest song, as timely a message now than ever. And in typical Denver fashion, the protest comes in the form of uniting people in spirit, rather than dividing them.

“There’s a line in there ‘why they try to tear the mountains down to bring in a couple more, more people more scars upon the land,’” says Schuler. “He actually stopped the Olympics from coming to Aspen because of that, so John actually did sing a lot of protest songs, particularly about the war in Vietnam.”

WALK-INS

When Schuler’s not in Israel unearthing mysteries of the past or working as an IT specialist, he can often be found performing with various members of Denver’s band, who marvel at the likeness and pitch perfect timbre in Schuler’s vocals.

“The very first time John’s manager from the ‘80s, Doug Belscher, met me in Aspen, the first words out of his mouth were, ‘Do you know what a Walk-in is?’

“I said, ‘No, I don’t know what a Walk-in is.’

“He said, ‘A Walk-in is when another spirit is walking in another body. You have John’s spirit! You have his eyes!’

“I’m like, ‘Dude, my eyes are blue, John’s were brown.’

“He said, ‘No! You have his eyes!’ I’m like, ‘Whoa!’ Personally, I’ve had a lot of people say that to me, and I feel connected to John not just through his music and his lyrics but also because we are both sensitive souls. As a Christian, I believe very much in God, and I believe in super-intention and those are things that we may not fully understand but I believe there’s evidence everywhere.”

FINDING HIS NICHE

It’s been 20 years since Denver passed away, and Schuler says he remembers the sorrow he felt on that day, but he also acknowledges he was touched by an angel.

“I remember realizing that maybe now I would be able to carry John’s message for him,” he says. “His message so clearly is one of peace, of love for the earth, as well as humanity. It’s the same with the archaeological work I’m a part of.”

The Qumran Cliffs of Israel are a long way away from Monroe, Louisiana, where Schuler was born. But digging into crevices and unearthing pickaxes of the Bedouin thieves long since passed away, is part of what makes this artist tick.

Despite the excitement and international spotlight that comes with finding the first Dead Sea Scroll cave in 60 years, he says much of the magic is simply in the process, like when it’s time to sing songs around the campfire on archaeological digs at night. He says it’s a vision straight out of Lawrence of Arabia. As the small team of professionals, among them people of Jewish, Christian and Muslims faiths, all bond together over their shared desire to tell the stories of history through earth excavations.

“We found a wine jug with handles and a lid and it had been sealed for 2000 years,” says Schuler. “The smell of it was so sweet, and to have an olfactory connection to something 2000 years old, if that doesn’t hook you on archaeology I don’t know what could.”

Although the latest scroll they unearthed last month appears to be blank, Schuler says, “We won’t know anything until we do multi-spectral imaging. If indeed this scroll has writing on it, it’ll be big news around the world.”

POEMS, PRAYERS AND PROMISES

It’s uncanny how strangers feel immediately connected to Schuler, simply because he channels Denver in both body and spirit. And despite his death two decades ago, his music continues to touch the world, with more than a hundred million views of Denver videos on YouTube.

“John was a romantic, an anti-materialist in a materialist world, who sang from his heart while bearing his soul. I share that with him, and that connects me with people.”

In addition, he says, history is also the great connector.

“C.S. Lewis said it best when he stated one should read old books to let the breezes of the centuries blow through your mind. That’s what the Dead Sea Scrolls are all about. And that’s what John’s music and art taps into, that greater consciousness that is basically timeless.”

In addition to performing Denver’s hits, Schuler writes and performs hits of his own, including “Rainmaker,” a theme song that plays in 35 million homes each week.

Among its lyrics is a Schuler mantra: “Live to inspire, and to be inspired…”

He has four albums on iTunes and among his latest gems is “Golden Days of Aspen Glow,” a beautiful song he wrote to pay tribute to John Denver and Dan Fogelberg, the footsteps that he’s walking in.

“As we fling our souls deep into the breeze, life colors us and all our memories…”

He also performs the Lord’s Prayer in Hebrew, as a way to transport his listeners into the caves of Qumran, and then he has his audience sing the lyrics in English.

“One of my favorite poets, Rilke, wrote, ‘Music is the language where all language ends.’ That’s how I feel about John’s message. I’m just grateful to be a torchbearer of his legacy.”