Jok Church

Activist, Artist, Connector, Educator/Teacher, Filmmaker, Idea generator, Journalist, Promoter, Writer/Editor

Jok is an internationally syndicated author, the creator of You Can with Beakman & Jax, a newspaper feature with a weekly circulation of 52 million in about a dozen nations. Jok's job is answering real questions from real children about the world, and how stuff works. Jok wrote 6 best-selling books based on his newspaper feature. His work is syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate. He also created the CBS television show based on his comic, Beakman's World. His TED talk is on Death being a part of Life. Jok also works, since 1976, for the artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude and is currently their web master. He wrote at Lucasfilm Ltd in the 80s, beginning his writing career as a a radio newscaster during the age of FM underground broadcasting in Northern California.

Acting with intent. Acting with truth and beauty along one's side. Turning one thing into something else by looking, watching, or reflecting it. This is also known as art.

Art has always grown to new heights, supported by patrons. As corporations have been granted a synthetic person-ness, their citizenship in the world of people seems to require something more that mere self-interest. I suggest we find ways to make art patronage beneficial to the corporations, to figure out how to fund the expansion of the languages of the arts without it being connected to the creation of an ad campaign. (Note: it is well established that the synthetic personalities of corporations, while legally whole individuals, have no real moral centers, limiting their decision-making to benefiting stock-holders.)

I had tea with a woman in work-out clothes at a TED conference who told me a high school teacher had saved her life by suggesting she study theater arts. She did study such and, she told me her life did, indeed improve, and that she was still in that field. I asked if she was in any work with which I might be familiar. And she said, I think so, probably. I didn't understand and asked who she was. She told me she was Goldie Hawn, and that I probably wouldn't recognize her because she didn't have her "glamor on" for TED conferences.

My self-taught animation skills.