Love for Another

I love Shaka Prynne. That is going to be Yonatanne Xaron, my altie's, display name, as soon as my One Who Thinks She Knows logs in again with a huge delivery of clothes for the altie who needs just about everything an avie can need and then some. My One marvels at what a good sport I am for helping out, but I'd sacrifice everything for an avie who shares my One, and it is not because my One has a kind but confused heart and combats her ruthless nature most of the time, and it is not because I think for myself some of the time. Most avies and Ones don't do any better or worse than I do.

It is because having an altie is like having a younger sibling. She is blood of my blood. She is flesh of my flesh. She has a share in my One's memories as I do. She is the avie in Second Life who is most like me. She is young. She has had a hard life. She plays a young human, but her life has still been harder than mine. It is only natural to want to befriend and protect her.

I had no problem giving her animations or running errands for her, though sometimes visiting schools left me dizzy and the orphanage left me curious about what really went on there. We went to Willowdale High and found out what it cost, but don't have a class schedule. We went to Hope Harbor which said Shaka would need a uniform, which was a deal breaker except they now let students wear their own clothes. We spoke to a student who said there was a very small student body. Then we visited St. Michael's Orphanage (no landmark at hand, sorry...) and looked at the application.

My One tore into it ravenously and then we both gasped. If the orphanage accepts Shaka, and they may not, she will need a doctor to look at her. The orphanage also does not have single rooms so she will have to go to bed in front of other avatarot. I hope it won't be avatarim. See, I can pick up my One's Hebraicisms. She will need night clothes. She will need udnerware because the doctor will ask her to strip. She needed a bathing suit and more pants and shirts, and probably a decent closed toe pair of shoes. Is this list getting exhausting yet? My One immediately promised that all the energy and time would not go to Shaka.

I said I did not care and I meant it. Here is a hair piece in progress. My One made Shaka hair on Sunday. She is going to make more hair. Hair is cheap to make. Shaka all ready had a ton of sculpties in her inventory. She all ready have a bathing suit. Shaka will need a cover sculptie to make a bed spread for the orphanage if she indeed goes there. That cover needs a multi-sit or pose ball animation.

Of course the orphanage is iffie because Shaka's back story leaves her with two living parents who clearly can not care for her. My One and I both thought Shaka's back story took her straight through Antiquity Texas. This is for me the scariest place in Second Life. It is Texas during the late 1800's or so I thought. After 1888, the world of Jim Crow was born. Jim Crow's ghost was supposed to chase Shaka from the island with good reason. Of course, I'm not really scaird of Antiquity Texas any more. I had no probem finding my way into the State House and sitting on the Governor or Speaker of the House' throne.

And no, this is a picture of the freebie store on Penn State UBMS in case you are curious. My One and I were looking for dances for Shaka after the weekend, but there I was Friday when the owner of the sim got in touch with me. She asked how I was doing. I said I was enjoying sitting on the Governor's throne, and then I got a bit mouthy. I asked if I could sign any death warrants. Then I realized that governors sign those in the office. My One reminded me that Texas in the 21st Century leads the country in miscreants put to death by lethal injection, the preferred method of execution. I apologized. The owner, in character, said she would have me put to death for treason because I was sitting in her throne. She didn't need to sign any warrants either. She said it was the 1700's to 1800's on Antiquity Texas.

"Oh my God in Heaven!" I exclaimed. If the owner had been playing at all realistically, instead of nostalgically, not only would she have no need of a death warrant, she would not have killed me unless she were sadistic. I after all would be precious property. She'd have the guards drag me out, beat me, brand me, flog me, rape me, whichever they enjoyed most and found most convenient. I after all would just be property. I was good for some fun, but I probably needed to be returned to my owner in reasonably good shape. I was a second class citizen and incapable of treason because I was outside the protection of the law. I was garbage, and Shaka would also be garbage!

But Shaka and I were worse than garbage when it came to Antiquity Texas. Surely the owner saw my skin color (Shaka is even darker!) so she knew my place in the social order of the early Nineteenth Century, but it was more fun and convenient to write minorities, slavery, Jim Crow etc... out of the sim and and the role play rather than face them and deal with them. Of course by writing those things out and ignoring them, you ignore those who suffered. You marginalize them. This is not racism. I'm not sure what it is, but being invisible and not seeing your own story, is worse than being garbage. Garbage after all exists. A large portion of Shaka's and my identities did not. Suffice it to say, Shaka's back story does not go through Antiquity Texas!

My One says she was sick to her stomach after my conversation with the sim owner on Antiquity Texas. And for the record, neither of us has the words to accuse her of anything. The story of the sim marginalizes people of color, and that includes avatarim like Shaka and me. That hurts, and my One has a good heart. She said, I needed care before we cared for Shaka. That would be her name. We put the Little Hotel back up in the sky, and I went for a nice soak in the onsen on Hakata.

Then on Monday, my One took Shaka to find gestures, poses, and dances. She had no luck with free dances until she got to Abraninations where she got nine of them plus one full price one. Shaka begged for all kinds of crazy, sexy dances. She also got a free bicycle and a snow board and plenty of free poses. She wore out my One. Shaka is twelve years old. She is a social orphan. Yes, that is the right word for it. She is needy. I have to help my One with her. I'll do everything I can. If my One sees my selflessness and good attitude, then her heart will stay focused and pure, and my One does have a very, good heart.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer and Shaka Prynne -- February 25, 2014

A Ray of Clarity

We are going back to Never B Solo. We have to go back because our panel vanished after only a week. Apparently, when the parent wall gets crowded, panels rent for less time, and ours is gone because who wants a long-term failure around. My One thinks she may have lost her panel for some other reason, but we follow all the rules. That is better than a lot of other avies do.

That means my One and I were in for a long spate of selfie sessions again, and since I had a new dress, this one based on the song, Shaving Cream. Of course My One had some work to do so that her heart would be as clean as her face. In my last post, I alluded to the fact that my One Who Thinks She Knows had done something obscenely shameful.

Now you get to know what it was. She had asked one of the small children at Never B Solo how they wore clothes and learned about the Toddleedoo Mesh Body. She did not want to try it out, but of course there is my altie, Yonatanne Xaron. She got the new body. She could keep her lovely dark skin color, but she was stuck with too much HUD, too little outfit for inexpensive creativity, and a demo sign over her head, left the way alties get left in the TTU Libraries Sandbox. I told my One Who Thinks She Knows that we had to do something for Yonatanne!

My One who has a kind heart most of the time despite her ruthless nature and confusion, listened. She restored Yonatanne's skin and shape but shrunk her a bit with sliders. She gave her three new pairs of pants, two new shirts, some landmarks and a place to stay in the Little Hotel in the Sky. The Hotel is up five and a half days a week. During the other two days, Yonatanne will have to go somewhere else. Here she is testing out the goofy sitting positions on the multi-avatar couch.

I got to test out the couch too. This is just part of being an avie and not really that embarassing. We go through much worse. It's not at all cruel. By now my One has made some bead board for the interior of Little Hotel in the Sky, and some birch bark logs for the exterior.

Here is the Hotel before we had any logs on it. Yes, we found a place for our "stupid and fruitless project." We are still going to make it into a model adoption agency building. So far we have the beginnings of furniure and textures for the walls. My One wants to put up artwork and stained glass skylights, but for right now all that is going to go slow.

First, we have a lot of winter dresses to finish. Here is a shot of My One laying out a skirt in the Little Hotel in the Sky. We were going to get more social in English speaking sandboxes, and now I have a private changing room and a home for Yonatanne. How did that happen? It just does.

The other reason is of course Never B Solo. Even though we are going back, my One now has new rules. Here we are by the way reading applications in La Bush, a house music club in Velda. We never LIKE potential offspring without reading their applications first. My One also says that from now on, all potential offspring need to follow the rules of the house. They need to have a current application and not use their name on the form or their panel. Sorry, if my One has to do this, so do they. If you can't obey a simple set of rules, what kind of a friend are you going to be?

Then of course there is Yonatanne. She is going to be a kid. She has the clothes. She would like more hair. She has an address. She needs a winter coat and some skis and skate blades. She also needs a bathing suit and swimmer. She's also going to go to school. My One does not want to play both ends against the middle at Never B Solo. Also with Yonatanne being somewhere between ten and thirteen, she's a bad fit for an adoption agency where babies are the stars.

That meant we checked out Willowdale High. It's a bit laggy and has some nice details worth photographing. We don't know whether they require a uniform, a deal breaker, or what their dress code is or what subjects they teach. My One Who Thinks She Knows thinks the high school is a bit more regimented than the one she attended, but she went to high school a long time ago.

The application says nothing about courses, uniforms, lunch, or much else. Willowdale High is a junior-senior high, which means the seventh and eighth graders are in the high school. Iyoba remembers growing up in her town where they did this and the parents lamented it. Seventh and eighth graders did not belong in the high school where the older kids could corrupt them. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there was a new middle school in place for grades five through eight by the time my One was in fifth grade.

Right now neither of us are sure whether Yonatanne will be at Willowdale High or at the K-6 elementary down the road or at another school. None of us, including Yonatanne herself are sure of her age. We know she is not a baby or an adult. I sent her an av ruler so we can find her height. The av ruler is three to six inches innacurate, but we can add those inches back if we want. My One suspects that Yonatanne may be a young twelve or an old eleven. She has a November birthday which makes matters worse. There is another school that runs K-12. Welcome back to middle school! My One had an unhappy time there.

And of course there's even worse in store for poor Yonatanne, who looks forward to school. Yonatanne must face her demons. I know the demons because I faced them myself. I wish I could go with her. I do not think my One is cruel for insisting that Yonatanne go through this ritual. There are some journeys in Second Life that every avie must make. Yonatanne won't be starting school until she has more hair, knows her age, and has made that journey. It doesn't worry me that we are going slow with all of this. That we are moving at all makes me happy. Now as long as my One can remember to put up the Little Hotel in the Sky every Saturday night and take it down before she goes to bed on Thursday, we'll be moving on the right track. I hope my One keeps that good, clear, feeling in her heart. Kindness can master ruthlessness and slay it. That is what I tell myself and Yonatanne.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer and Yonatanne Xaron who is looking for a good display name -- February 20, 2014

Not Enough Rejection Yet

By Monday My One Who Thinks She Knows was ready to walk away from Never B Solo. Our panel had died over the weekend due to too many likes, all of them unrequited, which is another way to say too little acceptance. The panel had only cost 1L and it had only three more days until it had to be renewed. My One took it down and said she wanted to think things over. We began revising our application. We do this with each new panel. It's just a good idea.

That still did not mean we were going to do a panel. My One who has good sense some of the time was making me dresses. The one I'm wearing in this picture, which is a selfie outtake for our panel photo, has cherry pies on it.

Another word for cherry, and perhaps a slang term in Spanish (no doubt a fairly vulgar term) is pacha. There is a new Club Pacha on the adult sim of Urania, and we danced there late last week. This gave my One the inspiration for this lovely, red, turtle neck gown with a cherry pie theme. A One in the sandbox is a busy and happy One or at least One out of trouble.

Of course that doesn't last. Monday night, an avie named Faith started chatting with us about what was happening at Never B Solo, and you know the rest. I have a picture of the DJ set up at Pacha, because these days we are doing precious little dancing, and it looked like we weren't going to dance for a while. My One finished our application while we worked at CVL on Imagination Island, and then it was off to take selfies.

We took a lot of selfies in a lot of different poses, both on Cibola and WiFi. Normally this is fun, but I knew where this was going. It would be days and days of entering Never B Solo's laggy premises, liking kids until our panel broke down, and subjecting ourselves to that tiresome, public address system. That was the future.

And the day after I posed on the bridge at WiFi, our profile went up and around 11pm EST, we had a match! To my One's credit, she did not dance and sing all over the apartment. She also did not dredge up the memory of that earlier time back in 2012 when we had a match that went down in flames in less than twenty-four hours.

Instead my One became deeply worried. A terrible ice storm was about to bear down on the city where she lives in "Real Life," and there was a good chance she would lose power and internet and a day of the trial. She looked up Lucy's profile. Lucy is not her real name, but there is no point in using her real name. My One was relieved that Lucy had been around Second Life for several years. Lucy asked for notecards instead of IM's. My One sent her a note card explaining the impending weather catastrophe. And yes, that is fine furniture at Pacha if you are curious. There is something about an empty seat.

Then Wednesday, fortune smiled upon my One Who Thinks She Knows. We got home late, but we had power! My One came in world, and got invited to dance with Axxo Erin, one of her favorite DJ's and her building hero at Keng Group, and off we went. That was when we saw the message from Lucy light up....

You can guess the rest. No, it's not an exciting ending. The third time you get rejected or neglected (as in the case of Clark Lane-Kent) on a trial with Never B Solo the pain is not as sharp. My One was not even very angry. She said it was unfair that Lucy had not gotten to know us better, but she also said that Lucy had ended things so fast, she failed to do a lot of damage. Of course not a lot of damage is NOT no damage. My One made me hair with beads. She took a box of linked ones apart and put them back in a folder so we could build with them. She has dresses lined up.

But my One's heart is as always confused. That is why she is trying to improve on the design of Never B Solo with her own decor and no nasty public address system. She has paneling for the inside of this space and may have a useable tile floor. There is of course something else I want my One to do, but she has forbidden me to mention it on this blog because she is ashamed. She has a good heart even if it is confused. Sometimes shame is a good thing, One! Let it eat you alive!

And yes, my One has told me where she expects this experiment to end. We probably will NEVER have a successful trial. Meanwhile, we renew our panel every two weeks and try to make it last for two weeks. We keep changing our profile picture, so we are going to get very good at taking selfies. Some time, even if my One and I behave well and follow all the rules, the good folsk who run Never B Solo will quietly kick us out, because our lame status is not something we are particularly good at concealing and it is not good for bringing in more customers, etc... If this sounds bleak and a bit screwed up, it is, but that is my One, with a kind soul and a confused heart. I sometimes wonder if other Ones Who Think They Know are like this.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- Feburary 14, 2014

What has Happened at UT PanAmerican

Now that I have your attention, I can start off February with some bushwhacking. Yes, that's a big change from Never B Solo. We are still members there, but there are only so many kids to "like," and my One Who Thinks She Knows has finally remembered we have other, more important things to do. One of those was/is exploring UT Pan American Archipelago. As I wrote, a few days ago, something and not something good had happened there, and my One and I had to find out just what it was.

Apparently the sims have changed hands, at least partially. Letty Luckstone does most of the building instead of Jessica Sanchez (zhska Takacs). That means there are some new attractions like the Realms Garden and the Amphibian Life Cycle and Habitat, which you can see in the image to the right of this paragraph. Wetlands are especially rare in Second Life, so this is a special attraction.

Here is the other side of the Amphibian Life Cycle and Habitat. You can see a bot preparing a mesocosm full of plankton for tadpoles to eat; for this exhibit explains how to raise your own tadpoles, watch them grow into frogs, and release them into the wild.

And that was the good news. The bad news is that a lot of reasonably up-to-date, and fairly interactive attractions have vanished. Gone is the library, the density lab, and the Nu-Grain Interactive Tutorial. That is where I am sitting. It's just empty grass now. All the maps of the islands, except perhaps UT PanAmerican Three are now completely out of date. There are lots of the old maps still around and they are good for a big laugh, though the humor gets old pretty fast.

Apparently the Business College is rebuilding. Here is part of its unfinished building. You can see chairs for an interview, maybe doors, a web site on a prim with no site, and some lovely, Frank Lloyd Wright windows. To the right of this area as you stare out towards the endless sea, you can see some ready built interview cubicles jammed together like eggs in a crate.

All of this rebuilding means that very little actual class time is happening on the UT Pan American Archipelago. This room in the education building gave me a syllabus for last fall's class. It is now February. Even on a quarter system, there would be another class here by now. Instead, the building is in moth balls.

And behind this comfortable class room, was chaos! These break out spaces are only half broken. They have doors and lack walls or furniture. Obviously they lack students too.

Then behind a door leading to "break out" area, my One and I found this! It's called a "Halls Teleporter" and the halls are in the sky. They are Letty Luckstone's creation, and they were what we couldn't photograph last week due to a poor connection. I knew where we were headed next.

And yes, that is what one of the Halls of UT Pan American looks like. We took this shot looking down from the porch of the Magic Drums Hall. As you can see, these halls each use a lot of mesh, scultpies, and then prims in general. Someone had great fun either buying them as prefabs and rezzing them, or else building them.

And while there is content in each and every HALL, including web links and at least one intellibook and a rather interesting sculpture, the quality of that content DOES NOT justify the use of the prims. This drum in the Magic Drums Hall leads to a web site about two animals of different species Owen, the hippo, and Mzee, the tortoise who become fast friends in a zoo of sorts. This may be a fine way to teach an allegory of race or international relations to little kids, but face it, people are not animals! And Owen is not a lion and Mzee a lamb. In nature, animals...er uh.... well they euphemistically call it a food chain.

In addition, drums in the Magic Drums Hall feature, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, and a couple of other inspiring quotations. The problem with this content, is that it lacks CONTEXT! Eleanor Roosevelt's lovely quote is dated 1958, it took nonviolent (and some not so nonviolent...ever hear of "any means necessary?") protests to gain civil rights in the US and it is taking a lot of work at the ballot box and in the courts and changing of hearts and minds to obtain same sex marriage. Pretty quotes alone don't do it, and as for the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the constitutions of many totalitarian countries gaurantee all sorts of rights, and you know the rest... Rights only happen when a government enforces them or the people fight for them. That is the part that is missing from the Magic Drums Hall, and all the pretty, prims in the world can't replace it. Sorry, Letty, you can do better.

And yes, it is kind of sad to see the UT Pan American Archipelago slipping down hill from its former glory. Now, when the Business and Education School rebuilds are finished, both my One and I could find we are terribly wrong. Maybe when other new builds crop up on the islands we will breathe a sigh of relief. Lack of oversight in Second Life is an endemic problem. It's sad to see the UT Pan American Archipelago fall prey to it.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- February 2, 2014

Eileen and Iyoba's Do It Better 2013 Roster
Name of Place	Why it Qualifies
The State Fair at Morrill	It has great rides; fun games; a huge, educational, archipelago nearby and also the Avatar Fitness Club near by with hard, house music and a crowd.
Hanako Land	Interesting architecture, amusement park rides that are kinetic sculpture, a four story castle, and a house of horrors that is sure to have your nightmare waiting for you.
Shinrei Ueno Hospital	This is a unique build with shadows, darkness, urban exploration, and ghosts. It also is an abandoned mental hospital with all the assocations this brings.
Fiteiro Cultural	Two clubs, art exhibits, innovative builds and architecture, sculpture, an old Dutch village and more!
Towson Innovation Lab	Art that comes alive and is always updated plus a well run, public, sandbox.
Soho New York	Home of the Cyclone and gateway to a variety of museums and galleries, temperate nature walks, the largest train on estate land, and the second longest ski run in Second Life. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Portugal Porto	Enter the Old City to see a Southern European fishing port as old as the Roman Empire. Visit four clubs. Shop in the stores, or just go for a walk. Unlike most of Second Life, this sim is populated but almost never crowded enough to crash or lag.
Virtual Rosewood	It can happen here and it did. A monument to and museum about the Rosewood Massacre that happened in January 1923 in Florida.
Electrobit City	Gaming meets kinetic, flat work and hard edged art for an immersive and exciting experience that never grows stale.