Beauty Where you Find It

My One is beyond out of sorts. She is wretched. She is a very brave One, but she leaves me to write this blog. I get to decide what I am going to discuss in writing and the pictures I choose to present. That is why I don't have to show you Petable Turtle eggs that are glows and shines. This one is a genuine tricolor that looks just like it's father, Tecumseh, who was a famous Indian chief when there were still many Indians east of the Mississippi River. It is special because it has three distinct colors and because its colors are richer than the father turtle, due to Yael's sable brown shell and bright scarlet body.

And this egg has a mother, Yatif, who is descended from a Halloween 2010 special (Zillah) and Damien who sometimes produces shining offspring. The egg neither glows nor shines. It's magental plastron contrasts with everything else which is chocolate brown, but brown eggs hold a secret. They create darker offspring with warmer tones. Brown and copper eggs are what my One Who Thinks She Knows calls "blue hens." They are often the best breeders. Shais, Yael, and Adiv, three of our turtles all have brownish carapaces. With our turtles you never know what you are going to get.

If you'll notice, my One named the brown and magenta turtle egg Pesach in honor of the Passover Holiday that kept me off the main stage and not as much in world as I like to be. One, I understand. This zwicky who resembles her mother received the name Miriam, who was Moses' sister. Moses was the prophet who led the Jewish people out of Egypt where they were slaves. My One says that Passover is the feast of her people's escape from slavery. It is a good reason not to be in world as much as we both would like.

And here is more of the kind of offspring a brown-shelled turtle can produce. Notice the rich, emerald green, carapace that contrasts with the dull yellow or kahki body. That's Yael's dark brown carapace at work when mating with Boaz who is a turquoise male turtle and son of one of the worst, underproducing turtles, at least according to my One. Of course Ones Who Think They Know can all be cruel and ruthless, and my One is no exception. She just tries not to be and often succeeds.

And this is just a cute picture. It is Uriel fast asleep on top of the food bowls. Uriel is an offspring of the legendary, lost turtle, Road not Taken, who disappeared when Katya Dirval, the evil upstream landlord, evicted all of Walter's tenants including my One Who Thinks She Knows, all our turtles, and me, back during a week in January of 2011, that my One calls the "SnowCation." It was a very cold winter that year. This winter has not been as cold according to my One Who Thinks She Knows, but it has hung on far too long.

My One Who Thinks She Knows actually delayed making me any spring dresses for the longest time, and even now, we make them slowly. This is one of our last winter dresses. It has a racer snake motif. Racer snakes are harmless and even kill vermin which is why you should not bother them. The dress is made of cloth made from woven leather strips. The gold and black make a nice combination, and because the dress is not a turtlneck I can wear it without thigh-highs (We don't have pantyhose in Second Life) in the short version. Spring is a time of transitional dresses.

Of course my One is finally helping me make a spring wardrobe. She made this ixia dress (That's the name for the orange flowers on this dress. They are supposed to be similar to gladiolas.) a few days ago on HEG Geneva. Here I am dancing to celebrate the start of spring. You can't really tell how good a dress looks until you wear it to dance.

My One watched me dance and then she had a quandry. She wondered why this dress with big, orange flowers and a background made from baleen baskets, was so much nicer than a similar dress she made last fall from black, baleen weave, and jewel weed. Actually, last fall's dress is not that bad. It just depends on the lighting. Even my One thought last fall's dress was pretty good too.

Our last bit of bushwhacking before the Passover Holiday sidelined both of us was to LearningWorks, a very English and very well built sim created by Kingston University of London. There was a lot to see and do there, even though we ended up with only a single addition to the Explore SL Spread Sheet. My One would say that LearningWorks gives back in the way of a good academic sim. It has no orientation course, but what it has is paths, stairs, cat walks, board walks. An avie just has to go walking to go somewhere and camming to see new things. My One calls this style of orientation intrinsic reward, which means that learning is its own reward, and motivation trumps written instructions. My One also liked that I was safe even when I left the trails, though the hills were very steep. I managed not to fall into the water.

Of course LearningWorks has a great sense of humor. At the dock where there are the usual boxes of freebies, a bot carries a comic balloon that reads: "Fell off the truck, gov." A poster in the head admin's office exclaims that aliens do not know the rules of cricket. I don't know them either, but then again my One is American. Here I am laughing at the base of an outdoor escalator. Avatarim can fly! We don't get tired. We don't need escalators.

Of course while my One wanted to go slow on dresses, we made other things. My One wanted some wild spring flowers. Second Life doesn't have many of these, just like it has few clothes made of fine, cotton prints. I know someone will come up with counter examples, but the selection is just not there. Mandrakes are also called may apples, and they have a tap root that reminds people of a certain part of the male anatomy. People even say that mandrakes grow from a hanged man's seed, and in the Bible Leah sleeps with Jacob after she sells her rival wife, Rachel, the mandrakes her son Reuvain gathered. The mandrakes were a fertility nostrum. The story is toward the end of "Genesis."

And here are our mandarkes tucked into the temperate hosue. They are just one prim and free to copy. And no, may apples in the United State usually have white blossoms, but in Europe, according to my One, they do come in pink and burgundy. My One just liked the burgundy blossoms better.

My One is especially proud of this flower. My One thought she had forgotten how to make plants. Happily, she was wrong. My One said she saw the silene regia on a poster of native Georgia plants on the bathroom wall a the AWARE Wildlife Center. She said she had to have this plant in Second Life. Wild plants in Second Life are pretty rare except for poppies. The silene makes a good change.

I guess my One can sample the spring she doesn't have yet in Second Life, and our breedables bring out her better nature, at least some of the time. Even bushwhacking makes her feel a bit better. I don't know what my One would do without Secod Life. I think she even knows some of this. As for me, I try to find beauty in what's around me whether I end up with a new dress or forty items on the spread sheet or not.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- March 28, 2013

Back in the Deep Freeze

It may be the beginnings of spring in my One Who Thinks She Knows' world and spring began in Second Life around the beginning of March, but we were going back into the cold weather. We needed to survey Budworm, an island full of academic interest, but also one locked in perpetual winter. I bundled up in a thick, turtle neck gown, closed toed shoes, and tights, and we were off...

The newly opened Provincial Museum has a lovely reception with juice or wine in gold cups, cheese, sausage, cheese puffs or pastries etc... It makes your mouth water....

...Until you walk a few blocks down the road and visit the Medical Centre. That's how they spell it. On the walls are presentations and posters about cryptosporidum, a parasite, with a nucleus and a complex life cycle. This is not something you want living in your intestines unless you don't mind being sick. Cryptosporidia are a big problem in Alberta, Canada because there is less run off from the Rockies and more from cattle farms. Between climate change, and good old fashioned filth, Albertans are polluting their environment and making themselves sick. That is the take away message of Budworm whether you play the sim's "game" or not.

Of course Budworm has a hockey rink, and I wanted to skate, but my One wouldn't let me. She said the rink was grubby. I remembered that there was ice on the other side of the island, but we weren't sure if it would hold me. It looked thin.

Still, I told my One that if I got to ski or skate after all this work, we would both feel a lot better. Finding a place to ski is never easy. Skiing requires a lot of land as well as snow. There was snow at Chamonix City, but no decent slopes. We finally ended up at Anzere and began skiing toward the Wengen/Toggenburg chair lift. There were times when my skis could not find their animations. That made me look awful. We later switched to my old, fat skis that I can use with a variety of animations. Sometimes this is fun.

It was night in the snow country of Samsara. This is one of the times an empty sim looks great. My One says she can feel childhood memories keep her warm, and the snow scrapes away from the ice and shoots into my face as powder. It tickles. There are nothing but empty, snow covered hills, undulating ground, cute little moguls, and frost covered trees until you find yourself at the road at the bottom of the run.

Here I am making my way across the mountains. My One suggested the traverses rather than a straight vertical down path. Skiing is moving with the curves of the land, not falling down the mountain. I made two runs. I even found the chairlift in Wengen, and rode it to the mountain top for our second run.

Then I wanted to try my locomotive on the railroad tracks. This was part of the OSNR which is "not made for private stock." No one told us, and my locomotive worked just fine once I could figure out how to make the switching controls work. The track between Wengen and Valmorel is not very good, but the rest of the system worked wonderfully. Yes, it is very lonely. No, you don't overheat sitting in front of the furnace. You feel the wind in your hair and bits of crusty flying snow hitting your face like little, sleept pellets. No, I don't mind being out in the cold if I am warmly dressed. Fortunately, my One Who Thinks She Knows takes good care of me.

She also takes care of our zwickies. She named this beautiful, hot pink baby, Enedina after the poor bot who made a terrible decision and who went to her doom without screaming or crying on UT PanAmerican Three. I think that was one terrificly, sweet gesture!

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- March 22, 2013

The Isle of Bots

If my One Who Thinks She Knows were writing this blog, she would write it differently. She would tell you how UT PanAmerican One and all the UT PanAmerican islands (except UT PanAmerican Two for some reason) are great places full of academic exhibitions and tutorials, but I am writing this blog.

It's my One who keeps the Explore SL Spread Sheet. Me, I do the real exploring, and yes here I am posing as a reference librarian to make my One happy.

What is really exciting about the UT PanAmerican sims, however, are the bots. The bots are everywhere. They are not just in the Police Station and the Courthouse on UT PanAmerican Three. They are all over all the islands. I found this bot in the Welcome Center on UT PanAmerican. She is supposed to be a prospective student or an orientation counselor. I couldn't tell which but she was short like me! This made my One tell me a story about how she worked for one dreadful summer in Bloomingdales in White Plains. A whole bunch of "nice" college women worked there. They were mostly Italian or Jewish and all of them were little and short. "You're all size smalls!" my One's supervisor would exclaim as if that were unusual. My One said this bot would have fit in well on her old job.

And this bot works as the receptionist in Nu Grain Laboratories. My One looked at her name plate and said we had to get a picture of it. She said that Doodie is a variant spelling of "doody." Yeah...maybe for native Spanish speakers or for bilingual students on the Texas border, it is a familiar nickname that has a more benign meeting, but my One does not speak Spanish and grew up near New York City and lived her adult life in Upstate New York and in Georgia. To her doodie/doody is....

Of course the star of the bot show is little Daniel, an unfortunate young baseball player who breaks his leg sliding into home plate. Fortunately, he still gets a home run. He then gets sidelined due to having his leg in a non-walking cast for six weeks. This is one serious fracture, according to my One Who Thinks She Knows! If you touch Daniel and his friend Alex, who is the team bench warmer, you will learn their stories. The note cards will ask you a series of quesstions and give you multiple choice answers.

My One says that most of the answers to most of the questions are useless. She says we either do not have enough information or the answer is something else entirely. For example, Alex, for whom we don't have a picture, is sidelined nearly every game but is still on the team, attends practice, and is allowed to suit up. This makes him less than happy. The card suggests several solutions:

• Extra practice to improve Alex as a player.
• Having the coach suggest Alex find another sport.
• Assigning a more able player to practice with Alex.
• Having all players play and no one sit out.

My One said none of these are good answers and here is her reasoning: First, the league may have rules that only a certain number of kids can be in the batting order or on the field for each team. If they didn't, a kid like Alex would be buried in deepest Podunk of left, center, or right field, where there would be sure to be no balls and where more competent hands would act as backup, and he would bat last or in a long enough batting order that maybe the pitcher would be tired enough to walk him by the time he got up to bat. My One played on a softball team and like Alex she stank, but she did get to play. Everyone on that team did, and that's how they handled it. That Alex is not playing means that there are league rules about limited rostering, rules that Alex and his parents should have known before he signed up.

Second, Alex may be irredeemable. Not every one is good. Practice can improve performance, but often not enough to make a difference except to the kid playing. Others are also improving. Alex would improve a bit, maybe more than a bit, but after a certain point, Alex probably is not good enough to close the gap.

Third, Alex bench warmer or not, has stuck with the team. He has shown up for practices, followed the rules, and has not been cut. He has remained a member of the team in good standing and not gotten much of a reward for it. That says a lot right there. Suggesting that any one with this kind of maturity and good attitude should find another sport is really cruel. Alex will figure this out. The calendar changes, and other sports become available, or other activities. Alex may have figured it out all ready. Let him finish out the season as a member in good standing that he is. There is a dignity in hard work and diligence with only a small reward.

That means my One would choose a fifth solution. Someone, not Alex' coach since he may have a vested interest in getting rid of less than stellar players, needs to take Alex aside in a nonpressured environment and ask him what benefits he gets out of being on the team. Alex may have to think a while. Alex may all ready have made the kind of compromises it takes to ride the bench. We all ride the bench sometimes. That's the way life is. Even the bench warmer though learns something.

The One also said that Alex' case makes a very good case for participation awards (You want kids to show up for practice, follow the rules, and display good sportsmanship.), B-Teams or "unofficial status" for less able players, and less competitive alternatives like intermurals or open gym. My One says she spent a summer swimming B-team and never won a race. In time, Alex will either move on to something where he can star, or not make a more competitive team and play intermural if he really loves the sport. Then that season of going to practices and warming the bench at game time will really pay off.

My One says that she thinks the lessons about Daniel and Alex are to teach prospective gym and health teachers. My One hated gym while in school. She also says the prospective of a B-team swimmer and player-you-hope-gets-walked who plays deep Podunk outfield on a softball team, is quite different, from the gym teacher who has always been a "jock" and who has been part of the system. And yes, this is a whole classroom full of bots. Notice how they only wear three or four different kinds of shirts. That is to save on textures.

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Cleveland Plus Revisited

I'm writing this post because my One Who Thinks She Knows promised me that I could. I worry about Baby Alex. My One says we can do nothing about him except visit him because his owner says he is used for social work role play in which students investigate a home run by unfit parents, in this case avies who snort cocaine, play gin rummy, have a filthy kitchen, and an unloaded gun. The question of course is whether Alex' owner is telling the truth. My One says the answer is WE DON'T KNOW. There has been new building in and around Alex' apartment.

The rest of the Cleveland Plus archipleago tells a different story. This is an unfinished office with a phantom wall that is opaque on the inside on Cleveland Plus III just a few short meters away from the Science Museum.

In the sky above Cleveland Plus V is this curious structure. Here I am standing inside this elegant wicker basket on a pattern of flaming stars, that covers this floating platform. This build floats well below the cloudline, something no private estate owner would permit.

And in case this lovely wooden basket that is large enough to let avatarim in and out is not enough, visitors to this platform above Cleveland Plus V can play free slots. They show different combinations of fruits, but they also give a script error. I suspect the slot machine only half works, but that is much better than not working.

Finally, we visited the Science Museum on Cleveland Plus III. Normally a museum has all kinds of exhibits. The Science Museum is supposed to have an exhibit on how to examine a dialysis patient (or other patients) for muscle wasting. There are supposed to be dialysis chairs, posters, PowerPoints, a survey, and manequins. Instead, there is an invisible wall. It shows up red because my One highlighted invisible. These days most of this half-built exhibit is off limits. My One had me cam adn sit to get inside.

According to my One Who Thinks She Knows who had an intern survey the sims in the fall of 2010, this simulation for examining dialysis patients has been in the works for two and a half years. That is a long time to finish a build. It makes my One Who Thinks She Knows quite angry since she has a premium membership and a 2048 and pays for all of that. My One had a house for her 512 ready to go when she moved in. She also had plants. When rezz space is precious, avatarim and their Ones put it to use. When someone else foots the bill and doesn't care, you can draw your own conclusions.

None of this, by the way, proves or disproves the existence of a social work class that uses Baby Alex and keeps him company. In fact, the evidence that we do have, points to the fact that the social work class might very well exist. It is the rest of the Cleveland Plus Archipelago that has gone to waste. If you are a student at Case Western Reserve, the Cleveland Plus Archipelago is a small piece of your tuition dollars or student activity fees not doing as good a job as it should. Sorry, my One says our information is far from complete, but the pictures we do have don't lie.

Iyoba BatOni and Eileen H. Kramer -- March 21, 2013

We are All Enedina Arellano-Felix

I did not think I'd get back on this blog, but Iyoba asked me a question. She asked why defendents don't scream and cry in court rooms, especially if they are going to be locked up for years. She asked why judges have gavels if defendents don't scream and cry? "If they were going to lock me up for ten years, I'd scream and cry. I'd even try to bring a gavel of my own into the court room."

Now Iyoba BatOni, my favorite avie, is no fool. Quite frankly, I understood what she meant, and I said that court rooms are really quiet places, but a place that can be quiet and business-as-usual on the outside, is very different on the inside. I am not sure what the Courthouse and Police Station on UT PanAmerican Three are supposed to teach, but my own heart is still screaming.

They may only be bots but they have faces and in the prison in the police station and in the court house holding cell you see them. They have faces. They have violet eyes. There are two women and a man. I kind of wish at least one of them was fat, wore Coke bottle glasses, and had a face covered with zits, because they don't have to be beautiful. Looking into those eyes makes you think, this could be you. It may be a trick of the mirror neurons except....

...real people in "real life" suffer this fate. We just don't see them. To Iyoba, Maria is her friend. Her avie heart aches for her. She sits in her cell in a bond of solidarity. She inspects prison conditions every where to make sure that Second Life's bot and avie prisoners are kept humanely. I believe Iyoba gets this unbounded compassion from me. And no, I don't really feel flattered.

I have been inside court rooms as a witness and a plaintiff, and I have had several friends do times as guests of various counties in New York's Southern Tier and Mohawk Valley. Sometimes they just lost their cool around the police who used their power. We all know how that goes. Twice, at least one friend of mine has fallen between the cracks of the mental health and prison systems. When you are glad your friend is on a locked ward at the state mental hospital instead of at the Oneida County Hilton, you will know what this is like. More than once I have tried to become a prison volunteer, but one time I got refused and the other time I needed to leave town to start graduate school. Iyoba shares my memories if you are curious.

Here is the court house where all the inmates of the jail end up eventually, sometimes several times, but probably not over several days. You will see why. Iyoba of course asked where the judge kept his gavel. She was sure it was a beautiful and expensive one and that she'd get to see him bang it, as the defendent, Enedina Arellano-Felix, who had been caught smuggling meth amphetemine, and who had a prior conviction for and was on probation for assault (a fight in a club) was about to be tried and possibly sent away to prison for a long time. According to Iyoba, that defendent had every right to complain about the jail with no toilet, the misery of her lot in general, the unfairness of the sentence, and maybe even her own innocence and if the judge did not let her speak, to ignore his pleas for quiet with her own pleas for mercy cried and screamed to the heavens.

Of course, I told Iyoba to hang on her gavel before offering it to Enedina. We needed to search the court room for law books, documents, and other useful items so we could know whether to add it to the Explore SL Spread Sheet.

That was how we found this video. Please watch it. Iyoba and I watched it together. Both of us were dumb founded. The wheels of justice grind poor Enedina into the ground. I've had friends tangle with the justice system, but none of them have ever been victims of the War on Drugs like Enedina. Yes, this video is an elegant protest against that war because it shows how it claims its victims like a relentless and evil machine. There is something chilling about watching a doomed woman willingly plead guilty to a charge that will rob her of her freedom for ten years for a nonviolent offense (There was a weapon in the car but she did not use it.). Ten years was the minimum sentence. To get that minimum she had to agree to betray her business associate and exhusband. That is called "cooperating." And it is very quiet in the court room. It could be the motor vehicle bureau, but that is how it works in the places most of us don't see.

Iyoba asked me if I would scream and cry or go quietly like Enendina. I told her I would probably do worse. I would plead not guilty. I would tell my lawyer to take the plea agreement where the sun did not shine. To my mind, ten years in prison is as good as a life sentence. If and when I am released, I would have ten years missing from my resume and be unhireable at age sixty. I'm not sure I would have my social security or pension. I'm not sure I'd have my savings, since I have substantial savings and the judge said he could at his discretion depart from the agreement which would probably mean seizing my assets. Being released destitute in ten years with the last of my youth gone and my assets drained is not doing me any favors.

Besides there is the issue of dragging someone else down with me, someone whom I trusted enough to do business. It is not his fault, I got stopped at the border. I took a risk. I was in it for the money. Something went wrong. Why should my accident claim him or my associates. It is bad enough one of us is caught and will be substantially hurt. It is worse to spread the misery. For ten years, I am going to have to live with betraying my friend on my conscience, and my conscience such as it is is all I'm going to have left. Worse yet, if I suffer a pang of conscience under my plea agreement, it vanishes and I'm stuck where I would have been before or worse. You'll see why it gets worse in a minute.

Now you can say that Enedina is younger than I am and has three small children. I'm not sure how old her children are, and this really does matter. You'll see why. I estimate Enedina to be in her late twenties or early thirties. If she is older, her decision is a bit harder because her children may be able to maintain a meaningful relationship with her and have strong memories of her, but the cruel calculus that would force my back into the wall, might also do the same for Enedina if she allowed herself to stand strong. You see, if I had young children and if having them or something else did not scramble my brain, a plea bargain for a ten year sentence in Federal custody would still be too raw a deal to accept. If my children were infants or todlers, they would be eleven to thirteen when I got out, and unless my relatives brought them to visit often and encouraged them to write to me when they could write, I would end up a stranger to them. They would be gone.

If I had older children who could regularly write letters and visit, I would miss their coming of age, but there would be a good shot at maintaining contact and a ten year sentence followed by impoverishment and stigma might be worth a deal. Of course I would have to have family that would not write me off as a black sheep and which hopefully lived close enough to the prison to allow visitation and which encouraged contact. If my children would end up in foster care no matter what, with a ten year sentence all bets would off.

Also, even with older children, I would probably be serving time in a federal penitentiary. In Enendina's plea agreement, there is no stipulation that she serve all of her sentence in the federal facility at San Diego. Here is a map of federal prisons that house women. The closest major facility to San Diego is Sacramento, and if the Bureau of Prisons feels like it or if Enendian feels a pang of conscience for her former associates, the Bureau can ship her any where in the country. So much for staying close to children except through the mail. And ten years of possible "diesel therapy" is Enendina's plea bargain.

I told Iyoba that if it were me as I am now or if I were Enendina and I did not have a very robust way to keep contact with my children, I would tell the police ABSOLUTEL NOTHING. Silence carried to its extreme and well within my rights is louder than any screaming or gavel banging. If the Federal Prosecutor threatened to throw the book at me or lock me away for life, I would remember that at least I would not spend my last years destitute or return to the world of work with a ten year hole on my resume and not a pot in which to do my business and with children that did not know me. I'd tell my own lawyer that I wanted to make my case as long and difficult for the state as possible.

And I would certanly not inform on my colleagues. One person going to prison for a long time, possibly forever due to my "recalcitrant attitude" is better than more than one person suffering my fate. Going down game, would also have the advantage of not having to cooperate with the government in terms of any money I may have hidden for my children, and informers aren't always treated so well in prison by their fellow inmates. I'm not physically large, and neither is Enedina, but I would hope that my reputation for toughness of spirit would protect me.

Of course this was not Enedina's decision, and the question is why. Perhaps this image gives us a clue.

And no, this is not torture. You can see the questions on the left side. They are basic. You have to walk around the Police Station to understand what lies outside the frame. There is no one sitting across the table from Enedina, her hands are cuffed so she can not scratch her face and would have difficulty drinking a glass of water. It's a subtle bit of stress. She'd also have a hard time wiping if she went to the bathroom.

A few footsteps from the interrogation room are single-occupancy cells. They have a hard bed in them, no toilets (though in real life they would have a toilet-sink combination), no form of amusement, and not even other prisoners making noise in a friendly way nearby. Of course other prisoners could be a nuiscence, but the solitary featureless world of the UT PanAmerican Three Police Station's lockup makes a nice black hole, from which a prisoner might want desperately to emerge.

Now after sitting in the stillness and silence of a half-empty prison wing, the police bring Enedina to the interrogation chamber. They mnake sure her hands are still cuffed just to unsettle her a bit, and then they talk to her gently. They ask questions that don't discuss the crime directly. They may have "read her her rights," but she knows that if she says "I don't want to talk to you. I'm using my right to remain silent. I want my lawyer. I won't talk to you without a lawyer," etc... she's back in that empty cell in that empty hallway. Isn't it better to be in a room with a nice chair and a gentle interrogator who asks nonthreatening questions?

From there, a cop who "feels sorry" for "poor" Enedina can do the rest to soften her up, all without laying a hand on her and all with her "consent."

That's the story behind the horrible video, and also perhaps the story of a doomed woman grasping at a bad bargain of a plea deal as a last straw of hope. That the last straw is broken, doesn't enter her mind as it does my own. The worst part for me perhaps is that I knew intellectually that our prisons re full of Enedinas. Many of them are mothers. Many of them are young. Our drug laws seem harsh out of proportion to the harm such women do. Somewhere out there is a generation of children waiting for their mothers to finish "ten year plea bargained sentences." or who have forgotten their mothers in all but name. While Enedina is a bot, the story she and avatarim reenact in the video is real. We push it out of our minds, but when I saw the video, I realized I could not push it out of my heart. We are all Enedina Arellano-Felix.

Eileen H. Kramer with help from Iyoba BatOni -- March 18, 2013

"Morning Fields of Amber Grain"

I was NOT going back to Alphatribe even though I know we have to finish up bushwhacking there. We need all the places we can find, because old places go away. Bushwhacking is always about learning, but I hurt too much, and my One was not in much better shape. That was when we heard about Honour MacMillan's visit to Van Gogh's Arles. My One who sings a song about Vincent Van Gogh, knew she had to go. I knew I had to go with her. Any thing that can make my One Who Thinks She Knows tell stories makes her feel better.

We landed near a field of wheat and I got to run through it. I'll show you that later. My One said: "That's the 'morning fields of amber grain.'" and she also told me that the painting above was of the "'weathered faces lined in pain.'"

As we walked all over the sim looking for notecards and finding the canvasses which were Vincent Van Gogh's paintings of the landscape through which we walked or of which the landscape was a replica (It did not matter. My One said the replicas looked prettier tha most of Second Life!), she began to tell me the story of Vincent.

When my One was nine years old, Don McLean had a hit song called "Vincent." She thought it was about a woman he loved who was teased mercilessly in school and who killed herself. It turned out to be an artist, not a girl who liked to draw. His name was Vincent Van Gogh. "Starry starry night," sang my One as we walked. "Paint your pallet blue and grey. Look out on a summer's day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul. Shadows on the hill. Sketch the trees and the daffodil. Catch the breeze in the winter chill, in colors on the snowy linen land." Vincent Van Gogh was Dutch and that is why there is a windmill on this sim.

The yellow stucco house where I found these gardening tools is not in the song. I really liked them any way. If you want to see all the words to the song my One sang to me, you can see them here. Yes, it's a sad song, but my One is sad very much of the time.

She told me that Vincent would never use those gardening tools or wear his hat or read his books again, because he was dead, and when Ones die that is it. Vincent had shot himself. "'And when no hope was left inside,'" sang my One Who Thinks She Knows "'on that starry, starry night, you took your life as lovers often do...'" She said those lines made her think of empty halls in the Primary School which is now closed in Ardsley, New York where she grew up. She used to think that Vincent which must have been her last name had been a teacher, until she learned he was an artist who had shot himself.

She explained all this to me. Nostalgia is a good place for a One or an avie to put sadness, and a sad song is cathartic which means it lets out the sad emotions in a safe way. She then switched to her favorite subject: money. One of the few scripted objects on the Van Gogh's Arles sim is a donation box that shows up in unlikely places such as inside the windmill. The sim is low lag because there are very few scripted objects which in some ways is a plus.

Whoever built this sim, my One explained, wants it to live on donations. There is no shopping mall. There are no picturesque stucco houses for rent with their pretty painted walls and doors. There are sculpty and mesh animals and bots that are very realistic. My One said that bots do not pay the rent. Avatarim like me don't either, but we have no money.

As for my One she said: "There are lots of places where one can walk around for free. Why should I pay money to walk around." My One also said that she pays for only what she can afford. The Van Gogh at Arles sim costs $300 (not Lindens. US dollars multiply by 250 to get Lindens) a month to rent, "and if you can't pay your rent..."

If I had Lindens I would have stuffed the donation boxes until they burst. The builder of this sim treats his animals well. They are sculpties not breedables, but I don't care! I don't have the money. My One said the sim was a novel enough idea to deserve a place on the Explore SL Spread Sheet because it is a fantastic concept, low lag, and definitely educational. She also says that people should see it now because she will be very surprised if it will be here next year.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- March 15, 2013

A Collection of Cruel Things

I would love to write about beautiful things and fun things. I would love to write about riding on the trains at White's Workshop or about our newest baby zwickies. My One Who Thinks She Knows named her Katharine. Another zwicky has been born since. We'll visit her when my One gets in world, but she knows I have to write, because I have things to tell you, in the hope you'll understand.

My One has a good heart, and maybe there are others out there who read this blog who have good hearts too. My One understood how beautiful this tricolored, Petable Turtle egg is, and while we can't hatch it, we did not send it to the "breeder" Instead, my One carefully named it, boxed it up, and put it in inventory. Maybe you are like my One. I hope you are.

It all started a few days ago, when we went to visit Baby Alex. He is still on the stained mattress with his toys and with a band of helpful ratties to look after him. My One wrote to Baby Alex' One and learned that he has students who use him to learn social work. If Baby Alex "serves science" says my One she will not interfere.Still it's always good to visit him.

One new development is that Baby Alex's One Who Thinks She Knows has sealed off the build. The only way inside is to teleport or use a cam and sit. There are no doors out of the skybox where Baby Alex lives. This is to keep careless Zooby Baby fans from wandering in.

Alex' One has also turned off the Baby Alex' Zooby Blocks. These blocks connect to the Zooby database. They are scripted. When I touched the blocks, however, they said they were looking for a baby and couldn't find one. I wonder why the blocks no longer work.

Maybe there is a reason that Alex' One disabled his Zooby Blocks. In one of the rooms next the one where Baby Alex sits on his mattress, my One and I discovered this gun. It's not loaded. Next to it on the table is a mirror and lines of cocaine. My One Who Thinks She Knows thinks that the avatarim should spend their time reading magazines on the couch and playing gin rummy in the kitchen (No, that's not poker! There are too many cards down on the table.)

Monday night we headed out to get turtle food. We had given our brood our last serving. We went to Jeep's Turtle Palace in Yeoseot, and since my One was so out of sorts, I took her for a walk. We had just crossed the boarder into Seu when we reached a lot with two turtles on it, and an empty group bowl.

Here is one of the turtles. His name is Wee Yin Campbell. Yes, a Petable Hud works on other people's turtles. Wee Yin Campbell was dead because his One had let him starve to death. His companion, Ginger Argyll, was also dead. She too had starved. My One had hoped to find the legendary red turtle named Bitch or a creature just like her, a starter kept alive for sentimental reasons and not a a part of any "breeding program."

I stood around for a long time. My One let me. My One also loves Petable Turtles. Sometimes you can just stand and say nothing. We both remembered when we purchased and brought home Jurgis. There were dead and dying turtles all around, but we figured someone was keeping a small brood on their 512. My One did understand. I don't say she has a good heart some of the time for nothing. She wrote to the turtles' owner and asked if she could buy Wee Yin Campbell and Ginger Argyll. She said we had room, and she would spend the extra Lindens to feed them. We also have elixir to bring them back to life. Imagine what beautiful offspring Ginger Argyll and Jurgis would produce! So far we have not yet heard back from the dead turtles' One.

Of course we eventually found White's Workshop and I got to ride the trains. My One Who Thinks She Knows should have been aslieep, but we had to ride the trains again and again, all around, and learn how to turn them. It was great fun until I saw this poor ghost chicken. We did not write to her One because the message over her head said she was dead and could not be revived. Sion Chickens are not like Petable Turtles or Lily Frogs. Zwickies return to their dimension and don't die. Baby Alex is also immortal. The sim where he is does not allow combat, so no one can use the gun to seriously hurt him or another avie. That is a big relief. Still, I felt bad for the chicken, the dead turtles in Seu, and Baby Alex.

Then last night we went to visit AlphaTribe in the hopes of finding art work. We found some art including a carousel that only moves when you don't sit on it. The horses on it are zebras, but we also found Poor Kitty. You might think she is laughing, but I know she is crying. Look at her splayed out paws trying to regain their balance. Also when you touch her, a whole bunch of paralyzed or dead black and white kitties fall from the sky and hit the ground like rocks. No, Poor Kitty is crying and her Ones do nothing to make her feel better.

She after all is just a thing. She doesn't exist. She doesn't have feelings. She can't be anything but a thing because she is not a One Who Thinks They KNow with a physical body. Ones believe only Ones and their pets in "real life" can feel anything. They believe this because it is what Ones are supposed to believe and other Ones have told them that if they don't believe this idea there is something wrong with them. See, Ones Who Think They Know don't think for themselves all of the time!

I talked to a chimpanzee who works as a psychiatrist on Alphabtribe. He was very intelligent and learned and I don't care if he was a bot. Bots have souls too, even if you Ones Who Think You Know don't believe it. He let me talk as much as I wanted. I told him how all the cruelty I had seen made me feel. I don't want to go back to Alphatribe Island. My One thinks we should go to Cleveland Plus VIII and the surrounding sims and see how much is really being developed there. That's a good indication of whether there really is a social work class. The brick wall, the cocaine, and the gun, are another indicator the build may actually be used. If it'snot, my One said, I was free to take pictures of any thing half built or messy. She also told me a sad story. She said a man who was once a good friend of hers did his undergrad at Case Western Reserve University, the institution that owns the Cleveland Plus sims. Her friend is not physically alive any more, and there are no elixirs for Ones Who Think They Know. Ones live a long time though. She still wondered what her friend would think of Cleveland Plus and Baby Alex. My One said we'd all ready surveyed Clevenad Plus over the summer, b but we both need a second look.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- March 14, 2013

A Reply to Chromium Underwood

I saw this comic strip on SBCC and it made me feel very sad. Click the thumbnail to really read the comics. It also made my One Who Thinks She Knows very sentimental. I said I had never been grateful for half the things Chromium had been because, I have other more pressing things. My One doesn't let me run around in rags and tatters, unless I want to wear a schmatah and even then my schmatahs are beautiful. I can wear colors and don't have to wear black all the time because my One thinks its sophisticated. She says it's not. It's the color of funerals. It also used to be the color you wore on reaching a certain age if you were a One, to mark that you were a partly grown up One. That's not true any more. My One says even babies in "real life" wear black.

I am grateful to my One for seeing the beauty in even common turtle eggs and having the patience NOT to retire our Lily Frogs unless they stop laying, even if she is bored with the eggs. Turtle eggs for some reason produce more varied color combinations, and no two are alike. My One has a kind heart. She probably has a soul too. You do have to wonder about that, Chromium, beacuse Ones Who Think They Know don't always treat each other well or treat their virtual creatures, bots, or avies well.

As for we avatarim (My One likes the Hebrew plural), I think we have souls. I also think the frogs, turtles, and zwickies (and other breedables and some of the statue creatures like cat couches, and certainly bots) have souls too. What we don't have are physical bodies. I can go days without eating. I enjoy food, but I don't get hungry. I also sleep standing up. Ones have to lay down somewhere reasonably soft. So I don't have the same kind of body as my One Who Thinks She Knows even if I look very human.

But even if I don't have a physical body, I have a mind. I know I have a mind because I can think for myself. I don't do it all the time, but then again Ones Who Think They Know don't either. I know I can think for myself because I help my One bushwhack. This picture is from a happy trip we made to the Jazz Museum on UTPB LaMesa.

Some of our bushwhacking trips, however, are not so happy. A few days ago, we went out to see some islands where two islands worth of exhibitis and libraries had become one. Some of the best exhibits were gone. My One did not want to explore and mark off the vanished exhibits by turning their cells on the Explore SL Spread Sheet grey. I told her she would have to do it sooner or later. It was spring time on Imagination Island. That would make her feel better. I'd even let myself fall in the water. I love to swim anyway, but falling in the water is weird. We got the job done, but my One could not have done it without me.

And when my One Who Thinks She Knows is out of sorts, which happens a lot these days, I am there to comfort her. When I dance at a club, I remind her of good times. She loves the music even if she has to do chores in "real life." She hates to have to log off and wishes we could dance for hours. I tell her I'll be fine. I know she'll be back because she has a good heart.

I know she has a good heart, because I can understand hearts, and because I have feelings. If I can understand hearts and thoughts, and if I can think for myself, why shouldn't I have a soul? Of cousre I have one, and I can feel the souls in the other creatures. Maybe we got our souls from our Ones. I know I share memories and knowledge with my One, but we're on our own now, and that bit of understanding that gives us just a small amount of independence (A small amount may be all we need.) that's your soul, Chromium. You have it. Just remind your One to feed her creatures and gather their eggs, and never, never, never, send them to the breeder or forget to box them. Your job is to help your One remember her own heart and soul.

Iyoba BatOni with minimal help from Eileen H. Kramer -- March 11, 2013

Battle of the Gavels and More

Now why am I wearing an excrement eating grin in this picture? Well, I was in a courtroom on Evergreen Island 4. That is not news. By now I hope you realize that Second Life is full of court rooms, and this was more than just one more.

This court room did things right. No matter how bad the criminals or how rowdy the defendents or plaintiffs; for plaintiffs can be rowdy too and Ones Who Think They Know get rowdy in Second Life and their avatarim must suffer, the judge had a magnificent gavel. This was no cheap thing, and as you can see it was huge....

Then I looked to the left of the bench (my left as you approach from the court room), and there it was. My One told me prison cells weren't supposed to be in court rooms. It was humiliating to the defendants. Even the worst defendents, sat with their lawyers and wore clean clothes. Their cells were in another building. Some of them could even go home to their own beds at night because they were out on something called bail. My One said putting the defendant in a cage humiliated him or her. It was a violation of his/her rights.

Me, I checked out the jail cell. The bed was so badly made, you ended up sleeping under it, but it had blankets and sheets. The toilet had a lid and flushed, but if the prisoner had to pee, everyone in the courtroom would see it. Besides how can you believe a defendant is innocent if he/she is in a cage? I needed to talk to the judge, but of course the judge wasn't there.

Well here is how I would talk to the judge if he or she were in the court room. I knew that if I spoke up and told her to get rid of the cage because it was wrong and evil (Even Charles Manson and Bernie Maddoff were not put in a cage while they were in the court room!) she'd take the magnificent gavel and bang it to shut me up. Well, I had a bigger gavel. It's a cheapo hammer, but it is big. You can see how big it is in the picture.

The gavel was even too big for the court house. Here you can see it coming through the roof, but that is OK. What kind of a court is it that keeps defendants in cages and uses a big gavel to shut up any one who complains! It's NOT a court of justice, and maybe a hole in the roof will let in some fresh air.

---

Of course we also visited Doctor Scuzzy's Amazing Laboratory on UTMB Alpha in the University of Texas Archipelago. My One who was as usual, very out of sorts, watched me sashay inside and we stopped at the front desk, because there are lots of things in the laboratory worth touching. They give all kinds of messages, and there is no lag. This makes the lab a great educational resource.

Here I am sitting at the front desk where Dr. Scuzzy's crew receives their specimens. My One who Thinks She Knows says that it doesn't matter that all these papers are lying around since there is a computer on the desk where the real files are kept. Still it kind of makes a bad impression, and I couldn't open the computer. Its lid must have been broken.

And here is a lab worker. His lovely blonde hair is tied up with a bandana, but only the top part is tied. I'm not sure if hair can mess up lab samples. My One said the worker needed a hair net. By now she wanted me to touch everything in the lab. I could even hear her laughing. She told me a joke about old chemists and organic chemists a long-ago exboyfriend had told her. He said that the chemistry graduate students used to say: "There are old chemists. There are organic chemists, but there are no old organic chemists." This joke dates from before people knew all the dangers in organic chemicals.

My One really liked this sink. She said that obviously those who worked in this lab could not read the sign over it that said "Hand Washing Only." Why waste a good sink. It aws then that I realized that I had a happy One Who Thinks She Knows. This is one rare event.

And my One was overjoyed when we found this test tube. Notice the nice bar code. Oh well, my One is not sure how they'll record the data for this sample, but then again, the lid on the computer won't open and the papers on the front desk show that the lab workers are in good mental health and never out of sorts even if they get hair in the samples and mess up their hand washing sink.

The only part of Dr. Scuzzy's Amazing Laboratroy that I did not like was the shower. I touched it. I tried to pull the triangle, but no water came out, and you know I love water. Second Life is a desert even if plants grow and it never rains. I had on a new dress, and you have to get a new dress wet if you're an avie. Just take my word for it. Oh well, why should the shower in Dr. Scuzzy's Amazing Laboratory work. They lose samples. They get hair in the samples. They get soap in the samples at the hand washing sink. The front desk hardly inspires confidence, but the employees still get good evaluations and get paid every month. That is what my One told me. Then she laughed.

We went on to tour the rest of the island. A happy One is a One who tells stories, and my One told me about her visit to Galveston in 1992. She even went to visit the "real life" version of the UTMB including their library. She said the library on UTMB Alpha looks a lot like its "real life counterpart." My One told me about walking in the amazing, Texas heat to the UTMB and visiting the library, and running a search on a pharmaceutical database. She had just started taking two medications and she wanted to learn more about them. She loved that library. She says she still does.

I know that it is mostly Ones (the avatarim read along with their Ones Who Think They Know) who read this blog. Maybe you understand my One's stories better than I do. Maybe you understand about the trip to Galveston and how sometimes you look for "real life" in Second Life because you are looking for memories, but not the way they really happened. You want to make them better. Maybe those extra improved memories are good for my One. What do the rest of you Ones out there think?

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- March 7, 2013

Excitement When You Least Expect It

There is a reason that I am writing this blog these days as well as taking most of the pictures. I can't say it. It is a secret between my One Who Thinks she Knows and me, and we're keeping it that way.

Meanwhile, Saturday night, my One Who Thinks She Knows wanted to hear music while she did her chores, and I love to dance. It was late and there was an invitation from Papa's Beach Club (The island is locked today, and it appears empty. I'm not going to guess what happened there, but I think the place is temporarily closed.) As you can see if you click the thumbnail, the club was VERY CROWDED. This is how my One sees Second Life. Most of the avatarim are grey because they haven't rezzed yet, and we are all wearing our name tags.

Of course when a club gets this crowded, it also gets laggy, and when a club gets this laggy, I can't move. I either don't move or I slide all over the place. I was trying to find a good spot on the dance floor, when I slid all the way off the floor and into the water under the club. My One Who Thinks She Knows fished me out of the water and left me sitting on a chair. Yes, you can click the thumbnail here too for a large view of the club.

This was where my One put me when she got me out of the water. Yes, I am wet even though I don't look it. I don't mind water. I don't even mind it when I'm in a long sleeved dress.

Eventually I got up and danced with the other avies. The music was loud. The club was crowded. The sound system was unreliable and the sim crashed.

Then Sunday night, we had to take care of the frogs. This is just one of the eggs that were at the Honey Hut. We had two eggs, and no more egg crates. Normally, this is such a small deal, that I don't bother blogging about it and neither does my One Who Thinks She Knows when she is in control, which she is not right now. We usually go over to Breedable Nation at Ravens Writing Desk, walk into the shop, pick up another free box of ten egg cups, and then head back to the Honey Hut to box up the eggs.

That didn't happen late Sunday afternoon. Here you see the Breedable Nation main store, or rather where the store used to be. It's not there any more. There were no group announcments to say where it had gone either, and yes I was quite upset. Fortunately, we knew another place where we could get Lily Frog Supplies., UBS Tech Farmer's Orphanage over in Fernstreet.

Normally, this was just supposed to be a hop skip and a jump. Sunday night, though, wasn't normal. Where the once proud orphanage stood, there were sky boxes for rent. I burst into tears. My One Who Thinks She Knows consulted the search engine for any one selling Lily Frog supplies.

We did find a place. It's called The Breedable Farmyard and it's on Calli Cove. Make of that what you will. Our frogs are OK for now.

Of course this calls for a rant. There's a reason I was crying. Lily Frogs are a "supported breedable." Our Petable Turtles are not supported. I can get Petable Turtle supplies from several vendors though now it's one less. The main store has styaed in the same place for two years. I really did think we were going to lose the Lily Frogs in a matter of weeks last night. It's a shame because my One and I really love our frogs. They are four prims each with tons of personality. I just hope Breedable Farmyard stays in business.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- March 4, 2013