We Will Never Forget our Lily Frogs
And We Still Love our Petable Turtles
Shouting into the Wind -- Almost the end of the Petable Turtles.
Illicit Grief and Real Loss -- Now the frogs are in trouble
as well. This hurts!
All I Want -- What do I want out of Second Life? Losing breedables, fully or
partially means I really have to think about meaning.
Our Frogs are Really Going to Die! The end
was almost upon us.
Dragoness Rage was Here -- There is no one to
rescue and resurrect our Lily Frogs.
Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- January 1, 2014
You Can Still Find the Sea
Young avatarim suffer from the prejudice of those who want others to conform to their fantasies of a carefree life. This means they just can't find any beach if they want to swim and sunbathe. It does not matter if they are well behaved or older. They are still children and adult avatarim can't.... I don't know what they plan. Most of the time it is nothing Shaka hasn't discussed on teh school bus, but Shaka needed a beach and preferably more than one.
And her need was especially urgent. Thirteen days ago, Shaka's landlady at St. Joseph's Orphanage crawled under Shaka's bed and tore her lovely still life of purple tulips from her bedroom wall, where it covered up a hideous decal of a deformed white tiger cub. Sorry, the thing's paws were huge, and white tigers suffer from inbreeding depression. Shaka's landlady, Maria, told her there would be rules forthcoming about what could and couldn't be rezzed in the orphanage. It was time for Shaka to find a new home at There is no Adult in the Room, because face it, sometimes that is the truth!
Shaka left St. Joseph's Orphanage with two to three weeks of rent on the box. We decided to wait until our tempers cooled and give the powers that be time to draft rezzing rules. Nearly two weeks came and went. Friday was Shaka's rent day. If she was not paid in advance, it would be decision day to stay or go. How badly did the good folks on GIANO Estates want to keep Shaka as their tenant? Well, last night was decision day number two, in more ways than one.
By then Shaka had accidentally ridden her new bicycle on to LEA 7 which is supposed to be for making Machinima but which has beaches with shallow water, hills, farm animals, and plenty of space where no one thinks he has the right of way because he drives a prim hog of a vehicle or because he pays beaucoup dollars worth of Lindens each month for choice land. For an avie prepared to live in the land of no free lunch and consumer choice, LEA 7 offered an embarassment of riches!
Of course all the fun had to come to an end, at least temporarily. With two decision days and no rezzing rules, Shaka had an unpleasant task ahead of her. Since the wall unit was not ready for a photo shoot, Shaka needed to return to St. Joseph's Orphanage, take her bedspread, and then cut her ties to Giano Estates. She is probably losing a week's rent money but 88 L = thirty-five cents. Call it a tip in the No Free Lunch Diner. Shaka entered the lobby, cammed upstairs, took her bedspread and then looked at the rent board.
"I'm still in good standing," she explained though she did not know how many more days she had left. Another box said another kid was overdue on her rent. A third box was lit up amber instead of black, red, or green. It said "Exceeds limit." "That's strange," Shaka commented aloud. "Why doesn't the land lady just stick the kid's stuff back in inventory. You know, they play favorites here." With that Shaka headed out the door and looked for a place on which to sit.
Apparently it is all right for the kids in St. Joseph's Orphanage to have the latest and greatest multi-prim mesh toy, but not a simple poster or the wall unit on which we are still working. Once a kid starts treating her space like "an apartment to decorate" (Sorry Maria, that is one whopping, good quote!) she just upends the whole no-free-lunch order. She is living well on nothing. She may have to walk two sims to the beach, but walking is good exercise. She may not have a fancy car or boat, but he or she can swim and go out to the theater and sit and read and eat take out food and just have a good old time. Of course such a kid is no longer an abject subaltern creature, he or she is a kid, poor, but proud and free and poor. That's a big difference. Being free, though takes responsibility, so Shaka was not sure she wanted to leave the group. "That makes it final doesn't it," she said. We also both knew, that Shaka might no longer be welcome on Giano Estates, small, but very pretty public beach. Of course we had found some ocean of our own on Solace Beach so we had a beginning of something new.
Life may be harder for a young avie, but Shaka still had to burn her bridges. On went the gasoline, and with one push of a button she was free. She regrets that she didn't get to ask the Giano Estates group a couple of questions. One night there was a drive-in picture and a few days later a car show. Shaka wanted to ask if bikes were allowed at the drive-in and if she could show off her snazzy new wheels, even though she only has two of them. Well, twelve-year-old's can't drive anyway. A twelve-year-old on a bicycle is not exactly subaltern when you think about it.
Of course Shaka did not feel like going home after cutting her ties to Giano. She decided to try the beach at Camp Soggy Padding. The beach had a water slide that Shaka tried twice, but the slide lands you in the shallow water which is not much fun when an avie wants to swim. Shaka swam laps. The beach is good for that, but it was at the wrong end of the creek for an easy swim to Diego Bay, our original plan.
Instead we ended up in Corsair Cove State Park on New Misthaven, another island in the Didake Archipelago. Shaka loved this age neutral board walk and light house. Here she is looking out at the sea on the peeling wood boardwalk deck, aware she can just explore and doesn't have to buy anything or worry about security orbs. She just got done swimming in the canals, and nobody yelled at her!
Here Shaka explores the light house and crouches in the entrance. She remembers other light houses. She thinks there is one on Penn State UBMS, and Shaka knows there is a light house on Rocky Point, but to get to the water to swim there requires crossing private property, and in the land of no free lunch, it means tangling with a security orb.
Thus last night, Shaka got to visit her first, REAL light house. She thinks the one on Penn State UBMS is just for decoration. I may wonder why there are no yellow light houses in Second Life. I'm sure they exist in "real life" by the way. Shaka though was just happy that this light house was public!
Shaka did not bother to scrounge for free food at the Pike Spinner, the restaurant on the other side of Corsair Cove State Park's boardwalk. She did get a mug of lemonade, but she was too busy petting, getting nuzzled by and enjoying headbuts from the nameless, black kitty whose job it is to entertain guests. Shaka told the kitty a sad story. She remembered Hijiki, the cat at the now gone Mother N-Word. Hijiki who even looks like the nameless Pike Spinner kitty is now probably sleeping in some avie's inventory, or maybe alive and well on some other sim. I wish I remembered who owned the Mother N-Word because Shaka would have liked to tell them how much she misses the place and Hijiki. Shaka doesn't really miss St. Joseph's Orphanage. She misses two of the kids there whom she chatted with, but she never really got to know them. She does not miss Maria. And yes, she will miss the public beach, but she does not need to live on islands where she would have to ask whether a kid can show her bike at an auto show or drive it to the open air theater.
Eileen H. Kramer with help from Shaka Prynne -- May 30, 2014
It was not Their Story
My One Who Thinks She Knows sees ghosts everywhere. It is part and parcel, I think, of having existed for a much longer time and having many more memories. Bobcat Village reminds her of a job interview at the Texas State San Marcos, which also owns the island. The One is a bit more comfortable with TXState II, which she thinks is a beautiful and sweet sim with a great story when everything there works. Well, my One used to thinnk that TXState II had a great story. Now she is not so sure.
We decided to walk onto TXState II from Teaching 5. We'd see the place a bit differently. I don't have to tell you that it looked beautiful with the trees growing out of tobacco colored, dry ground, made just moist enough by the Pecos River in New Mexico.
TXState II is a replica of a fieldwork cite in the depopulated village of El Cerrito, New Mexico in the Hispano Homeland. Before World War II, the country was more isolated and regionally different and El Cerrito resembled Mexico far more than did say Ardsley, New York. El Cerrito is in some ways another, simpler, and very beautiful world, except it isn't.
In order to put TXState II on the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet, we needed to watch videos. We watched several but this one was different. In it, Dr. Nostrand recollected "the most tragic event to ever happen in El Cerrito."
A mother of thirteen children, left her two youngest at home while she went to take lessons in food preservation from New Mexico's equivalent of Cooperative Extension. The oldest of the two children she left behind was Consuelo age thirteen, who watched her youngest sister Carmen, age three. It was a cold night in the house. Consuelo went to add fuel to the fire. She took a can of kerosene and poured it on the smouldering flames.
The fire set Consuelo's dress ablaze and also ignited her younger sister's clothes. The girls clinging to one another ran out into the streets, running for dear life. Neighbors tried to catch them, but the doomed girls ran until they could run no more. When neighbors found the bodies, they were "charcoal."
My One stood stunned as she listened to Dr. Nostrand and then she said. "You know, Iyoba, that's not really the story. It's old words," she explained. "The girls' mother and the neighbors have told the story over and over again. They tell it until it becomes part of them so they can't wonder what life would be like if the tragedy had not happened. There is no other road forming a Y. There is no before or after. The tragedy is a part of the landscape like the brown hills and the blue water in the irrigation ditch."
Perhaps you are wondering what all these pictures of Shaka are doing in this blog entry. Well, they are here for a good reason. Forty years (Consuelo and Carmen burned to death in 1935) and two thousand miles separate two tragedies. On the night of March 5, 1975 in Ardsley New York, Marie Benedicts fell asleep in her basement bedroom and never woke up. She suffocated from a gas leak that later made her house at 13 Wildwood Lane explode, killing her father who went into the flames to rescue her. My One Who Thinks She Knows was twelve years old at the time, the same age as Shaka. My One sat behind Marie Benedicts in homeroom in seventh grade at Ardsley Middle School.
My One Who Thinks She Knows has told the story of Marie Benedicts thousands of times. She says that of all the people in her classes at school, she thinks of Marie every day. Of course the story of Marie Benedicts is not really her story any more. It is a story of my One and the way she sees the world. She can not imagine herself, except really hypothetically, as an adult who did not lose a contemporary in childhood. My One says there are two hundred people walking around with a shard of Marie Benedicts worn like a broken Mizpah coin around their necks. The chains from tnose necklaces have grown into their skin. It doesn't hurt. It's just there. So it is with Consuelo and Carmen.
We will never know why a thirteen year old kid would be foolish enough to pour kerosene on an open fire, or why someone did not check the gas leak at 13 Wildwood Lane in Ardsley. We will never know what sort of a life Marie would have had had she lived or what kind of a life My One would have had. My One says she had almost no resources to deal with losing a contemporary. She suspects her classmates were also scrabbling around hard. She thinks these things get easier as you get older, but then again, as my One gets older, she is a person who has lost a contemporary in adolescence who is getting older. That changes everything. There is no Y in the road. My One can show others the scar formed in middle school and because it will always matter even though it was long ago. She can not show anyone what lies underneath. She is not even sure she can show herself that.
Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- May 28, 2014 -- And dedicated to Marie Benedicts 1962-1975
Limits and Sacrifice
How much will you pay to belong? What will you do? What will you tolerate?
If you ask me I will not spit in your face.
I think I have paid part of the cost. Shaka has paid even more, and then we both refused to pay further. It is that simple. The picture
you are looking at is in what once was the Little Minders Plaza on the
Gambier Islands, also home to the Mother N-Word. There is no more link for that last fine establishment because it no longer
exists.
How we dealth with
the Mother N-Word, a tea=house and bar furnished in most excellent Japanese taste, is how Shaka, Iyoba, and I usually handle
disputes in Second Life. Technically the Mother N-Word's name is a blatant violation of the Terms of Service, but usually we live and let live unless
someone is hogging a sim or stealing from an educational institution. We report squatters because I can't stand freeloaders. The Mother N-Word paid its
rent as far as we knew and English was not its owners primary language and they might not have known how offensive their bar's name was
to American ears. Name and shame was the best route to go. Shaka and Iyoba broke
the color line and took lots of photos. Shaka got a cup of hot tea she often drinks.
And since Shaka needed a shirt to wear with her yellow pants (She loves Iyoba's hand-me-downs!), I made her
one using an image from the most esteemed, Mother N-Word as a base image. Things were really looking up for Shaka at this point,
she had spent three days at St. Joseph's Orphanage and
was thrilled with having a seven-day-a-week-kid-friendly home and thirty-three whole prims! That is the truth. She ran downstairs on Wednesday a week ago and paid for four
more weeks rent.
She added a bedspread to her bed, and a matching bed bench (The cushion matches) and covered a hideous decale of a baby white tiger with
her masterpiece of a still life with purple tulips and red bananas. She had plans in the works for a wall unit that would house the radio's script.
That texture is half made, and I'll finish it some day. Once Shaka set up the radio which uses the media-mixer (bwb) menu script which gives a menu of URL links and does not touch the
sim stream, she began to worry. St. Joseph's Orphanage is full of content, including mesh. It is slow to
rezz. Shaka is a good citizen and worried about lag. She also wanted to make sure the radio wasn't just a figment of our imaginations. Since she was using only one prim and not hijacking the sim radio,
she announced that any one who had access to the orphanage dormitory was welcome to test the radio which she made into a prominient pole, textured with dried mud and thus called th e
Muddy Buddy. You'll notice there is no pole in the picture that is because it vanished on Monday night. On Tuesday at lunch, Shaka returned the pole and shrunk it and put it under her bed. The Giano Archipelago has a certain
aesthetic style and a big pole was an eyesore. Wednesday morning, Shaka logged in in time to see both her radio and her lovely stilllife returned to inventory.
That was when ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE. Shaka got in touch with Maria, one of the orphanage managers and opened the conversation with the epic words: "You crawled under my bed!" Once again the word BOUNDARIES flashed in front of my eyes. Were Shaka an adult tenant, she would have been asked to move her picture and remove the radio. She might have negotiated and bargained. She is well under her prim limit. As it was, Shaka figured she could make the radio into a HUD and she offered to move the picture. She was told NO PICTURES ON THE WALLS!. She then asked if she could keep her bed bench. She was told that rules for what she could and couldn't rezz would be forthcoming and to go play in the traffic. Even on the Giano Archipelago, the traffic can not run an avie over. Also Maria said that: THIS ORPHANAGE IS A SAFE PLACE FOR CHILDREN. IT IS NOT AN APARTMENT FOR YOU TO DECORATE! In real-life group homes, children are encouraged to decorate their spaces to make them feel safe. OK, Giano is about control and Shaka has a subaltern role but....
Let's just say we had our answer to the question: How much will you pay to belong? What
will you do? What will you tolerate? Shaka and I were past our limit, and Iyoba, Shaka, and I were all going to pay a price for
Shaka's mistake. That price is more than the 176L that Maria and her crew at St. Joseph's has in rent. The Lily Frogs that now will NEVER hatch paid the
ultimate price. Here Iyoba cries for them; for all of them died when they went into inventory as part of clearing the 512 so Shaka could
use it. I spent 100L to set up a group for Iyoba and Shaka. We named it Coquilles and Kelipot, a mixture of Christianity and Judaism, French and Hebrew.
We are all mired in externalites, all on a pilgrimage somewhere. Symbols can have dual meanings and the group logo looks great. Yes, this was another 10L and about
fifty lindens for textures.
Both Iyoba and I agreed that if Shaka was moving to the former Honey Hut, she would need to pay her respects to the Lily Frog eggs that would never see life now,
not that they were ever going to see life anyway, but when you sacrifice creatures to make room on land, and you benefit from that room, well....
You can guess the rest. Shaka put on her only dress. It was a winter ddress, but she did not care. She knew what a wake and a funeral was. She also put on her
"court date" hair piece. Then she went to the former Honey Hut and
stood and crouched before the frog eggs in their memorial grate and said the following:
I am sorry frogs. I am sorry, that I am taking your land, but I am alive and you can never live. I am sorry someone did you dirtier
than my land lady did me. They sentenced you to starve. They only stole my privacy and wounded my self respect. I am sorry you will
never be born, but I have been born and it hurts to be alive. I will not be here when Iyoba does the dirty. She and our caseworker, The One,
also says I have to pay my respects and understand. You don't have any choice in this. You were around and active before I was, but your
sacrifice is for my future. I want to thank you for that. I will never be able to repay you. I hope you can understand.
I will miss you very much, though I never met you. Iyoba and the caseworker loved you. I think I can understand that. You rest well
and enjoy the time you have left.
After this, Shaka logged off. Iyoba logged in, and we cleared the land (EUPHEMISM!) and set up a smaller (4 prim), Lily Frog Memorial. Then it was Shaka's turn.
She had a house ready to go and textured. It is seven prims including the door. Shaka was right when she said that thirty-three was a large number of prims.
So far even with furniture, Shaka and Iyoba have used only 25 out of 117 prims. It pays to know how to build and megaprims make things much
easier.
This is Shaka standing outside of her red house which as far as I know has no name. The Honey Hut is now
There is no Adult in the Room, but sometimes a rising eighth grader needs to remind adults of their ethics and values.
Shaka paid another month's tuition at Richmond Elementary School which has moved.
She even offered to make up the week she was in arrears since no one had ejected her from the group. The group manager would not take her money.
She owes a DJ a big tip. That is what amounts to a worthy cause in Second Life.
And here you can see another view of Shaka's red house, which has a sort of green (Yellow huechera in case you are curious) roof.
This means useable space. The walls are also full of bumps, lumps, pearls, and soda caps. They would NEVER
ALLOW a building like this on the Giano Archipelago. It clashes with the theme and what is worse, it is too cheap. You can of course say: "What kind of
avie would want to live in a windowless, one room shack?" I'll point out that the shack has a fine, oval shape....
...And guess what? The so-called shack is NOT windowless. One wall is full of decaled windows and there is a skylight as well. The light is good for eading and
studying. Shaka is going to take care of her education because she worries that you can not be an amuesment park ride tester all your life or you will end up like
the boys on the Island of Bad Boys in Pinnochio, and Shaka has no desire to be a donkey. We are going to make what classes we can, participate in group for moral support, and
study independently for the rest. Shaka feels comfortable with the Richmond Group, and for the first time I DID NOT begrudge her the
two hundred and fifty lindens. She will make her house into a study center for other avatarim of any age interested in self-improvement. Sometimes there does not need to be any adult
in the room.
Maybe it is easier to pay to belong when you know what you will NOT pay. Yes, Shaka even set up the bed she was working on the
night she paid rent for St. Joseph's nearly three weeks ago. Yes, it has been that long. She talks about plants for her garden. She wants purple ones! She
talks about getting another spinner. She needs to find a public beach. She is not sure she is welcome on the Giano Archipelago when she stops paying rent.
And here Shaka sits on the ground after I begged her to change out of her go-to-meeting dress and court-date hair.
The time for mourning is past, and the time of waiting begins. Shaka does not expect a rent refund. She needs to retrieve her bed spread.
Very technically, Shaka is still a troublesome tenant but one in good standing on the Giano Archipelago. Conceivably, the sim owner
could write rules about orphanage rezzing and pass them on to Shaka. Theoretically, those rules could be reasonable and wonderfully
accomodating. Shaka's rent day is Friday. Shaka has about two more Fridays before she is no longer in good standing. One Friday has passed.
Neither Shaka nor I are holding our breaths, and our Lily Frog eggs will not come back to life.
Eileen H. Kramer with help from Shaka Prynne and Iyoba BatOni -- May 25, 2014
Less than Three out of Five Remain
Text above this cute bunnie, that unfortunately does not appear in the photograph stated: "This bunny has Rabies and HIV." It also warned visitors not to bother the doomed rabbit. Someone at Hamilton College with a sick, but very amusing sense of humor built and left this bunny in the sandbox on Teaching 5 where a three year old poster presentation still sits waiting for a bean counter to pull the plug. This presentation, which replaced lovely but useless buildings was wonderful and creative in its day. A fresh presentation would be equally wonderful. My One Who Thinks She Knows says that what is wonderful about the presentation is that it is low-tech (for Second Life), reproducible, and chock full of content. It's just lost its backer and there aren't going to be any more like it. Most of
Teaching 5 is for rent. "Available" is the polite word, but at least it still exists.
Teaching 10 also still exists. Here is one of several cartoon sculptures from the Art Ark which received a place on the
Explore Second Life Spread Sheet. The Art Ark may improve with time, but it does not replace the Knot House. You'll notice the link is gone. That is because we are locked out of Teaching 7. We are also banned, for no good reason (No one saw my name except on a log of some sort. The place was ALWAYS empty when we were there) from Seton Hall University. When you stop being hospitable to visitors you lose your spot on the Explore SL Spread Sheet.You can see why we don't want Shaka bushwhacking. Bushwacking can hurt.
It hurts even when we discover the Capella University Enchanted Programmers Forest, a sandbox! I got a new dress, but sometimes that dress feels like a hair shirt. My One used to write endlessly about NMC's mismanagement of its archipelago. Essentially, they charged more or less double market rent. You can't find any evidence of that any more. No one has written on their web site in a year and a half and the Services section is blank, so their rent is a state secret. Perhaps it is negotiable. The fact is my One used to work for landlords, and it is brutally hard to rent land in Second Life. Overpriced land is going nowhere fast.
Unused land is wasted funds. Sooner or later someone wakes up and smells that the coffee has carbonized on the bottom of the pot, the pyrex is in shards all over the stove, and there is a lot of mess to clean up. That hasn't yet happened with the Terra Project on Teaching 6. It's just a matter of time. All those corny and lovely campaign posters date from 2011. It is now 2014. That's nearly three years since the political science course in Second Life has run. The blog in the link is even older.
The Forbidden City has also been on Teaching 6 ever since I first walked through the island as a newbie on a cruddy connection. It's real name is the Middleverse en Espanol but it was the Forbidden City for most of its live because high (as in 20 meters at least) walls surrounded it with large stop signs telling English speakers to keep out of this immersive Spanish environment. Like most places with so little hospitality, it did not earn a spot on the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet.
Do I have to tell you that all of that has changed? When we visited Teaching 6, the Forbidden City's walls had fallen like those of Jericho in the Biblical book of Joshua. Here I stand at the bottom of a subway that goes nowhere. It reminds me of the subways on Nippori and Nagisa Edowgawa. Enough said.
A strange and sad aspect of the Forbidden City is that it is a lovely, contact-rich, and realistic build. The PowerPoints all still work. The computer links go to sites that still exist, and there are plenty of both. I wish Middlebury had opened up this city sooner. Part of me really hopes this is a change of policy that means the place is here to stay.
I can dream. This café/restaurant doubles as a classroom. The fire is lovely. The chairs are not made of mesh and devoid of menus. That is a plus, even though it indicates that this is a very old build. The lack of mesh means faster rezzing and no missing pieces. The photorealistic textures were well made enough to have aged very, gracefully.
And no, this is not part of the Forbidden City, though I have never been here. I had to camm and take this picture. The structure, as lovely as it was, was surrounded by ban lines as was half of Teaching 9. I visited there on Friday. Most of the island was for rent but that was nothing new.
Teaching 9 almost felt haunted. Adelphi University used to be there. So too was Liberty University, of Jerry Fallwell fame. They had two teaching exhibits. On Friday I found out both exhibits were gone.
I thought about this and marveled that a conservative Christian institution had hung on as long in the wide-open world of Second Life. With half the sim still rented, and cordoned off with ban lines, I figured it would be a matter of time before there might be a new tenant. I had all ready found La Maison Tres Scuzzy and the Art Ark so maybe NMC is cutting its prices or maybe there are colleges that want the quiet of academic sims. There were, in short, sims in much worse shape than Teaching 9. Of course Teaching 9 is gone now. Teaching 7 is off limits. Seton Hall bans strangers. That leaves three sims out of five or maybe two and a half. As grey ink spills across the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet, it's hard not to feel an empty ache inside.
Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- May 20, 2014
To Reach the Beach
As I went walking, they tried to stop me with a sign that said: "PRIVATE PROPERTY," but on the back of that sign there was NOTHING. That side was made for you and me. -- Woody Guthrie "This Land is Your Land"
Let me start by telling the creators of Gianno Estates to pat themselves on the back. You have done a positively magnificent job in creating a dystopian community. Private property is a value as American as apple pie paid for because there is NO FREE LUNCH. That it makes Shaka a bit angry in her subaltern role (What other role does a twelve-year-old, rising eighth grader, orphan have!) and leaves the amateur urban planner in me thinking: "This could be so much better," only means that you have succeeded in creating a believable, economically successful, immersive, and yes, supremely dystopian world. Stand up and take a bow.
And now, Shaka is not leaving any time soon. She is not going to get herself in trouble to get thrown out. In fact she loves St. Joseph's Orphanage. Both of us think the rent is reasonable for a space where a kid, even an older kid, can be a kid and feel safe from adult prejudice. She likes that there will soon be other girls on the "Women's Side." She's glad to be able to come and go. She's glad to be able to spread out her things and that she has a home seven days a week. She can go elsewhere for what she needs if she can't meet all her needs. She has her issues. They are not my issues. So far she can work them through and she is an enthusiastic customer, as I am at some level, despite what I am writing here.
And Gianno estates is a very tolerant place. Here Shaka brings sashimi to the sim. I wonder if she is the first avie to enjoy a dinner of sashimi, edamamme in the shell, and seaweed salad on The Warwick. I think this is a first for St. Joseph's.
The Gianno Archipelago has no sushi parlors about which we know. Shaka, however, pays her 88L a week and has thirty-three prims worth of rezzing rights. She's used four of those prims for her space on the Woman's Side and may use a couple more. Meanwhile, an extra prim comes in handy. Consumer choice is a value as American as apple pie when you pay for your lunch.
That you get only what you pay for on the The Gianno Archipelago sometimes makes Shaka chafe just a bit though she is intensely glad there is a public beach. No this is NOT a picture of the public beach. In order to reach the beach, Shaka needs to cross two and a half sims. She sees water a long time before that, but those are people's yards. As you can see many of the houses in the The Gianno Archipelago are built like fortresses with stout fences and security orbs to keep intruders out. Cutting into someone's back yard for a swim is a "no-no."
On the map Rocky Point would appear to be the site of several beaches. It has water all around, but the rocks are mesh and where there is accessible lawn...well this picture says it all. Someone pays good rent for this mansion. Someone gets what they pay for. As for those like Shaka or any one who wants to keep their Second Life spending under control, they need to keep walking.
By the time Shaka had reached the western side of Rocky Point she was sure she had reached the public beach. I told her about how public beaches were sometimes down alleyways marked "Public Beach" in Miami, Florida and how in Texas, all the beaches had to be public, while the hotels on Galveston Island sat on the land side of the road with the seawall and public sand on the other. And Texas is a red state. Shaka looked out at the lifeguard's tower and realized, it was part of a big, motorboat. This boat leaves me feeling more freaky than it does Shaka, but I have my reasons. "That's all just for one person!" Shaka said. 'Nuff said.
Then at last Shaka found the public beach. It is about the size of one backyard beach for all the people who don't have back yards on the water. It has a free inner tube dispenser, and a very generous avie gave Shaka a Thor's Oak Swimming Hud so now she can swim without being stuck on the bottom. This should make up for everything. The water is wide. The sand is full of intriguing bits of shells and pebbles. The beach is temperate, and dune grass clings to the side of the road where the sun bleaches it tauni. Of course if Shaka makes a wrong turn while swimming and washes up on someone's back lawn, that someone will show no mercy. A security orb will see to that. After all, that person pays rent for his privacy and freedom from swimmers who make a wrong turn in the water.
But not even the open roads on the The Gianno Archipelago are places where an avie may roam freely. Look behind Shaka and you will see a sidewalk. The orphanage director warned Shaka to be careful of speeding cars; for it is they that own the pavement. It is a good thing that the police on The Warwick did not catch Shaka jaywalking. She wasn't jaywalking anyway, she was jay dancing!
By the way, Shaka would very much like to thank the person who created or provided her with the Thor's Oak Swim HUD. It made swimming amazing, and yes this is Seven Seas Fishing off at NewPort Keys. The view is just much better below the sea. Ironically, if things were different on The Gianno Archipelago this could be a public beach instead of a pay for your rod fishing pier. Simply adding a ladder that went down to the water would make the area dual use for both swimmers and fisher people. In Second Life one does not have to worry about a kid getting a hook caught in her bathing suit.
Of course in the cool evening the hot pavement did not burn Shaka's bare feet when she climbed out of the water using cam and sit. Yes, the parking lot was empty. "No!" the urban planner in me cried. A parking lot was not necessary. Why replicate the worst of "real life" in Second Life?
Some of the reason for creating artificial inequality on the The Gianno Archipelago is that it makes fantastically good economic sense. People will pay for what is scarce and pay more for it. If the reward of buying an expensive prefab and renting its land or renting an expensive prefab with the land under it were not good access to the water and an easy place to rezz your monstrous power boat, who would pay the rent, and how would the archipelago owners pay the tier. In Econ 102 language (Yes, I got to take micreconomics in college and I was a liberal arts bio major!) renting prime property to those willing to pay, creates wretched externalities for poorer residents like Shaka. Shaka's long walk to a public beach was an external diseconomy.
And yes, both Shaka and I (More me I'm afraid) can be big critics of how others spend their money and prims. This soda machine does not work, but then again in the land of NO FREE LUNCH why should it. It could always charge 1L for the soda, and Shaka has plenty of drinks in her inventory. But on a deeper level why should a no-name soda machine even exist in St. Joseph's? Why not make it a fruit juice, frozen fruit, or fresh fruit on a stick machine to encourage health. Second Life is "Your World. Your Imagination" and that means you can have the best you can imagine, not just what one usually finds.
This morning I asked myself, why any one would own those huge motor boats that Shaka saw. If I had land on the ocean and even if I didn't (since I could keep the boat in inventory) I'd own a skull (one of those flat rowing craft.) I remember the Cornell team practicing on the inlet. My neighbor sophomore year and her boyfriend both rowed on crew. My father knew a cockswain back in the 1950's. Real silver spoons are always a bit bent and tarnished. The biggest is not always the best. And Gianno is a family role play. Kids can handle a skull long before they can drive around in a motor boat.
And the most precious things in Second Life are not those one buys or those wretched externalities can take away. Shaka is acquiring roommates. Soon she will live in a group home of other young avies and not have to hope adults will tolerate her. Maybe she will make friends. Maybe she will play the role of confident, and intelligent, older child, though a bit of a snob. Oh those silver spoons are so flexible! She will bring her 88L worth of culture and class with her, because it makes her life comfortable. She doesn't have to lead any one else by example except herself, but maybe she can give others ideas. Maybe we both have something to give, despite my observations and complaining. One can not argue with success and the The Gianno Archipelago is both brilliant and successful. Shaka and I both want to stick around to see what happens.
Eileen H. Kramer with help from Shaka Prynne -- May 16, 2014
It Takes Grit to Bushwhack
Shaka can not bushwhack. This is not a question of it being "my territory" or some special thing I share with my One Who Thinks She Knows. Shaka is young and fragile. Shaka has suffered loss. Shaka does not need to see more abandonment and wreackage. And, sad to say you see a lot of that when you bushwhack. In the last week, the UTSA Roadrunner sims, home to some of Second Life's most innovative art have vanished. Gone too is the Deakin University Archipelago, home to amazing art work and a great wheel chair simulation, and Jaguarland USA Education. The USA stood for the
University of South Alabama.
I think I feel worst about the disappearance of Wise CAU sims because I was hoping Shaka could go there. Of course even when sims survive, sometiems their attractions vanish. Terragaia on UT Permian Basin is gone. The geodescic domes remain, but the signs are gone, and in the sky griefers release particles. This was a fairly decent exhibit. It's disappearance took me by surprise.
Another disapperance that came as a shock was the Timeline of Christianity. I really enjoyed climbing up the stair case cut into the mountain to reach the library that had the exhibit. Even my One needed this walk. We reached the top of the mountain...and you can see for yourself. The library had a few chairs, a nice fire, and no exhibit.
With all that Online Education is still intact and prosperous. There is a public sandbox, and one of the toughest orientation courses in Second Life. If you think your avie is tough enough make him walk the thin beams and tricky spiral stairs. It was hard work, but a lot of fun.
Of course by now both my One Who Thinks She Knows and I were toughened up enough psychologically to do the hard part of bushwhacking, seeing if anything had changed on the islands rented out for education, but often full of moth balled projects and waste, and we were going to start in the belly of the beast: Teaching 16 home of some very strange classrooms that once were detailed, lovely, high tech work, but that was several years ago. Their absence of mesh makes them look dated, especially since you can see they were once very fancy. Plainer projects don't age as badly. Some furniture never came inside. None of the classrooms show the customization that indicates use. If you are a taxpayer in Washington State, some of your tax dollars are very hard at work on Teaching 16
I'm never sure what the original builders had in mind when they put up the classrooms on Teaching 16. They are in what are some of the ugliest academic buildings in Second Life. The buildings are featureless on the outside, and inside, you just couldn't make them any more drab. You don't get the full effect in this picture because I am doing the siri to decorate the blank wall. You get to look at my new dress and reasonably new hair instead. Yes, it's light blue. I think it's a wonderful color, the hair that is.
Of course the real fun on Teaching 16 is not at ground level but up about 1900 meters on the western side of the island. I don't want to give an SLURL, because if the landlord does her job like she is supposed to, this place won't exist any more. The lovely African prefab owned by Portuguese speaking avatarim floats high above a portion of Teaching 16 that used to belong to or maybe still belongs to Ceet.ca. My One wrote to both Media Monsoo and the head of the Ceet SL group to let them know that this probably was not their building.
I mean, my One says that most college campuses in the United States are dry, and even if the drinking age in Canada is eighteen, and nobody gets drunk in Second Life, I doubt a cocktail bar is appropriate for a student union on the NMC Islands.
And while many academic conferences and meetings feature ice breakers such as relay races or even ropes courses, I doubt massages with the latest perfumed oils and hot towels are part of the fun. At least the squatters on Teaching 16 have better taste than to go in for whips and spiked heels. Those things hurt!
That said, if the landlord doesn't clear out the squat, I think I'd like to spend some quiet time in the hot tub and maybe even give the landmark to Shaka. She would really enjoy it. I know Shaka would NOT enjoy Teaching 11. I liked its green rolling hills, and the abandoned core that looked like a ruin. Even the object givers were turned off. I wondered how much longer NMC would support a nearly empty sim. It is nearly empty because University of Nevada Reno is here in a ban-lined bunker. Boo! Hiss! No link for them for obvious reasons.
Then we discovered that Teaching 11 had a new tenant. This happens from time to time, and the tenant, the University of Technology at Sydney had a Spanish prefab that said we did not have access to the bedroom. Ooops, someone had forgot to retrofit the place. They did remove the sex animations from the bed, but not the wine bottle, the corkscrews, the spilled cups...hey wait, we were getting note cards in French.
They were nasty, nagging, notecards, telling us to clean up a mess we didn't make. "Pense-toi ce que nous sommes les esclaves!" cried my One. I did take a slice of cake for Shaka. All that avie gets is junk food. No wonder she is getting a bit round. Poor Shaka!
And, no this beautiful kitty is not going out no matter what kind of nagging note, someone leaves. I love creatures in Second Life, and the cat can go out when she pleases! Meanwhile, my One realized we had found a lovely educational exhibit that was a twist on the traditional scuzzy house or lab. Bushwhacking does have its good moments. La Maison Tres Scuzzy is now on the Explore SL Spread Sheet as is the Vine Christian Mission. Still bushwhacking is more large defeats outside our control than small victories we win hard. We'll need to survey more wreackage. Let Shaka be a kid or as much of a kid as a twelve year old who's a bit traumatized can be. Hard work is for adult avatarot like me!
Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- May 13, 2014
Checking up on the Competition
I like to think that it all started with these black eyed Susans or rubeckia as my One Who Thinks She Knows calls them.
My One makes plants. My One is passionate about plants and that is an understatement. My One was thrilled with these. She said they looked
realistic. The blossoms were the right propotion to the foliage, and they looked surprisingly decent up close. She looked at the avie and One Team that
made them, and said: "Iyoba, we've got to go pay them a visit."
My One is very, very curious about others who make plants in
Second Life. She says that there are too few of them, and it is way too easy to be creative. As far as we both know, this brunnera bush that is now
in the Temperate House at Stinky Stinky is something no one else
offers.
That is not so for our green ariesema. Inochi botanicals has a
burgundy specimen. My One wanted to visit it in world. Then my One came up with yet another plant....
Sometimes, my One says the best things are the most common ones, and so it was with goldenrod. My One looked at her creation and thought:
"I bet we're the only ones with golden rod in all of Second Life." We weren't. There always has to be one other creator. I wanred my One of that.
Of course even if My ONe is not the one and only, for
many plant types, hers are natural looking with gentle curves and lots of sublte workmanship, like these bells of Irland that we both discovered when
we went to add some new plants to the Stinky Stinky Temperate House.
There they were.
And here is more of the Stinky Stinky is something no one else
Temperate House. You can see how chock full of plants it is! Still, there was goldenrod at Meadoworks.
My One sensed she had comeptition. I knew we needed to check them out, not just Inochi Botanicals, but also
Meadowworks and
Misty Rose Designs in Miliaco. It was time for what my One Who Thinks She Knows calls "Competitive Intelligence."
That is a big word for
touring other people's gardens. Gardens lift my One's spirits. I can't argue with that, and I can't argue that these
pink poppies at Meadhoworks are stunning!
There only problem is that they are ten meter hoops. A poor person with a 2048, a 512, or a Linden Home can’t have a clump
of them by the door.
Of course
since Meadowworks allowed five minute rezzing, my One had to see how her goldenrod stacked up against its competition.
It was hard to get a good comparison shot, but you can see our goldenrod is narrower (You don’t need a ten meter area!),
taller, and a much richer shade of gold. It’s also free to copy.
That left
Misty Rose Designs in Miliaco. Inochi Botanicals no longer has an inworld store and
Misty Rose Designs in Miliaco pretty much did not have one either. There was a store with this lovely cherry tree
in front of it, and a few potted tulips, but it was hardly the full-blown garden nursery we expected. And sad to say, the
lovely rudbeckia that had brought us to Miliaco, was not to be found.
And sadder still,
Misty Rose designs could not get tulips right. The ones in pots had bronze colored stems as if some sort of blight or a monitor
issue had gotten them. These tulips in the picture look healthier, but my One says in real life tulips have more robust stems, and
ones that are as thin as grass would blow over and their blossoms would be pulled off by the wind. As they are for many designers,
plants are/were a sidelight for Misty Rose.
Strangely enough, our
trip to
Miliaco was anything but a dead loss. Next to Misty Rose Designs was the Vine Christian Ministry. My One Who Thinks She Knows, who has not
bushwhacked in weeks suddenly returned to her old form. "Let’s look inside and see if they have a tract table or a library," she
goaded me. I don’t have to tell you, I did not take much goading. We found plenty of food for Shaka so she can eat with the other inmates in the
the orphanage. We did very well for ourselves.
And yes, the
Vine Chiristian Mission had a library, not a big one, and the links may not all be current, but if the links check out, we’ll be making a return trip
here to include the Vine on the Explore SL Spread Sheet!
And of course my One Who Thinks She Knows is still very much in the plant business. We made some partridge peas today.
You’ll see them soon, and just before we went to
Miliaco, my One planted this spotted monarda in the Temperate House. Yes, you have to look hard for the spots.
Yes, it is mostly leaves, but look closely. It is amazing with a little TLC will do for plants. And all of you who sell plants in bulk and stick them
in texture boxes and yawn, My One and I are there to give you a run for your money. Pay a visit to
Stinky Stinky and do some competitive intelligence of your own.
Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- May 12, 2014
Goodbye Little Hotel and More
Go ahead and ask Shaka: "What will you pay to belong?" Don't ask me that because I will spit in your face, and I will half mean it. Shaka is younger, more needy, has fewer resources. She had an adoption go awry very quickly this winter. That hurt. It still hurts. She also can't really be adopted due to her back story. Still both of us stare longingly at the walls of adoption agencies.
I stare until I remember what happened to Iyoba at Never B Solo. Now no one singled Iyoba out for abuse. She was always treated courteously by the actual staff, but adoption is ugly for all adults involved, especially for noncomformist avatarot like Iyoba. The loudspeaker at the adoption center constantly warned adults to be on their best behavior, which most were anyway unless they became upset. It was the kids who could and did do anything. Also, there was no way to renew an active panel, and the center charged adults more than twice the rent of child avatarim. This made Iyoba feel ill-treated. It made her lose heart. There are other reasons she lost heart as well. It's too long to go into here.
And apparently the adoption process would be as brutal if not more brutal on Shaka. Shaka has all ready had one very badly failed informal placement. She doesn't need another. She also doesn't need to be the only kid on the boards that gets ignored beause she is older and looks different. That said, we have tried schools and long ago, Shaka applied to St. Michael's Orphanage, which promptly disappeared when it saw her coming. Well, someone in the Richmond Elementary Group was having a party in a space above the Next Gen Adoption Agency. Worse yet, there were Next Gen staff at the party. Shaka asked if the agency handles long-term foster care. They don't. Shaka then found out about dormitories and had to go to see them. Shaka is sick of being homeless. The Little Hotel was only up five or six days a week. Having to crash elsewhere on the weekend was also awful.
The party also was awful. This was not the fault of the people there being rude or the people throwing it being unpleasant. It was more a case of Shaka's weird attitude toward adults. The adults at the party were playing oldies that were decrepit. These made poor Shaka wince. She also thought that the adults were not dressed appropriately. She had after all put on her new chartreuse hair piece that goes with her avacado blouse with the nasturtiums on it, and new pants, and slides. She was well dressed for a kid told to "look nice," and sent to a day time kiddie party. The adults were dressed like they were at a night club or breaking dress code. Adult hypocrisy kind of... well you know if you remember. I remember, and Shaka knows.
Of course we did not find any dormitories on Youth Quake, so the search engine became our best friend and we visited St. Joseph's Orphanage, and let's just say it looked a little too familiar. "It's back!" Shaka could not contain herself. Also all you had to do was click a rent box to move in. It was only 88L a week for 33 prims worth of space. Sometimes avatarot think for themselves. I was powerless.
All I could do was insist that Shaka check out the living areas. Shaka all ready knew the orphanage was not a prison school, though that could have changed. Also the County Board of Health closed down St. Michael's Orphanage due to poor food quality. I remember seeing green toast on the dining room table and so does Shaka.
Well the green toast was gone, though the no-name soda looked questionable. The soda machine (not shown) was broken, and the pizza and salad were sitting out at room temperature. Shaka promised to gather her own food. I offered to make some for her, and help her gather some free food that was fresh. Avatarim don't get sick, but food left out is gross!
Even if the food were perfect, Shaka would have no one with whom to eat it. She is right now St. Joseph's Orphanage's sole tennant. She spends most of her time away from the orphanage because the the Giano Archipelago is a cold, cruel place. There are too many security orbs. The police cruise the place. Shaka is not an outlaw, but she has only minimal respect for law and order. She has other, higher values such as culture, class, and beauty, her own conception of beauty.
That said, Shaka wasted no time in making her corner home like with a lovely clematis bedspread. (Thank you LC Sculpties handmade in Texas!) and a bed bench with a clematis cushion made from a shrub from LC Sculpties too. Shaka is now in the market for a poster or two. Shaka is always out to spend money. Here she is contemplating how to unburden herself from her load of lindens that is weighing her poor pockets down.
Fortunately, Shaka wants to get in shape, and there is no better place for a middle school girl to do that than a playground. Go to any playground at the right time of day and year, and the middle school girls will dominate all the standard size play equipment. There is nothing like starting up the spinner and keeping it going in the interests of esprt de corps, even with the corps is just Shaka. Shaka doesn't even mind pushing it.
I didn't mind that when I was twelve either. Then there is the see-saw. It gives Shaka a chance to exercise her legs and stomach while singing her favorite Beyonce or Michael Jackson tune. No Marjorie Daw for her! By the way, Richmond Elementary School removed its rope climb, a move that did not sit well with Shaka who does like to get her exercise.
Unfortunately, Shaka's quick, impulsive, grab at a home has left a stunned Caseworker doing back of the envelope math and shaking her head. I can't really persuade Shaka to drop out of Richmond Elementary but the part of me that believes in good value and financial responsibility says that is just what she should do. Paying 88L per week for a place to call home is not too bad. Paying 250L/month on top of that when classes are often not for older kids and at times that are inconvenient is not a great bargain, to say the least. To make matters worse, Shaka really likes the group. The problem is that a group shouldn't cost 250L a month to stay in. I am going to have to sit on Shaka who still has trouble realizing money is finite. She gets paid today. She will probably rush to pay her rent. We are going to have to have a long talk about tuition. And by the way, Iyoba did not put up the Little Hotel in the Sky this week. It may return as a school. We'll see about that.
Eileen H. Kramer with help from Shaka Prynne -- May 8, 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. |