Side of the Road in SL

Location: Sansara Mainland

Tough day at work. And by the time I got home, there was no time to garden. So I hit the virtual road in SL, as I'm wont to do when I need to clear my head.

I learned the term "samsara" in a Buddhism class many years ago, as a cycle in which we are born, die, and are reborn through the ages. I had, perhaps erroneously, associated it with suffering. Nirvana, on the other hand, meant perfection achieved beyond the circles of our world.

So when I set out, from my usual spot near Prokofy Neva's Memory Bazaar, I did not realize that my favored mainland for motoring was called Sansara. It's SL's "Old Continent," suggested by Robin Linden many years ago. I found a vehicle rezzing area with the handy map, shown above. After more than two years, my old home has a name.

Fun abounds on Sansara's roads. I wanted to see how many truly "adult" businesses remain, now that the Linden Lab policies regarding the mainland will force them to move. Only one sighting: a kinky toy-store called "Divine Discipline," which had a person on my friends list suggesting that it re-brand as a form of Catholic education. I know I was beaten a lot by nuns and priests...might be a model for the shop's survival in SL.

Not long before I spotted this shop, I came across a lovely juxtaposition. First, there is this Celebrity-Skin emporium. It's clearly designed for motorists like me, but as usual I passed no other vehicles. A few pedestrians wandered around, and I did my best not to hit them.


Then, right next door, there was a seemingly educational exhibit on urinary sediments. Since the billboard had no interactivity, I was left to guess at its purpose.


I'm not one to judge, but the proximity was so ironic that I cackled long and hard.


Then my car vanished at a sim-crossing...and I floated far above the cycles of hyperbole and despair. If the mainland vanishes one day, or just becomes a huge park with highways, I will miss this tawdry glory.

Garden Interlude: The Illusion of Control

Location: Back & Front Yards

Today is a good day to be in Second Life: the sky turned gray, and it's spitting rain. Yesterday, however, it was sunny and warm. I cut grass, then pulled some weeds from a bed still workable because of recent rains. The soil was rich, dark brown, and perfectly amended from years of organic methods. When the lawn was done, I saw a neighbor pushing his mower. Soon we were all on his patio, drinking beer and sharing stories.

As I worked the soil yesterday, watching irises about to blossom, I thought about those on my SL friends list who are always online. Why do they bother when the day is perfect and the outdoors beckons?

Perhaps they bother for the same reason I make big plans this time of year: we have an illusion of control.

In the Mid-Atlantic states, we have a blissful period when our gardens are not our masters: late March to early June. Then humidity, rampant weeds, and increasingly unstable summer weather bring riot and chaos. Perhaps those who torture their land with herbicides and pesticides don't have these problems, but I don't hold with that practice...in fact, I consider it evil. Such short-sightedness is poisoning our water and reducing biodiversity.

For about eight weeks, however, all gardeners have this wonderful illusion that they can control the flux of nature's gifts and whims.

Yet every day in Second Life, as long as we pay tier and stay within our prim-limits and free of griefers, we appear to be in control. Things mostly remain where we left them. No dust appears on our virtual furniture. The sky can be set to the exact mood and lighting we wish. If we get tired of irksome people, we mute them.

Yet in the long run, are we really in control? What would we do after a sustained outage at Linden Lab? Or worse still, if the Lab shut its doors?
What would become of our perfect gardens then?

H.P. Lovecraft Day in Second Life

Location: Arkham, MA Sim

I knew I'd find the Lovecraftians eventually. Tekelili Tantalus, of Hollow Earth, had told me of a sale at his shops in honor of HP Lovecraft Day. I have no idea why today is a holiday for "HPL," as we fans all call him. It's not his birthday.

If you know nothing of Lovecraft, you may find everything I write unfathomable....

But who needs an explanation when summoning extra-dimensional horrors from beyond the small circle of light that guards our fragile world in order to strip the earth of all terrestrial life and return it, primal and pure, into the howling voids to its original owners where pipes, held in nameless paws, play to accompany Azathoth, the Sultan of Chaos and primal font of all uncleanliness, in his mad dance. Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!

Sorry...back to my post.


Tekelili noted that he wanted to celebrate HPL by offering items--and he's a hell of a designer--at 50% discount. I walked away with a Loremaster avatar shown at the top of this post, weapons, a Lovecraftian monocle, a statue of one of the Great Old Ones, and a set of very cool weapons for roleplaying in Armada. And a little minion of Great Cthulhu shoulder pet...

Friends from Armada came by to lay down their Linden Dollars as well. Storm Thunders, on the right, is a Cray, a race from Mieville's novel The Scar. My friend Viv, of the Armada Council, is at the left.



Get your wallets out today before midnight, SL Time, and go to the Arkham or Hollow-Earth shops.

Virtual Harlem: A Trove of Good Pedagogy

Location: Virtual Harlem Sim

Aha! Moments are not rare in Second Life, though over time I've found them coming a little less frequently as I gain experience in the virtual world.

Simulations that are well made for teaching, however, still get me so excited that I can barely resist the urge to teleport home and begin building one. That was the effect of Virtual Harlem on me, during the a recent tour of the three-sim region. One feels immersed in the place and the presence of others living as though it were the Jazz Age. Classes in writing and African-American studies use the project; other academic disciplines certainly could as well.

I toured an interactive museum of The Men in Bronze: Harlem Hellfighters, a pioneering all-black unit that served our nation in the Great War. The videos there have not been readily available to the public, and museum director Daoud Zipper, an archivist with the Washington University Film Archive, was delighted to share his materials in Virtual Harlem.

He's hoping to re-enact the famous homecoming march of the Hellfighters, from lower Manhattan to Harlem, too. Student, faculty, and friends would portray the marchers as well as the eager crowds that greeted them in a powerfully postive moment in African-American history.


In Virtual Harlem we already had a crowd the day of my tour, including conferees from the conference on Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education. Claudia Linden dropped by Virtual Harlem Books to chat with students from a second-semester writing class led by Bryan Mnemonic. His co-presenters Oronoque Westland (my friend from the SL Education Round Table) and Carrie Pennell are pictured.



I didn't tell Bryan's students that they had guest of honor; Claudia has long been an avid supporter of education at the Lab, and the students were so delighted to talk about their projects and the class that I didn't want to spoil the magic with any self-consciousness.


Time did not permit me to get over to the Cotton Club to chat with Zora Neale Hurston and Bessie Smith. I plan a return visit in my Jazz-Age finest. I was able to catch most of a set by Trowzer Boa's Jazz band, in the public park/performance space. They play live jazz there regularly.