Month: September 2013

Remembrance

I hate this day.

Twelve years later, how should we continue to observe this tragic day? I will share my own personal opinion, noting that it is mine, applies to me only, and everyone else’s opinion is up to them.

What I hate about this day is the extent to which we allow ourselves to be frozen in grief, or in anger. Both emotions are honorable, appropriate, and good. But if we aren’t mindful, they can define us. Then, every year on this day, we find ourselves observing the occasion by striking out in rage against whoever it is we blame.

To me, that awards a victory to the terrorists.

I’ve never understood how killing someone is supposed to prove that one is better, or stronger. To me it only proves that one is more brutal.

For me… and I emphasize, for ME… the best way to honor this day is to be as unlike those terrorists as I possibly can be. To choose to act in the way that is as different as possible from what they hoped to achieve.

Today, instead of rage, I will embrace compassion. Compassion is the polar opposite of what they wanted us to feel. They expected that we would be enraged, and respond in kind, striking back with brutality as they struck us. But they don’t get to have their way–not from me, anyway.

I have no control over what governments do. I can only control what I do.

So today, instead of tearing down, I am going to build something.

Instead of feeling fear, I am going to do something fun.

Instead of feeling grief, I am going to rejoice in love.

And that is how I defeat terrorists.

Littlefield Grid members observing the day together at the 9-11 Memorial
Littlefield Grid members observing the day together at the 9-11 Memorial

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New Horizons

It was late April of 2010 when Walter first led us to explore grids other than Second Life. At that time, visiting other grids was pretty grim for those of us who find our pleasure the virtual world more by art and design than by technology. It’s hard to believe just how far we have come in three short years. What was the barren frontier has become a perfectly reasonable alternative to Second Life.

It’s been awhile since I posted anything about what I have been up to on our grid. So I’m taking this opportunity just to share a few snapshots of what I’ve been building.

In April of 2013, almost exactly 3 years after we first tried Opensim, in a vast leap of faith, we opened our own independent virtual world: Littlefield Grid. Here is our Admin Team arriving at the Grand Opening gala.

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We just added our 500th member a couple of weeks ago, and are closing in on 600 already. Littlefield Grid consists of about 140 regions, centered around a central shopping district and five welcome and hangout regions. The welcome regions include Littlefield Hangout, a beautiful redwood grove.

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Littlefield Engineering is a hangout for those who like to talk tech. It was my experiment in Brutalist architecture.

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One of Littlefield’s distinctions is our enthusiastic band of content creators. I have built lots of stores for them, where they share their creations with members for free. For me, building a store is often an opportunity to explore a new architectural style. I created a few stores in Art Deco style for my beloved who especially likes that style.

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One of the biggest challenges, when we left SL for the Opensimulator world, was vegetation. The quality of available landscaping materials in Opensim worlds in 2010 was distressingly poor, especially compared to what was available in SL. But three years later, things are looking up; we now have one whole sim of good plants and decent trees (and they are all free to our residents).

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I enjoyed learning about Victorian style when building this Queen Anne and a Victorian shopping street.

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One of my most recent builds was a conference center in the style of a mountain lodge – my little homage to the luxury hotels in the National Parks of the Western U.S.

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For more snapshots of Littlefield Grid, with many more photos of my builds, visit Camryn’s Flickr stream.

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Never stop learning

“No one is good to start with;

It takes practice for your work to match your vision.”

This wisdom comes from the amazing Robin Sojourner, one of the most respected creative forces in the virtual world. Robin’s quietly generous creativity permeates the virtual world through her free scripts and templates, the beautiful things she makes, and her teaching of building and texturing skills. “One of the things that excites me,” she says, “is that people who have no idea that they are creative come into Second Life and find out that they can make things. We are taught, at some point early in life, that creativity is reserved for the ‘creative types’ and they are special and there are only a few of them… and it’s just not true. All of us can do it.”

I was like that. If you’d told me in early 2006 that within a few years I would be so engaged in creating, I would have laughed. But now look. I’ve built whole towns and countless sims, and everything from jewelry to palaces. It turns out I have an eye for fashion and for architecture, something I would never have known about myself, had it not been for the virtual world.

But I think I am not done learning yet.

We have a similar creative force on Littlefield Grid, the marvelous Aaack Aardvark, who is generously giving his time to teach us how to make things in mesh. Our classes are fun and enlightening, and Aaack is a wonderful teacher who keeps us laughing. I am having a great time. The learning curve will not be easy, but with help, who knows. Maybe I can finally make a tree that satisfies me. Maybe more.

The day that you stop learning is the day that you start dying. Keep opening yourself to new things.