Babar is Running for President?

But I thought you had to be born in America.....

Hey Blanche! This Reminds Me of YOU!

Dearest Blanch-

Blog, darn it!
Love,
badrose

Second Life Friends

These are just a few of the precious friends I have made in Second Life. In a few years I expect you will all have a Second Life of some kind or another. From left to right: "Tita" who knows how to create things out of his brain that are amazing and who has tons of patience; "KFH" aka Kirsty Hawkshaw in Real Life, who is just a wonder on so many levels there is no way to describe her-just let me say again that her presence and spirit gave me grace and a teleport to a new life; "Loverush Pennell," a fine man and close friend who is willing to go shopping on a moment's notice and who is a bright star in his own right as a DJ, producer and generally grand human; then I am on the right, the bumbling, stumbling one who drops in and they all put up with my poor flying, hysterical laughing and whatever is on tap for the times we spend together. Would that you all realize soon that your lives can be ever so much more enhanced by getting your own Second Life!

One more thing-the green picture at the top? A mistake, typical of me at many times, but to go from something like that to being able to take the other pictures? Well, learning occurs throughout our lives, every day, now doesn't it?

Viva la Revolucion!

CUBA...

So I am guessing that the revolution may be about to come to an end. Castro has "retired." What an odd word for a revolutionary to give out to his people and the press. Of course this nearly-lost-in-the-middle-of-the-ceaseless-Obama vs. Clinton-saga piece of news brought up the old, which for a few minutes in the shower this morning made me think of the unyielding past memories of Castro's glory days. The good old post-WW II memories of a child growing up in the 1950's taking everything at face value with no alternate compass for comparison. By 1961, at age 10, the Cold War was raging, but what did it mean for my contemporaries? We were fed fear in huge daily rations left over from 1945. I do not remember my parents ever discussing it around the dinner table where my father held court and we listened to his days' events. To me he was fascinating, so full of life and energy and his daily tales of developing land, building houses and completing a vision his father had begun seemed like the most amazing thing to do. This went on every night.

In contrast, television news, which by that time had become de rigueur for all of us, gave one and all a daily dose of how life as we knew it was on the brink of total destruction. Once in a while I wondered why my father was doing all of this while the world was just about to come to an end. All I wanted to do was eat ice cream as that seemed like the most sensible thing to do under the threat of impending doom.

Pause...this blog has just been interrupted...a friend just asked what I'm doing and then referred me to the following youtube video. You must not, I repeat, must not, continue reading until you have watched it. Perhaps you remember it?



Okay...now that you've seen the video you've got my frame of reference.

Continuing on, this video and many others like it were shown to school children throughout the U. S. in order to prevent widespread panic. What it did, of course, now that you've seen it, was to provoke hysterical yet inner-directed terror which I have always maintained created a collective anxiety disorder that continues to this day. I've had my meds today, have you? I cannot speak for others but I suspect if I took a poll of my peers they would say this malarkey was directly responsible for a basic mistrust of government that simmered and then boiled over during the Vietnam War.

Anyway, back to the world in the eyes of a 10-year old child. So we watched this drivel and did not believe one word of it. There was not a word of discussion as we just didn't do that then but we all knew that we were cooked geese but didn't know what day it would happen. Not if but when and way before the color-coded, post-9/11 rainbow scale of imminent doom. I bet some of ya'll right now are going, oh yeah, hell, I forgot about THAT! What happened to THAT! The memory of it lingers on in the incessant scroll; that's what happened to it.

Back to the fallout shelter. This is what my parents proposed to do to save us all, which included a housekeeper, a cook, my father's driver (yes, we were spoiled), my parents, four sisters, a St. Bernard, three poodles and my turtles:

If we were lucky enough to hear a siren (not available) at school we were to calmly walk home. Okay. No problem. Then we were to go into one room in the basement, all of us mind you, and begin stacking up newspapers and magazines such as Look, Life and National Geographics against the walls as they would prevent fallout from entering this room. Oh everyone knew that. This room was unadorned with anything except a half bath that no one in their right mind would ever use, a safe that hadn't been opened in many years and the dampness and odor much like old potatoes that was noxious enough to gag a maggot. Swell. Eternity for the foreseeable future in that room with people I was quite sure were not really my family as it had all been a horrible mistaken identity thing at the hospital nursery.

Oops, one more thing. Mother had taken the time out from her busy schedule with this woman's club or the other to grab a few cans of vegetables and beef stew, because after all we did have to eat SOMETHING. We did not have Spam on hand, however, as my Father had had enough of that while adrift in the Pacific after his twice-torpedoed light cruiser Admiral Halsey thought cool to use as a decoy before the Battle of Midway. Hell, why not, they're already out there, collateral damage, cool, go for it. Apparently it worked.

So what does all of this have to do with Castro? I thought by now you'd forget but here goes. I know it is a lot to ask of a mere human, but if your whole life is lived as a revolutionary couldn't you have just pretended to live the rest of it out without the word "retired" attached to it? What a waste. One little word has diminished the whole bit. I feel almost dirty. In my secret world, the darkest pit of wishes, I was hoping he would put himself in a missile launcher and direct himself to Miami-now THAT would be totally in keeping with his character, the ultimate parting shot, AND it would make me feel better about all of the time spent under my desk or thinking about a brief time of hell in the basement with all of those people and animals.

More on Second Life

If you think my previous post was nonsense about Second Life ("it's just a stupid game"), just read this Reuters article. Brilliant.

Second Life

Second Life – The World of Ideas

I am 55 years old, which in some circles relegates me to Senior Citizen status, only meaning in practical terms at this point that I get discounts on medications and groceries at the local pharmacy and that I am still ten years away from Medicare benefits. It also means that I am viewed by any demographic you may choose as a dinosaur. OH, REALLY??? I think not, and here’s a lovely little story about how connections can be made and go around the world and where there is no such thing as time. This story is not about me but about ALL of us.

There needs to be a bit of short background for the whole Second Life story to be complete. I began the journey to Second Life thanks to Myspace. I joined in 2004 without the urging of my sons but I did it anyway. To be honest, it was a way to connect with them and their friends, and despite the press’ negative stories it has been quite handy on more than one occasion when there was no other way to get in touch with them. After a few months my youngest son Alex told me of some correspondence he’d been having with a singer in the UK named Kirsty Hawkshaw. Alex is a very modest person and a bit secretive so my parental ears perked up. I did a Wikipedia search and found that she had quite a history of musical accomplishments and thought how nice for her to lend a young musician a bit of encouragement. Her efforts singlehandedly saved him from a sense of hopelessness and her words inspired him to begin a never-ceasing series of brilliant poems, lyrics and ever-reaching higher aspirations.

After some months I decided to contact Kirsty and we had several lovely conversations by messaging and when Alex’s birthday rolled around she suggested which Korg device and microphone he should get so they could begin file-sharing. Present bought, files shared, music made! This eventually turned up as a real world experience when in November of 2006, Kirsty and Alex, meeting in real life for the first time, were together and where Kirsty, gracious soul that she is, actually allowed Alex to open her signature song, Just Be.



At about this time I became aware that Kirsty was experimenting with a new medium called Second Life. The first memory I have of this is that she did an Second Life video of her and Alex’s first collaboration called Hypoheretic, a song which reached 20,000 plays on her Myspace page before she decided to feature it on her newly created website, http://www.kirstyhawkshaw.co.uk/. Just for fun, guess who is now the co-moderator of her website (read ‘porn deleter’). That’s right-moi.

I joined SL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_life) in March of 2007 at Kirsty’s urging, and I will tell all who read this without equivocation that it has been a life-changing event. Myspace had only created the desire for more and SL filled that space for me in so many ways it is impossible to describe them all. If you don't care to read the wiki explanation above, I can just tell you that, in short, it is an online, virtual, 3-D world filled with with the user-created content of all of its members. All of a sudden, dropping into SL for the first time I had a real-time, interactive experience with Kirsty, her fans, friends and the occasional drop-in from other sims. Now mind you I am not a techie so it was very difficult to get started, and I still suffer a bit from post-traumatic “can’t detach the dancing cow” disorder but plod through with the help from my new friends and. Kirsty had begun having Saturday afternoon theme parties at her Club Connected in Mephit and they were like no others I’ve ever attended. Just as in any Real Life party the mix of personalities defined each one as a separate, storied tale, each having in common, though, a brilliant blend of music, conversation, worldwide humor and at the end of each, a wrenching feeling that it would be six more days before we all would meet again. This is not a game. It is real, as real as any other experience that I’ve ever had-the only part missing, of course, is the reality of being in one another’s physical space.

That piece of the puzzle was filled in on August 27, 2007 when I flew from Virginia to Chicago to attend the SL Convention. I almost passed out several times from being so overwhelmed by all of it: the people in the real world, press attention, fellowship-all of it. I sat next to a lady who is an educator in RL who is very interested in the application possibilities for those diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, a wide-ranging spectrum of autism. I remember one funny little multifaceted piece of time quite clearly: this lady and I are sitting in the guest area near the elevator talking about autism when ABC news people crowd around and begin to interview her. She shows them her home in Second Life on her laptop and you can see that they are not quite getting it but are curious. She has this knowing smile on her face as any good-natured, patient teacher is apt to have and tries to explain the inexplicable, finally saying “you’ve just got to be there to fully understand it.”
At about this time I glimpse Philip Rosedale, the creator of Second Life, walking to the elevator, giving our scene a sideways glance and he has the same bemused, KNOWING smile that everyone there had all weekend. He has been onto this idea of connecting the communities of the world in an environment where the limitations are truly only the ones we place on ourselves.

A few weeks later Alex and I filled in another puzzle piece by flying to visit Kirsty in the UK and where Alex and Kirsty created not one or two but seven tracks of music in one week that was also filled with the amazing presence of others from SL, including SirHermanBingy and Elrik Merlin, each of whom brought their part of brilliance to the party of Real which was just a continuance of the world of SL.

The best part of the story is that this is not the end but rather just the beginning, as worlds collide and then merge, connections are made, information is exchanged, ideas are sprung, tweaked and tinkered with, and the Second Life universe expands. Kirsty Hawkshaw is a connector, a visionary who has since her career began, been far ahead of her time and is, on a daily basis, as a leader, encouraging each of us by example to reach out beyond ourselves. Music has a new definition for me now and I find I must define lots of things: time, space, friendship, distance, and each baby step we take towards one another makes this a better world.

More Mamie

Well, after yesterday all kinds of Mamie stories started coming up and I now feel compelled to write a bit more about her. I adored her-she was fascinating in every respect. The whitest teeth on earth, one in the front with a delicate gold rim around it. She had poreless skin of the finest mocha. Her hair was always done, most often in a kind of pageboy; no small feat-it was a horrible ordeal to watch her straighten her hair, but whenever I could I sat like a curious cat to see the process.

The best part about Mamie, though, was her laugh, and I will never adequately describe it in mere words. It was most often heard as the final punctuation at the end of one of her endless stories of how she had three or four boyfriends fighting over her all the time and how she would just laugh and laugh. Her head would flip back, and I could see all of her teeth (no cavities, before fluoride!) and the laugh that came out was from some other planet. If you were the Devil himself that laugh would force you to chime right on in with her, but she had no peer in the raucous department.

I don't know if it was the laugh or something else that should be on the market right this minute but men loved her. They flocked just like sheep whenever and wherever we went. When we went to Virginia Beach in the summer, Mamie went with us, and thanks to her the delivery man brought our groceries earlier than for anyone else. And he lingered. And lingered. And lingered. He'd finally leave and then she'd trot out that laugh and we'd fall all over ourselves laughing, but we didn't know why. She probably had all of the secrets in the universe compressed into that laugh and when it erupted there was just nothing like it.

Mamie told us great long stories of escapades with men who brought her gifts of all kinds and of great expense. Apparently she took great delight in throwing them back at these gentleman callers when she was finished toying with their nuclei accumben, though I think she did keep a few of the more valuable trinkets just in case the men had re-gifting on their minds. She did wear quite a lot of rings and also told us that she had some furs. One time when she was babysitting for us at night, a gentleman came by with a Pepsi-Cola for her. Guess how many nanoseconds it took for her to blow him off the porch.

Sorry, Badrose, I just right 'em down as they come to me...this too, will be continued...

Boot Camp for Cocktail Waitressing and Life

I had no idea there were so many things to learn before life was to begin. Somehow, early on, I got the impression that from birth to say, about the time I was supposed to snag a rich husband that anything I did was in preparation for THE ONE and that nothing else was really all that important. Most of this was supposed to come to me by osmosis, as my parents really never told me very much about anything. Here are the two things my mother told me that seemed really important to her:

1) Don't ever do anything with a man that would cause you to feel uncomfortable around him at a cocktail party in 30 years

2) If you ever feel bad, just put on some lipstick and you'll immediately feel better

Well, that just about sums up the parenting. On speed dial. She was really a busy person. I had no idea what she did, though it always seemed like it was really important that she go somewhere. Now I understand that she just wanted to get away from 5 children and 4 dogs and I don't blame her. She also had 0 parenting skills most likely because she was raised by her older siblings. She was born in 1919 when both of her parents were in their 40's, and my grandmother was mortified to think that people would know she'd been having sex at at such an advanced age so she more or less pushed Mother off on the others to raise. At least that is what I think based on what she told me. My aunt and uncle used to take her to the cemetery where they'd all go to drink, and they'd tell her that they'd stick her in a grave if she told on them. I am SURE that didn't warp her.

Things I was unaware of for the longest time:

1) That the real world was not black and white before color movies came along. I actually thought this.

2) That people who lived through the Great Depression were actually depressed themselves-the stories I was told made it sound almost cool to have suffered through that.

3) That it is not true that men will be forced to rape you if they become aroused-I got this one courtesy of Mamie, a wonderful housekeeper who gave me tons of lovely misinformation like this.

4) That people lie on occasion. This one is still getting to me. I took just about everything anyone ever told me as the Gospel Truth, and that gullibility still rears its ugly head quite often.

I think that is enough list-making for today, but this is just a bit of the boot camp that lasted for 18 years. When my father died that changed everything.

To be continued...