New World Notes: Sander's Villa: The Man Who Gave His Father a Second Life

New World Notes: Sander's Villa: The Man Who Gave His Father a Second Life

I really recommend this museum. It is wonderful.

Rennete

To find an inspiration or my muse is not quite simple. It is more difficult, when you have to write or to talk about it, just only to show, who you are yourself. The ideas chaotically flow here and there. Some sleeplessness has been troubling you during the dreamless nights. And then?! This Moon with its majestic magnificence as a full moon pushes you down!

Early morning this huge circle is still shining. However, over its face the wide bands of the black clouds are coming along. Maybe my muse comes and suggests me, whether I can hope for an accomplishment of the most fervid wishes.

It has happened. Her face is still blurry, but I can identify her. We have never met each other. She is coming near and my heart beat is coming behind its limits. Maybe only few small steps to …

Both worlds have merged into one. There was a cruel awakening of treacherous Moon. What I just did you? It is useless to be irritated; the world of dreams and visions is like the virtual one, which reflects the real one.

---

She was the most beautiful woman of France. Her family and friends called her Rennette. However, she was called Jeanne Antoinette Poisson and later as married – Madame d'Étiolles. The French King loved her implicitly and introduced her to the court in Versailles, in spite of a big protest of the court and family. She was the cleverest woman of France and she governed King and France in a certain sense, even if they had called her as a bitch.

She died at the age of 42 in Versailles. When her coffin left Versailles, King said: “La marquise n'aura pas beau temps pour son voyage.“ (“The marquise won't have good weather for her journey.“) Only her Élysée Palace has remained. Toady, it serves as the residence of the French presidents.

She was called Marquise de Pompadour.

(Source: Wikipedia.org)

SLurls: Arc de Triomphe, Alma Bridge

Valentine

Late evening, on the first of May—
The twilit May—the time of love.
Meltingly called the turtle-dove,
Where rich and sweet pinewoods lay.
Whispered of love the mosses frail,
The flowering tree as sweetly lied,
The rose's fragrant sigh replied
To love-songs of the nightingale.
In shadowy woods the burnished lake
Darkly complained a secret pain,
By circling shores embraced again;
And heaven's clear sun leaned down to take
A road astray in azure deeps,
Like burning tears the lover weeps.

(Karel Hynek Mácha: May)

February is now only and these verses about love would look like not to fit to the current time. But it is not so like one could imagine for the first look. I am not in no way some favorer of the coming holiday, St. Valentine, because it has no absolutely anything to do with history and culture of my country.

Traditionally, just May is connected with love. Nevertheless, I have not resisted and I have strayed in SL at a ball in our community yesterday. This one was just Valentine’s ball. There were several people in the romantic arbour in Bohemia. So, I have call one lady to dance. Evening has run in nice atmosphere, so no one has wanted to leave.

What was there? So I offer some pictures for an inspiration, even if two last ones are from other time and other place.


The whole poem is here.

Wealth

"Gold is the money of kings; silver is the money of gentlemen; barter is the money of peasants; but debt is the money of slaves."

(Norm Franz: Money and Wealth in the New Millenium)^*

Have you ever held it in you handy? Of course, I think physical gold. This is the yellow metal, which is pleasant to touch and also to look. And also nowadays after many millennia, what people know it, it fascinates, attracts and tempts them. They are able to do everything to acquire it, and at the same time they do not sometimes detest even the most terrible thing, which man can do it to another one.

However, there are even other possibilities to exchange – however not with gold, silver or other precious metals. It is money, concretely paper money, but also virtual money of which real value one can maybe doubt.

When Marco Polo showed Venetians paper money, which he had imported from far China, one form the attendees had took one note and had lighted it. Of course, it burned completely. After that this man took out one coin from his pouch and knocked on a hilt of his sword: “This is a sound of money!” Marco said: “You just burned the note valued at ten golden Venetian ducats.”

Is it that real wealth, which is in our wallets as the notes and coins of dubious value? Is it that, what enrich us? Or is it a freely convertible virtual currency in the whole world like credit cards, bank accounts or checks?

These are quite hard questions and probably there is no unique answer. Whether you think about the real world or about virtual one. I always will be an opinion of particular person.

I try to outline, how I see it, and for both worlds.

Real Life

Something to own is thing, which man has maybe encoded in its genes already from the very ancient time. Maybe even the predecessors of contemporary Homo sapiens sapiens (wise man) wanted to own something, what the others did not have and they regarded it as a kind of “their wealth”. Remember the opening sequence of the movie: A Space Odyssey: 2001. Some chief of one troop find a long bone and begin to bang with it on earth. When he finds out its strength, he tries to beat some animal similar to today’s pig a he kills it. Later he uses this weapon against another troop of modern men in a battle for a water source – the wealth – and hi kills chief of this troop. The first murder in a history of humanity comes to the world.

Nowadays the wealth concentrates to collect all sorts of everything, starting with money, properties, things and ending with others. The mammon governs the world. But to be not so skeptical, there are people that are at least indifferent to that. Their wealth is the wealth of an intellect, whether it is the fine art, the architecture art or the music art, gourmet art, art of enjoying the life, art of love and many others. This is the wealth that I respect and I strive to achieve it. But to have money is still always good. Do not you think? The old saying already says it: “Do not enter into the pub without money!”

Second Life

“Just I do not know!” This world has fascinated me for long time. However, I have never thought about some wealth form. As an avatar you collect many things until your inventory already is overflowed. And to find something there it is sometimes quite horror. Nevertheless, you feel the most things as nothing important one.

Everybody knows that. As newbies, you took everything, what was close to you and cost nothing. The reason was evident – no lindens. Later you obtained some lindens, mostly from today non-existent “camping“, or you had to hire for some job (dancer, DJ, companion, escort service, etc.) and in the best case you have rented something or have sold your own creations to other in SL.

For me the SL wealth is something other. Yes, my inventory contains many nice things with excellent design, mainly branded products. There are several things of the personal character there too. I received them form somebody and I never give them away. However, the avatars are the right wealth of Second Life world, actually live being behind them. This is the right social, multidimensional network. This is an attribute, which will never unsew to SL. And in my private opinion, SL is more “social network” than Facebook.

Tedy:

• The wealth is nice, sometime.
  
• The wealth sometime hurts and sometime troubles.
  
• The wealth is a contribution.
  
• The wealth is a burden.
  
• We want the wealth.
  
• We hate the wealth.
  

We pay for everything.

However, we are not able ever to pay off the wealth.

^*Quoted from a presentation of Nick Barisheff, January 6, 2011 at the Empire Club 17th Annual Investment Outlook Luncheon, full text here

Poppies in the wind and Falco

A piece of work comes to the world as from the movements that failed
as from those ones that succeeded.

You cannot divide any human being, and if you allow to live only the great sculptors,
then you will not have any great sculptors.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

They waved only so, these red little skirts, in the wind. It bowed them first to the one side and then to the other side. They did not scare. They did not scare even of a pestilent fire that somebody kindled on a small fireplace. Maybe he did it to heat water for a cup of tea, to roast potatoes or to barbecue some sausage.

However, a white duvet covered all country. The poppies disappeared to yield to hegemony of the Lady of Winter. I had a feeling, as if I had lost some something. Something, what never come back. I still see these red dots on the golden plains of the ripening corn.

After that some shadow slashed the sky. There was a big bird that majestically flew there. It eagle-eyed looked down to the earth and looked for its prey. However, it was not a merlin. It was peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus). It stooped to the earth so that it forever disappeared in the distance.

These poppies flow in the wind on the wall of my room.

Falco and his Jeanny sound form his special album of 25^th anniversary as a Deluxe Edition from the speakers of my tower, also in my room.

Mixed (pick 'n' mix) feelings at solstice

Solstice – in Latin “solstitium” = “sol” (sun) + “statum” (stay motionless)
Welsh word for the solstice is “point of roughness”.
Talmud calls it as “Tefukat Tevet”, i.e. the first day of “striping time”.

Longtime I have not anything written, but as onetime I am sitting on the roof in Bohemia, the hard feelings is pouring on me from the last days. It is due to this season shortly after the solstice, or coming of the Christmas. I do not know.

Time goes so fast that one does not suffice to remember all occurrences from our world and also them from the other world. Maybe only several snapshots that show it. It is this roof, party by Nancy and a resurrection of the disappeared Slovakia at the party of its long-time friends.

Let us stay in coming time, same way as our Sun did it.

Let me allow quote Alan Furst about the solstice:

“…day, when supposedly the sun does a break… Pleasant idea… As if the universe stopped for a moment to think about something and to take a day off. One directly feels how time slows.”

Marry Christmas a Happy New Year 2011

Coral

World AIDS Day 2010

Today is December 1 and many of us in a big hurry and a Christmas rush, by cleaning fresh snow or by carefully driving on the frozen roads, have forgotten that today is the World day of the fight against on of the most terrible illness in the world – AIDS. When I in year 2008 wrote in the context of Second Life world about this day (here), some both sad and terrible statistics had been missed there. So, here are the facts about HIV and AIDS.

• To date around 65 million people have been infected with HIV and AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since it was first recognized in 1981.
  
• The vast majority of the 38.6 million people living with HIV in 2005 are unaware of their status.
  
• In 2005 AIDS claimed the lives of 2.8 million people and over 4 million people were newly infected with the virus.
  
• At around 17.3 million, women make up almost half of the total number of people living with the virus.
  
• Sub-Saharan remains the most affected region in the world. Two-thirds of all people living with HIV, 24.5 million, are in sub-Saharan Africa.
  
• Declines in HIV prevalence have been noted in some countries, including Kenya, Zimbabwe, urban parts of Haiti and Burkina Faso and four Indian states including Tamil Nadu.
  
• There are more new HIV infections every year than AIDS-related deaths and as more people become infected with HIV, more people will die of AIDS-related illnesses.
  
• Worldwide, fewer than one person in five at risk of becoming infected with HIV has access to basic prevention services. Only one person in eight who want to be tested is currently able to do so.
  
• Each day, 1500 children worldwide become infected with HIV, the vast majority of them newborns.

What will you do for this thing? I have donated into above mentioned fund in RL and in SL I wear the symbol of the fight against AIDS – red ribbon.

Sources: Care, Keep A Child Alive, USA Today, World AIDS Day 2010

Time

Jacques Prévert

transl.: Johnny Mercer

Autumn Leaves
(Les feuilles mortes)

Oh, je voudrais tant que tu te souviennes Des jours heureux où nous étions amis En ce temps là la vie était plus belle Et le soleil plus brûlant qu'aujourd'hui Les feuilles mortes se ramassent à la pelle Tu vois je n'ai pas oublié Les feuilles mortes se ramassent à la pelle Les souvenirs et les regrets aussi Et le vent du nord les emporte Dans la nuit froide de l'oublie Tu vois je n'ai pas oublié La chanson que tu me chantais C'est une chanson, qui nous ressemble Toi tu m'aimais et je t'aimais Nous vivions tous les deux ensemble Toi qui m'aimais, moi qui t'aimais |: Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s'aiment Tout doucement sans faire de bruit Et la mer efface sur le sable Les pas des amants désunis :| Les pas des amants désunis

Autumn leaves fall and are swept out of sight The words that you said have gone too Autumn leaves fall and are swept out of sight So are the memories of love that we knew The wind of forgetfulness blows then Into the night of regret, The song you would often sing Is echoing, echoing yet The falling leaves drift by the window The autumn leaves of red and gold I see your lips, the summer kisses The sun-burned hands I used to hold Since you went away, the days grow long And soon, I'll hear old winter's song But I'll miss you most of all, my darling, When autumn leaves start to fall When autumn leaves start to fall

The scenery is going so fast behind the windows. On scene is switching over another one. It is like slow movie, when the frame by the frame of the film strip passes the light source and it is grabbed by the optics, i.e. by the system of the magic lens, to show the two-dimensional picture to the impatient viewers.

However, it is only an illusion. Only bit to draw mist away and to look through a time mirror. An eyewink, the reality is back again. The car is driving through the hairpins and is coming near to a village. It is long time that I was here. The memories are coming up from my memory.

We are on the place. The car has driven through the village and then into the forest. Only for me as if time has stopped. Actually no in the literal sense, because time still passes. It is never-ending story. So, we, PEOPLE, invented it!

In vain I am seeking some words. After all it is useless, though! It suffices only to listen. Yes, it is that space banked by the trees, in whose treetops wind is spinning. I want only to wait. I want only to embrace everything around me. I want only to forget.

The dead leafs cover the graves of the dead. Autumn has come.

(P. S. I wrote this contribution after our visit of the small forest graveyard, where my beloved great-grandmother rest in peace.)

One Day

It will be one day and the world will be change.

And then at one day, the world has been really changed itself.

This what it was, now it is not of that what has every been.

The old assurances has been changed themselves into certain real life.

Are we only the freaks or do we take the clear place in the middle of the universe?

Face to face of cruel nature, we are still here.

And then as from the clean sky, the lightning enlightens our tiny existence.

Welcome in the world of the Second Life!

Meetings

So, do you know such a feeling too that you have been anywhere here? Or do you know her/him? Frenchmen have for that nice collocation, actually it is a literal translation – already seen – déjà vu. So, I still experience such feeling in Second Life. But maybe it is thanks to go to the same places.

However, just there are those right people, you can find there everything you want or everything you long for. Yes, sometimes it is a people crowd. Some other time, you would like to arrange your thoughts an to be alone. Alone and lost in the never-ending space of SL, lost in never-ending time depths.

Nevertheless, then you come back to the same places, you meet same people or you meet some new ones and you enrich your second life. Like me just now. I am writing this contribution now and in the same time I am talking with somebody that I have randomly in my friend list on Facebook and she is from Brazil. First, she has been trying in Portuguese, me in English and finally, she has been talking to me in Czech. But what Czech? Omg, a mad internet translator! Sometime it is sidesplitting, but she is trying hard.

It is not only about that to watch the sunsets or sunrises or a sky studded with stars.

It is not only about that to sit and to meditate somewhere,

It is not only about that to be.

It is about a life

It is about a friendship.

It is about a love.

Just there is no difference between this world and the other one, at least for me.

And what about you?

Africa

They say that Africa is a humankind cradle. In Olduvai, an ancestor of the contemporary man appeared for the first time – Homo habilis and Homo erectus – and from the heart of Africa, it spread into the whole world. The area of the East African Rift Valley is rich for the many fossil findings and Olduvai is just here in Tanzania. However in year 2002, Brunet et al. published in scientific journal Nature^* about the oldest hominid petrifaction. This would not have been anything so strange, but question is: Where were found these petrifactions? The scientists found them in distance of 2500 km (1 553.43 miles) from the East African Rift Valley in central Africa in Chad and they estimated their age between 6 and 7 million years!!! This is Africa surprising.

Africa, these are the streets of Marrakesh, the pyramids near to Cairo, the temples in Luxor and Karnak, the cities like Casablanca and Alexandria, the lost Timbuktu with its doors, the endless plains of the deserted and sometimes green deserts like Sahara or Kalahari, or the deep and impenetrable rainforests with the richness of flora and fauna that often disappear forever.

Africa, these are the Nile River with its cataracts and with all burying Aswan Dam, waters of the Victoria Falls, with snow covered peak of the highest mountain known as Kilimanjaro and the deep mines with diamonds and gold in Kimberley and Congo.

Africa is also the extreme poverty in glamour of the riches. It is hopelessness, high unemployment, pain and sadness, worry and death. These are the depopulated villages. These are prejudices and superstitions. It is hunger, HIV and it is AIDS.

I was in Africa only once sometime in year 1985, it was in Algeria. Nothing of what I have now written, I have seen or experienced. Only the oleander flowers attracted me through their aroma and I drowned in them under rays of hot African sun.

Come back to the reality. Africa has materialized for me on just ending weekend. The theatre “Husa na Provazku” (Goose on String) in Brno has entertained some group of people, enthusiasts, doubters, but even faithful and selfless people and donators this Saturday (26.06.2010). Africa has materialized for me in the form of the large photos, beads and small baskets made by people that are far. Africa has materialized for me in the form of African drummers from Congo; by the way they live in Czech Republic. Their drums have totally overturned the world and the theater has become a furnace of Africa.

However, in an intermission we have listened narrative of Missis Gita Fuchsova about many projects that are under way in Kenya and in neighbouring countries. Missis Gita Fuchsova is the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary and Permanent Representative of the Czech Republic to the UNEP and UN-Habitat ((UNEP = United Nations Enviroment Programme, UN-Habitat = United Nations Human Settlements Programme).

The wide spectrum of programs has covered, for example, the preventive vaccination of dogs in Mt. Kula mountain chain in Kenya, which is every year made by people from the University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Brno and they do it successfully. It is also “Doll for UNICEF” project, where the voluntaries sew some doll and it is offered to an adoption for 600 CZK. This amount is needed to revaccinate of one child in the underdeveloped countries against six mortal child illnesses.
And of course, it was Bwindi Orphans, because this civically association and its activities in Uganda were a midpoint of that day. It has begun by some afternoon talk and has continued then in the theater passage and in the evening also during the concert. It was not missing also a connection between Bwindi Orphans and the virtual world Second Life, which was tried to explain by Fanda Ryba. I think that he has succeeded it. At his presentation, he has shown us also several pictures from SL, where is also placed the school, for which there is a fund-raising campaign through the pink pigs that are on many sims of Czech and Slovak community in SL. Around this school you can see also picture made by the court photographer of Bwindi Orphans Michal Prihoda. The account amount is updated regularly on this web site and all donators (more than 400) are there listed even with the respective amount of Linden dollars. To this day (01.07.2010) people has donated 634 805 L$.

However, the performance of the band called Cankisou (maybe pronounced as Tschankeyshow). This band was founded by bigbeat musicians at some Christmas party in year 1999. With help of the most various instruments form the whole world, they threw themselves into absolutely new waters of ethno, world music and in an original way, and they based their work on some legend about an ancient uniped nation of Canki (Tschanki). During 10 years of it existence, the band has gained the solid place in musical sun and today they belong to the top of Czech world music.

To describe an atmosphere in an auditorium and even on a stage is quite difficult, one have to experience it. So, at least there are several pictures from this event here: ones on the official site of Bwindi Orphans and other ones on Zuza Ritt stream. Well, finally you can look at three clips of Cankisou only for an idea what they play.

Zuha clip was shot in Pakistan by LP Fish during our participation in World Performing and Visual Arts festival 2007 in Lahore. Borrega clip is animated one made by students at Film Academy of Miroslav Ondricek and Independent Film College in Pisek. Last one was based on materials that Michal Prihoda recorded and shot in Uganda.

^*M. Brunet et al.: A new hominid from the Upper Miocéne of Chad, Central Africa. Nature 418, 2002, 145.

Pictures: Offical site of BWO [only in Czech], Zuza Ritt stream

SLurl: 3D-model of the school on Shinyland

(Sources: Cankisou [only in Czech], UNICEF, UNEP, UN-Habitat, University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences Brno, Embassy in Nairobi, Wikipedia, YouTube)

Destiny – Disaster – Reality

Some situation can come by each of us, the situation, which influences everyone very markedly. And so that way that one never can forget it and even one will ever forget. Is this an omen? Maybe yes.

This day was not or did not begin like any other. All day there was the big hot (about 34 °C = 93.2 °F) in the shade. It lured to go somewhere to water and to take one’s poor body into the cool waves. On the other hand, many people inclusive me did not want to leave their houses and to beat down sun.

Nevertheless, finally I gave out on the town and sat in some café on the summer terrace. I looked at the world around. At the same time, I looked at the world around me in Second Life. The next moment, as if these two worlds began to penetrate each other and to blend in one.

The darkness had come, slowly like some creeping creature. Yes, the world had darkened, but it was other darkness than if sun sets and the sky is covered with the distant or nearby worlds.

If we would substitute one of the Aristotle elements – fire – for the phenomenon light, that this one had switched off. Strange darkness interlaced with the wads and the cords of heavy rain (water element) however was full of light of lightening and noise of thunders (fire element).

Did the world go crazy? No, it did not, only the nature showed one of its features. There were hard features, because the trees felt down. There were the trees, which destroyed the houses. There were the trees, which killed. One woman died and her five dogs maybe will be placed in some pound.

It was the destiny.

It was the disaster.

Only the reality.

In The Light of the Moment
In the Embrace of the Fire

11.6.1775

An avatar is an interactive, social representation of a user.
(Mark Stephen Meadows: I, Avatar – The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life)

It is a bit strange title of my today‘s article, isn’t it? Not particularly, I titled it so advisedly, because this day in my country will be the hottest in a row of day just form this very distant date. Today’s outsider temperature should reach 34 °C (93.2 °F), in the shade of course. The streets will become void, the swimming pools and the natural lakes and ponds will crowd, and people maybe will hide at home themselves.

So take swimwear, towels, something to drink and hooray to water!

And what about to water in Second Life? Everything is possible, as I have made sure yesterday, when I have received some IM: … i am in sl by the swimming pool and i bathe …” It only suffices to search through an inventory, takes the right type of clothing and sets out.

So I have looked on my inventory, took some clothing form Splendeurs and set out. First, it has not been to water, but later really to water, so to the sea, where I have lounged in pretty society.

Try it as an avatar! You are interactive and you are social!

SLurls: New Port, Splendeurs, Wirreno