Giving
It is the holiday season. No matter what you call it, be it Christmas, Yüle, Hanukkah, or whatever, this time of year is traditionally a time when we reach our darkest, shortest days, only to see the light come back. In a way, it's a time of renewal.
Sunny Salutations \o/
Marianne McCann, Interim Editor
IN THIS ISSUE
All that... and some other stuff from Bay City's finest paper
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BREAKING BREAKING BREAKING
Explosion at Toxic Taco!
Could this be the work of Terrorists?
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Page 2 Editorial: There's A Place
(Edited from a ramble told at The Pen's Espresso Yourself night.)
I recently read a piece about the importance of "place" to communities. I could not help but relate it to some of my own experiences here.
A few years back, the former vice president of product for Linden lab, Tom Hale,, infamously claimed there was no "culture" in Second Life to call its own. In some ways he was right -- for Second Life is a world of many cultures.
What we do in bay City is unique to Bay City. We have events that are uniquely ours, in jokes and references we get innately, our own heroes and villains, our own histories. We know the "call back lines" that we have in our meetings. We own that culture.
Within Second Life, there are many other places with their own cultures. Raglan Shire and its tinies, the furries of Luskwood, the aviation and seafaring communities in the Blake Sea, East River, and so on.
There actually is a small overall culture of sorts, too. There's a decade or so of history. Most everyone has an opinion of infohubs, or Lindens, or new users. So in a way, perhaps, our culture is similar to a large country, like the United States, or perhaps the European Union. We are many pockets of culture, brought together under one name.
But back to the sense of place in a community. In the piece I was reading, it talked about how important it is, that without place, you will have a hard time forming community. I think this is right.
Here in Bay City, we have our landmarks, our meeting place, all these places that are the "fabric" of our part of SL. It is the foundation we build upon.
This is why every anniversary we use a stage that BlueGin Yifu, the alliance founder made. It is why we have memorials here to those we've lost, and why Ever Dreamscape's apartment holds the same items she left there. And yes, it's why we have places like the Bay City Community Center to come and hang out and be a community together.
The same thing came up the other day around The Arcade, and how it is somehow "more special" that people can only be there every so often. We have good feelings about the place, and get to come and visit and feel those feelings over so often. It is a place that we have that same traction in. I'd say the same about Havenhollow., or, for SL kids, Camp HardKnock. This probably also applies to our annual events in Bay City, such as the prim drop or mole day. The place and the feelings felt become one, amplified by their scarcity.
So I ask you to consider your places here, How do these places build community for you?
