A friend teleported me to look at something at Portland Connection yesterday evening. At first I thought I was on the mainland but later I walked around the perimeter. After we were done with the subject at hand I continued to explore on my own and it really did remind me of Portland, Oregon.
I could appreciate the vision and the way the place has a cohesive feel, if that makes sense.
I was most taken by the the Asian area of the place and it helped soothe some irritation that an astute reader might pick up on.
I’d been doing one of those add-on-to-my-already-too-long-list things when I got the request from the friend. Sometimes I do like my privacy or am feeling unsociable because I don’t feel well or am sorting through things but really, if we don’t ever have time for our contacts what are we even doing here? So I went, partly out of reaction to some of the selfish, me-in-a-bubble-of-self-importance that I’ve been witnessing lately in SL
Lovely garden.
It looked to me that the creator of this place has maintained it for five years now and somehow that felt comforting since most of SL is way more transitory, including the way I change homes.
My typist is remembering 9/11 and how the presence of the Rocky Mountains and the Flatirons near her former home in Boulder County, Colorado strengthened and reassured her. She spent a lot of time hiking and just sitting out in nature all along the Front Range as well as parts of the Western Slope. It’s painful for her to see images of the flooding there and to be aware that so many people she knew are overwhelmed now.
So she takes time to grieve and then turns her attention to effective action. Life is a gift to engage with.
While I was getting the photos ready and had written most of this, I noticed Sylvia Ashbourne on the map so I messaged her to express admiration of the sim and let her know I was going to blog about this place. Usually I don’t do that because…..well…..many builders and sim owners and administrators just want to be left alone.
She was very gracious and gave me information, so now I have actual facts which I can share with you. This place is Sylvia’s vision and was mostly built by Garnet Trilling who had done most of the work on the 21st sim, which was a Portland based sim on the Mainland.
This was founded as a place for the community that had been there to call home and to do research in education in SL. (I’m quoting much of this). I let her know I really liked the Asian area and she mentioned a Japanese Garden in the foothills of Portland. There was a virtual zoo before the garden so things do change at Portland Connection.
I asked about Halloween; her picks indicated they had done something last year–she said they’d had zombies and a haunted house and wasn’t sure about this year yet.
She told me that Grif Bamaisin does live music every Thursday at 10:00–11:00 p.m.; that explains the “Electric Brit” stuff I saw around the sim as I was exploring.
Sylvia wrote that this place is a work of love by the people who built it and who still visit and enjoy it. That is evident to me.
So how about at least one more photo:
There’s a pub, coffee shop; also retail and residential rentals.
I flew to get a final shot and noticed some trees in the distance. It’s an area I’d overlooked before.
There’s a beautiful beach to the right of the photo but that will have to wait for another day. My typist was feeling more uplifted by the time she logged off.
Million Happy Endings 