A Celebration of the life of Fran Serenade at Savoy Ballroom in Creations Park on Saturday, May 11, 2019, from 11AM to 9PM, featuring some of Second Life’s very best performers.

April 29, 2019  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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EVENT DATE:  May 11, 2019

On March 3rd, 2019, Creations Park lost its original inspiration, and Second Life lost its most celebrated senior.  Fran Serenade passed away at 92 after a lifetime of loving and serving others in both of the worlds she lived in. Fran was beloved by all who knew her, including her Linden friends. Her daughter, Barbie Alchemi, and son, AlmostThere Inventor, built Creations Park in Second Life to be a wonderworld to stimulate the mind, specifically for Fran and others with Parkinson’s.   The Draxtor video about Fran and the medical research into Parkinson’s done at Creations Park was called one of the most important ever made about Second Life by Linden Lab’s CEO Ebbe Linden.  

A Celebration of Fran’s life will be held at Savoy Ballroom in Creations Park on Saturday, May 11, 2019, from 11AM to 9PM SLT.  Some of the very best live singers in Second Life will be performing in her honor.  Most knew Fran and some had performed at her 90th birthday party, also at Savoy. All talent will be performing for tips only, and like all events at Creations Park, this will benefit Team Fox for Parkinson’s Research.

By June 1, 2019, a memorial honoring Fran and this celebration will be located in-world at the Savoy Swing Era Museum, and will be available online at SavoyBallroom.org/fran

Shorter Version 3:40m     Fran’s story, with Barbie and scenes of Creations for Parkinson’sParkinson’s patient exploring virtual world
Living in a Modem World  Posted on April 12, 2015 by Inara Pey

ENTERTAINMENT SCHEDULE

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TIME ARTIST AGENT/SL CONTACT

11:00 AM Samm Qendra direct

12:00 PM Putri Solo (putrisolosinger) Jamila.lanley  

1:00 PM Luciano Lionheart Helen (Helendar Bailey)

2:00 PM Phil Setner Alessia Setner (alessia.rodeyn)

3:00 PM Agatha Knowles Troy Nelson (troyjaimes)

4:00 PM Savoy Dance Troupe Jackie Brown (antarctica.ferraris)

5:00 PM Max Kleene Kat Vargas

6:00 PM Ronnie Artano Missy (lilmiss54)

7:00 PM Savoy Stars Showcase Carlyle Chaparral

8:00 PM JaeSands direct

Second Life Official        ‏@SecondLife Mar 7         Replying to @draxtor

  

Our hearts are broken. We will always remember her incredible enthusiasm for life and what a joy she carried with her everywhere.

RESOURCES

Event Flyer

Event Schedule

VIDEO

  

The Drax Files: World Makers 5:00m [Episode 13: Creations for Parkinson's]

Draxtor  Despres November 1, 2013

Living the dream in Second Life  2:00m   (People with disabilities in a virtual world)

Colorado Public News    July 4, 2013

  

ABOUT FRAN

  

Farewell, Fran       Inara Pey: Living in a Modem World  March 7, 2019

Fran Serenade in Second Life Has Sadly Passed Away Aged 92

Daniel Voyager   March 8, 2019

2017 Person of the Year Runners Up: Barbie Alchemi and Fran Serenade

Second Life Newser  December 29, 2017

FRAN & PARKINSON’S RESEARCH

  

First They Got Sick, Then They Moved Into a Virtual Utopia

Wired.com  Backchannel - Kristen French  February 13, 2017

Fountain of Youth

Anthropologist studies Fran in Second Life

UCI School of Social Sciences   John Wescott February 6, 2017

"This Is Who I Am": Why A Woman With Parkinson’s Sees Both Her SL Avatar & Her Physical Body As Real (Excerpt, Coming Of Age In Second Life)

New World News September 10, 2015

Parkinson’s Research Project Seeks eXtension 3D Assistance

Terry Meisenback  September 8, 2014

Transcending Parkinson’s in a Virtual World

Virtual Connections - Nancy J Smith  November 7, 2013

The San Diego Union-Tribune - Pam Kragen September 24, 2013

Second Life's Best (Perhaps Only) Killer App: An Immersive, Open-Ended Social Platform For The Disabled

New World News February 13, 2013

Woman With Parkinson's Reports Significant Physical Recovery After Using Second Life - Academics Researching  New World Notes  February 7, 2013

CREATIONS PARK

  

About Creations Park

Creations Park Blogsite

Creations for Parkinson’s  SLNewser   Deaflegacy February 19, 2018

See the Cosmic Circus at Creations Park and Support the Michael J Fox Foundation

Great Second Life Destinations:  Creations Park

Eddie Haskell  Saturday, May 25, 2013

Creations For Parkinson's, An SL Sim & Support Group For People With The Disease, Their Caregivers, And Researchers

New World News  Hamlet Au February 8, 2013

BOOKS

  

Coming of Age in Second Life

An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human

Tom Boellstorff   2009 Princeton University Press

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4 Reasons Teachers Should Take Their Career to the Next Level

As a teacher, you can fuel career growth in three key ways. One, you can take short courses in areas such as leadership and management, mentorship and relationship management among others. Two, you can register for an advanced degree, masters or PhD. Sites such as https://online.merrimack.edu/  offer advanced degrees online and thus you can study as you work. These online degrees are flexible and a great investment for anyone who wants to advance their career. Finally, career growth can come as a result of your hard work and dedication. You can advance in your career by doing your best in class, actively participating in meetings and extracurricular activities, and volunteering to take up more tasks. But why is it important to take your career to the next level?

Better Pay

As you advance your career and get promotions, your pay check will also go up. Therefore, if your current teacher position isn’t giving you enough to spend, save and invest, make a plan that will take you to another position. However, money shouldn’t be your key motivation. You have to be passionate about helping students in the next level to achieve their goals. When money becomes your only concern, you will not meet your goals as a teacher and you may end up losing your job.

Experience Working in Different Environments

Ever dreamt of working as a college professor and helping others to become teachers? If yes, consider furthering your education and applying for postsecondary teacher positions. You can also move from elementary to high school or even consider teaching kids with special needs. You may end up getting more satisfaction teaching in the new environment.  

Take Up an Administration Role

By advancing your career, you can move away from the classroom and take up roles managing a school or departments within the school. Administrative roles come with big responsibilities and may require additional skills. For instance, as a head teacher, you need skills to help you manage the students and teachers, resolve conflict, improve performance and make good financial decisions among many others.

Move Away from Teaching

While teaching is a nice profession, it is not for everyone. There are teachers who get into a classroom and realize it’s not their long term calling. There are a number of alternative career options for those teachers who desire to move away from the classroom. For some careers, a teaching degree will be enough to get you started on your new career, but for others you will need an extra course. For instance, for roles like a curriculum director for schools, an extra course may not be necessary. Other alternative careers for teachers include social work, child counsellor, librarian, research writer, online teacher or tutor, business or personal coach and health care worker among others. If your career change requires extra training, you can take part time classes as you work your teacher job and quit teaching when you are ready to start your next career.

By advancing your career, you will enjoy better pay, experience working in new environments, get the opportunity to head a school and even explore other careers away from teaching.

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How Second Life can help in the battle against anxiety

We regularly hear the word anxiety, but how many of us actually know what it is? More to the point, did you know that Second Life can help sufferers battle anxiety?

Anxiety is that feeling of nervousness, tension, and unease that something terrible is going to happen. It’s something that a lot of us experience some of the time, such as when we’re in stressful and unfamiliar situations.

For anxiety sufferers, those attacks are a lot more frequent and severe. They don’t just stop at feelings of dread or worry but extend to feeling physically sick and a suffocating tightness in the chest.

We’ve looked at the ways in which Second Life can help in the battle against anxiety.

Second Life allows people to practice their social skills

One of the most prominent forms of anxiety is social anxiety. This is the thought of having to socialize, especially if you doubt you have the social skills to do so. Second Life provides people with a safe space to practice those skills anonymously and where they won’t be judged. On Second Life, you can build confidence from interactions and then take that into the real world with you. By helping remove the fear and anxiety that comes from being in a social situation, you’ll be in a better position to battle the condition long term.

Second Life helps us relax

Stress and worry are two of the main triggers for anxiety, which goes part of the way towards explaining why anxiety is on the rise in America. When we play Second Life, those feelings disappear. Your mind isn’t on what is troubling you out there in the real world, you feel more relaxed as a result, and your anxiety levels decrease. Outside of Second Life, you can use natural supplements to try and help you relax and battle anxiety. Herbs and plants such as kava root, lavender and the best kratom powder online are just some of the natural remedies some people use.

Second Life makes us question

Playing Second Life makes you ask questions and forces you to think about what you are doing with your avatar. Compare that to what goes on in your own head. You very rarely question what you are thinking or why or even if your mind is playing tricks on you. That is part of what anxiety is. It is where your brain takes a situation and distorts it into something far bigger, causing you serious worry. It might be an innocent email from your boss which your mind tells you is going to result in you being sacked or a friend failing to reply to a text and making you think you’ve fallen out. If you can question these thoughts, then you can start battling back against anxiety.

Second Life teaches us to test things out

You make a decision that you’re going to do something in Second Life, and you test it out. That way, you find out if the outcome is positive or negative. One of the most crippling aspects of anxiety is that it gives you a real fear of failure to the point where you can be paralyzed from doing anything. You won’t go to that party for fear that nobody will talk to you. If you act in real life as you do in Second Life, you’ll test out your negative theory and probably find out that you were wrong – people will talk to you. Once you get that confidence, you can battle anxiety.

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Two More Stephen King Stories Set to Hit the Big Screen

Stephen King is one of the world’s most prolific writers. He is worth an estimated $400 million, which helped him buy one of the most expensive properties on the west coast of Florida. He’s in good company, of course, as there are many celebrities that live in Tampa and nearby Sarasota.

During the long span of a highly successful career as a fiction writer, King has published 58 novels and sold more than 350 million books. He’s also had many of his books adapted to the screen, some more successfully than others. Now it looks like there will be two more adaptations hitting the big screen soon. Entertainment news outlets announced that two of King’s works - a novel and a short story - are being adapted for the cinema and TV screen.

Rest Stop

Rest Stop was a short story published in Esquire magazine in 2003. It won an award and was later included in an anthology of work titled Just After Sunset. There are now plans to turn it into a movie. The story centers around an author who makes a pitstop in a Floridian rest area. While in the restroom, he becomes the unwitting witness to a man attacking his pregnant girlfriend. In a bid to end the violent argument, he channels his pen name’s alter ego, which is a theme King explores in another of his novels, The Dark Half.

Sleeping Beauties

Sleeping Beauties is a more recent work, published in 2017 and written in collaboration with his son, Owen King. In this tale, women fall prey to a mysterious sleeping sickness. Soon, women all over the world are blissfully asleep, protected by a cocoon. Unfortunately, many of their menfolk don’t appreciate being left on their own and they try to wake the women up. This is when it all begins to go horribly wrong, as the women who are rudely awakened erupt into a homicidal rage. And who can blame them?!

Insiders say this adaptation will be for the small screen, with the novel set to become a TV series. Who knows, maybe it will become another Walking Dead and continue for multiple seasons!

More New Projects in the Pipeline

Those in the know say that more adaptations are in the pipeline. King’s apocalyptic novel, The Stand, is being developed for the small screen, and a movie based on The Talisman, a book King wrote in collaboration with Peter Straub, is in the works, too.

Previous Stephen King Adaptations

One of the most recent Stephen King adaptations, IT, was surprisingly good, but perhaps the best one of all time was Brian de Palma’s Carrie, made in 1976. Jack Nicholson in The Shining and Kathy Bates in Misery are also excellent. Other great works include Stand By Me, The Green Mile, and The Shawshank Redemption.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Some of the worst include Lawnmower Man, Graveyard Shift, Cell, and Maximum Overdrive.

What’s your favorite Stephen King novel? Tell us more below!

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SPOTLIGHT ON SPIRITS IN MOTION AND THE KACHINA THEATER – Josh (Thomas1 Bellic) Reporting.

SecondLife is arguably the most advanced and perhaps engaging of the virtual worlds out there. Not just a land of phenomenal beauty and creativity, it also hosts an incredibly talented and diversified community of artists.  A relative newcomer to the performing arts community is the Kachina Theater and their performing dance troupe, Spirits in Motion.

I recently had the very real pleasure of visiting the Kachina Theater as they were preparing for their upcoming performance of “Blast from the Past”.   This show was written by Jilly Lonewolf (leannburt), with assistance from Ciarra (kayceb), and choreographed by Mrs. Starlena Lonewolf (starlena.hansen) and in some cases even the dancers themselves.  Most of the sets were designed by Starlena. This musical extravaganza will be preformed one time only on Sunday, May 19 at 2:00 PM SLT. Their newest production will feature numerous pieces of music from the Roaring 20s to the Rocking 60's.  With Muse Wolf (musicgal9026) as the DJ, Ciarra as the announcer/moderator will serve as a sort of time traveling musical guide as cast and audience waltz through the ages.

I caught up with Starlena one night recently, and she was gracious enough to give me a tour of their facilities.

As you enter Kachina Theater by way of swinging double doors, you are greeted by a tastefully appointed lobby with grand staircases at either end leading to the upper lobby.  From here you enter the theater proper, with ample seating available in either single person chairs, or two-person love seats lined up about the room. The stage with the proscenium arch is the focal point of the room.  Elaborate in both planning and execution, Blast from the Past will involve multiple scene changes and an equal number of costume changes by the dancers.

The sets and the musical numbers selected for this show are guaranteed to have you leaving the theater humming a favorite tune.  On a Wizard of Oz set, you will hear the Scarecrow lament “If I only had a Brain”.  Whisked away to a USO stage at a WWII base camp, you will be entertained along with the troops to the dulcimer harmonies of the Andrew Sisters as they sing “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B”.  And what else would you expect to hear in a 50’s style Malt Shop but “Rock Around the Clock”.  Don’t forget to catch that quintessential favorite at night clubs in the 30’s, Benny Goodman’s “Sing Sing Sing”.  And you certainly do not want to miss when that crooner of crooners, D'Artagnan Michaels (raybartleson) wows the  audience with “Jailhouse Rock”.

Later, I caught up with Jilly Lonewolf, deep in the midst of her own show preparations, and I was able to ask her some questions about the theater and production,

Josh (thomas1.bellic):  What a great name… “Blast from the Past”.  Tell me, Jilly, where did you get the dialogue and dance routines for this show?

Jilly Lonewolf (leannburt): We are one of SL's newer venues.  This show is totally original. We started from scratch, so to speak.  I came up with the concept and the title. The theater and land is closed prior to the day of the performance as many of us also live on the sim.  

J.B:  how many shows will you be doing?  How many performance times?

J.L.: This show right now is one performance only.....we have been talking about doing an encore performance but some of our dancers work weekends etc. so our schedule is limited at present.  Starlena, our primary set builder, works full time so her available hours to build are short. She is amazingly creative and her set designs are fantastic! We schedule our shows approximately five weeks apart. Our actual schedule depends on when Starlena has time to work on the sets and I get the script written.  We do plan to put on our version of Phantom of the Opera late this summer/fall.

J.B.:  So tell me, Jilly.  How did you and Starlena meet?  And how did you decide on a partnership in the performing arts?

J.L: Starlena and I go way back.....we worked together first at Magnifique Weddings....I was an officiant/planner and she was the main photographer.  Later we both worked at Paramount Playhouse, which is another performance venue here. We have always wanted to have our own theater and the timing was right for us to make our vision a reality

J.B.:   How long has your Dance Troupe been together?

J.L.: We formed our troupe in January and held our debut performance February 17th, 2019. Our dance troupe normally has a cast of 13 dancers and various support crew.  This show will have a few extras on board that don't dance but do some add ons, playing instruments etc.  Some of our dancers are extremely talented. Many of them even do their own choreography.

J.B.:  A quick search turns up dozens and dozens of Dance Troupes in SecondLife, involving hundreds, if not thousands of dancers.   What is it that makes Kachina Theater special, given the large number of options available to people in SL today?

J.L.: Hmmmm.....not sure the proper way to phrase this so perhaps you can help me out.  We pride ourselves in the fact that unlike many theaters, our shows are more PG, as in no nudity or suggestive language.  Our show is more along the lines of what you would see on Broadway, It’s something you would be comfortable bringing your parents to.  We feel you don't have to take your clothes off to be sexy :) There are plenty of places in SL that folks can go to see naked avatars and hot and heavy emotes.  We focus on strictly entertainment.

So, there you have it folks.  I don’t know what your plans are for Sunday, May 19, but if you DON’T make it a point to attend Kachina Theater’s “Blast from the Past”, starting at 2:00PM SLT, you are gonna kick yourself later.  There is ONE performance only, and I guarantee this is one show you do NOT want to miss.  The Spirits in Motion dancers and Kachina Theater present “Blast from the Past”  A musical review of your favorite songs from the Roaring 20’s through the Rocking 60’s,  brought to life through song, dance, and the magic of SecondLife!

Be there.  Aloha! - J.B.

Teleport:   http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Azumi/128/108/1501

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