One thing about doing these authors and artists I’ve been commemorating lately:  there’s so many good ones to choose from!  For instance, January 25 was the birthday of the Bard of Ayrshire, Robert Burns.  Most of us know him, of course, for “Auld Lang Syne,” and that would give him fame if nothing else.  But he was far more than that, writing hundreds of poems and lyrics during his life, collected and loved to this day.  It wasn’t an incredibly lucrative profession, though, being a poet, just like today, and Burns just managed to stay ahead of the debt collector when he died in 1796, leaving his family hard on the rocks.  But such was his renown even in his time that a public subscription was raised and given to his wife, Jean Armour, for the support of her and their children.

Jean was an amazingly long-suffering woman.  There is no doubt that Burns loved here deeply; and they had nine children together, only three of whom survived.  His eye was ever a-rovin’, though, and he had many an affair.  But it seems that Jean was his inspiration for many of his poems and lyrics, such as:

O my Luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June:
O my Luve’s like the melodie,
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ ’twere ten thousand mile!

My friend Conan Bankersbox has a preference for “A Man’s a Man for A’ That,” which is not a celebration of being a man (grunt, grunt), but of the Common Man, the average person who struggles along and is all the more glorious than kings or bishops because of his real worth:

Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an’ a’ that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that.
Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an’ a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man’s a Man for a’ that:
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that;
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.

Ye see yon birkie, ca’d a lord,
Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that:
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
His ribband, star, an’ a’ that:
The man o’ independent mind
He looks an’ laughs at a’ that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an’ a’ that;
But an honest man’s abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their dignities an’ a’ that;
The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a’ that,)
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s coming yet for a’ that,
That Man to Man, the world o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.

Incidentally, if I’ve whetted your appetite for a bit o’ Burns, and you have an iPhone, you can get an app with over 500 of his poems, a thumbnail biography, and even how to throw a great Burns Supper.  The tagline for it on one Burns Web site:  “An App’s an App for A’ That.”

Photographed at Inis Caiseal region.

Me pausing for a moment at the Patch Thibaud Auditorium in Casablanca Boulevard, home of this year's Miss Virtual World Pageant.

The announcements of nominees came out this morning for the 84th Academy Awards.  My preferences, just to let you know, are no preferences; I haven’t seen a one of these, not even the Best Picture category, which is nine films long this year.  So why am I talking about the Oscars?  Because it’s time for the the 2012 Oscar Fashion Photo Contest at Around the Grid!

The contest groups will open for submissions once this article is published, and the prize pool is in escrow (so to speak).  Time to talk to your stylists, find your hairdresser and book a time, call in favors at the jewelry stores, and decide what you would wear if you became a nominee for the little gold man.  For those considered outstanding in their evening couture and artistic portrayal, there shall be (15 minutes) of fame, (a tiny bit of) fortune (for Second Life Residents only), and hopefully fun in playing the game.

The rules follow the break –

Please read these rules carefully, as it will prevent many misunderstandings, letters and headaches.

1. Eligible photos must be submitted by addition to the SL Oscar Fashion group on Flickr or the Oscar Fashion group on Koinup. The Flickr group is for Second Life material only; the Koinup group is open to works from any virtual world found in Koinup. Please read the group rules before submitting photos to the groups!! Exception to the submission rule: leave a comment to this or future messages concerning the contest, containing a link to the photo. All accepted submissions to the groups from publication time of this article until 12:01 a.m. SLT on February 27, 2012 will be considered for judging.
2. As noted, photos must follow the submission guidelines for the groups, which in this case should be pretty easy. Both groups are moderated, and any submissions not meeting the group rules will be rejected and considered ineligible for entry. The same applies for comment submissions.
3. Multiple entries are not allowed.  If you enter, then change your mind and want to do a different dress, you must delete your photo from the group and submit a new one.  You should also notify me by E-mail to harper.ganesvoort@gmail.com, to inform me of your change.
4. Photos taken prior to December 1, 2011 are not eligible.
5. Still photos only, please; no machinima or storyboards.
6. Post-production is allowed.
7. Vendor cards will not be allowed; neither will photos with advertising text in the owner notes or comments.  You will, however, be welcome to submit a “stripped” photo for contest purposes; “stripped” here means no text, either in the photo or in the description below, aside from the normal list of who designed what.  As implied, a simple list of designers for what you are wearing is allowed, and, indeed, encouraged!
8. I will review the entries following close of the contest, and announce the winners by March 12, 2012 (tentative, subject to change backward or forward). Judging will be based on the appropriateness of the entry to the theme, and the artistic merit. In case of a tie, prizes will be split. All decisions will be final.
9. By entering, you agree to allow me the right to republish your photo in a future article in Around the Grid. This will be the only use of the photograph beyond your own publication and other grants of permission to other venues of publication. Your copyright will be noted in a caption to your reproduced photo. I strongly encourage all submissions to be signed in a corner! All photos will be linked to their respective pages in the article, so it will be possible for readers to jump to the photo page and leave comments, faves, retweets and likes, etc.
10. Prizes will be awarded in Linden dollars only; therefore, only Residents of Second Life will be eligible for virtual cash prizes. However, the best submissions from other worlds will be recognized in the article, as well as my comments on the picture at time of announcement.
11. If there are any tweaks needed to these rules, they will be announced in a future article here on the blog, and this article amended, with notes.
12. Needless to say, I’m not eligible (grin).

Once again, the prize pool for Second Life will be L$6,500, split as follows (unless there is a tie):

• 1st Place — L$2,500
• 2nd Place — L$2,000
• 3rd Place — L$1,000
• Honorable mention (4) — L$250 each

This prize pool is guaranteed, and will not be reduced.

Let’s see what you have, fellow fashionistas!!  Get your photos in.  You only have some 30 days to do it.

Photo taken at the Patch Thibaut Auditorium, Casablanca Boulevard.

Nothing much to report here — in terms of news, or new clothes, or whatever.  I’ve been working for about three days on the constant bugaboo of Second Lifers:  cutting down on Inventory.  I was close to 16,800 items¹ a few days ago; with a lot of determination, setting the sort to date and no folder sort, and standing around mostly buck naked in my (virtual) bedroom, I’ve chopped a lot of stuff out of it and shipped them off to the luminiferous æther. ² It isn’t just getting rid of landmarks, notecards and calling cards; you need to get in to the muck of boxes you’ve accumulated and go through, throwing out the stuff that you can’t believe you bought and won’t admit to if threatened with cyanide.  And then you should go back through, and give some good hard thought to the stuff you kept in the first round, and decide what you absolutely can’t do without for another year or two.

I feel myself overwhelmed by an inventory of less than 20,000.  Others I’ve talked to in world smile, snort and sneeze at my notions; they stagger around with Inventories of 25,000, 40,000, 60,000 items on their back, most of which never sees the light of day more than once.  Or even never, if they’re like me and have a mess of stuff that they never got around to unpacking and trying on.  That’s what I’m trying to do now, in part.  I suspect that I’ll be able to trim down around 12,000 before the choices start getting painful.

Really, people, you need to take a look at all the shit you’ve picked up over the years you’ve been around.  Do you need to keep 200 gowns, most of which you’ve worn only once?  Or five or ten different living room sets?  Put up for sale or give away what you don’t want to a newbie, refresh your wardrobe to the most recent styles (aside from some classy vintage pieces, such as from Last Call, purchased during the Last Sale in 2008), and, in the words of Monty Python, “Get on with it!”  You’ll find you move around a lot lighter, too, I bet, when the servers don’t need to keep up with all that stuff; and the asset computers will thank you, too!

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¹ That’s exclusive of Library items, which I’ve suppressed through Debug settings.

² Remember “luminiferous æther” from your old science classes? That’s the medium everyone though light was propagated through back in the long ago 19th Century. You may still hear them referring to the æther in some of the steampunk sims, to keep in character with the role play; and anyone who has played the Eighties RPG Space:  1889 “knows” that the æther is an essential principle in the movement of ships through space to the various Terran colonies on Mercury, Mars and Venus.  Back in the Real World, some still refer to software that mysteriously disappears as “etherware.”  (“Ethernet” is also a registered trademark for a line of software used in controlling ethernet networks, but I think the difference is obvious.)

Contact Sheet is an irregular column of selected photographs and portraits from Residents of Second Life and other virtual worlds. All rights to featured images are reserved to the artists under appropriate copyright laws. Click on the links as necessary to go to the required blog, Flickr or Koinup page. Please go to these artists’ pages in any case to leave comments, (as well as comments here), if you have an account on the appropriate service.

Suggestions are appreciated; please send descriptions and links to me by in-world IM, notecard, E-mail to harper.ganesvoort@gmail.com, or leave a comment below.

NOTICE: Some of the photos/links may contain nudity. Viewer discretion advised.

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One of the things that can make a great photograph is a sense of motion.  Movement is a factor of life, as is change; indeed, movement is one of the things that often causes change to happen.  Great pictures often contain a dynamism to them, an element of light or positioning or some other factor that instills the perception of motion into the photograph.  Take a look at the following small collection and see for yourself.  (Click on the thumbnails for the full-size photo at Flickr or Koinup.)

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Copyright 2012 by Skip Staheli

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Copyright 2012 by "zhey"

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Copyright 2012 by Link Bressig

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Copyright 2012 by Irina Strazytski

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Copyright 2011 by July Raymaker

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you can see they have a lacquer bowl of milk to drink from here in the snapshot.  But the wild thing is this:  the photo was taken while I was facing them.  But when I turned the camera around to face me….

the cats were still looking at the camera.  And these guys aren’t like the trees or flowers — they’re solid prims, not sheets.  To prove the point, I shot from above:

same, slightly eerie thing.  Whoever designed these kitties did good….

I seem to be acquiring a reputation for pictures of women who belong in a James Bond movie -- or at least one Bond movie. So why not have some fun with it today, and get a little added mojo from the lovely Shirley Bassey, and her memorable version of a title song from said movie?The gown here is Meli from Angel Dessous, and is one of the biggest gowns you'll find outside of Sascha's Designs. It comes in three color combinations; since I was in a metal mood, I chose the gold strapless bodice and huge black ball skirt. This has a netting overskirt as well, as you can see if you look down at the hem on the ground; and a furred or feathered waist.

Goldfinger
He’s the man, the man with the Midas touch
A spider’s touch

The hair is from Hairoin, and the golden skin from Wunderlichs, who also do the silver skin I often wear.

Such a cold finger
Beckons you to enter his web of sin
But don’t go in

The jewelry is all part of a series from Lilipily. I've put it together into a suite, but it's only available separately, at least through the Marketplace. (You can also purchase it in silver, and both versions come in either copy or transfer types.)

Golden words he will pour in your ear
But his lies can’t disguise what you fear
For a golden girl knows when he’s kissed her
It’s the kiss of death from Mister Goldfinger

Gold on gold? It seems to work here for the eyeshadow from CoCo, which I've then overlined with the purple/lashes version of BOOM's Liquid Glaze liner. And the lips are from Oceane Body Design.

Pretty girl beware of his heart of gold
This heart is cold
He loves only gold
Only gold
He loves gold
He loves only gold
Only gold
He loves gold!

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The details:

• Skin: Wunderlichs Metal Skin (gold)
• Eyes: Poetic Colors Gold Flakes (amethyst)
• Hair: Hairoin Magnetic (Pisces)
• Gown: Angel Dessous Meli (gold/black)
• Shoes: Detour Glamour Metallic Pumps (gold)
• Nails: Mandala super long HUD nails (some of the nicest prim nails you’ll find; the HUD lets you choose from five shapes of nail, then customize the colors to a fare-thee-well, with different colors on each nail if you wish.)
• Makeup: CoCo Rainbow eyeshadow b3; BOOM Liquid Glaze liner (lashed purple); Oceane Body Design Jade lips (Cherry, gold stripe)
• Jewelry: Lilipily Chantel earrings, necklace and bangles

“I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That’s living.”

I lived for a time in Central Florida, and I took my bachelor’s degree at Rollins College, in Winter Park.  This town was just a few miles south of the town of Eatonville, which claims to be the oldest city incorporated by African Americans in the United States.  Eatonville has other claims to fame, including being the home town of author Zora Neale Hurston.

Hurston was born in Alabama, but her family moved to Florida in 1894.  Though they lived in an all-black community, and her father served for a time as mayor, life was not an easy road for Zora; her mother died when she was just entering her teens, and her father and almost instantly new stepmother sent her off to a boarding school, which later expelled her when the tuition fees were not met.  Zora worked as a maid for a traveling Gilbert & Sullivan company for a time, eventually landed in Baltimore, docked 10 years off her age to qualify for public funding to finish school, and graduated from Barnard College in 1928.  She went on to become one of the lights of the Harlem Renaissance, and a friend of poet Langston Hughes.  According to the Web site built for her memory and a foundation in her name:

Hurston knew how to make an entrance. On May 1, 1925, at a literary awards dinner sponsored by Opportunity magazine, the earthy Harlem newcomer turned heads and raised eyebrows as she claimed four awards: a second-place fiction prize for her short story “Spunk,” a second-place award in drama for her play Color Struck, and two honorable mentions.

The names of the writers who beat out Hurston for first place that night would soon be forgotten. But the name of the second-place winner buzzed on tongues all night, and for days and years to come. Lest anyone forget her, Hurston made a wholly memorable entrance at a party following the awards dinner. She strode into the room–jammed with writers and arts patrons, black and white–and flung a long, richly colored scarf around her neck with dramatic flourish as she bellowed a reminder of the title of her winning play: “Colooooooor Struuckkkk!” Her exultant entrance literally stopped the party for a moment, just as she had intended. In this way, Hurston made it known that a bright and powerful presence had arrived. By all accounts, Zora Neale Hurston could walk into a roomful of strangers and, a few minutes and a few stories later, leave them so completely charmed that they often found themselves offering to help her in any way they could.

By 1935, she had published several short stories.  Her best-known work, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was published in 1937.  Even then, Hurston found it hard to gain full acceptance of her work, even among her peers in the Harlem arts movement; she received much criticism for her use of phoneticized dialect for her black characters.  Her 1942 autobiography finally brought her the notice she was due.  But her star faded, even as she went on to serious anthropological studies and writing.  She died penniless in Fort Pierce, Fla. in 1960, and was buried in an unmarked grave — a situation remedied by novelist Alice Walker at the start of her own career.

Zora was born on this day in 1891 — her actual birth year — and I hope this small tribute, photographed at Virtual Harlem, is adequate to her memory and greatness.

“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.”

Rollins College — Project Mosaic:  Zora Neale Hurston

Zora! Festival — official site

Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved, who was a dawn onto his own day, had waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese for his ship that was to return and bear him back to the isle of his birth.

And in the twelfth year, on the seventh day of Ielool, the month of reaping, he climbed the hill without the city walls and looked seaward; and he beheld the ship coming with the mist.

Then the gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far over the sea. And he closed his eyes and prayed in the silences of his soul.

But he descended the hill, a sadness came upon him, and he thought in his heart:

How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?…

…Then a woman said, “Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.”

And he answered:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall….

                    — Kahlil Gibran

                    The Prophet:  ”The Coming of the Ship” and “Joy and Sorrow”

Gibran was born on this day in 1883, and this article is dedicated to his memory, evergreen since the publication of perhaps his greatest work in 1923.

Photographed at the Kingdom of Sand.

It’s been a little busy in RL, which has prevented me from checking up on this.  But you still have a chance for one more day.  Selected gowns in the formal department are 50% off; look for the gold star, and enjoy!