Ahavah Synagogue and Memorial Garden

Saturday afternoon saw the unveiling of a synagogue and memorial garden in Caledon Ahavah. The Duke and Duchess (Mr. Walter Schnogginstein and Miss Yenta Bernheim) were there for the opening, with Miss Patty Poppy serving as the mistress of ceremonies.

Above: the Duke (far left) and Duchess (front center). Mr. Jorge Serapis and Miss Skye McLeod in back.

Miss Poppy, Miss Solace Fairlady, and Miss Darlingmonster Ember

Miss Poppy said:

Good afternoon or evening new friends and old friends. I'm not quite sure why I was chosen for the honor of presenting this lovely Synagogue and Memorial Garden on behalf of the Duke and Duchess of Ahavah, but I am humbled and so very pleased to be here.

We gather today to mark another milestone in Caledon history. This milestone is to present to the community a beautiful Jewish Synagogue and remembrance garden. To my knowledge this is the first synagogue to be constructed in Caledon. My humble apologies if this is not the case.

This sim is called Ahavah – In the Hebrew language the word meaning Love. I think you will agree a most fitting name for this beautiful sim and home for this new synagogue (shul) and memorial garden . These additions are dedicated to our community from our own Yenta Bernheim and Walter Schnogginstein.

Inspired by Yenta's vision, other known artisans contributed to these Icons. Yenta and Walter wish to recognize Jorge Serapis, Kaluura Boa, and Bram Hallison for the building of the Synagogue. Alastair Whybrow for the creating of the Torah and all their full dress. It is with humble gratitude we present to Caledon and the Second Life virtual world this truly lovely and inspirational Jewish memorial and garden. This is a place that is open to all to come for comfort, reflection, remembrance, meditation or for prayer.

A bit of history about Yenta's vision: Miss Yenta lost her parents at a very young age and has had a dream of creating a memorial to her parents and grandparents inspired by Jewish tradition. Her grandparents and father both attended services in the original schul (synagogue) and her father studied Hebrew within its walls in Belgium. The synagogue before you is a replica of the Arlon synagogue found in the city of Arlon Belgium. They have named this Synagogue "Beit Chesed-Ahavah" (house of loving kindness and love).

Mr. Jorge Serapis, Miss Annie Rosen (in the white dress), Miss Magadalena Kamenev.

Miss Valerie Bluebird and Mr. Alastair Whybrow.

I don a hat for the occasion.

The crowd was large and enthusiastic. In addition to those pictured above, Miss Nyree Rain, Mr. Ravelli Ormstein, Miss Remember Snowfall, and Miss True Irelund, Duchess of Kintyre, among others, attended.

After Miss Poppy's speech, the synagogue was unveiled.

The interior:

Miss Poppy continued:

Let's now turn to the Memorial Gardens. Yenta and Walter wish to acknowledge Darlingmonster Ember, Solace Fairlady and myself for work on this garden.

There is a maternal symbolism of regeneration represented here. As I mentioned before it was inspired by Yenta's vision. Darlingmonster and Solace created this living work of art. Yenta and Walter want to recognize them both as well as Yenta's Mother h'en (grace). We present the “Solace Ember h'en Memorial.”

Through generations it has become a tradition in Jewish communities to leave a small stone when one visits the grave of a loved one. It is a small remembrance of a loved one saying "we still remember". The custom began hundreds of years ago when grave markers were but a mound of stones over a grave. Over time, stones disappeared for any number of reasons and it was necessary to replace the missing stones. Over time it became a lovely custom.

A lovely and unique part of Caledon!

Highlands Beauty

I had been meaning to pay a visit to Caledon Highlands ever since the Vikings (Mr. Roberto Viking and Mrs. Soliel Snook-Viking) had relocated there. As soon as I stepped foot in the area, walking along the stone path as it began climbing from the lowlands of Caledon II, I realized I should have come earlier.

An amazing variety of plants was there to greet me, a dizzying array of colors on trees and shrubs, some familiar, some unknown to me. A short distance away was the greenhouse that marked Soliel's Garden Centre.

Not far away was a covered bridge over a gentle stream.

Beyond was a white church.

And what would the Highlands be without the famed Highland Coos? (I dared not get too close!)

The Vikings have a large manor house, complete with those newfangled horseless carriages.

There's even a local watering hole, the Dog and Pony Pub!

And if one needed to leave paradise, what better way than via a leisurely sail aboard a wooden ship?

A Soothing Spot

After a hard day in the Steamlands - you in the back, stop laughing; I work hard some days - one sometimes needs a place to unwind and soothe the soul. Not far away from the Sky City is Miss Panacea Luminos' pastoral Victorian Gardens.

A flower-lined path, complete with gas lamps, leads the visitor toward the manor house. (Note the floating neighbor to the right!)

The imposing manor, with its stone exterior, overlooks a fenced-in yard to the right and a hedged garden to the left.

The stone bridges are particularly striking in the twilight.

Victorian Gardens may be sparsely populated, but what is there is beautifully done. Just right for one of those days.

Avatar Games

I've now spent two enjoyable Monday evenings at the Avatar Games, a heady concoction of athletics, endurance, and entertainment. Mostly entertainment. Audience participation is not only encouraged, it seems downright crucial to these games.

Each contestant gets two runs through the course, and then all compete in a final group run. Times - including the best times of the season - are posted on a board behind the stands.

The audience stands overlooking the course (which is in a separate sim - a high draw distance is a must):

Contestants must complete the course, from the starting area, across a moat, through two turning wheels, up a hill where giant balls are rolling down at the runners, up a set of steps that grows and collapses, over a wall, up another incline, to the finish line.

And to make things challenging, spectators may arm themselves with a special gun that can knock a contestant off her path.

I was content to merely watch and listen.

Indeed, listening may be the greatest pleasure. Announcers R. Crap Mariner and Miss Honour MacMillan provide the play-by-play, the color commentary, the banter, the jokes, the complete digressions, and asides.

A contestant needs nerves of steel to handle the course and a strong ego to withstand the withering comments of the announcers!

The games are held Mondays at 4 p.m. SLT. on LEA3.

Customer Service

Customer service seems to be a declining art. I don't pretend to know all the causes - people seem angry all the time, and they take it out on their customers; the carrots and sticks available to managers no longer suffice to induce good service; there's a sense of entitlement that is at odds with a substantial work ethic; some customers can be jerks, and salespeople have had enough and are fighting back - but I've seen it often enough to think that I haven't just seen a few people on bad days.

The other night provided a good example: I was in Sears, looking for filters for a fan. Problem one: the shelves were not well-stocked or well-labeled. I finally settled on a box that had no price associated with it, figuring that I would see at the counter what the computer thought the price might be. The young lady behind the counter was eating a hamburger, and put it down long enough to ring up my transaction. Holding aside the sanitary consequences to her of handling cash and then putting her hands on her food, I was clearly interrupting her important business of eating with my silly desire to purchase a product from her employer.

My local Safeway provides other examples weekly. The older staff (and by older I mean people in their 30s and 40s, not Roosevelt-era holdovers still manning the butcher's counter in their 90s) are knowledgeable, courteous, and friendly toward regular customers. (A little too friendly, at times, as I'm not keen on hearing a running commentary on my purchases. "Oh, another one of those itches again?") (Okay, that was made up. But I did have a checker comment on a piece of meat I was buying that she thought was outrageously expensive.) They know all the codes for the produce, even the weird kinds of fruit and rarely-purchased herbs. They know how to bag groceries. In contrast, the younger people, in their late teens and 20s, appear uninterested in being at work - an attitude I often have, but choose not to share with the public at large - are aloof, have no idea what some of the produce is (one couldn't identify Brussels sprouts, not exactly an obscure vegetable), and think that it's perfectly fine to put heavy items on top of eggs in the shopping bag.

One last example involves a trip to Staples. In the checkout lane, as I was waiting for my items to be rung up, the cashier said to her friend, "I really wish I didn't have to be here." Same here, lady, but I'm not insulting you by saying it to your face.

Dealing with the public is hard. I've been fortunate in not having to make a living that way. I have meetings with people outside my agency a half-dozen times a year, and it's often a strain to be polite in what is usually an aversarial relationship. I have sympathy for people who work in retail jobs, so I don't ask much of them. Furthermore, it's true that I can come up with examples of good customer service from young people (and of bad service from older people). But the fact that those examples stick out suggests that they're the exception rather than the rule, and that's a shame.

It seems to me that part of the problem stems from a collective view from the employees that their parents oversold a vision of their future. They were raised in nice houses by people with decent jobs, and instead they've come to the labor force at a time of great uncertainty and lowered expectations. Such a reversal of fortune would make anyone upset.

Another part of the problem is that the trend away from thrift toward instant gratification has resulted in people viewing a job as a way to occupy eight hours before the next social event. My grandparents were young adults during the Depression, a decade that surely shaped their attitudes toward work and saving. My parents became adults during more prosperous times but were close enough to the prior generation to learn some of the same lessons. My generation, in contrast, has spent freely, borrowing money whenever possible, to finance a lifestyle beyond that which is wise or, at times, sustainable. (I suspect that this stems in part from the unfortunate fact that U.S. productivity growth slowed between the 50s and the 70s and has never really regained its higher level. It's become harder for people to achieve much upward mobility when, at the same time, television reinforces the view that conspicuous consumption is a desirable goal.) People in their 20s have grown up under that attitude, and it has created a mindset - again, not universally - that every night is a good one to go out and have a good time. Technology, which allows people to remain connected to their social group even at work, has only added to this problem: whereas helping customers was once a way to make a dull day go faster, customers are now interfering with the ability to talk or text to one's friends.

I find interesting the fact that, despite all of the above, some retailers manage to find employees who are hard-working and enthusiastic and to train those employees to provide good customer service. High-end retailers are good at this, possibly because they can afford to pay more (and likely pay sales commissions or bonuses to reward effective customer service), and so my local pen store (Fahrney's) always has a helpful staff, as does every Apple store I've been in (now those are some enthusiastic nerds!). But other, less tony places seem to attract helpful staff, too: for example, several of the local Au Bon Pain locations, or my local Borders before its untimely demise. I don't know what magic the managers of those stores have, but they consistently hire and train employees that provide good customer experiences, so I'm convinced some magic is involved.

Traditional retail stores and chains have lost a considerable amount of business to online retailers over the past decade, and a great deal of ink has been spilled trying to understand why. Lower prices are of course a large part of the explanation. Part of it, though, is that shopping isn't fun any longer, and if it's a chore we may as well skip the store and buy from the comfort of the couch whenever possible. The folks at Sears may want to think about that.

All Aboard the Steam Snail

It turns out that the Steampunk Tribune and Dr. Rafael Fabre visited this site somewhere around the same time I did. "This site" is the quirky Steam Snail Headquarters of Mr. GianLuca Araghi.

The platform is apparently kept aloft by a large balloon...

...with the help of a number of industrious clanks wearing some sort of propulsion system.

Nearby is The Pipe, also owned by Mr. Araghi and floating high above the mainland.

Be the Human Cannonball if you dare, Dear Reader, but beware - you may find yourself several sims away when all is said and done.

Steampy the robot is on board the Snail to greet visitors, but he's remarkably taciturn.

Still, this is undeniable:

Mr. Hax's Junkyard - Buyer Beware

I was delighted to see that the small property next to mine was now occupied. Then it hit me: this was Steam Sky City (well, Aether Isle, but the principle is the same), and one's neighbors are often...different.

"Yoo-hoo!" I called out, holding the pie I had taken with me as a prop. It was a real pie, just not of my own making. It wouldn't do to poison the new neighbors on the first day.

As I neared the building, however, I saw that it was not a residence but a brick shop, and one in run-down condition at that. The structure nearly abutted Miss Samm Florian's shop and maze and had a back that was open to the water.

Although the shop was empty, it was clear that the proprietor was none other than Mr. Denver Hax, whose earlier Laboratory was just down the road a bit.

He calls this shop The Junkyard, and it contains bits and bobs, including the Mark I Drama Reactor shown below. Drama, as it turns out, is a fine fuel source but just a tad unstable.

There's also the ever-popular Guvnah in a Jar:

There's even a time machine (pictured below, far right) and a teleportation device that seems to have only one destination and a unique way of getting one there (below, center). First-generation products often leave room for improvement.

Come to think of it, there was a great deal of broken glass in the shop. Perhaps not every device was ready for sale. Ah well, I'm sure Mr. Hax has a generous return policy - your heirs can take products back for a full refund.

Debt Deal a Draw

As no doubt everyone knows, Congress struck an 11th-hour deal to increase the debt ceiling. It seems to me that this deal could have been struck any time in the past month, as it largely reflects both parties' sticking points: no new taxes (right away) and a nominal reduction in spending that (slightly) exceeds the increase in the debt ceiling - the basic Republican demands - and a debt ceiling increase that extends past the next election (the basic Democratic demand). I try to find humor whenever possible, and God knows this situation requires looking very hard to find the humor, so I find it quite funny that both ends of the political spectrum are up in arms about the contours of the deal.

For example: RedState declares that "Obama is the bigger winner," while the Wall Street Journal quotes disgruntled Democrats with a headline "Liberal Debt Deal Revolt." The Journal's columnist James Taranto quotes a number of unhappy Donkeys:

A New York Times editorial calls the deal "a nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists. . . . This episode demonstrates the effectiveness of extortion. Reasonable people are forced to give in to those willing to endanger the national interest." Haha, remember "civility"?

Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman is even huffier: "By demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, [the deal] will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status. . . . What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question."

Roars Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect: "The United States has been rendered ungovernable except on the extortionate terms of the far-right. For the first time in modern history, one of the two major parties is in the hands of a faction so extreme that it is willing to destroy the economy if it doesn't get its way. And the Tea Party Republicans have a perfect foil in President Barack Obama."

And, as Roll Call reports, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, the Kansas City, Mo., Democrat, "said early reports of the new deal appeared to be 'a sugar-coated Satan sandwich.' " Hey, it's better than peas!

Hyperbole much?

In my view, both groups need to take a Valium and relax. I am disappointed that next year's spending cut - the only year that really matters, as whatever "framework" this Congress create for future years will not be binding on future Congresses - is minuscule. However, it's hard to see how control of only one House of Congress could have allowed fiscally conservative Republicans to demand more. Similarly, while Democrats are no doubt unhappy that spending isn't going up next year, they are in a politically untenable position in trying to spend more given the public's unhappiness with both the size of the debt and a general unwillingness to see taxes rise.* Republicans whine that the Yet-Another-Commission Commission that will supposedly find another round of spending cuts by the end of the year are not constrained in some iron-clad way to avoid raising taxes. At the same time, though, the forces that prevented President Obama and a Democratic-controlled Congress from raising taxes in 2010 are at work in 2011 and 2012: a bad economy and little public appetite for higher taxes. Democrats whine that they're not allowed to spend more, borrow more, tax more, but it's not the Republicans who called a halt to the free-spending policies of 2007-2010, it was the voters.

In effect, this debt deal was a way to defer action on the important fiscal questions dividing the country: how will we ultimately get the debt under control? Will it be through higher taxes (and, if so, on whom?) or through reduced spending (and, if so, on what?), or, as seems most likely, a combination of the two?

Although both sides seem to acknowledge that the status quo is not sustainable, there is a fundamental disagreement about the way to solve the problem. Both in terms of day-to-day spending and, more importantly, Social Security and Medicare spending, Congress has promised more than it can deliver. It's promised generous government services combined with low tax rates. Both parties enjoy spending and dislike taxing; they differ only in degree. Yet, as Greece has discovered already and other European nations are slowly realizing, deficit spending to finance unsustainable payouts is not the way to the Worker's Paradise. Eventually those who end up footing the bill decide that they've had enough, and chaos ensues.

Whether we end up substantially increasing taxes** or substantially decreasing services,*** the piper will be paid. What we've done is to defer that conversation. There is no way to avoid having it.

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* Where the public stands on raising taxes tends to depend considerably on the specific question asked. I think it's a fair generalization to say that most people are okay with raising taxes on other people but are not to keen on seeing their own taxes rise.

** I've seen some truly stupid things on the Aetherwebs recently regarding the relationship of taxes to job creation, as well as the ability of "the rich" to finance our current and promised future levels of spending. Suffice it to say for the moment that "the rich" don't have nearly enough money to let the government spend at European levels. If you want a European-style economy, be prepared to pay a lot more for it. That means you, people in the bottom 99% of the distribution (meaning me, too). The top 1% - with adjusted gross income above $380,000 - pay 38% of all income taxes, or about $392 billion out of $1,032 billion (as of 2008). In this group, the average tax rate is 23.3%. Doubling the average rate paid to 46.6%, just to make the math easy, would result in an incremental $392 billion to the Treasury, assuming that this increase had no effect on the economy or the level of tax evasion. A nice chunk of money, to be sure, but nowhere near the $1.4 trillion in current deficit, much less the larger deficits (counting Social Security and Medicare) going forward.

*** "Substantial" is in the eye of the beholder, of course. I've read that a switch from indexing Social Security payments from wage growth to price growth eliminates a good chunk of the Social Security projected deficit. Whether that's substantial to you depends on what else you've saved and how many years you have before retirement in which to adjust.

Into the Sky City

It was time to venture into my large, overhead neighbor, the Sky City. I hadn't been there since the last Mad Scientist Convention, so I was prepared for some changes, and changes I found in spades!

The Control Room was the same...

...as was the end of the city nearest Oxbridge Village, with the Steam Man statue looking over the Looters' Emporium on the left and xxx on the right.

The latest incarnation of Miss Mari Moonbeam's Moonbeams store seems to be in the grasp of a giant hand.

Miss Glorf Bulmer's cafe is dominated by the geared clock on the wall:

Mr. Red Quixote has his wares in the cleverly-named The Eclectic Company:

Next door is Mr. Balpien Hammerer's InMotion Store:

Across the stern is Lady Dawn Starbrook's Starbrook Designs, Ltd....

...and her Blue Moon Teahouse, a touch of Japan in the Steam Sky City.

Also on the aft side is one of the few spots that has remained unchanged: the Worlds' End Cafe and Salon (Miss Magdalena Kamenev, proprietress).

Below, the mighty engines that keep the city aloft:

Next to the Caledon Air Transport offices is Miss Erehwon Yoshikawa's Aetheric Engineering shop, specializing in Fantastical Accessories and Impossible Devices, both of which are desperately needed.

Circling around to the fore starboard side, Dr. Garth Goode has his shoppe, Goode Inventions, stocked with a variety of indispensible doo-dads on the first floor and books on the second. (That reminds me to put out my force field to zap any intruders.)

Looking down the corridor on the starboard side, the first shop contains Kheph's Creations, Writer Steam Works, and E. Laval Aether, carrying a wide selection of Steampunk merchandise. Next is Miss Magdalena Outlander's Luxuria Mystic, carrying limited edition prints. Further down is Hax Autonomous Experiments (Dr. Croquet Hax, prop.).

Last, but not least, are the Steamlander offices (Sir Excalibur Longstaff, ed.).

Whew! I didn't get to every nook and cranny in the city, but that's quite enough for one day. I plan on keeping a careful eye on what my lofty neighbors are up to, so prepare for updates.