10 February, 2021

I'm gonna chase it, I know, I know, I know

PRESS RELEASE 10 February 2021:

The Gearhaven Endowment for the Arts, Sciences, Magick and Metaverse Culture is pleased to Announce the first recipients of the Gearhaven Prize for Steampunk Preservation in Second Life.

Our two recipients for the first quarter of 2021 are:

Recipient: Michael Macbeth (michaelneff.macbeth)
Project: The Tesla Theatre in Caledon Victoria City

Mr. Macbeth's attempts to foster community and participation by encouraging avatars to share the same experience, together, is laudable on its own. But he's also trying to create a community of theatre owners, to schedule events together, pass show lists back and forth, and encourage each others' group members to attend community showings. Especially now, this is vital, and worthy of preservation.

Recipient: Fuzzball Ortega
Project: Steelhead Bay

I'm not sure I need to go into why Fuzzball's efforts to preserve Steelhead, that quirky mix of Western American steampunk, mad science, clockwork creations and magic, are worth supporting, but for anyone who doesn't know, Steelhead started out very long ago on the grid, owned by another avatar entirely, and over the years, it not only changed hands, but grew in size. There was an unfortunate accident of timing that prevented the sims from being paid up on tier, and one by one, they all went away.

This, not to put too fine a point on it, crushed some people.

But Fuzzball had a dream. And he made that dream a reality. And had we been around, we would have supported him that very first year, for the sheer enormity of the effort to bring it back. But we're here now, so we're doing it now.

Each recipient receives L$25,000 to use towards preservation and improvement of their projects.

A formal gala will be announced soon for the official presentations of the awards.

We applaud and congratulate our two winners and wish them all success for the future of their projects.

For information on future awards contact Justine.Johndory Amethyst by IM or Notecard or visit the Duchy of Gearhaven in Second Life.

2 comments:

Fuzzball Ortega said...

Thank you for this. It's a bit hard building a region from scratch with no prior skills in terraforming. Region needs a lot of work, still. Rebuilding the community has been the real challenge. But I haven't given up

Emilly Orr said...

TRUST me on this, I so understand now. All I'd done before was a little terraforming on single parcels, so I thought, well, it's fiddly, but not that difficult overall, right?

Then Hiro accidentally flooded Gearhaven, and when he fixed THAT, he said, maybe you can finish the bay...Which turned into leveling the ground...and building the beaches...and installing a sim surround...and planting a garden...

So yeah. Fire bad, terraforming hard. So with you there.

I wanna live a vibrant life, but I wanna die a boring death

This is the..."Ham Tree"...at LORE . It's a group gift. Mesmer's love of meat where meat should not be is spreading... ...