Interview With Frets Nirvana, Musician And Veterans Advocate

 

Frets Nirvana is a name many longtime readers of the Newser will recognize.  Perhaps best known for organizing monthly benefit concerts at Veterans Isle, he's had a long career in music in both real life and Second Life. Netera Lander recently interviewed him, finding out what musicians influenced him over time, other details on him as a musician in both real life in Second Life, and particular reasons on what led him to organize the fundraisers he does for veterans.

 

Read Netera's interview in People. 

 

Memorial Day

 

 It's Memorial Day in the United States, when the country honors it's veterans who died in the line of duty from major conflicts such as the World Wars, the Civil War being the deadliest with over 600,000 dead in a nation of thirty million at the time, to training and smaller conflicts, including the War with Iran still going on today which has claimed thirteen American soldiers so far, and not long ago the Afghan War in which 2400 US servicemen died, and 4500 in the Iraq War. 

 

Second Life has some memorials to America's fallen. This includes it's replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, located high in the Veterans Isle sim which was rebuilt here in 2022, and has all 58,000 names on the original. With one's avatar looking so small compared to that massive list of names, each one an American veteran who had their hopes and dreams and usually with family who would never see them alive again, it's a sobering reminder of the price of war. 

 

The Vietnam Wall is at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Veterans%20Isle/177/185/2485 

 

"We shall remember,"

 

Bixyl Shuftan