A Busy Weekend

 

This weekend saw plenty going on. Saturday saw the start of the RFL Home and Garden Festival (above). Caledon would hold it's anniversary parade. And the CDS held it's Chinese Lantern Festival. On Sunday, Veterans Isle held it's monthly Homes For Our Troops benefit concert, there was a 24 hour event for Rare Disease Day, and at the stroke of Midnight, the biyearly Gacha Guild event started.

More on these events later.

Bixyl Shuftan

Scenes From The Relay: Lantern Release Ceremony

The Relay for Life is usually a fun time for all. But there are occasional reminders of the seriousness of why the fundraiser exists. At the Home and Garden Expo, there's been a daily lantern release ceremony, every day at 4PM. It's suggested those watching set their viewers to Midnight.

In the ceremony, many dozens, well over a hundred, of paper lanterns slowly float up into the air, illuminating the sky. The lanterns represent friends and loved ones lost to cancer. The time I watched the ceremony with several other relayers, one talked about how his grandfather had taught him how to make his own paper. We each reflected on those we knew whom had passed away from the illness, and hoped that someday soon, there would be a cure for all forms of it.

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

Taken at Club Zero Gravity

By Bixyl Shuftan

Lantern Release Ceremony At The RFL Home And Garden Expo

The Home and Garden Expo is taking place in Second Life. Among the events there is the Lantern Release Ceremony. It takes place every day at 4PM at the Hope 5 sim. At the start of the event virtual replicas of Asian lanterns are released into the air, in remembrance of friends and loved ones whom have been lost.

Saffia Widdershins, who invited me to the event, told me, "These lanterns were created especially for the Home and Garden Expo about seven years ago, by Alchemy Immortalis. We started the tradition of releasing them then, and ever since, every day at Expo, we have the lantern release ceremony."

The ceremony ends with a sunrise, a reminder that tomorrow is another day, and of new beginnings.

For more on the ceremony, check the RFL Home and Expo blog. To head to the Expo, head to http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Hope%201/128/123/23 .

Bixyl Shuftan