30TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY FLOWERS

IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE LIVING LIFE IN PEACE
John and Yoko’s dream comes to Second Life®
by Jura Shepherd, ROLE Magazine, October 2009.
 
Piercing the sky above one of Second Life’s most northerly sims, stands a tower of light that began life as an artistic concept in the mind of a young, wild-eyed artist over forty years ago. The tower, named IMAGINE PEACE TOWER, will be officially open on October 9, 2009 and will stand as a symbol for universal peace. It is part of a life-long dream of Yoko Ono, the artist who conceived the idea for the real world and who commissioned it’s creation in SL.
 
The tower will replicate, as closely as possible, its real world counterpart which opened on October 9th, 2007 on Vi?ey Island in Kollafjor?ur Bay near Reykjavik, Iceland. The terrestrial version is made of fifteen powerful searchlights manipulated with mirrors to form a column of light that is tall enough to not only reach cloud cover, but has been seen to penetrate well beyond it. According to the University of Iceland, the light is so powerful that, if within the column itself, the light would still be visible with the naked eye from space and could be easily detected with instruments from much further away from our planet. The base of the tower is an elegant but austere cylindrical structure made of white stone that is meant to symbolically represent a well, specifically a wishing well. Circling the well are engravings of the phrase “IMAGINE PEACE” written in 24 different world languages.
 
There are 15 spotlights in all. 9 shine straight up from inside the well and 6 are in the 'corridors' around the base and are reflected up by 6 mirrors.
 
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER’s wishing well concept is one that is a continuation of Yoko Ono’s interactive art. After the passing of her husband John Lennon, Ono began to collect wishes based on a traditional idea from her childhood. “As a child in Japan, I used to go to a temple and write out a wish on a piece of thin paper and tie it around the branch of a tree. Trees in temple courtyards were always filled with people’s wish knots, which looked like white flowers blossoming from afar."
 
"All my works are a form of wishing” says Ono and indeed she has collected over 850,000 wishes since she started the project. In a 1996 interview, Yoko Ono explained: “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen: every piece of paper has a wish on it, I don’t read it, and all of them will be put in one big tower of a sculpture, like a totem. It will be a very powerful sculpture… a tower which contains wishes of the people of the world of our time. All in one tower!” What may have seemed like an abstract concept at the time is exactly what she did. The wishes Ono had collected over decades are buried under, and made a spiritual part of the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER.
 
The story of how IMAGINE PEACE TOWER has come to be in Second Life begins with SL developer Bernard Herzog, the elder of the father-son duo Herzog-Brenham. Inspired by the real world project, Herzog built a tower of light on the New Brighton sim that he owns. He took pictures and sent them to Yoko Ono’s IMAGINE PEACE website with the hopes of simply having them published to the site but they actually created a great deal of interest.
 
Ono would eventually see the pictures and it was agreed that if there was to be an IMAGINE PEACE TOWER in SL, it would need to be an accurate relative to its real world counterpart, and that Herzog-Brenham would be the ones to build it. Ono is known for forward thinking and was open to the idea of her concept crossing into virtual worlds. Bernard tells us, “It was not a hard sell and when I eventually met Yoko, she seemed genuinely excited and very open to the idea.”
 
Herzog-Brenham was introduced to Tetsuo Hamada and his son TetsuRo, who were responsible for the building of the real world IMAGINE PEACE TOWER and were supplied with blueprints, detailed documentation, and photos to work from. Herzog’s real life son and SL business partner, Dannyboy Brenham, has created scripting to handle the tower’s lighting sequence, which will happen at SL sunsets 6 times a day, as well as a special HUD to be used on the island and the handling of wishes sent in-world. Herzog says “I believe it's as realistic as it can be”.
 
The HUD operates the free Onochord torches and preloads textures to improve the experience of the tower lighting up.
 
At the time of the writing of this article, construction was still underway and moving at a frantic pace to meet the October 9th opening date which also happens to be John Lennon’s birthday. The IMAGINE PEACE TOWER sim is restricted access until then but there’s no doubt there is a great deal of excitement surrounding it. Bernard Herzog tells us, “It’s a fantastic honor to be working on something that is so close to Yoko's heart, albeit in a virtual world. I hope it captures a small part of the experience of visiting the re

Killer ladybirds (Harlequin Ladybird) are invading London and are threatening the Capital's insects and plants.

The large Multivariate Asian Ladybird - a native of Japan and Siberia - has been spotted in London, and has brought with it a new threat of terror to the Capital's ladybird population.

It is not known how the foreign ladybirds entered the country, but the illegal immigrants are thought to have arrived via intercontinental rail, or on imported fruit and flowers.

Many of the foreign colonies have been spotted in south west London - including the Chelsea, Lambeth, Northern Wandsworth and Southwark boroughs, with experts believing the Harmonia axyridis - to give the species it's Latin name - will spread further east along the Thames as it breeds.

London residents have been asked to keep guard and look out for the large aphid - roughly 6-8mm long. The ladybird can be identified by its white patches down the side of the fore-body, usually coloured red or orange with up to 19 black spots. It may sometimes be coloured black with two to eight red patches.

The public has been asked to send specimens or photographs of unusual specimens for identification to Michael Majerus

Information:
Michael Majerus, Dept of Genetics, University of Cambridge, CB2 3EH
Ladybirds travel well by post if securely packed in a small, strong container such as a photographic film tube.