Monthly Archives: August 2015

SLN’s future: An update

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Hello everyone,

It’s my intention to try to keep the blog going. Ella handed over ‘the keys to the kingdom’ last week regarding passwords and items like the photo archive, so it’s me running the show for now. I don’t intend this to be a long-term fix, as I’m hopeful that we’ve got replacements for Ella and Pookes and they’ll take on the day to day issues regarding the blog.

I’ll make the introductions next week and we’ll see how things progress from there.

Ella has declared her intention to fulfil her promise of doing her ‘Postcards from Spain’ series, so expect daily updates from the middle of next week. I’ve also offered her the role of ‘Emeritus Editor of SLN’, with an open invitation to post as and when she feels like it. She hasn’t ruled it out completely, but remains adamant that she wishes to take a break from blogging and I respect that.

My apologies if the usual professionalism is absent. I post so rarely that each time I log into wordpress it takes some time to find the various buttons required to make a posting.

Howie

 

Swaziland’s ‘Reed dance’ tragedy

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SLN has reported on Swaziland’s ‘Reed Dance’ before (check the archives). Sadly, a bus crash claimed the lives of 38 young women going to this year’s gathering, and there are some suggestions that the authorities there tried to cover up this tragic event.

When the ladies were writing SLN’s news stories, they would have been openly critical of the Daily Mail’s reporting of it, with the focus on them being ‘topless’ and ‘virgins’ as opposed being dead at a horrifyingly young age. Illustrating this post with a photograph is inappropriate.

 

Howie

 

Giardina di Vita

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There’s a stunning new sim called the Giardina de Vita (The Garden of Life) that I spotted on the updated Ad Vitam Aeternam blog.

It’s almost certainly not naturist, but what the heck…no one was around. The photographs I took accurately reflect how I spent the weekend, gardening or harvesting nature’s bounty.

That has certainly eaten into what might be SL time, but between that, and getting ready for my holiday next week, I thought that there was something nice about the fact that my little available SL time was reflecting my RL time. Might that be a good place to stop my regular postings? I think it is.

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I will, as promised, be back to report on my RL naturist holiday, at the beginning of September. After that…who knows if SL Naturist will continue. From what I’ve read it looks as if Howie imagines there might be a reprieve. I hope there is. It would be terrible to see the blog just disappear. But apart from my now familiar ‘Postcards from Spain’ series, I think that’s me done. 🙂

Ella

 

Cancel that wake!

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Don’t buy wreaths just yet, or write out the eulogies. Because I think we might just have replacements for Ella & Pookes and SL Naturist may just be able to continue. I think I’ve found a couple of writers. Female, again, as females are by far the best bloggers where SL is concerned in my opinion.

Nothing has been nailed down tight yet (including the SL Naturist coffin lid) but we may be able to continue, which would be amazing after the gloom of the past few weeks.

I’m off to Spain tomorrow, Sunday, for a week to sign the papers for our new ‘retirement’ home out there, so there’ll be no further updates on this until next weekend.

Fingers crossed we can keep SL Naturist going anyway.

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Howie

Self-regulating body temperature

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It’s well documented that sleeping nude has several health benefits. One of these is that the body’s temperature self-regulates, and adapts to the temperature to raise cortisol levels, for one thing.

The same is true of daytime naturism, the body adapts itself so that the weather doesn’t need to be fantastically hot and sunny in order to feel comfortable. Good to know in what has been a desperately indifferent summer. The wind is an enemy, though, and it will certainly make you feel cold even if temperatures are ‘OK’ (your definition of ‘OK’ will be different to mine depending where you live in the world 🙂 ). But on a relatively still day, it’s possible to be naked, outdoors, on cool days. I wouldn’t advise sunbathing in 5 degrees celsius just because it’s a cloudless winter’s day, of course, and the idea of walking through snowy woods in nothing but a pair of boots is foolhardy, but there are probably more ‘outdoors naked’ opportunities than we imagine.

For instance, I walked down to the village shop for a paper today, The Times has a positive article on naturism in today’s edition (unfortunately it requires subscription and log-in to read, so I’m afraid I can’t link to it for you, apart from the first paragraph, so it necessitated a trip out for a paper edition. On my way back I got caught in a heavy -and I do mean heavy- shower. The presence of a light rain jacket didn’t help. By the time I got home looking like a bedraggled rat, and with the paper so sodden I’ve had to leave it sitting on a window ledge to dry in the sun, I was soaked through to the skin. Everything had to come off and be thrown into the washing machine!

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Ella loads her washing machine

By this stage the shower had passed and the sun came out. I had been wearing a pair of canvas trainers while out, and these were sodden too, so I decided to set them out on a bench in the back garden to let them dry in the sun. Once out there, it felt rather pleasant, despite fairly indifferent temperatures so I decided that, well, I wasn’t going to get dressed just yet.

Indeed, as my body adjusted from shivering in wet clothes, it felt more than comfortable, and thus I pottered around my kitchen as nature intended for a good hour thereafter. The children quite merrily followed my lead and cast off their clothes to run in and out of the garden and up and down the stairs without once ever complaining about ‘feeling cold’.

We only got dressed as we needed to go out in the car, and I have to say that I certainly felt too warm, even in a pair of shorts and a T shirt, after having been ‘cooled’ a little bit by wandering around outside for a bit. Perhaps we need to be considering the health benefits of nudity more closely, as it seems to me that our immune systems would all benefit from a bit of a surge if nudity in and around the house was more widely practiced. I’ve boosted my vitamin D, resulting in a better sense of wellbeing, I’ve allowed my skin to be rid of toxins (wearing clothes ensures toxins are re-absorbed back into the skin, causing some skin problems) which will give it a healthier glow. It’s suggested that being nude, and not constricted by clothing, improves circulation. One study suggests that being barefoot decreases the chances of developing Alzheimer’s Disease. All good reasons why we maybe need to embrace naturism within the home and garden more often.

Ella

Growing

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My favourite time of the year is…now! We grow some of our own produce in the garden, and from the beginning of July, our winter’s efforts begin to, quite literally, bear fruit.

Historically, the British strawberry season was the beginning of July, coinciding with the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, part of the reason that ‘strawberries and cream’ are so interwoven into that event’s culture.

These days, you can buy ‘fresh’ strawberries in the supermarket on Christmas Eve, thanks to refrigerated transport and force growing them in huge greenhouses, then sometimes flying them into the UK.

I won’t buy these for a couple of reasons. One, they don’t taste as good as home-grown. Two, I object to the carbon footprint involved in the transportation of them. My naturism extends to a need to indulge in the conservation of the planet. Burning fossil fuels, by truck or plane, just to have strawberries at Christmas, isn’t my idea of a fully rounded naturist approach to life.

Apart from the strawberries, our tomatoes ripen, lettuce are grown, blackberries are approaching their peak, peas and beans are ready for harvest. We don’t grow enough to feed ourselves, but we do enjoy growing some produce, with the added benefit of knowing we’ve not put fertilisers or chemicals near them.

Having the benefit of a secluded garden, it means we can be out there as nature intended too.

Yesterday was a beautiful late summer’s day, although today has been one of heavy rain all morning, with no sign of it drying up any time soon. For all that, it’s still warm, so we’ve been in the garden this morning wearing little more than our wellington boots and raincoats. The greenhouse is still warm enough to potter in as nature intended.

 

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There’s something about the garden, the potting shed, the greenhouse, the vegetable plot, the orchard, that all lend themselves to the naturist lifestyle. I’ve far more tomatoes than I can possibly use. My next task will be to get the over-ripe ones into our kitchen and begin to think about making a nice chutney with them and get them laid down in jars to mature in time for Christmas. I’ll eat with a clear conscience, knowing that they’ve not been flown half way across a continent and left an indelible stain on the planet’s carbon footprint.

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Second Life offers a huge array of places you can visit and buy items for your SL garden. Sadly, it appears to be something that is pitifully underdeveloped in SL, and I wish more people would give greater attentions to their gardens, as they’re something that can be chopped and changed, with an SL house remaining constant, refreshing your SL home’s look constantly.

Ella

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What’s your ‘ideal beauty standard’?

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Just when you think some SL avatars have no sense of perspective where their appearance is concerned, Cosmopolitan presents a gallery of the same woman’s image photoshopped to demonstrate how women around the globe see their beauty ideal.

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Some seem slightly strange choices up to a point. For instance, if asked to do this in respect of a Dutch woman, I’d have reflexively gone for much longer legs, a much taller model. The one constant is that, whatever shape is utilised, each and every body is beautiful.

 

 

Ella

 

A Burning Man sim challenge?

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This is why I love SL. Sometimes, things just come out of left-field at you, as with this notice from Sedi at Commune Utopia.

The Commune has been given a quarter sim with 3515 prims to build something fantastic in the style of the Burning Man festival. We have a whole month to build, and then the general public will vote on which out of the four plots is the best – and then the winner gets a whole sim for a month! Obviously I do not want to be building alone, so let’s get a team together and discuss and collaborate! You do not need to be an expert builder, the enthusiasm is what I want!

I love the idea of Burning Man, despite never having attended it or anything like it. In a world of increasing standardisation, it’s just lovely to know there’s a counter-culture out there and that people are buying into the idea.

SL will often throw up ‘prizes’, such as being the centrefold for Playmates magazine, or cash for photographic competitions. What’s exciting and possibly unique is that someone’s largesse has determined that they’re stumping up the ‘prize money’ of a sim free for a month. And because of the way in which the competition is framed, it means we’re going to get a Burning Man styled sim to enjoy later in the year.

Casual nudity is often part of the Burning Man vibe, often among people who wouldn’t describe themselves as ‘naturist’. It’s all part of the normalisation of social nudity, and getting wrapped up in the whole Burning Man atmosphere. I’m rather hoping that the winner, whoever they may be, embraces that casual nudity element into their finished sim.

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I’m still undecided whether or not my SL continues once I step out of the editor’s chair in a month’s time. Needless to say if I’d been fully committed to remaining I would have loved to have thrown my energies into helping with this project.

 

 

Ella

 

SL may be increasing your sense of wellbeing.

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Mr. Keng was listening to football commentary on the radio last night while tinkering with an old radio he’d picked up in an auction. This is an old style radio with the dial marked with now long forgotten radio stations on it, post war and possibly up to as far as the mid-60s would be my guess at its age (although I’m no expert). But apparently the names of the stations evoke a sense of romanticism for people of a certain age in Europe. Let me run down some of them to see if they trigger your memories or if you remember them: Luxembourg, Athlone, Hilversum, Paris, Light Programme, Third Programme, Home Service (the latter three would become BBC Radios 2, 3 & 4 respectively, and I thing Athlone became the Irish broadcaster RTE and Hilversum became NOS, Netherlands Radio).

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It’s a rather long pre-amble into me telling you that BBC did one of its ‘stings’ for its own programmes, this morning’s BBC Radio 5 Breakfast programme, and my ears pricked up when I heard that one of the items being discussed was that virtual reality gaming makes you smarter and gives you a sense of wellbeing.

An extract from the discussion is here (although I’m not sure if that will be playable to internet addresses beyond the UK).

However, a psychologist says, in that extract, that “you have these other psychological phenomena which give you a sense of wellbeing, such as competence […] you get a sense of achievement, we know that’s a fundamental psychological need that people have, and that gives them a great sense of wellbeing and happiness”.

Is Second Life giving you that? Does the process of dancing with SL friends and indulging in idle tittle-tattle while listening to someone DJing give you a sense of wellbeing? I know there are times when doing that, in SL, is a far superior relaxation and ‘wellbeing’ process than watching some television programme.

Do you think that too many people are far too quick to write off SL as ‘that thing that was briefly popular’ (I know that, in relation to this very blog, I’ve read a comment on the internet that more or less reads ‘Is that still going? And it has a naturist community?’)

Yes. And yes. And in both instances, up to a point, thriving. Clearly not of Facebook/Twitter style popularity (although we’re comparing apples with pears) but thriving, improving and being a pleasurable experience to its players nonetheless.

Is the view that SL players are ‘sad loners’ misplaced? Might it be that people who, for whatever reason, live alone, have a sense of belonging provided by SL? Might it be that cybersex is a positive, valuable release valve rather than some sordid thing? It will be interesting to see, as SL develops, just how psychologists come to value it. Because it’s clear that we’re now moving away from that ‘video games made me a mass killer’ view into something different.

Ella