The Sojourner is one of the oldest residents I’ve been honoured to know — she was one of the many Mentors that always was available to give everybody a hand. She was of the “old school” generation of Mentors — when you had at least to give a class every month — and Soj (as we affectionately called her) was great at those. She also had some of the best in-world tutorials about SL.
When it was clear that just helping out was not enough for her, Soj did much more. She created probably the first exhibition for non-profits in Second Life, the Dreams Fair, hosted on Soj’s own sim. The third yearly one was just last month. This was always a major undertaking requiring an insane amount of work to contact lots of communities, groups, and individuals, setting up booths, setting up dozens and dozens of events, and making the Dreams Fair one of the major events in the year. In fact, to a degree, it tended to be more attended than the Second Life Birthday events, or the Burning Life festival, although it was ‘limited’ to a sim.
Soj was a pillar of the community — being a strong supporter of SL since it’s very early days. She did so many things and was in touch with so many people all the time that it’s hard for me to list all her accomplishments in this virtual world. I keep meeting people that have been friends of her. It seems that she knew everybody.
The Sojourner is now on her last, and ultimate trip, to an even better place than SL. Sadly, she left RL this morning. I’m definitely not worthy of saying anything more but a big THANK YOU, and that Soj, wherever you are now, you won’t be forgotten.
[UPDATE] A tribute to The Sojourner has been set up at http://tributetothesojourner.wikispaces.com/
