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#1
Metaphysical / Re: Introduce yourself (Mk. II...
Last post by Hez - Yesterday at 07:17:40 AM
So Welcome and welcome back. 
the more the merrier!
#2
Metaphysical / Re: Introduce yourself (Mk. II...
Last post by Ore Cart - November 06, 2024, 12:06:56 PM
  Btw, I have just never ran into the verfy post feature anyway.
#3
Metaphysical / Re: Introduce yourself (Mk. II...
Last post by Ore Cart - November 06, 2024, 12:02:44 PM
  Thanks for the welcome!  I certainly will share, but right now I'm just doing some resesrch and gathering ideas.  Looking for a new direction to take my art.   I just wanted to introduce myself.

  I used to tinker around with robotics and electronics....  I think I tinker around too much sometimes.   :)
#4
Off Topic / Re: GAAAAAHHHHHH Mk.VI: The Re...
Last post by Xenos - November 06, 2024, 04:29:03 AM
Watching the US Election results. It's absolutely dreadful. I'm going bonkers. Enough of this "Will they/Won't they!"

The whole system is absurd. I can't believe I'm sat here a bundle of anxiety watching this close of an election... especially between these two people.
#5
Metaphysical / Re: Introduce yourself (Mk. II...
Last post by von Corax - November 05, 2024, 08:55:33 PM
Welcome, Ore Cart! I do hope you'll share your interpretation of Steampunk with us.

Quote from: Ore Cart on November 05, 2024, 06:59:43 PMSo, I see I have to verify a bunch of letters to post this.  Not crabbing, just new to this forum. 

I had forgotten that I had turned that on a year or so back when we were inundated with spambots. It's off now. (Anyway, they say 'bots are better at solving those things than we humans are... :-[ )
#6
Metaphysical / Re: Introduce yourself (Mk. II...
Last post by Ore Cart - November 05, 2024, 06:59:43 PM
  Well, I am new here and typed out a nice long introduction but left the page to look up a definition and the whole thing disappeared and logged me out.  I'm not very tech savy, but I used to be.  I'm a scrap metal artist interested in what constitutes steampunk.  I am sending this before it goeas away.

  So, I see I have to verify a bunch of letters to post this.  Not crabbing, just new to this forum. 
#7
Off Topic / Re: Happy Thanksgiving 2024
Last post by von Corax - November 05, 2024, 01:33:13 AM
It long ago occurred to me that the United States was founded by religious extremists while Canada was founded by drunken lumber jacks and womanizing fur traders. I think the differences are still evident. :P
#8
Metaphysical / Re: Video of Player Piano Play...
Last post by PlayerPianoPlayer - November 05, 2024, 01:19:14 AM
Thank you!

I, too, was much more active in the field of steampunk around then.  I have since gotten more into the historical preservation realm, restoring equipment to functionality in both my own collection as well as volunteering in a historical museum capacity fixing up antique equipment to operation at the museum to keep it alive for future generations.

But I do still miss those days.  The whimsy and optimism of it all.  I still think it was kind of the kickoff for the "maker" movement, and a lot of skills and techniques for making, crafting, building, and constructing things, which used to be common, were rediscovered back in the early days of steampunk.  And despite my primary profession then, as it is now, being the wrangling of these accursed modern computing devices, when spending time enjoying ourselves, many of us eschewed technology enough that there's very little record of a lot of those early days.  At least not to the extent that you would expect for how active the community was.  I'm sure that second video I posted a link to is still around.  It's undoubtedly still on a hard drive of the lady who captured it, buried in a long-forgotten folder somewhere.  It will be interesting to see how much "lost media" of events like that surfaces decades from now as future generations become interested in the history and start asking about it.  But in the meantime, it's up to the rest of us to keep the memory of it alive, I guess.

And if anyone on here knows someone who attended that event, maybe ask them to post it somewhere?  Because there doesn't seem to be much left of the memory of World Steam Expo in Michigan.
#9
Metaphysical / Re: Video of Player Piano Play...
Last post by J. Wilhelm - November 04, 2024, 02:53:46 AM
Well hello, Mr. Piano Player!

First of all, welcome to the forum, Mr. Piano Player! And let me tell you the video brings back memories from those early 2010s, when I was a lot more active in the convention realm.  I can relate to not having to many pictures or video from those years.

In my case we actually hired a professional photographer and we organized a photo shoot for the now defunct Seaholm Steam and Diesel Club in Austin, Texas. I'm afraid the sands of time have erased even the website of the photo studio we hired, and all that remains is whatever we got hidden in our hard drives. The say the Internet is "forever," but I beg to differ. Everything I've got is in "cold storage" on my hard drives. We have a saved copy of this forum on the Wayback Machine, but by the time we did that backup most of the photos from the early days had disappeared.

Adm. Wilhelm
#10
Off Topic / Re: Happy Allhallowtide!
Last post by J. Wilhelm - November 04, 2024, 12:11:19 AM
Quote from: Sorontar on November 01, 2024, 10:57:38 AMIt was last night for me. The weather wasn't great and the neighbourhood wasn't as organised as usual but I think about 50 kids visited (normally twice the number). I was told to be nice and not scare them but it is hard not to surprise them when they knock on one door and I open a different creaky door behind them instead.

At least I didn't put on a costume, just wore my pirate tricorn.

Sorontar
Good for you! Good show!

I'm afraid I didn't have any way of doing anything holiday-wise this weekend.  The most I could do is horse around with an AI Image generatorm I'm afraid.  There was no "Bread of the Dead" at my two local supermarkets. Hardly anything to pickup. Rather somber if you ask me.

Some customers told me that on Wednesday night they did have Trick or Treating by a copious amount of kids and parents, but since I no longer live in a residential neighborhood there was none of that where I live. Bah, humbug.

Here at least have a bit of history.

Re-imagining the original "La Calavera Catrina" of Jose Guadalupe Posada
(You can zoom into the image)



Click spoiler for background on this character
Spoiler: ShowHide
Who is La Catrina? This enigmatic character, "La Calavera Catrina" ("The Dapper Skull") started life as a political cartoon created by Mexican printmaker and lithographer José Guadalupe Posada between 1910 and 1912. The cartoon was created at a time during a period of history (known as Porfiriato) when Mexican classes were very divided, thanks to a forced industrialization policy imposed by President Porfirio Diaz, which opened the borders to wealthy migrant Europeans, offering them residence and citizenship  in order to exploit Mexico's natural resources and develop Mexico's heavy industry and railways.

A tremendous class disparity grew among Mexicans because people who were directly associated with this industrial movement, including these new European-born Mexican citizens  became very wealthy, while the poorer classes became extremely poor, particularly the Native Mexican farmers around the country. Eventually in 1910 Porfirio Diaz was forced to resign, and an insurrection started among the farmers, which turned into Mexico's Civil War ("La Revolucion").

The well-to-do, Europeanized their looks to match the new class of wealthy migrants, and Mexican women adopted the latest Parisian fashions to match, and rode in their new-fangled automobiles, in a way that mirrored the westernization of Japan during the Meiji Era. Wealthy people lived and pretended to be European in Mexico City, while the poor starved in the fields.

It's in this civil war climate that Posada made his political cartoon critiquing wealthy Mexican women in 1912, basically stating graphically that his "Dapper Skull" mirrored the women who "could dress as elegantly as they wished, but in the end they'd succumb to death as all the rest of us."

However, as part of the Day of the Dead celebrations, it is customary to write friendly poetic epithets (similar to roasting in English) in the form of obituaries called "Calaveras Literarias" ("Literary Skulls"), and other people with a political bone to pick reused Posada's image in the form of editorial broadsides written for the Day of the Dead (1917), in a similar form to these "obituaries," and not necessarily aimed at the upper classes, so there are many examples of this character being used during La Revolucion (1910-20) as political ammunition.

Other artists borrowed the character and La Catrina appeared in art exhibitions. Eventually, through repetition by way of artists like Jean Charlot and Diego Rivera, La Calavera Catrina slowly became a symbol of the Mexican Day of the Dead.

Ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Calavera_Catrina