Ever since you made one of those turkeys out of an outline of your hand in kindergarten, you’ve probably been aware of the fact that Thanksgiving might not be the preeminent maker’s holiday. Unless your forte is food. Or turkey papercraft.
But being thankful, taking stock of ourselves and our world, is something we should all be able to get behind as makers, even those of you who don’t live in the States and aren’t celebrating this particular holiday today. The subtitle of MAKE magazine is “technology on your time.” It’s about slowing down (likely), taking stock of your physical world, your technology, figuring out how it’s made, and figuring out how to improve it, and by extension, how to improve the quality of your life in the process. So, in some ways, the ritual notion of Thanksgiving is kind of encoded within the mission of MAKE itself. That was also part of the idea behind the “ReMake America” theme of Maker Faire this year. Taking stock of what we have, the bounty we still enjoy, even during an economic crisis, and then figuring out what we can do to creatively improve the quality of our lives, using the resources at hand. It’s a mission we’re still on.
So on this day, we at Maker Media will slow down, sit down, take stock of what we have, of what we’ve accomplished (okay, and eat and drink like just-rescued castaways). And we’ll think about the coming year and what we can do to better document and celebrate “technology on your time.” We’ll hoist a glass to all of you in the process.
Thanks for making 2009 such a great year for the maker community and thanks for supporting us in all of our Maker Media endeavors. We couldn’t do it without you!
Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some hand-print turkeys to cut out and glue.
Thanksgiving project to help you work off lunch:
DIY Thanksgiving roundup 2009
CRAFT Thanksgiving roundup 2009
Thanksgiving papercraft redux (above image)
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