JP Dean, Author at Chicago Steampunk Exposition

Remembering the dead and laying them to rest in the Victorian Era.

Presented by Sandra Fenton

Come stroll through cemeteries of the late 1800s. Learn about the rituals of both loss and remembrance, from the commonplace to the bizarre. Become acquainted with the symbolism and language of mourning, and see how both science and superstition permeated these trends.

Sandra Fenton is a historian and cemeterian from Northern Illinois. Long interested in the folklore and traditions surrounding rites of passage and the macabre, she helps maintain a small cemetery and preserve the eroding names of the dead before they weather away. She takes her tea without cream or lemon, and enjoys long picnics among the headstones on warm, cloud dappled days.

The Museum of Wonder & Awe will be sharing their array of curiosities and strange relics this September in the Exposition Exhibitor Hall.

Curator MacRae opened his first museum in a backyard chicken coop. The exhibits contained snake skins, sea shells, bird nests, peacock feathers, fossils, and a desiccated road killed squirrel. He was 6 years old. Today, after 50 years of acquiring and interpreting the curiosities, oddities, artifacts and relics from the 6 corners of the globe, MacRae has opened the new Museum of Wonder and Awe. An intrepid traveler, MacRae’s collecting expeditions have led him from Tierra del Fuego to the far flung Isles of Langerhans.

Upon his visit to Medulla, Oblongata, the indigenous people proclaimed him their king. Despite his legendary status and spectacular accomplishments as an educator, MacRae remains humble, or as he often says, “When it comes to humility, I’m the greatest.”

Calvin, the Assistant Curator, was discovered living in the darkest jungles of Minocqua, Wisconsin. The Curator saw potential in this feral child, who was so uneducated and uncivilized that he couldn’t tell his own elbow from a hole in the ground. But under the wise and knowing tutelage of the Curator, Calvin is now able to tell the difference between the Pythagorean Theorem and a hole in the ground.

Learn more at http://www.museumofwonderandawe.org/