Author: 0owen1

Volcanoes and Rock Art

Three cinder cones appear on Albuquerque’s west mesa, few miles west of the Rio Grande River.

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Locals refer to them as the Three Sisters or the Albuquerque Volcanoes. Geologically, they are the visible remains of a fissure type volcano that was several miles long and spewed slow moving lava. This fissure is a small part of the volcanic activity generated by the Rio Grande Rift Valley. Link

The lava filled low lying arroyos and, upon cooling, formed a distinctive escarpment around one hundred feet high.

Much of the escarpment eroded into large rough boulders and cliffs.

However, some of the boulders have a smooth surface. Indigenous artists used stone harder than the basalt to chip designs onto the plane surface.

Some of the images are representational and depict humanoid figures

Some of the images appear to be more abstract.

Spanish era artists, inspired by their indigenous predecessors, also pecked away at the rocks as the cross in the picture illustrates.

Petroglyph National Monument protects many of these works of art. Link

 

 

Godzilla’s Godparents

By Ray Shortridge

Godzilla is the iconic Japanese dinosaur, having starred in several movies since Ishiro Honda brought him to life and international acclaim in the 1954 film, Godzilla.

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To no great surprise, this lovable (to the Japanese and the world-wide multitude in the Godzilla cult) monster has been further monetized beyond movie tickets, toys, and stuffed animals. In revving  up to the 2020 Olympics, Japanese entrepreneurs have written “the Godzilla experience” into destination tourist attractions, including a hotel and specialty foods. (For a sampling, navigate to this link.)

Brenda took this evening picture of the hotel with Godzilla peering over the McDonald’s golden arches at the passersby.

While wandering through the gift shop after making soba noodles for lunch, I came across dinosaur junk food products.

My initial thought was that these products were derived from the Godzilla craze. However, that wasn’t so. A Google search revealed that important real dinosaur fossils had been unearthed in the Fukui Prefecture and elsewhere in Japan. The Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum in Katsuyama is a leading dinosaur museum in Asia and houses many of the Japanese fossils. The gift shop was in Fukui Prefecture and was celebrating the dinosaur discoveries that were found more or less in their back yard.

As with Godzilla, entrepreneurs have found a way to profit from the dinosaurs. In Tokyo, where else?, the Henn na (Weird) Hotel is staffed largely by robots, many of which were designed to be dinosaurs.