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Fridgehenge - It seems as if replicas "Stonehenges"
are dotted throughout America, including this unique one, also referred to
as "Stonefridge," located just outside of
Santa Fe,
New Mexico .
This unique piece of art, created by Adam Jonas Horowitz, sits atop the
former site of the municipal landfill overlooking
Santa Fe.
Comprised of some 200 discarded and donated refrigerators, it stands 2.5
refrigerators high in most places and 3.5 in others. This "cool"
treat sitting among the desert cactuses and lizards was assembled
with human-power only - no mechanical cranes or heavy lifting equipment
here! Working with several volunteers, Horowitz and his team used
teepee poles, ropes, and pulleys to heft the large appliances one
atop the other. |
Fridgehenge photo courtesy
nicoalesce's photos |
| Though surrounded by a
chain-link fence, these many colored Kenmores and Whirlpools already
show the signs of passing visitors as they add their "art" and
graffiti to this monument to man's vapid consumer appetite.
Rather than being aligned with the sun
and the stars, Stonefridge is aligned with its own atomic power source
- Los Alamos National Laboratories to the northwest.
These sprayed and decorated metal hulks
are all lined up in a 100-foot diameter circle where they seemingly
worship several inner towers. Horowitz has been quoted as
calling it "a
post-modern, post-apocalyptic temple to waste and consumerism."
 Snakes
Alive in Albuquerque -
These days there
is pretty much a museum for everything including this Rattlesnake
Museum in
Albuquerque's
Old Town. Tucked away among the galleries and boutiques, this
museum might be small, but it’s certainly big enough to be called home
to over a hundred rattlesnakes of more than 30 different species.
Included in this
diverse collection are exhibits of snake science, snake culture, snake
art, and snake mythology right along side the creepy crawly critters
themselves. And if that isn’t enough, the snake gift shop offers
all manner of rattlesnake gear, t-shirts, fangs, skin, books, and
more.
Though this
particular traveler finds it extremely high on the creepy scale,
director Bob Myers says that there are actually very few people that
balk at the entrance or refuse to go within striking distance of the
snakes-behind-glass.
Myers conceived of
the idea with two objectives – to help people overcome their fear of
rattlesnakes and to educate them on the influence these snake have on
our lives. |
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The snakes represented
come from all parts of North and South America, each housed in a
vivarium with natural “furnishings” native to its
environment.
As
visitors move down the corridor, peering at the snakes, many of the
creatures greet their arrival with a steady buzz of rattles at work,
coming from such species as the canebrake, northern blacktailed, desert
sidewinder, tiger rattlesnake, and many, many more more. These crawly
critters also come in a variety of colors, from green, to pale-yellow, to
black, gray, and albino.
When
you’ve had your fill of the “real” thing, you can also check out a
collection of snake beer, snake flags, snake photos, snake games, snake
jewelry, snake kits, snake pottery, ……. It’s endless, but not
snakeless!
Myers, a former biology teacher, says he has enough snake stuff to fill a
building ten times the current size of the museum and hopes to expand one
day. |
The snake in this carving is not a
rattlesnake, but
an unidentified species of viper, closely
related to
the pit-vipers. The opium jar is carved in the
form
of a skull, and is encircled by a snake as the
symbol of poison. Photo courtesy
American International
Rattlesnake Museum |
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