Glassblowing Lessons

 

Glassblowing is a glass forming technique which was invented by the Phoenicians around 50 BC somewhere along the Syro-Palestinian coast. The earliest evidence of glassblowing comes from a collection of waste from a glass shop, including fragments of glass tubes, glass rods and tiny blown bottles, which was dumped in a mikvah, a ritual bath in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, dated from 37 to 4 BC.  Some of the glass tubes recovered are fire-closed at one end and are partially inflated by blowing through the open end while still hot to form a small bottle; thus they are considered as a rudimentary form of blowpipe.

Jerome, AZ

Jerome is a town in the Black Hills of Yavapai County, in the U.S. state of Arizona. Built in the late 19th century on Cleopatra Hill, overlooking the Verde Valley, it is more than 5,000 feet (1,500 m) above sea level. Supported in its heyday by rich copper mines, it was home to more than 10,000 people in the 1920s. As of the 2010 census, its population was 444.

Life of a Lizard

 

 

Why does the lizard stick his tongue out? The lizard sticks its tongue out because that's the way its listening and looking and tasting its environment. It's its means of appreciating what's in front of it.
-William Shatner

 

The Audrey Shaft

 

 

 

 

The Audrey Shaft in Jerome is the oldest and largest wooden mining structure in Arizona. The Audrey head frame stands above the Audrey shaft, which descends 1,900 feet straight down into the side of Mingus Mountain. The head frame and shaft worked together from 1918 to 1938 to raise more than $125 million in ore to the surface for United Verde Extension Mining Company.

 

 

 

Montezuma Castle

 

 

 

 

 

Montezuma Castle National Monument, located near Camp Verde, Arizona, features well-preserved cliff-dwellings. They were built and used by the Pre-Columbian Sinagua people, northern cousins of the Hohokam, around 700 AD. When European Americans discovered them in the 1860s, they named them for the Aztec emperor (of Mexico) Montezuma II, due to mistaken beliefs that the emperor had been connected to their construction. Neither part of the monument's name is correct. The Sinaqua dwelling was abandoned 100 years before Montezuma was born and the Dwellings were not a castle. It was more like a "prehistoric high rise apartment complex".

 

 

 

Tuzigoot National Monument

 

Tuzigoot is Apache for "crooked water", from nearby Pecks Lake, a cutoff meander of the Verde River. Historically, the pueblo was built by the Sinagua people between 1125 and 1400 CE. Tuzigoot is the largest and best-preserved of the many Sinagua pueblo ruins in the Verde Valley. The ruins at Tuzigoot incorporate very few doors. Instead they use trapdoor type openings in the roofs, and use ladders to enter each room.

Chapel of the Holy Cross

 

 

 

 

 

The Chapel of the Holy Cross is a Roman Catholic chapel built into the mesas of Sedona, Arizona, which was inspired and commissioned by sculptor Marguerite Brunswig Staude. Richard Hein was chosen as project architect, and the design was executed by architect August K. Strotz, both from the firm of Anshen & Allen. The chapel is built on Coconino National Forest land; the late Senator Barry Goldwater assisted Staude in obtaining a special-use permit. The construction supervisor was Fred Courkos, who built the chapel in 18 months at a cost of US$300,000. The chapel was completed in 1956. In 2007, Arizonans voted the Chapel to be one of the Seven Man-Made Wonders of Arizona, and it is also the site of one of the so-called Sedona vortices.