More Dog Art

In the labyrinths of lives and civilizations long past there were in Mexico and other parts of the Americas some who revered the dog. This first photo is a ceramic dog made perhaps 1900 years ago. I took the photo in a museum in Colima, Mexico in April of 2004. Probably it depicts a kind of hairless dog, known as the Techichi or Escuincle which is believed to be a relative of the Chihuahua and possibly also of the Mexican Hairless also called the Xoloitzcuintle. Apparently these dogs or their ceramic representations were sometimes buried with their masters, to guide on the long trip to another world.

Pre-Hispanic dog in Colima, Mexico

In Xalapa, capital of the state of Veracruz, in Mexico there is a wonderful museum of anthropology. I took the next two photos there in July, 2002. They are also prehispanic representations of dogs -- unfortunately I did not record the civilization or period they came from.

Ancient Mexican Dog

I wish I knew why this poor dog was hunched over and whether it was functional or ceremonial or decorative or what -- but I do not.

The next photo, also from the Museum of Anthropology in Xalapa, proves that the wheel was known in the Americas before Europeans came. Apparently this dog was a child's toy and so far as anyone knows the wheel was not used otherwise.

Prehispanic Mexican toy dog

On the edge of the city of Colima, in the state of Colima, Mexico is a wonderful statue of two dogs dancing. To me they seem to be kissing as well. Here is a photo I took of that statue in April, 2004:

Dancing Dogs -- Colima -- Mexico

These dogs are really quite large, maybe 6 or 8 feet tall, I wish I could remember better. They are modeled, I believe, after a much smaller archaeological find dating back to 150 AD approximately.

Back in August of 2003 I was in St. Louis for my daughter's wedding and had a chance to visit the St. Louis Art Museum. They allowed you to take no-flash-no-tripod photos then and I took a this picture of what I think is a well known painting of two sighthounds:

Two sighthounds. Artist = ???

Unfortunately I didn't write down the artist's name or the date of the painting. Please email me ( jbuddenh at gmail dot com) or comment if you have any information about this painting and I will update this blog entry.

The next image is a photo I took at the Texas Clay Festival in Gruene, Texas back in October, 2005. I don't remember the artist's name. Here it is:

Dog art at Texas Clay Festival, October, 2005
(ceramicist unknown )

By the way, I put 49 photos of the Texas Clay Festival of 2005 out on the internet and they are still there, just photos, no text. To see them click here.

In the year 2004 my wife and I drove across the United States and spent a couple of days in the Silver City, New Mexico area. We heard there would be a festival called "Fiesta de la Olla" in the small mountain town of Pinos Altos near the 7080 ft high continental divide north of Silver City. This festival celebrates (among other things) the wonderfully decorated Mexican pottery made in the village of Mata Ortiz, Chihuahua, Mexico. So we went to see the fiesta and I took some photos including this one which should give you an idea of the Mata Ortiz pottery:

Mata Ortiz pottery

Later we wandered a bit around the town and I came across this wonderful sculpture of a dog in someone's yard:

Folk Art, Pinos Altos, New Mexico (July 17, 2004)

Some of you, like me, may be old enough to remember when the Soviet Union shot off Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957. This was the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth and it shocked the U.S. out of the complacent feeling that we were the most technologically sophisticated nation on earth. It precipitated changes in the teaching of science and mathematics and was surely one of reasons for John F. Kennedy's 1961 decision to put a man on the moon. You may also remember that Sputnik 1 was unmanned but that shortly thereafter on November 3, 1957, the Soviet Union put the first 'astronaut' into space and that astronaut was a dog named Laika (original name кудрявка). That poor dog met a terrible fate. At least we have this painting (which I snagged from some commercial site, if memory serves) to remember her by:

Laika the Space Dog

My next dog art image is by Irish printmaker Tim Mara(1948-1997) and is one of my favorites. One Tim Mara site said that images can be used 'for educational purposes only', so I hereby declare this an educational blog. Here is the image:

A print of Tim Mara

Last (and in some sense least :)) let me conclude this dog art post with a painting of the well known Colombian artist Fernando Botero (born 1932):

Dog Turning a Corner -- Fernando Botero--1980

This concludes today's posting on dog art. Since my collection has swollen to over 250 images, I reserve the right to someday post again on this topic.

cascada post 25

Unknown Animals (y mas)

The other day, November 17, 2007 to be precise, I went out in my yard and noticed a strange bug on one of the leaves of a bird of paradise plant. At first I didn't think it was a bug or even alive. It was tiny, smaller than a pencil eraser, maybe about 3 mm in length (about 1/8 of an inch). I was standing there about 3 feet away and it looked like a whitish or grayish spec, maybe dirt or ash, or maybe some white mold or fungus. Then it moved. Hmm, that funny little thing is alive, I thought. I looked more closely and now I see it crawling slowly along the leaf .. it didn't look like an insect since it seemed to have many legs. It didn't look like a caterpillar either. What could it be? I ran and got my camera, a 2001 vintage digital which back then was called a Nikon Coolpix 995. It does a nice job with closeups. Here is the picture of this odd creature:

Unknown #1: Strange 'bug'. What is it?
(click on picture for discussion)

That's my thumbnail over on the right, so you can better gauge how small that bug is. I count 24 appendages plus one short one right on the axis of symmetry. The photo shows it more clearly than I could see it with the naked eye. It looks a little like a trilobite I thought. But, in spite of the fact that there is a recipe for trilobite cookies at one of my favorite sites, trilobites have been extinct for 250 million years.

I made a real effort to identify that little guy, but so far not much luck. Part of my effort involved searching the internet and eventually posting a query at buguide.net . There was one response which suggested it was some kind of mealybug. So I 'google' mealybug and find out there are hundreds of different kinds. And then I 'google image' mealybugs and find many pictures -- but none look like the little guy above. You see, mealybugs have this white powdery dusty stuff all over them. In short: mealybugs are mealy! Not the little guy above. No dust. No powder. I keep my eyes open in my backyard and soon find some real mealy bugs, really small, maybe 2 mm in length. I got a good picture of one. Here it is:

Mealybug (Pseudococcus elisae ?)
Common name: banana mealybug (?)

This mealybug looks bigger than the unknown creature above, but it is actually smaller. The photo was taken by holding my digital camera above the eyepiece of a microscope -- the very one my parents gave my brother and me back when we were in high school around 1958, nearly 50 years ago!

Since this post is about unknown creatures (or maybe some are fungi) found in my back yard, let me show you another:

Unknown #2: snail or scale insect or something else?

This looked like it might be a snail, but it was very tiny, only 1.5 mm in size. Then again maybe it is a scale insect. Ignorance is not bliss. I could see it move very slowly on the leaf it is resting on, and whose cell structure is visible. The picture above represents the maximum closeness I can get with my camera, unaided. Let me show you a couple of other pictures of the same specimen under the lowest power of my microscope. The first shows it upside down and you can see clearly the semi-translucent structure of the fat 'under-belly' with some dark material inside.

Unknown #2: a closer view

Remember, this guy is only about 1.5 mm in length, that is slightly less than 1/16 of an inch. I have no idea what this is. If you do, please either leave a comment or email me (jbuddenh at gmail.com). When I moved this little guy around under the microscope I could see in one position what looked a little like antennae or some other kind of small appendages. The depth of field is close to zero, so it is pretty blurry, but here is what I saw:

Unknown #2: detail showing antennae-like structures

Let us proceed now to unknown #3 which I thought was some kind of fungus but which some folks on flickr thought was more likely to be an egg sack of some spider or insect. Possibly it my be something altogether different. If you think you know please chime in. Here it is:

Unknown #3: diameter of 'sphere' about 2.8 mm (about 1/10th of an inch)

This thing is made out of thin hair-like fibers interwoven. I cut it open and it seemed to be hollow. I had no proper instruments for this delicate surgery so I used my pocket-knife :( and the results are less than for certain. I looked a bit on the web and found that there do exist galls of similar shape to this and some of similar size, but all were more securely attached. Incidentally this was attached to a leaf, but I don't know the name of the plant.

Next comes unknown #4. It is an example of scale on a leaf. Probably you have seen scales on leaves. They are roundish things that look sort of like a fish scale, maybe 1/8 of an inch in diameter or a little bigger. They sit on the leaves and grow a bit but otherwise do not move. Perhaps you, like me, did not realize that many of them are actually insects and go through various stages in their life cycles. The first stage in the life cycle, called the first-instar nymph, is the crawler stage. Soon they become scales and females are condemned to remain scales even into sexual maturity. The males eventually develop a pair of wings and can fly but die after a few days. Most of their lives scale insects are just motionless scales on leaves. Their is a huge diverse collection of different kinds of scale insects, perhaps 8000 species. These fall into three main classes: the hard-shell kind that look a bit like tiny barnacles stuck to leaves, the soft-shell kind, and the mealybugs which are not scales per se but are related and grouped with them. You can find a lot more about scale insects here. So that brings us to unknown #4 which is nothing more that a closeup photo of an unusual scale on a leaf:

Unknown #4: strange scale on a leaf

The green background is the leaf. The round thing, which is about 3 mm in diameter (a tad more than 1/10th of an inch), is the scale which, however, is unusual in several respects. First there are the orange filaments or hair like structures in the middle. So far as I know these don't occur with scale insects, but I am not a biologist so I could be wrong on this. Second, the base material has a greenish cast which makes me wonder if it contains chlorophyll, which makes me think plant, not insect. Fungus? Slime mold? Gall? Something else? You tell me, because I don't know. Click on the picture to see what a couple of people on flickr think.

Let me close out this blog article with one last unknown creature, unknown #5, which is has attached itself (or is attached) near the edge of a sick leaf. Here it is looking maybe like one of those hard-shelled scale insects, but only about 2.8 mm in length.

Unknown #5: scale insect, or snail, or ?? on a leaf

Here is a low magnification microscopic closeup, not clear on top but showing the edges pretty well.

Unknown #5: could it be a fungus?

To me it resembles a fungus, such as might be on a dead or rotting tree, just much smaller, about 1/10 of an inch in length. I pried it off the leaf, which was difficult since it was stuck on pretty well. But, when I looked carefully at the bottom side I saw a few strange leg-like projections. Here is a closeup again my digital camera hand held above the eyepiece of a microscope, set at a low magnification.

Unknown #5: detail showing a strange appendage

What could that be? Do fungi have appendages like that. Admittedly, there were only a few of these in evidence. Maybe it is not a fungus but instead one of those scale insects. Well, as a non-biologist I certainly don't know. If you can ID any of these things, or shed any light on any of them, please comment or email me at jbuddenh at gmail.com. Please mention the unknown by number as shown in the captions under the pictures.

cascada post 23

Axolotl in Cruz Blanca

Recently I have been suffering from a severe case of blogblockitis which is an intransigent form of the more transient malady known as blogblock. One of my favorite blogs recently passed through the final solution and on to the other side. There was a certain beatic way in which it happened and I have to admit to a smidgen of jealousy. But, for unknown reasons, I trudge along still on this side.

If you are wondering what the title refers to, at least in my imagination, were you to speak the title without benefit of visual cues, you might misapprehend it as "accidentally in Cruz Blanca". Of course, if you are axolotl-aware you probably wouldn't. But just supposing that you did you wouldn't be entirely wrong: I was in Cruz Blanca twice a few years ago without even knowing it. Back then I thought it was all part of Matlalpa. In fact, when I mentioned to Kyoka, the young Japanese woman who has the strange fortune to work in Matlalapa, that the road ended in Matlalapa and that the only way to get to Cruz Blanca was to walk from there, she looked at me curiously but was far too polite to set me straight.

If now you are about to Google "Cruz Blanca", let me save you some trouble. Cruz Blanca is the name of at least five different towns in Mexico, and two are in the state of Veracruz. Is the true cross white? Our Cruz Blanca sits in the foothills of the nearly 14000 foot volcano, Cofre de Perote. It is just a little above Matlalapa which in turn is above Xico Viejo, whose indigenous precursor was, many believe, passed through by Cortes with his troops nearly 500 years ago. You can find this Cruz Blanca in Google Earth if you enter in this latitude and longitude: 19 28.424, -97 05.183. My GPS reports the elevation as 7290 feet.

Here is a picture from a little higher up looking back at Cruz Blanca (lower right) and Matlalapa (left side). If you follow the road back to the right until it seems to disappear you can see a few houses, which mark the upper limit of the small town Xico Viejo.

Cruz Blanca (right) and Matlalapa (left)

There is a small church at Cruz Blanca which honors 'San Isidro'. Here is its picture:

Iglesia 'San Isidro' at Cruz Blanca

The temporary structure on large bamboo stilts spanning the door is called an 'arco' and with much fanfare is marched to and erected at the church on the patron saint day of the town. This happens at most Catholic churches at least in this part of Mexico and is always a big festival.

Appropriately there is a white cross at Cruz Blanca. Here it is:

Cruz blanca a Cruz Blanca

Enigmatically, perhaps, there is also an axolotl at Cruz Blanca. And what is an axolotl? Well, when they are mature they are about nine inches long and look like this:

Axolotls as drawn by Jitka Horne

(I have to confess that I glommed this wonderful drawing from some no longer remembered internet publication. Jitka, if you or your publisher object please contact me). And here then is the much larger axolotl at Cruz Blanca, still under construction:

Axolotl (building far right) at Cruz Blanca

I'm afraid you can't see its tail, just its head, eyes, and mouth. So why are they building such a strange structure at Cruz Blanca? To understand you must know a little more of axolotls, which are unusual and interesting creatures.

Axolotl (in Spanish ajolote) is the common name for the species Ambystoma mexicanum, a kind of neotenic salamander. The 'mexicanum' part of the name derives from 'Mexico' because this animal only existed in Lake Xochimilco and Lake Chalco in the highlands of Mexico surrounding Teotihuacan (city of the gods) and just to its south the town of Xochimilco (city of flowers--from Nahuatl xóchitl = flower; milli = cultivated field, co = place). These lakes were full of axolotls which were a delicious and important food for the people of this region. These cities are ancient and are thought to have originated around 200 years before Christ, and by the 4th century (about the time Ethiopia was Christianised) Teotihuacan was the sixth largest city in the world.

Now of course the region is the giant megalopolis known as Mexico City and the lakes have long since been drained or dried up with only vestiges remaining as a few canals at Xochimilco, in the southern part of Mexico City. As late as 1911 axolotls were still common in the markets of Mexico City. Whether they are still eaten and still available in markets I don't know, but I am skeptical because axolotls in the wild are now endangered.

As you probably know, each of our cells contains the complete genetic information of our bodies and so, in a sense, each cell contains a plan which if followed would could create a clone of ourselves. Unfortunately however it is only the youthful embryonic stem cells which can actually develop into a full clone, or into various parts of us, say a hand or a heart or skin depending on the environment that cues them. This is why stem cell research is so important, because only the stem cells are (as it is called) pluripotent.

Not so with the axolotl, for not only is it neotenic, that is it never metamorphoses like most salamanders into an adult form, but rather its youthful form including external gills continues into reproductive adulthood and throughout its life; but also its mature cells are pluripotent. Exactly why this is so is not well understood, but this attribute allows the salamander to regenerate lost limbs and other parts of its body.

These, then are the reasons that the axolotl is today important as a research animal in both regenerative medicine and stem cell research.

As a former (and maybe future) pool player I couldn't resist sharing the above diagram, grabbed from somewhere in the vast miasma of the Internet.

So now the reasons for the axolotl at Cruz Blanca emerge: axolotls will be raised for use in medical and pharmaceutical research. I am indebted to Alberto, friend and native speaker of Spanish, for talking to the local people at Cruz Blanca and explaining to me what they said. However, any errors here are mine since this posting is partly suppositional.

One small question. The great naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, for whom I have great regard, reported, as a result of his own exporations around 1803 or 1804, that the axolotl existed in other high altitude Mexican lakes besides the two mentioned above near Mexico City.

Alexander von Humboldt, as painted by Joseph Stieler, 1843

This is apparently not true today and I have not seen any confirming evidence that the salamanders reported by Humboldt in other lakes were in fact axolotls. If you can shed any light on this please comment or contact me.

Finally, on a personal note, I have had a persistent cough for nearly a month now. Happily I can report that a doctor in Xalapa has determined that it is not a contagious malady, and that following his prescriptions I am much better now. Still, though not suggested by my doctor, I cannot help but wonder whether this product,

which I have not yet been able to obtain, might have helped.

cascada post 20

Chile Extranjero Update


Chile habanero (left) and chile extranjero (right)

click here for a larger version

In a previous posting, cascada post 8, I discussed the beautiful chile pepper (or chili pepper if you prefer that spelling) you see on the right in the picture above. Here locally, in Col. Ursulo Galvan, near Xico, in the state of Veracruz, Mexico, people call this chile "chile extranjero" which literally means "foreign chile". Apparently it originated in the Andes mountains of South America many millennia ago but was not introduced into Mexico until roughly 100 years ago.

The vast majority of chile peppers available in the USA are different varieties (or cultivars) of a single species: Capsicum annuum. The two chile peppers above are both unusual in that neither is Capsicum annuum. The chile habanero is Capsicum chinense (a misnomer since it is not of Chinese origin) and the chile extranjero is Capsicum pubescens. If it has black seeds you know you have chile extranjero.

Both of these chiles (the habanero and the extranjero) are tasty but very hot. The interior part of the chile extranjero and the seeds are much hotter than the meaty part near the skin. Even just touching the seeds will cause your fingers to burn, even if you wash your hands. Be careful not to touch your eyes after cutting or preparing chile extranjero.

What I learned recently, which did not surprise me, is that 'chile extranjero' is just a local name. Here in the state of Veracruz the correct name is 'chile cera', which literally means 'wax chile'. In much of Mexico it called 'chile manzano' (apple chile), in the state of Oaxaca it is called 'chile canario' (canary chile, because it is yellow), and in the state of Michoacán it is called 'chile Perón'. Click on this link for more information about Mexican chiles, and look under 'Chile Manzano' for more about chile extranjero, which from now on I will try to remember to call 'chile cera'.

cascada post 19

Niños y Niñas

Colonia Ursolo Galvan is the name of the small town where I live. It is a small place, maybe 1000 people, about a mile or so off the main road, roughly halfway between Coatepec and Xico, in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. The 'Colonia' part of the name is because it is a 'Colonia' of Xico. This means that officially it is in the municipality of Xico, even though it is about three miles from the population edge of Xico. It is a peaceful, friendly, and generally nice place to live although is quite poor. Most people do not have cars, most cook on wood fires, and some have dirt floors. Still, there is community pride, and family pride, and pride in the state of Veracruz. There are lots of children here and they are, compared to many kids in the U.S., well behaved. They often play in the streets, and save for buses there is little traffic and it is safe. The picture (above left) shows about one third of the town.

When I first arrived here I was surprised to learn that this little town has four schools. One is a preschool which seems to have two or three levels, roughly like kindergarden and pre-kindergarden. There are two primary schools, and a secondary school called a 'Telebachillerato', roughly like a high school in the U.S. but much of the instruction is piped in via satellite TV. This seems to be fairly common in rural parts of Mexico.


Our friend Marie dropped by one day to invite us to attend Daniela's end of school celebration. Daniela (or Dani) is her preschool daughter, about four years old. At left is a picture of Dani, from about a year ago. That is a really serious pose. She is really a happy, smiley, busy little girl and a delight to be around.




So the time arrived and we went to Dani's school. Here are some pictures of her school.

The first is the sign on the front of the school. The second is the entrance to the school as decorated with balloons for the celebration.

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Next the 'Bienvenidos' or welcome sign near the entrance and a portion of the playground.




After quite a wait during which the audience, proud parents, relatives and friends, was remarkably patient, the ceremony began. First some speeches, for which my Spanish was largely inadequate. Then came some sort pledge of allegiance and applause and finally each class of children (there seemed to be three) performed a dance or two. The sound system was terrible and the volume way too loud for it to handle, but it really didn't matter.



Here are some scenes of the children dancing, and the audience audience watching. All were dressed for the event. The first photo shows the little children waiting for their turn to dance. Next we see some of them dancing.

After the picture showing some of the audience [hopefully the next photo, this blogging software's preview never shows what the published post will look like] is a photo of Dani, kneeling as her part in the dance is about to begin. She is older and more mature than in the photo above taken about one year ago. Click on any photo to see it larger.















Soon came more dances of the other two class, each dressed in a different color.

The music was mostly Mexican, loud and crackly.





Then a real surprise for me. The oldest group came out to dance. I guess these were the graduating preschool children. An when the music came on it was the 1966 Percy Sledge favorite "When a man loves a woman".


What a strange feeling it was to see those little children, in this very foreign (for me) country dancing to that song to which I have my own set of memories.














And here they are at the very beginning of the dance:









I have to confess that I didn't stay till the very end of this event. Presumably the graduating preschoolers all got certificates and parents and children when home pleased and happy. In any case I was really glad I went and I came away proud of my little town, Col. Ursulo Galvan.

cascada post 18

Video of Cascada

Here you have it, short on quality, but it is my cascada -- the view from my front window.

My Cascada

And here you have Cascada at her worst:

Cascada, August 6, 2006

That's all for today.

cascada post 13

In the Xalapa Sculpture Garden -- Part 2

Here are more pictures of the Xalapa Sculpture Garden, taken back in July of 2005. The indoor pictures were part of a show, not part of the permanent pictures. My apologies to the artists (and to the readers) for the artists names that I did not record.

Mi nieto by Rocio Sagaon -- high temperature ceramics
(another view is in my previous Part 1 posting)

look carefully and you will see a daddy-long-legs spider

intermission -- garden flora
(photo by Esther)

made of bamboo

photo by Esther

photo by Esther

Thats all! If you want to see more, come and visit Xalapa and go to the Sculpture Garden.