Death becomes Marcy Street display

By Tripp Stelnicki | tstelnicki@sfnewmexican.com
Jun 18, 2018

Austin Mason, visiting from Indiana, stops to looks at a replica obelisk marking Trinity's Ground Zero outside the Santa Fe Convention Center on Monday. The replica was used as a prop for the television series Cosmos: Possible Worlds. Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican

I am become death, destroyer of … West Marcy Street?

The Sanskrit quotation from the sacred Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita actually is interpreted as “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Physicist Robert Oppenheimer said he was reminded of the quotation after the first atomic bomb detonation July 16, 1945, at the Trinity test site in the Jornada Del Muerto desert.

A volcanic rock obelisk marks Trinity’s Ground Zero, about 175 miles south of Santa Fe, and is only open to tourists twice a year.

But look no further than West Marcy for the next-best-thing. A 12-foot-tall obelisk appeared — of all places — on the sidewalk outside Santa Fe Community Convention Center sometime last week.

It is identical to the Ground Zero obelisk in all but weight. The prop came from the set of Cosmos: Possible Worlds, a documentary television series that filmed parts of its upcoming season at Santa Fe Studios this year.

How the obelisk got here is simple.

“We were told it existed and I asked if we could have it, and they said, ‘Yes, you can,’ ” said Randy Randall, executive director of Tourism Santa Fe, which has headquarters at the convention center.

Seemed like fun, Randall said. “Usually props get destroyed.”

This marker of destruction lives on. And its display on Marcy Street is good timing, Randall said. He was referring to Santa Fe Opera’s eagerly anticipated Doctor Atomic, a production set in the summer of 1945 in the build-up to the Trinity test and set to debut this summer.

“It’s just as much fun that it’s an example of a prop used in the film industry as it is a replica of the Trinity memorial — which you can’t really get to see,” Randall said.

The replica, made of styrofoam, is sheltered by the eaves outside the convention center, but it might not survive a harsh monsoon season.

“We’ll see how long it lasts,” Randall said.

Follow Tripp Stelnicki on Twitter @trippstelnicki.