Tabletop Phantogram of a Bonsai Schefflera and a rant

Hello Friends,

For those of you wishing to create phantograms, the simplist approach is to put a piece of paper onto a tabletop, lay your subject onto the paper, and shoot from back at an angle making sure that your entire subject falls visually within the borders of the paper. I call this a "tabletop" phantogram. In this case I used the edges of an actual tabletop to form my guidelines for the phantogram. I used a Fujifilm W3 and cropped both the left eye and right eye shots to the edges of this 24" x 45" table. Ideally this image should be viewed at approximately a 45 degree angle.

I got this Bonsai tree several years ago from David Fukumoto of Fuku-Bonsai in Kurtistown on the big island of Hawaii. Scheffleras are close relatives of the amazing banyon trees you find in tropical climates. David and I became friends and enjoyed talking plants and politics for several years mostly via email. He told me this type of bonsai was extremely hearty and could last for many years. Sadly David is no longer with us, he died in November of 2023.

Politics and the Trump administration have been particularly hideous this past week, as they try to march us into authoritarianism. I can't believe that even the majority of Trump voters would prefer abandoning Ukraine and allying ourselves with Putin's Russia, but here we are. Betsy, Whiskey and I attended our first protest this past week, with undoubtably more to come.

American writer and former NFL football player Chris Kluwe provided the city council of Huntington Beach, California with some inspiration and choice words. Earlier this month, the Huntington Beach Community and Library Services Commission approved plans to install a commemorative plaque to mark the library’s 50th anniversary. The plaque’s design, which needed final approval from the Huntington Beach City Council, included two American flags, the names of current council members and other city leaders and an acrostic reading: “Magical. Alluring. Galvanizing. Adventurous. At the city council meeting Chris stood and gave a different interpretation of what Maga stands for. Quoting Chris:

"MAGA stands for trying to erase trans people from existence. MAGA stands for resegregation and racism. MAGA stands for censorship and book bans. MAGA stands for firing air traffic controllers while planes are crashing. MAGA stands for firing the people overseeing our nuclear arsenal. MAGA stands for firing military veterans and those serving them at the VA, including canceling research on veteran suicide. MAGA stands for cutting funds to education, including for disabled children … MAGA stands for hate, and fear, and the idea that we should have a king instead of co-equal branches of government."

Kluwe also called MAGA "profoundly corrupt" and "unmistakably anti-democracy," before labeling it a "Nazi movement." As some in the crowd applauded, he added, "You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is." When he approached the dias where the city council members sat, he was brought down by city police, hand-cuffed, arrested and carried out.

Wishing us all well in these times,

Barry Rothstein

I send out a weekly email of these. If you'd like to be included, please go to the contact page and send me an email.

Previous Images of the Week