Spectacularly Colored Hibiscus

Hi All,

For several years I've enjoyed looking at the colors of this hibiscus, located on the corner of 3rd Street and Molino Avenue in Long Beach. Despite being a fairly common plant around here, I've never seen one with these colors. It's easy to spot from the sidewalk, so if you drop by there don't bother the folks that live there. I shot this with my Fuji W3 camera, using frame sides for phantogram processing.

I'd recommend you freeview it, either parallel or cross-eyed with the images below the anaglyph. The anaglyph is a "half-color" style, as I liked that style more than either a full color or Dubois anaglyph. I'm not sure how such an image is formed, but it's easy to toggle through the various types in StereoPhoto Maker. If you'd like to see it in higher resolution, let me know and I'll send it to you.

I hope you enjoy the image, and if you don't want to hear me rant, it's time to move on.

The virus is taking its toll on us through illness and death, as well as impatience to get back the lives we're accustomed to. While making its debut in big cities, it most effectively spreads in tight confined spaces, and is most deadly to the elderly. As such its biggest threat of infection has been in prisons and meat packing plants, and the biggest threat of death at nursing homes.

Clearly we need to focus significant resources in these places. On a state by state level the nursing homes are finally getting some of the attention they desperately need despite typically being manned by some of the lowest paid workers in America. In best case scenarios state's national guard troups have been called upon to do testing in nursing homes, and hopefully they or military medical personnel and/or other volunteers will be brought on to bolster their staffs.

Throughout the country prisons are being over-run with the disease. In the rare cases where prison populations are tested, infection rates have typically been in the 50-75 percent range, but it seems there's little political will to improve this situation.

Meat packing plants, where people customarily work shoulder to shoulder in enclosed spaces, have been deemed essential to our food supply needs, albeit much less essential has been protecting people working in them. The rates of infection in them has been skyrocketing, as well as such rates in their surrounding communities, and these plants are pretty much everywhere, and heavily in rural communities.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) used to wield vast power to demand companies maintain safe working environments, but very recently, in late April, the Trump administration's management of the CDC weakened safety requirements at meat packing plants to the point of making them merely suggestions and entirely voluntary instead of mandatory. This was followed by Trump signing an executive order demanding that these plants be open.

Equally disturbing has been the images of well organized protesters armed with heavy automatic rifles in Lansing, Michigan, demanding their governor end stay-at-home orders. These are Trump's chosen people, egged on by his "Liberate Michigan" tweet, and he proclaimed them to be "very good people". One can only wonder when the first shots will be fired by one of them or at one of them, and what will happen next.

Keep safe.

Barry Rothstein

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