Wooly Willow

Hello Friends,

Per Wikipedia, "Salix lanata, the woolly willow, is a subarctic species of willow native to Iceland, the Faeroe Islands and Finland, through to eastern Siberia. In Scotland it can be found in only a few localities of Perthshire, Angus and Aberdeenshire, generally on rocky mountain sides at altitudes of 600–900 m."

The width of this image was approximately two inches. I shot it with my Panasonic Lumix GX7 with 3D lens, using frame sides for phantogram processing in StereoPhoto Maker and Photoshop.

On our recent trip to Iceland I found these in several locations in a number of varied forms. At first I was excited to photograph them as something new to me, but soon found they were common to most of our hikes. This one was my favorite shot of them.

We've been back home for a week, so I'm pretty much over the jet lag from a 7 hour time change and the long travel day home. I wish I could say the politics at home improved in our absense, but not the case.

We're still abducting immigrants and making it unpleasant and unhealthy for them so as they'll willingly elect to be deported. It's still amazing to think this is happening in the USA. On a positive note there's been significant local push back wherever the Trump administration has tried to open new warehouse prison to keep them, to the point of where they're failing to open and will be selling the properties they've bought at ridiculously inflated prices.

Despite practically no one supporting Trump's 1.776 billion dollar slush fund to pay off January 6 "patriots" who invaded the capitol and fought police in support of Trump's attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, Todd Blanche, our acting Attorney General won't commit in writing to it not being enacted. He wants to be taken at his word that it's "not going forward" as if that's to be trusted.

The war in Iran is for the moment at a standstill, but it's become increasingly clear that Trump's crack team of negotiators has been pretty much rolled by the Iranians. It took a sit-down with bigwigs in the oil industry to finally get it across to Trump that there's no winning of this war, so all Trump wants now is to get out on practically any terms and still claim victory. So long as the stock market numbers hold up, Trump thinks he's winning, but very few other than die hard Trump supporters are fooled by this.

RFK Jr.'s wrecking of the previously world class CDC is becoming a problem. Ebola is on the rise, as are measles. Hegseth's inept and shameless chops at our military are increasingly making us less safe. And on and on, this and so much more.

Wishing for better,

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