Prolific Prickly Pear

Hello Friends,

In Long Beach I see many cacti, often some in blossom, on every neighborhood walk. This prickly pear plant for me is the neighborhood award winner both for the quality and quantity of its blossoms. You're looking at a width of approximately 6 inches in this shot. The overall plant is perhaps 3 feet tall, 2 feet wide by 4 feet wide, with hundreds of active blossoms.

I shot this with my Fuji W3 using frame sides for phantogram processing. There's too much red to make this an enjoyable "full color" anaglyph, so I chose a "half-color" anaglyph in StereoPhoto Maker, which provided a lot less "retinal rivalry". If you'd like it in LRRL format email me back and I'll send it to you.

Here's this week's rant. Please consider that America (as well as the rest of the world) is experiencing, and we are living through, a dangerous, highly charged moment of time.

Shame. Pain. Horror. Deaths. That's how this moment will be viewed by future generations if Trump and his accomplices are allowed to keep on their current course. Among a vast number of sinful acts, this moment will be remembered for Trump's prioritizing federal resources to capture, persecute, and deport hundreds of thousands, eventually millions of immigrants, uncaringly tearing apart families and communities throughout all of America, big cities, small towns, blue states and red states. What a legacy to leave!

The crime and the truth about "illegal" immigrants is that they come from all over the world at great risk and sacrifice to themselves and their families, in search of the same hopes and dreams that brought our parents, grandparents and so on up the line for generations. For the most part they keep their heads down and work menial jobs for low wages. They're the people who pick our fruit and vegetables, work in meat packing plants and factories, cook, serve, and wash dishes in restaurants, take care of our sick and elderly, wash our cars, clean our homes and maintain our yards. They are our friends and neighbors.

The depiction of immigrants by Trump, Miller, Noem and the MAGA crowd as murderers and rapists is beyond just despicable. It's harmful, cruel and dangerous. Spewing out those words is an insult to any intelligent human being. It's the same game plan countless wanna-be bullying demagogues have used over and over and over again, always at first gaining power by picking on those who are the least able to defend themselves.

If we don't stand up and protest, fight for our freedoms and their lives, but instead quietly allow this to happen, what will you tell your children and grandchildren about this time and what you were thinking and doing?

Regards,

Barry Rothstein

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