Jim the bug photo man says (and rightly so I am sure) that butterflies and moths often seem attracted to colors they can blend in with. I think of flowers: deep orange butterflies on deep orange zinnias, for instance. This butterfly (or moth) also blends nicely, but not with a plant.
I took the photo in what appeared to be the bug free environment of the Angeles Hospital and office complex next to Plaza de las Americas on southeast end of the main highway through Xalapa. It is one of a chain of hospitals in fancy buildings, with fancy equipment and fancy doctors which exist in Mexico. This one is maybe a year old. Interestingly enough, it is accessible to people who are not loaded with money as long as they can pay some money. We are taking the son of someone in our colonia here to see a psychiatrist because he developed rather severe symptoms of depression. The psychiatrist knows all the health systems from those for the poor (Seguros Populares) on up and makes referals and recommendations accordingly. But I think he is not so egalitarian...here it occurs to me that there is a lot of prejudice against poor people by not so poor people.
This is not an unusual prejudice as Americans should know only too well, though here I don't think people blame the poor for their plight so much as assume there is some basic difference between classes. At the moment (and seemingly irrelevantly) I am reading a new biography of Vincent Van Gogh in which the extreme prejudice on the part of the upper middle classes to which Van Gogh's family belonged against lower (and Catholic) classes is described in detail. People like Van Gogh's mother, and hence her children, feared literally contamination from the poor if they slipped in guarding their standards. Here, while a doctor might explain problems with generics to someone like me, he might assume they are adequate for someone from a lower class who doesn't need so much money spent on his problems. He might assume a kind of "you and I know better" attitude. I am making some enormous leaps of assumption here, so don't take what I say all that seriously.
Angeles Hospital is designed under the obvious influence of Mexican Modernism and architect Ricardo Legorreta, but it lacks the surprises and playfulness and aesthetic sense of a Legorreta building. Legorreta's buildings engage people's curiosity (or at least mine) and make them want to turn corners and look out windows. This building is kind of ho-hum and sterile. But better a Legorreta influence than a big-box influence: better some precariously perched spheres than just another long corridor.
This was taken in front of the elevators on the second floor.
The lobby has lots of comfortable chairs and is enlivened by a giant, smiling photo.
This strip of Xalapa is almost indistinguishable from such a strip in the US. Sometimes I find myself automatically speaking English in the buildings around here.