Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Monday, November 28, 2011

Look, there's the Penis!: A View From The Inside

The other day my younger son, and his wife came by with photos and a CD of a recent sonogram of their baby to be born in April 2012. They were, without saying, ecstatic about showing it to my wife and I, so we slipped it into the Blu-Ray disc player, and pushed "play".

Then, we all oooed and aaawed for about 10 minutes watching this mini-human, a boy, kick and squirm, roll and punch inside the womb. "Look, there's the head!" "Look, look, the penis! All in High Definition.

We marveled at the little hands and counted the tiny toes. Yup, there's five, one-two-three.... There was the little face, eyes closed, the heart beating like tiny drum, the umbilical chord. As he tumbled and kicked I said "He's gonna be a Futbol player!" And they all cracked up.

As we watched, I marveled at our new technology and how in the old days we never knew the gender of our babies until they slid out on the delivery table!

In fact, when my wife was pregnant with our youngest (we have two boys), our oldest son was already three years old and my wife, who had mysteriously forgotten about all the problems she had with that labor, crooned "Oh let's have another baby, a little sister so he can have somebody to play with??" She talked me into it. In fact, I had to be talked into the first one too!

It just so happened at the time I was reading a book about the power of the mind concerning how if you concentrated on the preferred gender of a fetus, you could kind of "will" it to be a boy or a girl. It had to be a constant and willed power of thought, each hour of every day, speaking to it, singing to it, and even calling it by his/her name, so we named our unborn baby "Christina", painted her room pink, and my wife knitted little sweaters, caps and blankets, all in pink, of course.

Well, it didn't work! And a bouncing baby BOY was born! We were shattered! We didn't even have a name for him! So much for the power of positive thought.

And now, as we watched the 42" flat screen in our bedroom, we all "knew". It will be a boy. No surprises. No amazement. No wondering. No mystery. No waiting. There was no mistake; there was the penis.

But as we watched I could stop myself from wondering about how we would feel if we saw the baby had no hands, no feet, or only two fingers on one hand? After all, we had asked to "see"?. We had asked to "know"?. Could this be why we all count the toes?

I those ten minutes I also could not stop from thinking about abortion, and about the debate concerning when "life" begins and at what point is a fetus in actually human. As long as we don't see the baby moving inside the womb, the heart beating, and count the five fingers on a tiny hand already, we can justify abortion.

But the sonogram should put all that to rest: We rest our case. There, in plain view is the penis.

Friday, November 18, 2011

New Peechurs

                            Proud Grandma with her grand kids.
                      Leo de Los Angeles, Oaxacan weaver.
                         White Egret at Bodega Bay, California
                         The Good Life at Bodega Bay!
                            Morning Glories Through The Fence
                         Bird Nest in My Plant
                           Amaryllis On My Back Porch
               Hydrangeas From Our Yard
              My Wife Carved This Watermelon Just For Me
     Altar For My Mother & Mother-in-Law For Day Of Dead 2011
             Cactus In Bloom
               Hors d'oeuvres In The Backyard
                      Guadalupe Appears in My Backyard
                         Peas From Our Graden

Friday, February 26, 2010

After The Rain



Always wanted to shoot some photos in puddles or during sunsets. Finally did it with my trusty
point-n-shoot camera. Not bad, eh?