Fall of Mandela

Fall orange and chill
Not very gone
As 'Cember rolls along,
But year end props puddle the news:
Mandela breathed and gone.

Better hero, Steve Biko?
I think he lobbed no bombs,
And look, now this. A demon monarch
Bled THIS man who
Thought alone:

http://youtu.be/HKO7MmJ60zY

UNHINGED By Fetal Pain, My Ears Are Burning

I have my ear horn out, pressed hard against the uterine lining of my Mah's midsection listening to the radio. I can hear talk show host Larry Mantle interview an EXPERT on fetal pain.  This dapper fellow explains his reasons for believing the 20 week old fetus does not experience pain, and that a bill in the great Republic of Texas should not be passed, disallowing any abortion over 20 weeks gestation.

Mr. Mantle's guest is smarmy and intellectual; an authoritative voice of reason, mainly because he speaks with a British accent and is an ASSOCIATE professor.

His name is Mr. Stuart Derbyshire.

Derbyshire teaches at the National University of Singapore. He explains that because I cannot formulate adult level, "higher order" thought processes, I cannot possibly experience pain.

"It isn't sitting in the womb worrying about what is happening, thinking 'Oh my God, my leg is being removed! 'What am I going to do? How do I get out of here!? Why is this happening?!' That existential angst many of us have about what is happening to us...

that autobiographical response, I think we can all agree, that is NOT happening to the fetus...

... he's not comprehending what is going on. It might be apprehending something, in a very immediate fashion, but that's not pain as we typically think about someone experiencing pain..."


Well.
I'm glad he cleared that up.  I've been concerned my lac of wokabuLArry mite ghed mhe in hhod wadder sumdaee...

BRITISH THINGS ARE SO INSTANTLY RESPECTABLE

Dr. Emidio Novembre took my position. An anesthesiologist and MD/PhD, Mr. Novembre's speech is lumbering, painstaking.

He does not have a British accent.
He unfortunately speaks with a Brooklyn taxi driver's accent.

You can see how these grown up arguments go. It's all about smoke and mirrors. If you're not articulate, even if you're ten million times SMARTER than your opponent, you can't possibly win in the grand and glorious branded marketplace of ideas.

But hear this without your ears; read this with your very own mind.  Yes, put down that ear horn and just read:

Senor Novembre speaks from his experience; his 25 years in medicine, 5000 OB deliveries,  his extensive training in anatomy wherein he learned that the subthalamic plate transition feature is intact in the fetus (that would be ME...) at 16 weeks, much earlier than Sir Knighted "Charley" Stuart Derbyshire said.

Mr. Novembre's long experience as a fellowship trained, board certified obstetric anesthesiologist is decisive:

"...the babies born at 24 weeks definitely feel pain when I put an IV in their arm!"

I think I can concur with that statement.
I am feeling pain right now just thinking about my leg being "removed," actually. Owww...!

Also, feels somewhat hot in here, and in a very immediate fashion, I feel my adrenal glands are getting pumped just a little. That can't be anger, however, as I am far too young a zygote to ever experience anger.

Must just be gas.
Oh, how I love the way science makes everything so very crystal clear.

Facing the Giants of Defeat

Facing the Giants Of Defeat, Fear and Failure:

"Your actions will always follow your beliefs, David."

If you expect defeat, then that's what you'll get."

- - Dad Childers

Facing The Giants

Sherwood Pictures

Facing The Giants

Moving Day/Year Blues

Mt. Wilson Watches All
((No, that is not my house.))

Zygote has been transported north to a very mountainous place not too far from her POC (place of conception), but far enough that her poor mind and heart have gone through some trying moments of disorientation and adjustment; and as unborn fetuses around the world can well attest, there was no protest I could stage to prevent this.  Where the big belly goes, I must follow. Or, err, LEAD really.

I've given Emmet Till some thought in these first months of adjusting to our new home.  I believe I know why his horrible fate was a Civil Rights gamechanger, while all the millions of mangled pre-born corpses bandied by the pro-life movement haven't amounted to a pile of produce (as in "hill of beans," you see).

In the mid twentieth century, when Mr. Till found himself at the wrong end of a practical joke, there was consensus. The world he lived in, racist though it was, coalesced around a Christian world view which saw Justice as inherited from centuries of Judeo-Christianity; and when Till's fate doused that culture with cold water in it's collective face, it was naturally wired to wake up and gladly right a wrong.

Today, Justice is just so many pithy quips on a network TV drama; so many rights earned by well funded special interest groups. Today, Justice is "mob ruled", not ruled by a rule of law. And the mob watches TV and Facebook Friend tallies. They adopt whatever the prevailing party line tells them to adopt.  And aborted baby proofs? Well, they're just tolerated. That's what comes of dumping prayer and Bibles off the back docks of nearly every public school in the land.

Guiltiiest of all is the internet. This unprecedented explosion of knowledge has pretty much numbed the planet with TOOMUCHINFOrmation. WAY BACK when newspapers reported the fate of Mr. Till, hearts could burst with compassion and remorse because they hadn't already broken over sixty quadrillion other injustices worldwide.

Today, you can't begin to pick your cause with anything approaching earnestness, because there are just too overwhelmingly many to choose from!

And if Emmet Till were to arrive under banner headlines today, above the fold and as bloodied red as the USA Today presses could allow, I wonder if he would generate much more than a weekend stir on the Face The Nation circuit. Because what the mob wants is FEELgood tinglings from Pintrest, great clothes from GAP, and greater profits from tech firm IPO's. No one wants to bother with justice. The nation's manicures would be ruined, her pedicures sullied. So, who even WATCHES Face The Nation anymore, except the wives and mothers of its pundits and panelists?

And there stands honor-bound Keith Mason, sullied and weary, wishing for some sympathetic ad agency to spin him something positive about death and dismemberment.

So, I guess I am toast, me and my nerve rattled zygote compatriots.  Doom doom and more doom.

Oh, Mary Travers, why did you desert us?

Emmett Till !?

I may be the most miniscule, microscopically insignificant little glob of human stem cells you'll ever meet, but I have been around quite a lot longer than the usual 40 week pregnacy... say, maybe 51 years longer.

So, how is it that I have NEVER NEVER, EVER EVER seen this image of Emmet Till??

I NEVER KNEW HIS FACE WAS THE FACE THAT LAUNCHED THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT.  Thanks to a Focus On The Family Broadcast last 24January, 2013,  I know it now.

You learn something new every day.

If I think of it, I'll tell the BertNernie bandaid story next time. It has been a fornight, and I did promise... but Mr. Till's visage is such a matter of moral suasion, that I just have to stop everything and think for a long moment.  If the injustice of his death launched a movement that changed the course of a nation, why is the well documented fact of dead and dismembered victims of abortion not bringing about the same?

I'm going to ponder this. When I am through, I'll talk bandaids on wood floors.

.FORTY.

I think this LifeSizedCapture captures the thought of the moment.

The state of the Pro-Life Movement, circa 2013.

Forty years of RoeWade ticks by on January 22, 2013. Forty.

Do only the Fickers and AnnFran and the Masons work this public perception problem? And Diane D? Such tiny handfuls of frontline stalwarts dotting the map. OH yes. And the Cielnickys. And Dr. Don. People who put their actual lives and families out in front in the wet and rain and storms of bad press ridicule.

Believe a new tack is in order. Or I'm not an expert roachWrangler.

- - -    - - -    - - -    - - -   - - -    

When I've emerged from a fortnight of Forty-Years-of-RoeWade-Trauma coma, I'll post a nice story about how one tiny zygote wrangled a roach with a bandaid.  I promise it's not photo-shopped. I can't even buy PhotoShop, 'cuz Adobe is a ProAbort company. (Well, OK, I did once, but I installed it on someone else's laptop.  And after trying to crop someone, i gave up. It was too hard.)


For now,
I go. To cry. And mourn.