journal features

grandparents!

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2009.10.15

Kenny's grandparents have come up from Miyazaki for a visit. Tonight Otoo-san and I went to get Kenny from the daycare and he looked from one of us to the other and then gave us a well-pleased smile.

We got him home after running some errands (for once I bought Mari a bouquet of flowers of all one colour, which she's been telling me straight up—for a long time—is her style) and it seemed that Kenny knew that something was different. He stepped tentatively into the hallway after I took his shoes off, and after a moment shocked me by saying "Kazu?"

That's the first name of his Obaa-san (grandma), but she's trained all of the little ones to call her that because she doesn't like being called "grandma". I had no idea that Kenny knew the word, and it seemed to surprise the grandparents, too. Good lad, start the visit with a splash!

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton