Three Little Birds

View from the balcony, January 1st 2011

Click to play [youtube]

Don't worry about a thing,
'Coz ev'ry little thing gonna be alright...

(Bob Marley, Three Little Birds)

If Wikipedia is to be believed, no-one is quite sure who or what Bob Marley had in mind when he wrote this hopeful, upbeat song, but it's as good as any to start the New Year, and not completely irrelevant. Justin again, who's sleeping in his cot next to me as I write this, and still growing well. No real smiles, despite the counter claims of Seán and Julian from the back seat of the car earlier today —"You just don't see it Dad, you're too busy driving!" (the second part of which was, fortunately, true...), but he seems content nevertheless.

Which leads to the point of the post. Should we believe only what we see, or what others—be they children or doctors—tell us? On the left, the baby I see, who's growing, stretching, gazing, cooing like any normal baby; on the right, the chromosomal evidence that supposedly seals his fate (trisomy 21, bottom center-left)?

Both are true pictures, but the one on the left makes the other one seem considerably less frightening, and easier to bear. Of course, the music doesn't hurt either. Have a good day!

Comments

Reflections on Thought: Work in Progress

"An incredible trick" The starting point for this piece is an observation that Simon Kirby made a long time ago in the introduction to a BBC Horizon programme Why do we talk? , a documentary that I have used for nearly 20 years in my language acquisition classes at Konan. It is a scene-setting observation, one which seems self-evident and innocuous, and to which I paid next to no attention until a few months ago. I can walk up to someone I don’t know, and I can make a sequence of noises…that I’ve never made before…by pushing air through my mouth. I will take a thought in my head…and make it go into their head . That’s an incredible trick. It would be incredible, if that was what happens. Yet a moment's reflection - or perhaps twenty-plus years of rumination, I'm not sure which - tells me that this is completely wrong. We do not take our thoughts and cause them to go into other's heads. That would be amazing. Instead, whatever is involved in verbal communication i

Musical Triumph....

it wasn't, but a family triumph most certainly. After four weeks of occasional rehearsal, Sean, Julian and I appeared on stage in support of Justin's first piano recital. The quality of the performance does nothing to detract from the historic significance of this event: 10 years ago, I could not have imagined that Justin would be able to take piano lessons, nor that Sean and Julian would have rallied round in such a way to support their brother. Justin has brought out the best in all of us.

Starting over

Blogging is no different from any other activity: once the momentum is lost, it's hard to get going again. So pushing, grinding, out these first few lines is even more difficult than I had anticipated. Yet looking back on the posts from last year, I can see some value in the enterprise, as a family document, and from the fact that some readers come back regularly to browse... So let's begin with the headlines, in brief. After months of torpid indecision, Ayumi and I decided not to return to our professional lives in England—though we spent a very pleasant two months there in February and March—but to give Japan a go for a bit longer. In December last year, I was offered a permanent job at Konan University in Okamoto—Kobe's Hampstead, if Kitano is Chelsea), where I have now started teaching English and Linguistics courses to a delightful bunch of students, in the company of friendly and extremely welcoming colleagues. First day at Konan (Okamoto) The professor I'm

Devenish

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