The Merry Month of May

May has been merry. I can't point to any big achievements, but things are moving in a good direction, and we are gaining momentum slowly.

As the weather grew warmer, Bow and I spent more and more time out of doors.

More time outdoors meant more grooming and more mowing the lawn.

While mowing the lawn, I discover butterflies hidden in the grass.

Other things come to my attention, like the common milkweed that I found growing in the lawn.

There were three such plants, and on the day the mowers came, I was going to ask them to transplant them to the flower garden by the lagoon. But when the mowers came, two of the plants were gone, roots and all! At first I was a little paranoid. Had someone followed me and stolen my milkweed before I had a chance to transplant it myself? But my gardener explained to me that it was probably an inside job, performed by moles who ate the milkweed root first, starting deep in the ground and working their way up to the leaves. Only the smallest milkweed plant remained, and after it was transplanted, it wilted and fainted all the way to ground.

The prognosis did not loo good, but I kept watering it. Meanwhile, I discovered a purple milkweed patch growing by some dogbane in the pasture.

This will be a great way to compare the growth and habits of dogbane and milkweed, I thought. But it wasn't only the plants that were starting to propagate. On Mother's Day, I discovered a new nest.

These were not robins' eggs, like the one I had seen in years past. These were brown and white, marbled.

I was looking forward to watching them hatch and seeing what sorts of birds they turned out to be, but the next day, the nest was empty. Is there somebody following me around and taking whatever I find? I wondered. But probably not. Probably it is just part of the grand scheme of things, where not every living being that sprouts or is conceived gets to make it past the very earliest stages. Being culled out is part of the system. Redundancy and wasted life are part of the grand design. There are so many, because not all are expected to make it. And still, despite it all, some do survive! I am glad of that.

I was very grateful to have Sword home for Mother's Day, and Bow enjoyed the gifts she brought, too.

How they both have grown! Soon a new Audible and Kindle version of When Sword Met Bow will be coming out, read by Kelly Clear. My time for raising babies is done, but this book can help the families that are just starting out to introduce a new baby to older siblings. .

When Sword Met Bow -- Order Here

My other children's book, Ping and the Snirkelly People will also soon be out, read by Evelyn Adams. It describes the process of acquiring a second language by total immersion.

Ping and the Snirkelly People -- Order Here

However, on most days right here in and around the pens, life unfolds more like my third children's book, In Case There's a Fox. Through daily walks I encounter various animals, and they don't always tell me what they are up to. I can ask the rabbits to let me now what the turtles are doing, but until I look down and notice the turtles, the rabbits will keep mum.

On May 15, I spotted a couple of rabbits behind the garage and moved in closer to take a look.

As I drew closer, one of the rabbits ran away, but I kept my focus on the other rabbit, still oblivious of the indistinct rock-like thing in the grass by the fence.

Would you believe that, even at this distance, I was so focused on the rabbit that I had no ideas there were turtles in the picture? The rabbit stood very still. I wonder what it was thinking. I'm guessing it knew all about the turtles in plain sight.

I kept coming in closer to get a better look at the rabbit, and it kept holding its ground, until the moment when it ran off. Then I noticed there were two turtles at my feet!

I've never seen anything quite like it. But it's not going into any children's book.

My friend, Pam Keyes. who is an expert on turtles, told me that the female of the pair is at least sixty years old. Male turtles prefer older females to mate with, because their offspring have a better chance to survive. We recognize this particular female by the BB gun hole in her shell.. I have decided to call her Beebee.

Later that day, I saw Beebee just outside the fence. I thought maybe she was scouting locations to lay her eggs. But it was a bit early for that yet.

The sagas of box turtles in love and rabbits keeping their secrets are mostly for my own amusement. For the regular viewers of my channel, Bow is the only star attraction. Our most popular video for this month was the one from May 18 of Bow grooming me, but stopping short of picking my nose, when I asked.

In the Missouri Ozarks, May is part of the rainy season. It rains day after day sometimes, and the lush vegetation is richer for it. It's not such a bad way of life. But Bow prefers that it never rain, so he can go sunbathing in the outer pen. Lately, though, he has been taking the weather mostly in his stride.

For several days it rained, with brief periods of respite in between  The video above is from May 19, when Bow went out between rainstorms and displayed at the wind -- without setting foot on the wet floor of the pen! After the rain, there was a bit of flooding, and small rivulets of water crossed the internal road on my property to get to the other side.

Beebee the turtle found a conveniently wet spot to dig a nest for her eggs. And the armadillos came out to play. There were so many bugs for them to feast on!

Although I wanted to immediately sit down and to report on Beebee the box turtle, seeing all those armadillos that very same day over and over again kept me distracted.

But the armadillos disappeared, after putting in a full day of appearance on the May 21st, and by Memorial Day they were long forgotten. We did have a nice encounter with several butterflies, instead.

The best part of May is hanging out in the great outdoors. And Bow, more than anyone else, knows how to hang out. He has it mastered!

It's All in the Point of View

Bow and I  are getting ready for Christmas. As we put up our tree, many of the ornaments, which are just pictures of Sword and Bow in their younger days, make us reminisce about the past.

Then we  look at old photo albums and old books, like my own When Sword Met Bow.

You cannot go back in time, but our memories are fairly vivid, and we can see old scenes replay in our mind's eye, even with our eyes closed.

But back in the present, there are also wonderful things taking place. From the perspective of research, publication, or just plain living, good things are happening, and we have much to be grateful for. Sometimes I try to share our happy little moments with others on social media, but every person has a different point of view, and each one sees something different.

We have different audiences on Facebook and on YouTube. On Facebook, the video of Bow jingling the bells is really taking off. Everyone on Facebook agrees that Bow is cute. And, of course, that's true. No denying it. But there are other aspects to Bow's personality, and the focus of YouTube viewers is a little different.




On YouTube, it's the grooming videos that everyone wants to see. My top performing video at the moment is the one below.

Sometimes viewers will ask me questions that reveal their own bias. "Why do you  have so many grooming videos?" One person asked. "Is Bow your pet chimpanzee?"

I do not have "so many grooming videos." Out of 1903 videos, only a handful are of Bow grooming someone. But just at the moment, those are the ones that are trending. They are not even my top ten videos of all time.

Besides the Leslie Fish music videos, which have always done well, there is the Diorama of an Amazon rain forest that Sword made when she was in grade school. I always suspected that it got so many views, because there were so many other children and parents scrambling to assemble one of those, since it was assigned to them in school.

But besides class assignments, which are often mandated by the government, and besides Leslie Fish songs, which are very rebellious and cool --and I enjoy them, too, or I would not have them here -- the vast majority of the public has ignored the vast majority of my content.

There are the very serious playlists of videos explaining Project Bow and its scientific findings.




There are the songs from my musical with composer Daniel Carter, The Debt Collector.




And there is a playlist of the trailers for my books.



Not one of the videos in these playlists is anywhere near the top ten for my channel. This is not a reflection on me. It is an indication of what YouTube viewers like to watch.

The vast majority of my videos include nature scenes, like the one below of a Monarch butterfly. Hardly anyone watches them, though.

I was so excited to get this close to a Monarch butterfly this year! I was really proud of this video, but most viewers did not notice it at all. That is perfectly fine, though, because each of us has different interests, and one of the great things about YouTube is that we can watch whatever we like. As a libertarian, I am all for that.

But it's amusing when a viewer complains about there being too many grooming videos on my channel. If all you see on my channel are grooming videos, then that is because that is all you are looking for. It reflects on you, not on me! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so are the videos that rank high with each viewer.

Bow looks through When Sword Met Bow

Today, Bow and I were reminiscing about the good old days.  So we leafed through When Sword Met Bow. 

It is one of the books that would make fine gift for someone on your Christmas list.

Books by Aya Katz

There's something in there for everyone. But if all you see are books on a particular topic, then that might be because that is the topic that appeals to you. We each create our own universe from our  point of view.

Our Tree -- How many of my interests can you spot in this picture?

Meanwhile, enjoy the holidays, and if you find one of my books appealing, give it a read!

Bow's Christmas Card and Other Surprises

Bow often receives mail addressed to him. Usually, it is a catalog for expensive food that Harry & David think that Bow might like to order. But Bow never orders anything. He just looks at the pictures in the catalog, stopping for a moment to contemplate each, but never expressing a preference for any.

Our rural mailbox totally fell apart this year. First there had been those bullet wounds it suffered years ago. Then a beautiful wild rose bush grew all around it. Then somebody -- not anyone I know -- must have sprayed the rose bush with weed killer, because it withered away quite unexpectedly at a time when all the other wild rose bushes were blooming and  thriving. Then, after that, ants started swarming inside the poor mailbox. I can't help but think this last event was related to the dying rose bush.
After that, the lid of the mailbox fell off and someone ran over it and flattened it. Unperturbed, I still managed to put the lid back on there in a precarious sort of way. But finally when we returned from St. Louis I decided to replace the old mailbox with a new one. Lawrence put it up on the wooden post for me. And the first piece of mail we received in the brand new mailbox was addressed to Bow Katz.

It was a card by the look of it. I gave the unopened envelope to Bow.

Inside was a card with the head of a white polar bear sticking out of a hole in the front of the card. Bow was very cautious in how he proceeded. First he turned to card over to see what was on the back.

Then he opened it. Big surprise. The bear began to dance to tune of "Jingle Bell Rock". Bow took this all in his stride, as if dancing bears inside cards were an every day event for him. He was happy with the card and not at all spooked by it.

Another nice surprise was a new review of When Sword Met Bow.

A new review

It is  helpful to have a review like this from someone who has actually read the book with children who are at the age of the intended audience. I have had some unfair reviews in the past from animal rights activists who had not even read the book, but assumed that Bow was still a baby, and I would not be able to cope with him past that point. (Bow will be fifteen in February.) The book itself is not so much about cross-fostering as it is  a the story of a new baby in the family and how an older child reacts. So if you are looking for a Christmas present for a young child with a new baby sibling, this book would be a good choice.

But the nice surprises did not end there. We received a package from an old friend who used to spend Thanksgivings with us. She could not make it to this year's Thanksgiving celebration, but she sent us a box full of baklava and a card about the memories.

This is such a nice time of year to be home with your family, to hear from old friends and to share memories of years gone by.

A picture of Sword and Bow with our friend who sent the baklava. 

Funding for Project Bow

Books for Children by Aya Katz

It's that time of year again. October is almost over.  After Halloween, there is always Thanksgiving. And after Thanksgiving there is Christmas. And after Christmas, taxes come due. First there are the property taxes. and later there is that whole business of the income tax.

Sword and Bow in 2002

People who make their living in sales find this season to be the busiest one of all. Sometimes they put everything else on hold until it is over, because during this season they can make enough money to finance the whole rest of their year.

At Project Bow, we also hope for that kind of income. And no, we are not a "nonprofit". Why not? Because we want to maintain our first amendment rights to speak out against those who would do us harm. If we were a nonprofit, then there would be many things I would not be allowed to talk about.

Campaigning for a presidential candidate, which is something I have done this year, would not be allowed. But there are many other things that I would  not be able to say and do, including lobbying my local and state and Federal representatives not to pass anti-primate legislation. I would not be allowed to speak out against US Fish & Wildlife and their funding of the Jane Goodall Foundation with our tax money. I would be silenced. And for what, a few measly tax dollars? Why should I sell my soul for that? Why should anyone?

Other Books published by Inverted-A Press 

So when you buy books from Inverted-A, books that I wrote and that will help fund Project Bow, or books that I edited and published but did not write, you are not going to get a tax write off for the purchase. I, in turn, will not be able to take in that income,  tax exempt. I will have to pay the IRS for my right of free speech. It isn't right that they should tax free speech, but I would rather pay the tax than give up my first amendment rights.

Because I am willing to pay those taxes now, I can campaign for a presidential candidate whose platform includes doing away with the IRS, so that not only non-profit organizations but every single citizen can have tax free income. To me, that makes the whole thing worthwhile. If you agree, and you would like to make a contribution to Project Bow, please buy books that I have written and/or published as Christmas presents for friends and family on your list. It isn't tax exempt, but it's worth every penny, because what you are buying is freedom.

Books for Adults by Aya Katz

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Bow is about to turn thirteen this month. This is an important birthday. In prehistoric, Biblical and aboriginal cultures, when a boy turned thirteen, it meant he was ready to be a man. It's kind of true for chimpanzees, too.

One sign of Bow's maturity is his frequent displays. But another sign of maturity is that he can decide that he's displayed enough, and it is time to move on. When Bow is done with that, nothing that Leo contrives in order to re-ignite him is going to work. Bow has self-control.

After active exercise, many lazy hours are spent enjoying a nap in the sun. Bow is secure in the knowledge that his needs are provided for and that he is a valued member of the family.

Lately I have been reminiscing about how all this began.

Bow was a month old when he came to join our family. He was completely helpless at the time. In a few months, he learned to walk.

Early development in chimpanzees is much faster than in humans, and Bow has always been a natural gymnast.

Bow traveled with us to New Hampshire to attend a linguistics conference, and he has always been very affectionate, adventuresome, but careful not to fall into water.

When Bow moved into the pens, that is when he became most literate, and yet he never ceased to be part of the family. 

Because we depend in part on the sales of books, I encourage anyone who has a small child in the family and another child on the way to buy the story of how my daughter first met Bow. A new baby in the family -- human or not -- can be a big adjustment. 

http://www.amazon.com/When-Sword-Met-Bow-Katz/dp/1456373765

But did you know that you can help in other ways? If you follow the link to Amazon, you can vote down the negative "review" posted there by an animal rights activist. Commitment to a chimpanzee -- or to any other creature or person in your life -- means not abandoning them as they grow and develop and change through different stages. Not everyone is capable of that kind of commitment. Sometimes people who cannot commit try to make trouble for people who can.

Was that person's negative experience inevitable? What would be the most compassionate way to respond to those remarks? Sometimes I think I should write a book about potty training. How many people have failed to get through that one stage of development with their chimpanzee or their human child? How much unhappiness is still just a result of not being able to get over that one little hurdle? Would that poor reviewer have had a completely different experience with their own chimpanzee if only they had had a little guidance in that one area of life?

As it is, Bow is well trained, but he also has constant companionship. This means I have to be in the pens twelve hours a day to supervise, and he is never alone, because when I am not there, he has Lawrence. 

Sometimes people ask me how I can stand to be so cooped up. In fact, it was much harder at first, in 2007, when Bow first was confined,  than it is now, eight years later. I have grown used to our living arrangement, as has Bow, and we have found ways to accommodate each other's needs to not always be engaged in the same activity while spending our time together. Life in the pens is good. 

To See and Be Seen

Everybody likes to be seen and perceived and understood. That is one of the great joys and delights of social interaction. But even when nobody sees you, you are still there. You still exist. You still are.

Even though I cannot see Bow, I'm pretty sure he is still there underneath the blanket

Object permanence is one of the first lessons babies learn about the nature of reality. They learn it by playing peek-a-boo. Much later, about the time of the first hide and go seek games, they also learn that if they can see someone else, that does not necessarily mean that this someone else can see them. Seeing isn't necessarily reciprocal.

Now I can see Bow. But can he see me?

Another lesson that is even more subtle is that seeing things affects what you know, but being seen does not necessarily affect what someone else knows. If he did not know you were seeing him, then he has no new knowledge.

Peekaboo! I see you!

Trying to gauge another person's state of mind involves guessing what they know and what they do not know, based on the sorts of information that are available to them, and also by trying to model their mental process. It can be very difficult, because not everybody perceives what he sees the same way. Someone can see you, but not notice. Someone can hear you, but not understand what you said. Even very intelligent adult human beings can make terrible miscalculations, just based on a false belief that to exist is to be perceived or that seeing necessarily means knowing.

Daniel J. Povinelli wrote a whole book about what young chimpanzees know about seeing. The problem is that what a researcher knows about what a chimpanzee knows is not necessarily a straightforward fact. The smart chimpanzee may not choose to let the researcher in on all its knowledge. Do you know what I know? How can you be sure?

Yesterday, I reviewed the movie  Cloud Atlas. I took issue with the statement by the character Sonmi:

"To be is to be perceived, and so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other."

Being is one thing. Being perceived is something else. To conflate them is to be a social metaphysician, a person who believes that social reality is the only reality. People may misperceive you. You may misperceive yourself. But who you are is a fact, not open to social mediation.

People perceive different things in the same situation. Sometimes I will reminisce with someone about something that happened long ago, and it will turn out that they never knew a fact that was obvious and significant to me. Then they will say, "I must not have been in the room when that happened." Well, maybe. Or maybe they were in the room, but they were not mentally present. Maybe they saw, but did not perceive, heard, but did not understand. Maybe their attention was centered on another sight which was significant to them, and not to me.

People do not remember what they see. They remember what they perceived and how they interpreted the data. This is one of the reasons that we don't tend to remember what happened in our early infancy. It is not because we did not see, but it was hard to come to many conclusions with so little data to go on. We cannot remember what we did not perceive. It takes time for someone's mind to turn a sight into a perception, an event into a memory.

That is why it can happen that you might meet someone on a particular day, but they will not meet you until much later, when they finally perceive you for the first time. That is the topic of my children's book, When Sword Met Bow. 

When we bring a baby home for the first time, whether he is a human or a chimpanzee, he does not know enough about life to know us or meet us in any meaningful way. We may meet him on that day, but it may take a while before his cognitive development is enough to meet us back. That is because seeing is not perceiving, and the relations between sentient beings are not necessarily reciprocal.

Seeing is not knowing. And just because you know somebody you must not assume that they know you. And before any seeing or knowing can even begin to happen, things have to actually exist.

Reality is primary. Social reality is secondary. And while psychological visibility -- the feeling you get when somebody really understands you -- is a great delight, people continue to exist even when no one sees them. It's that very basic concept of object permanence that you learned when you started playing peekaboo!

To Jefferson City and Back

Today is a dark, rainy day. It has been raining all morning, which leaves the pens unusually dark, and Bow is a little less than happy. But yesterday was a beautiful day, and Bow got to spend most of it outside in the sunsine, while I made my way to Jefferson City and back again.

In the morning, it had started out foggy and then the fog cleared up, and I saw all the rolling hills with green grass, the blossoming fruit trees and the trim little farmhouses along the way. The Missouri Ozarks are beautiful country, and it's such a shame that anything like politics should ever mar them.

The Missouri State Capitol Building is a tourist attraction, and there were groups of school children with their teachers coming and leaving all the while I was there. I arrived a little early, but it was hard to find a parking spot anywhere close by, so I ended up walking down Madison Street. It got me to thinking about James Madison, who is an ancillary character in Theodosia and the Pirates.

Once at the Capitol Building, I decided to stop by and say hello to my representative in the Missouri House, Robert Ross. When I told his assistant, Gina Richardson, my name, she exclaimed: "That's who I thought you were! You wrote a book."

This surprised me so much, that for a moment I was speechless. I did not remember ever seeing her before, so I could not imagine how she knew that. While I had been in touch with my previous representative in the Missouri House, I had not actually had any sort of dealings yet with the office of Robert Ross, who is newly elected this term, which is why I thought I would make a point of saying hello. How did this woman know I had written a book?

Of course, I was actually holding a book I had written: When Sword Met Bow.  I was going to give it to the Senate Agriculture Committee when I gave my testimony.

"Well, yes, yes, I did," I said and showed her the book. But clearly this was not the book she meant. "I was just reading about you," she said. And she opened up a manila folder where she had a photocopy of a newspaper clipping about my  book signing at Texas County Museum of Art and History. She pointed to a picture of Lanie Frick, Suzie Blackburn and me, posing in front of Lanie's painting. "I thought it was really interesting to see the author, the artist and the model in the photo together," Gina said. I remembered posing for that picture, but I had never actually seen it until then. Gina told me that Representative Ross would be mailing me that clipping. Then she walked me up to the house floor, where Representative Ross was busy. He came by to speak to me briefly, and we exchanged a few words, but he had to get back to the floor, and I had to get to Senate Room One for the Ag Committee hearing.

The Agriculture committee was chaired by Senator Munzlinger and closely attended to by Senators Libla, and Parson. Senator Kiki Curls was there toward the end of the session and asked about large carnivore owners.

If I believed that the burning issue on everyone's mind on the Senate Agriculture Committee was non-human primates when I came in, then I learned otherwise rather quickly. Two other bills were discussed before SB149. The first was introduced by someone who wanted the Agriculture Department to develop a new website for Missouri farmers to sell their products online internationally, a sort of Craigslist. One of the senators asked him whether there wasn't already such a website, and he answered that indeed there was, but that it was outdated and obsolete, because it was not properly optimized for search engines these days. I was surprised that the subject of SEO would come up in an agriculture committee meeting. The sponsor of the bill also said that Google was not the top search engine globally. That honor falls to baidu.com and now everything needs to be optimized for that engine. Senator Munzlinger was concerned about selling goods in Asia and not getting paid, but Senator Parson wanted to know if the current agriculture department website was obsolete now, how we could be sure that this proposed website would not be also obsolete in a couple of years.

The next item on the agenda was a bill to regulate the freshness of goose and duck eggs when sold in a regular establishment. Apparently, there already is such a law regulating the sale of chicken eggs, but a loophole had been left for other kinds of fowl in the interest of public safety.  Senator Munzlinger thought this was an "egg-cellent bill," but Senator Parson was concerned with how it might affect his Amish and Mennonite constituents who do in fact sell duck and goose eggs. A person from the Department of Agriculture was there to testify on behalf of the bill. He said it was a matter of public safety to make sure the eggs were stored at a low enough temperature.

At this point, I began to think about Willy Wonka and wondered if the public really had such trouble recognizing a bad egg that it needed protection from independent farmers. But nobody showed up to testify against the bill, and it was clear that -- unopposed as it was -- it was going to pass.

And then it was time to consider HB149. Senator Keaveny revealed that he was acting on behalf of the St. Louis Zoo and the Kansas City Zoo. He took great pains to distance himself from HSUS, although further testimony revealed that HSUS and those zoos had a financial connection.

And then testimony began starting with those who supported the bill, sometimes stultifying in its claims concerning safety and animal welfare. There was also a boast that the law does not discriminate in favor of the zoos -- that the same rules apply to all, and that the zoos are happy to submit to these restrictions like everybody else. But the first people to testify quickly put that in issue, since there is a requirement that no one who kept primates should breed, transfer or display them to the public, and yet clearly the zoos in order to operate, would have to engage in these activities. If the bill does not exempt them, it would put them out of business.

There are only five chimpanzee owners in the state of Missouri, one person testified. To subject them to the fees necessary to fund a regulating agency would be prohibitive. To tattoo or chip chimpanzees, some of whom are already fifty years old and are retirees from the zoos, would be inhumane and extremely cruel. Many people testifying against the bill said  that they were Missouri natives, had lived here all their lives and they opposed the bill. While they agree that not everyone should own primates, there is no need for this law, as those people who choose to go into primate ownership are very responsible and well informed. There were no ordinary people testifying on behalf of the bill. There were only employees of the zoos and of animal rights organizations.

When my turn came to testify, I decided not speak against the bill's effect on primates and owners, so much as to inform the committee about what it would do to the State of Missouri if it were passed. I told them that unlike many of the others who were Missourians born and bred, I was an outsider. I came to this state because I wanted to start an ape language research project, and Missouri was the best state to do it in, because there were no anti-primate laws. I came to Missouri because Bow was born in Missouri. I started a project that might be of help to autistic children who had trouble communicating. I needed to cross-foster Bow together with my own child, because if I did not do that, he would not be enculturated, and the experiment would fail. If it is now impossible to continue here, because the law is passed, then I will have to leave the state of Missouri. That means no more investment in the state, no more revenue from donors or volunteers or even tourists who come here because of Project Bow. We will be gone. And the state will be left holding the bag.

Senator Munzlinger wanted to know if I meant that I could not afford the fees. I agreed that I couldn't. But Senator Parson wanted to know something completely different. "You say you raised Bow with your child. Do you consider them the same?"

At first I thought he was talking about safety issues, and I tried to explain that when Bow was a baby he posed no risk to anyone, so it was okay to raise them together. By the time he turned five, I found it necessary to put him in the pens, which are very secure. But Senator Parson stopped me. That's not what he wanted to know. His concern was not safety. He wanted to make sure I wasn't claiming equal rights for Bow. He asked the question again: "Do you consider them the same?"

I shook my head. "No. They are not the same." He was satisfied. There were no more questions for me.

I met a lot of good people yesterday, some of whom belong to an organization called Animal Owners of America. Senator Parson made a comment during his questioning of one of the witnesses from the zoo that stuck in my mind. He distinguished animal welfare from animal rights. "We are all interested in animal welfare," he said. "Every farmer is interested in that."

When somebody wants to grant rights to a creature who cannot exercise those rights directly, you can be sure that the person is looking to gain power over that creature. That is the issue of animal rights versus animal welfare. And I think the Missouri Senate Agriculture Committee is pretty clear about that difference. I think it's going to be okay.

As I was leaving, after I said goodbye to all my primate supporting friends, one of the animal rights activist called after me to say she appreciated the research I was doing. "Thanks!" I said.

I got home too late to take Sword and her friend to their regular music lesson, but their teacher Jill Dabney came over to my house instead, and I could hear the strains of The Star Spangled Banner being played at Sword's piano as I came in.

As for Bow, he had had a great day with Lawrence. His only complaint: he didn't like the peas he was served at lunch. He refused to eat them. When Lawrence asked him why, Bow spelled: "The peas are rotten."

The peas were not rotten. Bow just likes to complain sometimes. We had the peas for lunch today -- both of us. Bow ate his peas, but for some reason wouldn't eat the pickles.

Last night, after I put Bow to bed, I was so grateful to be home that I appreciated my little corner of the world even more. I hope I don't have to leave Missouri. I've got a really nice place here!

"Let Sword Read It, Too."

This morning, I picked up the proof of When Sword Met Bow from the P.O. box, while Lawrence stayed with Bow. After lunch, I read the book to Bow, and then I let him proof it himself. 

Bow seemed to like the book. He took a good long time to go over it. Then, later, when we were on the other side of the glass, he spelled: "Let Sword read it, too."

"Okay, Bow," I said. "I will. I'll let her read it as soon as she gets home from school."