Perpetuities in a Nutshell

Bow in the Outer Pen this Morning Enjoying a Persimmon I Picked for Him

At the farthest corner of my land, surrounded by brambles and blackberry thorns, is a tiny persimmon tree that is covered with fruit.

It's the Smallest Persimmon Tree on My Land, But It Bears More Fruit than the Others

It's the smallest persimmon tree on my land, but it bears much more fruit than the others. The other trees usually lose all their leaves by the time the fruit is ripe, and they stand tall and naked, with only a few orange globes hanging from them, which is why I refer to them as my Halloween Trees.

This image is from a post in 2014

None of these trees were planted by me, and they sprang up on their own, because I did not mow the pasture. The landscape of my land changes every year, I think that change is more natural than everything remaining at a stand still, so I wonder about those who are agitating to try to stop climate change.

A View of My Pasture at Sunset a Couple of Days Ago

If you look at the picture of my pasture at sunset, neither the fruiting mulberry in the foreground nor the cedars and pines in the background were there when I bought the property -- and they were not planted by me.

The Weigela Blossoms day before yesterday

It has been unseasonably warm lately, and not only the service berry and the cherry and the apple tree have been blossoming, but on the Weigela bush the fruit and the brand new blossoms are growing side by side.

What if it really is getting warmer here, and what if it has something to do with "global warming"? Does that mean we can do anything about it, or that -- even if we could -- we should?

If change is the natural state of things, should we try to artificially stop the change, preventing bigger harvests and easier living conditions in temperate areas? Why?

I know of people who want to freeze everything, keeping it all the same, because, after all, people and animals depend on the status quo. When a large business goes belly up, they try to keep it afloat at the public's expense, for the sake of the workers and of the economy. But the workers and the economy would be just fine, if you just left everything alone to decay and die and be reborn in the natural course of life. There are business cycles. There are climate cycles, There are winners and losers every time something changes. If you try to help the losers at the expense of the winners, you will eventually bring everybody down.

Take the current state of the Congo. Not very safe for either humans or other great apes. So what do conservationists do? They try to send money to the Congo to help to keep everything the same. Meanwhile they try to destroy the ability of private apes in the United States to keep eking out a living in a new environment. But the greatest hope for non-human apes to survive is among humans in the United States. 

And then there are the researchers who actually believe that some rich donor is going to provide them with funding for their project in perpetuity. But every single time, the particular business that this donor depends on falls on hard times, and there goes their revenue in perpetuity. No business can last forever. The economic climate is constantly changing. It's natural.

When I was taking Trusts &Estates in law school, I happened on a tiny book called Perpetuities in a Nutshell.  For me, it was just a study aid, but it was a good one, and the title was so catchy that it stuck with me.

Here is what I can tell you about perpetuities in a nutshell: Nothing lasts forever. Things change constantly. If you take advantage of those changes that work in your favor, then you can always find a way to survive and sometimes even to thrive.

This means that instead on insisting on having the fruit you have always had under the circumstances that it has always ripened, you look around and see what fruit happens to be ripe for the picking right now.

The Ripe Persimmon

One of the persimmons on the tiny tree was already ripe, so I picked it and brought it home to Bow. I have been told that persimmons should not be eaten until after the first frost, but in that case, why do they ripen without a frost? Surely in some areas it never freezes.

Bow was not particularly hungry. It was not long after breakfast. But he accepted the persimmon from me and ate of it delicately.

What if the warming trend in Missouri continues, making the outdoors safe for chimpanzees here year round? Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing for chimpanzee conservation in the US? Why would you want to reverse this trend for the sake of other animals elsewhere on the globe? If everything had always stayed the same throughout our own history, would any humans have ever left Africa? Do you want to reverse that trend, too? It just does not make any sense. 

Progressives accuse conservatives of wanting to "halt progress." But isn't that exactly what progressive conservationists are trying to do to climate change on this planet -- halt progress? There is really no telling where nature is going with this. It is unlikely that we can stop it, But we can help ourselves and the animals we love by adapting to the change. The entire history of life on this planet is a history of natural migration and natural adaptation. 

Koko's Commercial and the State of Ape Language Research

Yesterday, on my twitter feed, there was much ado about Koko the Gorilla's appearance in a commercial about climate change sponsored by the French conservation organization, NOE. Among the primatologists, there was now a move to distance themselves from this public service announcement, not because they disagreed with the message, but because they believed the messenger did not actually mean what she said, and that quite possibly she was coached to say it, and that her words were elicited in other ways, then edited together to make it seem she said something other than what she actually said. Here is the Huffington Post article that deals with the reactions of primatologists.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/koko-gorilla-climate-change-video_568d2368e4b0cad15e62

Now, to tell you he truth, this video of Koko had appeared in my Facebook feed before, and I was sure it was a hoax. Sickened by the message and by the appropriation of Koko's persona, I had no idea this was the real Koko. I thought it was somebody pretending to be Koko.

But now that it has been confirmed that it was the real Koko, I went back and watched the video. And when he saw me watching it, Bow insisted that he wanted to see it, too.

I tend to agree, from watching the video, that there is no way to tell whether Koko actually said this, and I think it makes sense to take it with a grain of salt, as we take all Public Service Announcements. I mean, if we see a famous child  actress on a PSA tell us to not be a fool and to stay in school, do we assume those are her real words? Do we think she thought of that rhyme all by herself? Do we think she personally agrees with the message? Or do we think: Hey, she probably got paid to say that. After all, she is an actress.

A performance by an actress in a commercial or in a play, movie or TV show does not indicate what she actually thinks. It also, believe it or not, does not prove that she has mastered human syntax. The words were written for her by somebody else. If she flubs a line, they do another take.

Why are these established  primatologists bending over backwards to distance themselves from a PSA with a gorilla delivering the message? Is it because they are worried that people will confuse a commercial with real life? Or is it because they think that the Gorilla Foundation should not allow Koko to work for a living? Or is it because of the bizarre "personhood" controversy that has arisen around apes who can use human language?

Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Mastering syntax does not guarantee intelligence. Many people with a low IQ have mastered syntax.
• Intelligence itself does not guarantee that someone is able to give legal consent, which requires not only an understanding of the words in a contract, but also an ability to deal with long term consequences of entering into an agreement.
• Neither syntax nor a high IQ imply the emotional maturity to lead an independent life in human society. Many very smart people who speak their native language perfectly require a legal guardian.
• Impulse control is an issue for many, including humans and other apes. An inability to control impulses can require confinement away from others, even when the individual is intelligent, articulate and otherwise emotionally mature.

At present, we give personhood rights just based on being human to many who cannot live free among us, and they receive government support. Whether this is the correct thing to do or not is a political question. Whether we want to extend such rights to other apes who would need the same level of support is also a political question. It is not simply a matter of proving the many intellectual achievements of speaking apes.

I think it is a good idea to separate politics from science as much as possible. When we see the president crying on TV, we take that with a grain of salt, knowing he is a politician, and somebody probably wrote his speech, and he gets paid to say that. We should do the same when a working ape is trying to earn a living by appearing on a commercial.

Should animals other than humans be allowed to work for a living? Definitely. Is there anything wrong with an ape appearing in a commercial? In my opinion, no, there is not. But let's not get all distracted by the acting to the point where we take the rehearsed words seriously or forget that the author of the words and the one aping those words are not the same person. 

This in no way takes away from spontaneous linguistic output of the same apes when they are not acting. If we want to know whether the president has mastered syntax, we need to catch him in a spontaneous language stream and not try to determine this while he is giving a public speech.

That so many primatologists confuse the question of linguistic competence with other issues is a problem for ape language studies. It does not matter whether Koko cares about climate change in order to assess her language skills. And it's not in the context of a political commercial that we want to evaluate her linguistic competence -- or anyone else's. 

Partially Deceptive Signalling

I may have mentioned once or twice that Bow lies to me. What I haven't talked about as much are the partial lies, the half truths and those cryptic answers that just make me feel a little uneasy, knowing that something is up, but not knowing what exactly that is.

This morning there was some commotion outside. Bow suggested that I go out and check "You want me to go outside?" I asked him.

"תנסי לצאת" he qualified it. "Try to go outside." What does that mean? Why did he say "try"? Was he expecting that someone would stop me from going? Or that it would not be easy to leave? Or that unless I tried to go, I would never find out what might happen next? Did he have some trick up his sleeve?

So I went outside, hoping to see deer again, but it was only the neighbors' cattle grazing close to the fence line.

When I got back, it turned out that Bow had used the potty in my absence. He did so correctly, but since I was not there to help him wipe, it necessitated a little more cleanup. So in hindsight, I think Bow was signalling that it was okay for me to go, he would still be good, but things would not go as smoothly as I envisioned. And all that meaning was jammed into that one word "try".

Everybody is so interested in learning to communicate with animals, and to read their signals. There is this feeling that if only we understood each other better, something miraculous might happen. But very few take into account that since we cannot rely on anything a human being says to us, then we can't really expect "God's Truth" from other animals, either.

Take those deer on my land. They are sometimes seen in the woods.

I see the deer. The deer sees me. It stoops down to make sure I am really there, and then, absolutely certain of it, it leaves. And sometimes there is a whole group of them. They see me. I see them, somebody snorts, and they all turn around, flash their white tails at me and leave.

So the snorting is a signal that means "Hey, let's get out of here, we've been spotted!" -- right? Well, that was my naive interpretation of the signal, until I looked it up. It turns out that some experts believe the snort is not intended for the other deer at all. The snort could be an anti-predator signal, intended to tell me not to follow!

Snorting did not appear directed at conspecifics, and comparative data suggest that it signals that the predator has been detected. In contrast, foot-stamping was effective in alerting other deer to the observer's presence. Deer may have bounded to clear obstacles along their flight path. These preliminary data indicate that several aspects of anti-predator behavior in white-tailed deer may be pursuit-deterrent signals, and they therefore highlight the necessity of observing natural predators' reactions to signals given by deer in future studies. (Caro, Lombardo, Goldizen and Kelly,  Tail-Flagging and Other Anti-Predator Signals in white-tailed Deer.)

It is good to remember that not everything other animals do is directed at each other. Some of it may actually be directed at us. As such, we may be mistaking their attempt to speak our language for the whole sum total of theirs, which may be much more subtle and advanced and spoken in a pitch and at a rate that is too high for us to even take cognizance of.

I believe that some ethologists studying chimpanzees in the wild may have mistaken the chimps' cries intended for non-chimps to overhear as the sum total of all chimpanzee communication. It is for this reason that they believe chimpanzee vocalizations are extremely limited and do not carry much information.

But what sort of information would you direct at a predator, an outsider or an enemy, anyway? Wouldn't your chief purpose be to deceive him? And if you always lied, then what kind of deception would that be? How could that possibly work?

That's where this other paper comes in: Between cheap and costly signals: the evolution of partially honest communication

Beyond the empirical significance of our results, we have demonstrated an alternative evolutionary explanation for (partially) honest communication in situations of conflict of interest, which can range from parent–offspring interactions to mating advertisement to predator–prey interactions. Although this equilibrium had been previously observed [5,20], it was not known if this phenomena was an artefact of the particular games or if it represented a general phenomenon common to many different signalling interactions. In this paper, we show that this type of signalling is at least as evolutionarily plausible as that offered by the traditional costly signalling models and may fit better with the observed data on signal costs. In this respect, it may represent a superior theory to traditional handicap theory.

This is a novel concept for me, although in hindsight it sounds almost too simple. Lying and deception continue to pay off, but only if they are partial. Because no information could be conveyed unless you were honest at least part of the time, the optimal amount of deception would have to be only partial. This means that even the deer tell their predators the truth part of the time. Good to know!

Bow deciding what partial truth to tell me next

Reconsidering Our Villains

Every story has a hero, and if it's a certain kind of story, then there might be a villain, too. But what if there were no outright villains? What if every person were a mixture of good and evil, kindness and carelessness and callousness. What if every man had some of the traits of John Quincy Adams for instance?

Bow giving me a frank look this morning

Or what if  any wrongdoing alleged was not where we have been trained to think it must be by the literature we have read? For instance, Aaron Burr was acquitted of treason, and yet historians today often go on believing that he was guilty of it. Why? Is it because they keep reading -- and citing -- each others' books that keep asserting that Burr was a traitor?  

I am currently working on the second half of a book about an internment camp in China run by the Japanese. A lot of very bad things happened there. But not all of them were the fault of the Japanese Commandant who ran the camp. It would be tempting to portray him as a villain, but that does not appear to be the truth, based on contemporary accounts I have read.

My historical reading is not limited to things that happened during the War of 1812 or during World War II. I also read books about the history of ape language studies.

I have read about Washoe, Lucy Temerlin, Nim Chimpsky and several other chimpanzees who are less famous, all of whom were born on the Lemmon farm in Oklahoma. Over the years, reading many different such accounts, I came to form a bit of a caricatured view of one of the people who kept appearing in all those books. I blush to admit it, but I came to believe he was a three penny opera villain.

It's not fair to judge somebody you've never met by the accounts of other people who may have had a falling out with him. That's why I would never take Thomas Jefferson's word on the guilt or innocence of Aaron Burr. And that's why, over the past few years, after understanding the intricacy of animal rights propaganda, I have come to reevaluate the role of Dr. William Lemmon in the history of ape language research.

That's all I'm going to say for now. I have a novel to write and an ape to research language with. But if you have also read all those books about Washoe and Lucy and Nim, please reconsider. Maybe he was not as dark a figure as you have been led to believe. I recently spoke with someone who knew him, and she confirmed my suspicions that it's not quite like that.

"You Know What I Mean"

Sometimes Bow wants to communicate one thing, but he says something else. For instance, he wants to go outside, but he will spell out "Give me a blanket." Or he knows that it's almost time for dinner, and he is impatient to be served, and he spells out "Give me a blanket." Or he is just upset over something, and does not have the words to express it, and he spells out "Give me a blanket."'

Bow with his old Blanket Last September

In every such case, I take Bow at his word, and I give him a blanket. Sometimes this upsets him, and he attacks the blanket in frustration, biting it. However, at this point, his attacks on the blanket are very gentle, because he knows that he is not getting a new blanket till Christmas, and the winter months are fast approaching. Bow can be moody, but he is not stupid.

Bow with his Current Blanket

I was speaking to another primatologist the other day, and she said: "We have this rule: if they can express what they want clearly by any means, then we respond to that."

I didn't know what to answer. That sounds so kind and liberal and caring.  Has she ever tried raising a bilingual teenager in a monolingual country? I wondered. But I could not say that. So I just said:  "Well, that was not the rule in my parents' house when I was growing up."

She smiled. "So you are just following the pattern you were raised with?"

Yeah. It works. The other way may work, too, for purposes of communication, but it undermines language. Because, let's face it, we don't use language because that is the only way to communicate. We use it because it is a very sharp tool, and unless you use it to communicate, it will not stay sharp. It's use it or lose it. I know, because I've been there, and I am still there. I am a language warrior.

Ping and the Snirkelly People

When I was six years old, I was placed in a classroom where only English was spoken, and I was a monolingual Hebrew speaker. Because I had no choice, I picked the language up very fast. But if I had had a choice, the process would have been much less efficient. Learning a new language is not about the desires of the language learner. Holding onto an old language is the same.

I remained fluent in Hebrew, because my parents spoke to me only in Hebrew. I acquired perfect American English, because my classmates and teachers spoke to me only in English. Nobody would give an inch, so I was the one who was forced to give way. Language is not about communication. It is first and foremost about power.

http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Learn-a-Foreign-Language-Issues-in-Second-Language-Acquisition-and-Pedagogy

The more you accommodate the language learner, the less effective the process.

I did see, a year after I learned English, an example of parents who took a different course with their children. In order to help them adapt, the parents spoke only in English to the children at home. This actually delayed complete acquisition of an American accent and fluent English grammar, but within about a year of the implementation of this policy the children were no longer willing and/or able to speak Hebrew anymore.

In our household, communication was not king. Language was king. If you meant one thing and said something else, it was the thing you said that was responded to. If said in the wrong language, it was not acknowledged at all. And that's the only way to hold onto a specific language, when there is another, alternative way to communicate which is equally as effective.

If nonverbal cues are good enough to communicate everything, why use language at all? It was only during my college years that I encountered people who said one thing, when they clearly meant something completely different. It was not even a question of lying or deception. It was more like an extreme case of mixed signals. A person was talking fluently and grammatically about one subject, while all his nonverbal cues were pointing to the fact that he was thinking about and asking for something completely different. It was not that I could not read the nonverbal cues,  I just thought anyone who behaved that way must be insane.

Bow is not insane. He knows what he wants. And I know what he wants. And he knows that I know that he knows. But all the same, language is about power, and I cannot give in.

"You know what I mean," does not work in my house. And that's also why my daughter can still speak Hebrew when nobody else in this county does. It takes will power!

Bad Apple

Yesterday was my day off. When I returned from my errands, on the dining room table, on a paper napkin over which was an apple with one bite taken out of it, Lawrence had written: "Bow took bite of this, spit it out and said it was bad. Do you think others?"

He was referring to all the other apples that had come in that bag. If this was a bad apple, were all the other apples bad? I felt of the apple, and it was hard and unyielding. There was no indication to me that it was rotten. The only reason the part Bow had taken a bite of was brown was because of the normal oxidation process.

I went to the pen to ask Lawrence about it. Lawrence said he had asked Bow why he thought the apple was bad, but Bow, who is not good at answering questions that start with "why" had merely answered: "Because it is bad."

In the evening I made my own investigation. I cut open the apple, tried to remove the oxidated spots and bit into it. The apple tasted fine. I then took it into the pen with Bow, along with the napkin, to begin an inquiry of my own.

"Bow, do you know what it says here?" I asked him, brandishing the napkin. "What does it say?"                                                                                                          "?אתה יודע מה כתוב כאן? מה כתוב כאן"

I then read him the napkin, word for word. While I was reading it out loud to him, Bow followed along on the napkin, pointing at the appropriate words. He can read. But when I was done he looked away, as if totally uninterested in the issue that the napkin's words addressed.


"Is it bad? Look, I am eating now," I said and took a bite of the apple. "Is it bad?"
                                                   "?האם זה רע? תסתכל' אני אוכלת את זה עכשיו. האם זה רע"

Bow picked up the apple and started eating it. He finished the whole thing. There was no more talk about the apple being bad.

Mind you, this was one of a bag of red delicious apples, which are the least tasty of all the apples in the store. Even the Wikipedia says they don't taste so good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Delicious

But that's why they have the lowest price per pound from all the apples in the grocery store. Supply and demand. These are human grade apples, fit for eating. I eat them, too.  I also let Bow have more expensive apples in moderation, but I can't have him turning up his nose on the red delicious as long as we are on a budget.

I think he understands. And, yes, he can read!

Chinese Food

Yesterday during dinner my daughter and I were talking about our plans for later that evening. We had recently found out it was possible to get Chinese take-out in a neighboring town, so we were planning to do that for a late evening snack on a Saturday night. Meanwhile, we were having our regular dinner in the pen with  Bow.

Bow had already had his red apple and his green apple, and the only things left for him to ask for were a pork dish in a bowl and a banana. Usually when he sees these dishes, he just calls them "meat" and that is good enough for me. But Bow took my little finger and spelled:

 "תני לי אוכל סיני". "Give me Chinese food."

I looked at his choices on the little white table. The only thing that even vaguely resembled Chinese food was the pork dish, which consisted of little pieces of pork stir fried with diced potatoes and onions and some lemon juice thrown into the mix. Admittedly, my recipe is a little Asian inspired, but it was hardly Chinese food.

"Fine, here's some Chinese food,"I said and handed him the bowl. He took it and ate it all, but when he returned the bowl to me, he spelled angrily:  "תני לי אוכל סיני". "Give me Chinese food!" There was only a banana left on the table.

I looked into his eyes, and I realized he was angry that we were excluding him from our late night snack which this time would consist of Chinese food. We always have snacks together in my room on Saturday night after Bow has gone to bed,  if we are not going out, and Bow does not seem to mind. But he does like Chinese food, and I guess we should not have discussed that in front of him.

"Okay, Bow," I said. "If I have any leftovers from tonight, I will share them with you tomorrow." This satisfied him.

We ended up getting "General Chicken", which is what they call  General Tso's Chicken on the local menu. I can only finish about half of a normal serving, especially if it is my second dinner of the night.

Bow liked the chicken very much when I let him have my leftovers today, but he did not eat the rice.

For the really big morsels. he bent low over the food, so as to avoid dropping it.

All in all Bow is a pretty clean eater. And does like his Chinese food!

When ...?

Life is good. We have good food. We have nice things. But chimpanzees do not live by bread alone. Bow does not talk about this much anymore, but today he broached the subject.

When Bow vocalizes in a high pitched voice, he sounds very agitated. It is usually also when he is trying to speak. He can make sounds in a lower pitch, of course, but they are not the sounds that he is trying to overlay with consonants and vowels. Do I understand what Bow says out loud? Sadly, I don't. That's why he has to spell things out for me.

Aya: ?מה  What?

Bow: שקר Lie.

Aya: ? שקר. מה
        A lie? What?

Bow: מתי קופה
        When a female-chimp

Aya: ?מתי תהיה לך קופה
         When will you have a female chimp?
        ?האם זה מה שאתה שואל, קשת
        Is that what you are asking, Bow?

Bow: כן
          Yes.

Aya: אני לא יודעת
        I don't know.
  ? אתה נותן לי את השטיח
You're giving me the rug?

Bow:  יש
           There is

Aya: ? יש מה
        There's what?
      (He persists in giving the rug to me.)
        טוב תודה
      Okay, thank you.

I just happened to be taking pictures when that exchange transpired. I know it looks as if I am holding Bow's hand, and with the way he is vocalizing in a high pitch, some naive viewers might think this exchange is happening against his will. Over and over again, people have commented that it looks as if I am holding Bow's hand and guiding it, but really it was his doing. I was just going to film him playing. He took my hand. It would have been very hard to withhold my hand from him. He insisted.

Bow is much stronger and more agile than I am. I cannot take his hand without his consent. And in this particular case, he was the one who was eager for the exchange.

Bow will turn twelve on February 16. I know what he wants for his birthday. It's not a rug or a cake or anything that I can afford to buy him. In fact, it's one of those things that people euphemistically say money can't buy.

I sure wish I could arrange a visit from a female chimpanzee, if only for a day.

Passing the Time with Renoir

Yesterday, it was too cold to play out. Bow and I needed to find something to do indoors to pass the time. I brought in an old art book that I inherited from my grandmother. It is a big book, and I am sure it must have been expensive, but most of the pictures in it are black and white reproductions, with only a few in color. Those that are in color are sort of pasted in loosely -- they were not printed with the others. I imagine that today, if you buy an art book, it is not like that.

I put the book on the table on my side of the glass and did not bring it in for Bow to look at until he asked for it. It is very important for it to be Bow's idea, because otherwise he might not be nice to the book. Bow gets to decide who and what is permitted to enter his domain.

When Bow started looking at the pictures, the book was propped up on my knee, and we were looking at it together. But eventually he took it away from me to look at by himself. When he did that, he was pretty gentle with the book, but it's true that one of the front pages got folded under the wrong way.

I did intervene just a little, to save the page from being misshapen. Bow was about to be a little miffed with me when he thought I was taking the book away prematurely, but he calmed down when he saw that I was just straightening it up and he could continue to enjoy the art appreciation experience.

For Bow, who flips through the pages rather fast, one viewing is not enough. He likes to look at the same pictures over and over again.

Bow pauses longer on some pages. I think he prefers the color reproductions.

When Bow really likes a painting, he does not merely look at it. He likes to touch it, too.

Bow's favorite Renoir painting is called Baigneuse. The English title given in the book is "Seated Bather." Bow returned to this picture again and again.

Unfortunately, though he was very gentle, Bow did leave tiny scratches on this print. I probably need to get him another copy, one that is laminated!

However, in searching for this exact painting online, I found a lot of bathers by Renoir, and even a seated bather, but none was this exact painting. Renoir seems to have painted many bathers, and practice makes perfect!

Mission Accomplished: Bow Breaks the Wood

Today there is snow on the ground, and there are occasional flurries of snow. But yesterday, Bow went outside. It was cold, yet not too cold to play.

Even though the piece of wood was there on the floor of the pen, Bow studiously ignored it when he first went outside.

Since nothing much was happening, I went in,  and a little while later I could hear Bow breaking the wood. He had picked it up and dashed it against the cement a few times. By the time I got back out with the camera, the deed had already been done.

I thanked Bow for breaking the wood, gathered up the pieces and added them to the fire.

Bow took my praise of his wood breaking skills in his stride. It's as if he were saying : "no big deal."

But the wood was broken, and that was good.

                                                             ***

For a retrospective article about Project Bow, check out page 54 of this Canadian Journal.

http://jewishreview.ca/images/JewishReview_Fall_13-LR.pdf

It's actually a glossy print journal, and this is a pdf file of it, which is why it takes so long to load. But if you have started reading about Bow recently, my article might give you much needed background information.

Just Say No!

It has been very cold. It snowed yesterday, and school was canceled for today.

I built a fire in the fireplace.

The snow did not seem all that uniformly high.

But there were drifts of snow that were quite deep.

This morning, even with the heat on, it seemed a little cold. When Bow asked for a shirt, I took him at his word and brought one out that I thought he might actually like to wear.

At first, I thought that he might like to put the shirt on himself. But when he just stared at me, I decided I would help him. Coaxing did not work. Pretty soon he had me chasing him around the pen. Then finally he took my hand and spelled לא. No is no. I accepted his answer and stopped pestering him.

It's a good thing we have language. There is no need to be coy. When someone makes you an offer of something that you do not want, you can just say no. It's amazing how well that works!

Bow later also told me that a guy does not wear clothes. דוד לא לובש בגדים. As a general rule, I might disagree. But this particular guy stopped wearing clothes the moment he got free run of the pens.

So in the end, Bow asked for his blanket, and he seems happy, even though it is cold and there is not much to do.

Using Words When Gestures would do.

Today started with a stormy, overcast morning. I watched from the front door as the bus picked my daughter up for school.

Bow napped a little after breakfast, and then he got up and called to me to come and talk to him. When I asked him what he wanted, he started to take my hand to spell it out, then changed his mind and pointed at the lock of the door that leads to the corridor that leads to the outer pens. Only after he had signaled what he wanted in this non-verbal way did he spell out what he wanted: לצאת -- To go out.

I opened and shut all the intervening doors, but when he got out there, he hesitated, because it was cold and wet. Then he gingerly stepped over the wet concrete to assume his typical posture, perched on top of the bench and with his index finger balancing against the grid.

This type of incident involves communication that does not require language. Bow didn't have to spell out what he wanted, because I already knew the moment he had pointed at the lock. But Bow is not the only person who is prompted by caretakers to use language when he has already made himself perfectly clear.I know of autistic children who have the same experiences. They can tell you what they want without using language, and yet people keep pressuring them to use language, in the hopes that the practice will one day make them say something unexpected -- something that conveys information that only they know and expresses opinions and desires that are complex enough so that a mere gesture would not be enough to convey them.

When people see a video such as the one above, they are quite within their rights to assume that it is Clever Hans syndrome: I know what  Bow wants to say, and Bow can read my body language about what letters to use in order to say it.

But we have had other conversations in which the communication was unexpected and only Bow knew the information. Conversations about mice, for instance, that Bow knew about, and I did not. Or the time he told one of our volunteers the Chinese name of a girl she had never met and did not know.

It is in these unexpected moments that Bow proves that he can use language. But most of the time, language is superfluous for Bow. as it is for many parents with their kids: you don't need him to say it before you know what he wants.

Language isn't such a great thing in everyday life. But on that rare occasion when you cannot read another person's mind through posture and gesture, it can be a powerful tool.

Different forms of social cooperation: a nod of the head

I've been very busy in the past month or so setting up new websites and pursuing business interests that may seem to have nothing to do with Project Bow. A pesky commenter on one of my sites wanted to know: so have you given up on proving that Bow's communication isn't "Clever Hans"? And when I replied that I had not given up on anything, but was also not pushing Bow to prove anything he doesn't want to prove, she was not satisfied. To her way of thinking, unless I am working on direct proof, then my interactions with Bow are of no consequence, for scientific purposes, which is all she really cares about. On top of that she suggested that I was deluding myself that Bow and I were communicating at all. Who's to say that our day to day conversations are not entirely in my own head, and that Bow is contributing nothing?


That is a valid question, but I also think that if what is going on here is entirely Clever Hans, then even Clever Hans is of scientific interest. Why on earth wouldn't you want to study how non-verbal cues play a role in social cooperation?

Take for example the following video. I needed to explain some things about how to get a Google Adsense account to my new writers on Pubwages. Did Bow have to be a part of that? Well,  no, he didn't. But I am with Bow twelve hours a day, most days, and so the only way I manage to get anything done is to involve him in my daily transactions. Besides, he's much more photogenic than I am.

When you watch the video, notice how at first Bow circles me, then he sits down to listen to what I have to say, then he gets up in the middle because it's not all that interesting, but when I train the camera on him as I am wrapping up my spiel, Bow starts to nod and smile, as if agreeing with me. Did I train him to do that? No. Did I ask him to do any of that? No. He did what he felt like doing, just as when he takes my hand and points to letters, he's also doing what he wants, not what I want. I couldn't for the world force him to say something that he doesn't want to say or do something that he doesn't want to do.

But did Bow really understand what I had to say about getting a Google adsense account? Does he know what adsense is? I doubt that, because he's still struggling with the concept of money. However, there are lots of human beings who also don't understand about adsense. A good friend who watched the video wrote me that she enjoyed it, but she had no idea what I was talking about. Bow, too, seemed to enjoy my presentation, though he had little comprehension of the subject matter. And yet he knew exactly which part of the discourse was the wrap up, and he decided to give his approval at that point.

Is it a pre-verbal skill to be able to pick up the beginning, middle and end of a speech, without knowing exactly what it's about? How many times have you used that same skill when trying to determine when to applaud or agree with your interlocutor, even though you were not closely attending to the meaning of the discourse? What allows us to cooperate in this way? Why are some autistics incredibly dense about picking out this sort of information?

The Footage from Wednesday

For whatever reason, today it was easy to upload the footage I described in yesterday's blog. It took less than ten minutes, whereas a snippet of ten seconds had taken an hour before. So here is the footage that Bow reacted so strongly to when Lawrence was viewing it.

The video is of very low quality. The audio is too low. But for whatever it is worth, here it is.

Bow's reaction to being filmed

Uploading a video is taking longer and longer these days. For instance, that tiny snippet in yesterday's blog post took well over an hour to upload. There was a companion video that I wanted to upload with it, but I just gave up because it would have taken all day.

Today I have some other things to do on my computer, so I cannot take the time to process videos and upload them. But we did do some filming yesterday, and I want to tell you a little about Bow's reaction.

We used to film every day, but that was when we had interns, and there was a fuctioning video camera, and we had a whole routine for the interns of exactly how to go about reviewing the footage and how to index it. It's been ages since we had interns, and so the routine has changed. We are in survival mode. Bow has to be taken care of every day, and played with, and fed, and all his needs have to be seen to, research or no research. Survival comes first.

Lawrence is Bow's sitter, who comes and plays with him when I have to run errands. He is not an intern, and he doesn't have any research duties. Bow talks to him, because kids usually talk to their sitter. It's a way to communicate, but it's not a "scientific experiment".  I couldn't ask Lawrence to help me document, because there is not time or money enough for that. And our camera has gone dead, on top of everything else.

Anyway, yesterday, just for the fun of it, I showed Lawrence how to film Bow using Bow's computer's built- in webcam. The resolution on it is pretty bad, and the lighting in here is not so good. (We used to bring in extra flood lights when we were filming for real.) But Lawrence was game to try this, and he even decided to see if he could get Bow to ask for his afternoon snack while the camera was running.

Now, Bow likes the camera. He gets very excited when you turn it on. He likes to use it as a mirror, to examine parts of himself that he can't usually see. Lawrence practiced filming Bow, and Bow was fine with that. But I guess he didn't realize that Lawrence had kept the camera on. Lawrence kept trying to hint to Bow that it might be time to ask for a snack, because he wanted to show on film that it was Bow who initiated the conversation.  So there he was, muttering to himself about how nice it would be to have some apples for a snack, and there Bow sat, not taking the hint.

And then I came in for a moment, not knowing that Lawrence was trying to film, and I asked whether Bow had had his afternoon snack yet. (Sword had a friend over, and right after I had to take her to her music lesson.) Lawrence said that it might help if I just brought the apples into the pen. So I did, and then I left, and Bow got excited and asked for a green apple, and then he had the green apple and Lawrence had the yellow apple.

Lawrence kept talking to Bow about why Bow preferred the green apple, when the yellow apple was bigger. By then, Bow had finished his green apple and asked for Lawrence to give him what was left of the yellow apple Lawrence was eating. So Lawrence gave him the apple, and eventually he stopped filming.

 When Lawrence decided to watch the video he had just filmed, Bow went nuts! He started screaming, as if he were trying to articulate words, and he ran around in protest, and he looked really upset.

When I questioned him about this later, Bow said he hadn't realized he was being filmed. It upset him, because he wasn't used to it.

Next time, we'll have to ask for his permission to film!

Bow lost a tooth

Today Bow lost another baby tooth. It was his left bottom canine. He showed me that it was loose, and it seemed to be troubling him. I asked him if he wanted me to help him pull it out. He acquiesced, and I had my fingers in his mouth for a really long time, wriggling the tooth back and forth. When it came out, he let me keep it.

In the past, I used to offer Bow a dollar per tooth, but he never spent any of that money. This time I decided to reward his cooperation with candy. I gave him a mint. It's worth a lot less than a dollar to me, and a lot more than a dollar to him. So it seemed like an equitable trade. Here is a picture of the tooth lying on the mousepad of my laptop:

Lawrence will be relieved to know about this. Last week Bow lost his other lower canine in the midst of rough play with Lawrence. Lawrence was afraid he may have unintentionally hurt Bow. I wasn't sure at the time whether it was a baby tooth. But this pretty much clinches it.

Bow was nice and cooperative when I asked him to pose for pictures showing his current lack of lower canines. He knew just what I wanted him to do.

Snowed In, but Still Keeping Ourselves Amused

We've been snowed in now since Tuesday. Lawrence did not come in at all this week. We have plenty of food, though, because Sword and I went to Wal*Mart and stocked up just before the blizzard. For the past couple of days I have been amusing myself by editing a video trailer for my upcoming book, Ping & the Snirkelly People. Between numerous interruptions, Bow let me do this.

Bow seemed uninterested in the snow, and didn't ask to go out at all, until today. In the morning, he went all the way to the door of the outer pen, but then changed his mind and asked to play with his shoe indoors, instead. He especially wanted to play a game of his own invention, where I put on the single shoe and chase him around the pen.

This afternoon, I decided to try to take some pictures of the outer pen with the laptop camera, but the pictures were too flooded with light from the reflected snow.

However, safe and snug inside the inner  pens, Bow got a big kick out of posing.

What Can He do?

Sometimes when people drop by, they look at Bow and maybe they even say "hi" to him, but then they turn to me and ask: "What can he do? Can he wave goodbye? Can he blow a kiss?"

 Well, it's not what can he do. It's what he wants to do. There's something about questions like this that makes them hard to answer: the unspoken premises on which they are based. The assumption that if Bow doesn't do something, then he can't. Or the even more deeply embedded presumption, that if he does "things", he does them on command, because he has been trained to do them.

How many parents of talking children have faced the same dilemma: can your child say "mamma"? they are asked. With the implication that if the child can say it, he will do so right now, like a trained performer, instead of a spontaneous user of language.

Bow can spell. He writes what he wants to write, when he wants to write it. He does kiss me sometimes, but not because he has been asked to. It is usually for one of two reasons: because he feels I am sad, and he's trying to cheer me up, or he's done something bad, and he's trying to apologize.


Bow gestures a lot. He shows me when he thinks I should leave, by taking my hand and leading me to the door. He shows me that he wants to spell, by taking my  hand and  leading me to the glass. He takes my hand to draw my attention and points things out to me. The purpose? Always communication. Never to put on a show.

Today, when someone asked what he could do, after they left, Bow took me to the glass and spelled: "Tell them not to talk like I am stupid."

I wish I could.

New Years Resolutions, New Intern Applications and Foreseeing Culture Shock

Bow's new year resolution to learn to play the piano seems to have fizzled out, as happens with many a new year's resolution. He played with the keyboard a couple of times after the initial attempy, and Lawrence was trying to teach him the scale, but Bow lost interest and handed the keyboard back and asked for it to be taken away.

That's actually one of the new ways in which Bow has been showing more self-control lately: when he no longer wants something in with him, instead of trying to destroy it, he asks for it to be taken away. Yesterday, Lawrence was here, and Bow had had his blanket with him all afternoon, but by the time I came in to relieve Lawrence, the blanket had been put away.

"Bow handed me the blanket and told me to put it up," Lawrence explained. "He said he wanted to eat." (Bow knows I always ask for the blanket before I serve dinner, but he didn't wait for me to come in and ask. He wanted to be ready.)

I hope that in the future, if Bow is not having a good time with one of the interns, he will also find the words to say: "Please go out now," rather than using a more direct approach to get them to leave. This is one of the things that I am thinking about with the regard to possible summer interns. Because right now the applications are starting to come in, and these are eager students, many with excellent qualifications and valuable experiences. I hope that we will find a good match for Bow and for our program.

But in addition to worrying about whether the new intern will get along with Bow, I also worry about other things. I worry that maybe these young people have had all their education in academic settings that were so institutionalized, that they might not even conceive of the idea of a private research project setting. I am working hard to alert them to our lack of institutional affiliation, and everything that this implies. I am hoping to find future students among the applicants, but they are probably unprepared for what it would be like to pursue a research project for years without substantial funding. It will be an eye opening experience for them on so many levels. After all, in the real world everything is very different.