Book Season at Project Bow

This is the season for books here in the pens. I just finished writing a new one, and now the involved process of editing begins.

I am never far from Bow, but when he is napping in the inner pen, I can still edit while staying close to hand.

When Bow wakes up, he takes a more active role in the editing process.

Notice how very aware Bow is of everything that is going on. Before I start reading, he is looking directly at the camera, which he knows is there.

Bow looking at the camera before I sit down to read

However, as soon as I start reading, he gives me and the text his full attention.  And when I am done with the page, he wants to do some editing himself.

My Amazon author page

For many people, this is Christmas shopping season. If you have a child on your list please consider one of my books for children. Here are some reviews:



http://mystories.sweetbeariesart.com/2015/12/12/book-review-ping-the-snirkelly-people/


http://hubpages.com/literature/When-Sword-Met-Bow-a-Book-Review


http://eyeonlifemag.com/eye-on-educators/in-case-theres-a-fox-critique-review-and-activities


Or you could go straight to the my author page.  Remember, this would reward both me and Bow for the work we have done. Behind the author are all the people who have helped her, and Bow is at the top of my list.

Telling True from False

After it rained yesterday, I noticed that some of the tiny real flowers at the center of the dogwood blossom had started to open.

All these years of living here, and this is the first time I have seen the true flowers blooming. Up till now I had been focused on the showy white false petals that are really just bracts -- not seeing the flowers for the leaves.

Bow and I went outside and I looked very carefully at the tiny flowers at the center of the bloom. Some were open, and some were still shut. Many of the blossoms had a single little green flower at the center open, while all the other flower heads were still in expectancy. The clapping that you hear at the beginning of the video is Bow, in the outer pen, trying to draw my attention.

Bow is so expressive with his hands. In the video embedded above you can clearly see him beckoning for me to come and open the door, because he wants to go back inside.

Yesterday morning I struggled with Bow for over an hour, holding off breakfast, trying to get him to spell by himself. We are both very stubborn. But I wasn't going to starve him, and our life is very much dependent on civilized routines, like pouring cereal into a bowl and eating it with a spoon, and clearing away at the end of a meal,  so eventually I gave him a very limp hand to use, and he spelled with my hand in his. But the fit was very, very loose. This morning, I would not give him a whole hand at all. I would only offer a finger.

At first Bow was not happy with this, and he tried to gently pry my hand open.

 But when that did not work, he started spelling with my balled up hand in his.

This is not good enough to prove anything to the skeptical. But it's a way to loosen the dependency on my hand. I think if you look closely, though, you can  see that my hand is not the driving force behind Bow's choices.

In life, lots of what we see is only a show, to protect something else that we can't see. People say one thing and mean something else. They point you one way, when the real answer is in the opposite direction. There are flashy, showy petals that are really not petals at all. But sometimes if you look a little closer, you will discover where the real flower is hiding, right there in front of you where it has been all along in full view.

Negotiating Over the Future

Yesterday my daughter and I went shopping in the afternoon, and Lawrence stayed with Bow, fed him dinner and put him to bed.

This morning, when Bow woke up, he had a single dark navy blue sock on. Hmm, where did that sock come from? Was it a belated Christmas gift from Lawrence?

Anyway, Bow seemed very happy with his new article of footwear, and he kept the sock on all through breakfast, and when I cleared away breakfast, and he still had it on when he took my hand and spelled:  אני רוצה לצאת  "I want to go outside."

"Okay," I answered. "Give me the sock, and you can go outside."

He took my hand and with a bit of savage anger spelled:     ! לא    "No!"

(He didn't actually spell the exclamation mark. We don't have punctuation on the glass, but his manner when he spelled "no" was such that it proclaimed: And I really mean this!)

No means no. If I had tried to take that sock away from him by force, I had every expectation of being scratched or bitten. Bow has an absolute right to everything on his person, and nobody, but nobody messes with him. So I waited.

A few minutes later, he took my hand and again spelled out that he wanted to go outside. Again, I told him he could go, but not with the sock on.  This time he did not reply verbally. He just extended the foot with the sock out to me, and he allowed me to gently remove the sock. I placed it in my pocket and started to unlock the door. As I was doing this, Bow reached into my pocket.

"Bow!"

He withdrew his hand. With chimpanzees, possession is nine tenths of the law. Since I had the sock, he realized he would be violating my space if he took it by force. If he did that, I would be perfectly within my rights to lash out at him with my claws and my powerful jaw! (This would not, however, prevent him from taking it by stealth, if I did not notice, because Bow is not the most honest or upright person I know.)

After he was done playing outside, Bow asked to have the sock back, and I gave it to him. It is. after all. his sock! I just didn't want him to get it wet and dirty outside.

Bow and I are civilized enough to negotiate over the things we want. We are capable of  verbalizing our conflicting positions and coming to a compromise. In some ways, that is just as remarkable as the fact that Bow can spell out words. We don't have to physically fight over an object. We can talk about it.

But here's the thing: I desperately want to have proof of his literacy, because to me it would mean:

• professional vindication
• the possibility of getting funding
• a way to contribute to the body of scientific knowledge accumulated by my species and culture

Now those might seem like greedy, selfish  motives on my part, but there you are. I'm being honest about it. That's what I want. The reason this would be a good thing for Bow, too, and why he ought to support my efforts is this:

• He is dependent on my money for his food and shelter.
• If we had funding, he could have a mate and friends of his own species.
• His social status would be greatly improved if people knew how smart he is. It might even be a triumph of sorts for his entire species.

However, I am having trouble convincing Bow that he has something to gain from helping me prove it. It would not actually take Bow free-form spelling to make a dent in the resistance to my claims. Even a multiple choice computerized test where Bow was asked to match spoken words with their written equivalent would do it. But Bow is resistant to this idea, and I kind of understand how he feels.

I have always hated multiple choice tests, because they are not about expressing what I really think. It is more like validating the preconceived opinions of the test writer. It is a little like this conversation that I have actually  had with someone recently:

"Do you think my outfit is pretty?"

"I think it's charming."

"No, I didn't ask you that. Is it pretty? The only possible answers are: it's pretty or it's not pretty."

"Oh. Well, in that case, I think it's pretty."

"Thanks."

The multiple choice test is not about self expression. It's not about providing the test giver with new information.  It's about showing that you know the right answer according to the person formulating the test. And Bow, so far, has been completely unwilling to play that game. 

Now, if only I could figure out a way to negotiate with him so that he will be willing to play the game for the sake of both our futures!

Literacy and Book Reading Distinguished

I think people are very confused about literacy these days. They assume that literacy is the ability to read, and once you learn how to read, you can read anything and understand anything, so that literacy can open the entire store of human knowledge to any given person. As romantic as that may sound, and as much as I would like to believe that it's true, there is an element of magical thinking in that.

Literacy at its simplest is the ability to decode and encode writing so that symbols on the page or on the screen can be associated with pronounced words in a particular language. Being able to read can precede being able to have a conversation. It can even come before the meanings of some of the words one can read are understood. Little children can do this. Chimpanzees can do this. It is no big deal, and it does not imply a giant leap of intelligence.

I've had people ask me: "Since you say that Bow is literate, does he read books?" My honest answer has always been that I don't think he does. He has been exposed to books since infancy, and he likes to have them read to him, and he also likes to handle them, but so far, I have not seen any evidence that he reads books. He may read a few words here and there, but he does not sit down and sequentially read a book from cover to cover, taking it in the way the author intended.

Bow knows what books are. He has seen me use them in the canonical way, but it's not something he wants to do. So what does he actually do, when given a book to read? Here is a video clip that answers that question.

Notice that Bow holds the book right side up, not upside down. He is interested in getting to know the different parts of the book,and  he flips through finding small snippets that are of interest to him, whether pictorial or textual, but his attention span does not allow him to stop for too long on any given thing.

Admittedly, this is a book that is of interest to me because of the subject matter. Bow is not interested in the ideas and personages involved, but I have in the past given him books about other chimpanzees to read, and he treated them about the same way. He would sit for hours -- or at least twenty minute intervals with breaks -- to have me read to him about Nim, but he did not sit for hours reading about Nim himself.

To be honest, I don't read every book sequentially, either. When it's a book that I use for research purposes, I go through the index just like Bow, and I pick up particular passages that have something to do with my own purposes.

Many humans have trouble sitting down and reading a book cover to cover. Bow is not alone in this. If you would like to learn about the problems of other readers, I recommend this blog:

http://thethinkingmother.blogspot.com/2012/12/both-kids-have-eye-reading-problems-now.html


Literacy isn't everything. There are many other components to reading a book besides being able to decode a sequence of letters and make out which word it spells. It isn't magic. And Bow's achievements in literacy do not in any way imply that his intelligence is abnormally high. That claim was never made.

What I am hoping for, someday, is to find a way to prove what Bow really can do. It's not all that remarkable, once you realize what it is, but it would be nice to be able to share this knowledge with others. And maybe if people realized how modest an achievement literacy is for the average human, they might come to be less closed to the idea that a chimpanzee can do it, too.

Becoming Politically Involved and Proofing Books

When I first moved to this area in 2001, I was waiting for Bow to be born, so we could begin Project Bow. Some local ladies asked me to become involved in local politics, and I declined. They were Democrats, but I would have turned down the Republicans as well. I had a two year old child and no babysitter. I was expecting to take custody of a newborn chimpanzee. And though I had been involved in politics in the past, this was not the right time for me. I wanted to concentrate on my domestic and productive life, and all I asked of the outer world is that they leave us alone in peace.

At that time, I was not even trying to publicize Project Bow. I wanted to first of all have a chance to raise Sword and Bow together, quietly and without anybody remarking constantly on the difference between them, so that they could have a level playing field, and their experiences would be as similar as possible. That way, any differences in their way of interacting with me and with their world would be based on their own internal requirements and not on anybody's preconception about them.

Sometimes we went places, and when Bow was an infant, nobody even noticed he was a chimp. I would take them both to McDonald's, Sword holding my hand and Bow slumbering in his infant seat, but I kept him covered in a blanket. People sometimes asked casually how old my baby was, but if they didn't look too closely, they didn't see anything unexpected.

Those days are long past. The differences between Sword and Bow have gotten too great not to notice, and I do treat them quite differently, each as their own behavior requires. And no, it is no longer possible to deny that I have a chimpanzee. Just at this time, the political forces that are overwhelming the entire country are threatening also to snuff out our way of life. So the time to lie low has ended, and the time to be active has begun.

On Saturday, I participated in the local Republican caucus, and I worked in concert with a very fine group of Ron Paul supporters. While we did not win the day, our candidate came in second, and the slate of delegates elected are bound to vote for Ron Paul, if the person in the number one position drops out of the race. Why Ron Paul? Because he is the only candidate who promises to keep the government out of people's lives. All the other candidates want to impose their views on how to live on other people. Ron Paul believes in "live and let live."

After the caucus, Bow and I proofed books. We have to try to make a living in a way that has nothing to do with ape language experiments directly, because the road to an established position in academia is permanently blocked. Bow would really have benefited from the opportunity to merge into an existing program, where he could make friends of his own kind, as well as keeping his human family. But since we cannot hope for that at the moment, we fall back on the skills we have, which in our case is literacy. We can read and write. So we publish books.

Somebody who recently saw me posting a picture of Bow proofing a book on Facebook asked me if Bow could read. Yes, he can. I posted a link to the old article about Bow and Literacy from 2007. There are many well-wishers of Bow's today, I think, who have almost lost sight of his intellectual achievements, so intent are all of us on keeping Bow safe and our family intact.

Tomorrow, Lawrence will come in to stay with Bow, and I will make a trip to Jefferson City to plead our case before the state senate. There is a time to be quiet and lie low, and there is a time to speak up. For me and Bow, the time to be quiet is over.