I am a primatologist who spends twelve hours most days in the company of a thirteen year old chimpanzee named Bow. I am also an editor with Inverted-A Press.
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.
It's no secret that what I have craved for some time, career-wise, is a tenured position at a reputable university. I don't want it just for the prestige, and I don't want it just for the money. I want it, because I believe that such a position would make it possible for me to speak out and be heard. In fact, it's for the right to exercise free speech effectively that I want to be granted such an affiliation with an existing institution.
People who work in industry often have to sign contracts that say they will not discuss their work with outsiders, because the work they do is proprietary and belongs to the corporation that employs them. People who work for the military and for military contractors are also silenced through national security regulations. People who work for public schools have to adhere to community standards about what may be said, and they are answerable to school boards who in turn answer to the voters. Even when I was in private law practice, I felt pinched and sometimes frightened to speak my mind, because my clients' fate lay in the hands of elected judges. The political machine controlled the judges and the judges controlled the lawyers who needed their cooperation in order to represent their clients. I found myself helping judges campaign for their reelection while my cases were pending in their courts. That felt wrong.
There is a problem right now for anyone who wants to speak freely. They either have to be so independent that they answer to no one, in which case people question their expertise. Or they have to be known experts who dominate the field -- in which case, their hands are tied and their mouthes are gagged, unless they do as they are told by their masters. On the one hand, if you are completely independent, people say things like "you're not really a primatologist or a linguist or a lawyer or a writer."This is because people think only institutional affiliation counts. But on the other hand, if you have affiliation with an institution that has the kind of prestige or clout to allow you to be recognized, then you are prevented from working with chimpanzees or owning them, kept from publishing anything that goes against the grain of the political correctness that rules in such places, and generally kept from saying anything surprising and original that would turn the state of current knowledge on its head.
Bow displaying at a butterfly
Trying to change the system from the outside is about as effective as displaying at a butterfly. But trying to change it from within is even harder. ISP/ASP won't allow me to publish my work with them, because I own a chimpanzee. But if I did not own a chimpanzee, there would be no work to publish. How do we change this situation?
Concerned that I would lose Bow, I went and campaigned for Austin Petersen. But did you know that if I had created a non-profit for Project Bow, which might have conferred more legitimacy on us and even have allowed me to pretend that I did not own a chimpanzee because he was owned by a corporation and not an individual, then I would not have been allowed to speak out on political issues and certainly not to endorse a candidate?
As part of my involvement in the Liberty movement, I have been freelancing as a journalist. One piece covered Trump's press conference in which he chose Pence as his VP.
Bow sat there and watched the press conference on C-Span with me, only distracting me a little from what Trump was saying. And what Trump appeared to be saying, in his very inarticulate way, was that he wanted evangelicals to be able to have more power over politics, which they currently are afraid to exercise, due to their tax exempt status.
I'm not a big fan of evangelicals, so none of that impressed me, except that later on the same day, I had some new comments on an old video I had made about Yaron Brook and space exploration. And then it clicked. It's not just evangelicals. Yaron Brook -- a secularist Objectivist -- would not be allowed to endorse a candidate, either, because the Ayn Rand Institute, of which he is now the head, is a non-profit. This has nothing to do with religion in politics. It's about anyone who receives tax free donations losing the right to exercise his civil liberties under the first amendment-- the right of free speech and press.
He can't endorse anyone because he works at a non-profit! This was news to me. What is the use of being Yaron Brook, if you can't endorse anyone? How can all that prestige be leveraged into actually changing the world we live in, if he can't endorse anyone?
If Ayn Rand had been the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, instead of just Ayn Rand, then she could not have endorsed Barry Goldwater! Let that sink in!
The flitty butterfly has been back in touch. I can have a seat on the board. Should I tell her that I am afraid I can't serve on the butterfly board if it means I have to give up my free speech to do so?
Dangling before me is the possibility of getting the type of affiliation that I need for my speech to be heard.
But if I accept, then I may not be able to be heard at all, because I will have lost the right to speak.
Taxation is not just theft, anymore. It's a gag order. It's slavery. And I don't see any way out.
Some people are as flighty as a butterfly. They flit in and out of our lives at random moments chosen only by them. We always welcome them, because they are beautiful and rare, and we like them. But then no sooner than they flit in, they also flit out, and all we can think to say is: "Where did that butterfly go?"
We had a nice fourth of July weekend. There was corn on the cob to enjoy.
Bow absolutely adores corn on the cob.
He is always happy to have some,
My daughter and I attended a local fair that featured carnival rides, concession stand food, country music and fireworks.
And just in time for the fourth of July, we had a special visitor. It was a primatolagist that we have seen often in the past, and she came to spend some time with our family, which was very, very nice of her. She even went in with Bow, and he enjoyed her company very much. She gave me permission to film her, but not to publish the filming, because she said she had to ask permission from the "board" about that. So instead of a picture of her, I am posting this shot of a flitty butterfly that led me on a merry chase as I was trying to mow the back yard this morning
This red spotted purple teased me this morning
The butterfly kept popping in and out of the backyard, flying circles around me, teasing -- almost taunting me -- in one moment and out the next.
It was a red-spotted purple -- limentis artemis asytyanax -- and in its appearance it mimics a pipevine swallowtail, though it can also be mistaken as any other dark swallowtail. But it's not a swallowtail at all. It's just pretending.
A closer look at the
In and out of the yard it flew, letting me see it in all its glory, but also letting me know who was the boss, "I don't need you at all," it seemed to be saying, while resting on the ground that belongs to me, because I have a deed, or on the dayflowers that I allow to grow in my yard and could just as easily have mowed down.
"My work is valuable," said the butterfly. "I am important." And I, of course, do value it, enough to let it fly circles around me.
Up into the trees it flew, saying "try to catch me if you can!" And it did not seem to know that all I wanted was to capture its essence in a photo, while allowing it go about its business unharmed. Bow, seeing the butterfly acting so provocatively in his backyard, decided to display.
But the butterfly, happy as can be, determined it would be okay to let me film it. Up in a tree it went to perch, so that it would be visible but just out of reach.
After I had finished filming, the butterfly said: "You had my permission to film, but not to publish. Now I will have to consult with the butterfly board to determine what is the best possible use that can be made of this footage, for the sake of all butterflies everywhere."
I'm just kidding. The butterfly did not say that. Butterflies never consult with other butterflies about anything. They fly solo. They themselves determine what is best for them, and they never feel that anything they do should be dictated to them by the best interest of all butterfly-kind.
The day flowers by the generator
I can't imagine what it would be like to be answerable to a board for my every move -- to have to ask permission for each image I post of Bow or of a butterfly or a flower in my backyard! I am thankful for my right of free speech and free press, a right that only means anything if you happen to own a press and the land you live on and the animals that are a part of your life. There can be no freedom without ownership, and I love freedom. Isn't that what we were celebrating yesterday on the fourth of July?
This morning, Bow asked to go outside early and started his display on the swing.
For people who are not accustomed to chimpanzee displays, it can seem frightening or be interpreted as a sign of aggression. Bow makes it very clear that what he means is: "I am big and strong" and that his display implies no menace towards anyone who is willing to concede that, yes, he is big and strong.
In the clip above, you can see Bow displaying, then gesturing to invite me over to the bench, once the display is done. He is happy and friendly, and one of the reasons we get along so well is that I don't try to hinder him in his natural behaviors. If Bow needs to tell the world that he is big and strong, that is fine with me. I do not have any desire to stop him or to edit his message to make it more politically correct.
One of the reasons I feel no desire to engage in a shouting match with Bow over our relative strengths is that I am perfectly at peace with who I am. I am a five foot two human female, and I don't need to be stronger than a post-pubescent male chimpanzee to feel good about myself. However, I do know other people who feel threatened by another's attributes, abilities and activities, even when they have nothing to do with them.
Lately, I have seen all sorts of displays by humans about their right to edit the free speech of others. One person, who I really felt should know better, suggested burning every copy of a book, because the book contained "false" information.Who decides what is false? By what authority? If it is false, don't you trust other people to eventually figure it out?
The argument goes something like this: Are you a government certified expert on this subject? If not, how dare you write about it? What if somebody believes you, and they get hurt? How dare you publish this recipe for poppy seed cake? What if someone uses it and gets food poisoning? What if someone reads this false interpretation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and relies on it to his detriment? Don't people need to be protected from false information?
I have no actual claim to being an expert in the culinary arts, but this does not keep me from occasionally publishing a recipe. Other people may dabble in linguistics, who are not linguists. Even though I am one, it does not bother me. That's what's great about living in a free country. One can try anything and learn from mistakes and get better at it and later publish one's findings.
What makes it okay to call something a lexigram when it looks like a word? I've written about that here:
While I do have a Ph.D in linguistics, any real claim to fame that I have as a linguist is not based on authority or certification, but on the things I have found out for myself and the information I have shared by writing about it and publishing.
We have some new readers for this blog, some of whom are unfamiliar with Project Bow and with the meaning of the term "cross-fostering", and who don't know our long history. Some of them seem to still think that Bow is a baby, and they warn me about what may happen when he turns three or five or six or seven. They don't realize that in February, he will turn thirteen. For those people, I am sharing these links, so that they may learn about our experiences at the ages they mentioned and beyond.
When I published "When Sword Met Bow" as a book for children, the intent was not to scientifically explore the phenomenon of cross-fostering. Instead, the book was meant for anyone bringing home a new baby to help their older child with the transition. It was a lyrical picture book, intended for a young audience.
However, now there are people who are worried that it will encourage others to adopt chimpanzees, and one such person has seen fit to write a "review" of the book without having read it, warning about all the stages of chimpanzee development.
And here I am, wondering whether I should put on my expert hat or my libertarian hat. Should I explain that I do in fact know a great deal more about it than these people assume? Or should I simply remind them that this country was founded on the principle of live and let live?
I am a linguist and a primatologist, and I do have scholarly publications on this topic.
But more important than any claim I might offer to expertise is this: we live in a country that was founded on the principle that all men are created equal and have the right to pursue happiness at their own expense. No expertise is required to pursue science or art, and no license is required for the publication of our results.
Other people do not adopt chimpanzees primarily because they do not wish to do so. Chimpanzee owning citizens are a minority, but one that needs protecting.
I once sat at a restaurant with a group of scientists, among them a noted primatologist, and all of them were complaining about how hard it was to get funding. Then in the same breath, one of them said something about money being the root of all evil.
Money is not evil. Trying to get it by force is. Respectable ape language researchers have been pushed under the bus. Their funding has run dry. They have been forced to try to escape to the private sector, but Federal regulations still leave them very much under the government oversight committees. The only hope is going totally private, and this means giving up the protections afforded by "expert" status.
Bow is not a "pet". But it's only because private ownership is still allowed that Project Bow is possible. That -- and the first amendment to the United States constitution -- is something I am very grateful for.
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