Enjoying the Weather

Bow had been cooped up for such a long time  that when the weather changed just recently, he immediately took the opportunity to sun himself out of doors.

Can you see how relaxed he is?

This is his favorite pose, lounging outside on his bench.

Meanwhile, this gives me a chance to explore what is going on outside.

I take the path down to majestic twin cedar.

As I get closer, I can see it better.

Closer still and other details emerge.

The birds are very active in the woods behind our house today.

And on the mossy ground right next to the woods, there are many nuts.

Some of them look almost edible.

But when I take the nuts in and crack them open ...

... there is nothing much there to eat, so we have oatmeal for lunch, instead. Oh, well.

Sunshine after the Rain

After many, many days of incessant rain, the sun has finally come back out. Bow is happy.

On Wednesday Lawrence stayed with Bow while I ran errands. When the delivery person brought a new man with her, Bow was at first wary, but then he warmed up to the new man. It turned out he really liked him. Bow gestured to Lawrence excitedly that he wanted to say something. Then he took Lawrence's hand and spelled: "I want him to come in."

Bow can go for a long time without saying anything new or surprising. But when he needs to say something in order to express himself, he knows how.

Someday, we will develop new ways to test intelligence and learning. Instead of expecting a subject to be compliant, we will test what they can do when they are actually engaged by the subject and are initiating a communication rather than responding to one.

Successful employers have already noticed that a high GPA predicts little about future performance by a employee, besides coming to work every day. Soon they will realize that standardized testing does not tell you much about creative use of intelligence in real life. Once we develop a way to determine knowledge and ability without cooperation, when we distinguish compliance from intelligence, Bow's achievements will shine, and people will see that he is much smarter than that dog who can identify objects by name on command.

In the meantime, Bow and I continue with our routines. There's a new review of Theodosia and the Pirates: The War Against Spain on Amazon. Bow and I are spending more time outdoors. In the video below from yesterday, Bow and I were just sitting peacefully on the stoop together, when I noticed an injured wasp on the floor. I asked Bow if he caused that.

Right after lunch, I went out for a walk and noticed a butterfly sunning itself on the road. I stayed and looked at it until a car drove by and the butterfly flew away.

On my way back to he house, I spotted several colorful butterflies enjoying the milkweed flowers in our pasture.

In the evening, I went to a local carnival with my daughter and her friend. It was Friday the 13th, and people had made up a rumor that there was a murderer at large at the carnival. Of course, we saw no sign of a murderer. But I did get a great shot of the sun setting at the carnival grounds.

Where is the Sunshine?

Yesterday, even though Bow had fun painting in the morning, by afternoon he really wanted to go outside. He asked to go, even though the sky was still cloudy, and a little rain was falling.

He went out on the ledge, where he was protected from the rainfall, considered climbing onto the swing, but thought better of it when he realized he'd get rained on. He came back in, but he was still not ready to give up. So he asked to go out again, and he was ready to settle for sitting on the ledge, when the rain came down even harder than before.

I kept painting, and by the end of the day, this is what our two paintings looked like. Bow's is on the left and mine is on the right. The brown in the backgound of my painting was a color that Bow mixed for me from the three primary colors I gave him. Looking at  Bow's painting, I can't tell what it's supposed to be, but it does seem to me that he tried to sign his name to it.

I don't mean that it looks like a perfect signature, but Bow's name is קשת in Hebrew, It looks as if he made the ק and then was trying to make the ת. Also, and this seems kind of weird, but it looks like he made a segol pointing mark under the wrong letter. The missing letter from the middle of his name is a shin, and it would have a segol under it. Like this:

                        שֶׁ

In fact, the ק also should have a segol under it. Is all this a coincidence, or did Bow mean something by the marking that looks like a signature?

I don't know. I do know that what Bow really wanted to do yesterday was go outside, and eventually, when the rain let up, he did.

Today has started out rather gloomy. It's looking to be another sunless day. Bow went out for a bit this morning, but he came back in, and before taking a nap, he looked a little depressed.

Let's hope the sun comes out this afternoon.