advertisements for myself, part 2

But to remark that “Animals Make Us Human” is a slightly lesser book than “Animals in Translation” is like saying Randy Newman's “Good Old Boys” is a slightly lesser album than “Sail Away.” If you liked the first one, you’re going to like the second.

The Joys and Pains of Being an Animal
By DWIGHT GARNER

Boy.

I'm having a very good week.

Ed and I heard Temple speak at the 92nd Street Y last night. She was wonderful. Her mom was there, too. She's 80 years old, I believe, and she told us she's speaking to parents of children with autism all over the country. She'd taken the bus in freezing snow and slush to come see Temple.

That was a funny autism thing.

I had wangled free tickets by asking Temple to get them for me, but I didn't ask for anything else, so Ed and I went early and stood at the front of the line so we'd get good seats. When the lady standing behind us found out I was Temple's coauthor, she asked why we weren't already inside.

Why we weren't already inside was: Temple is autistic & doesn't think of these things, & I'm so used to autistic people that it doesn't occur to me to think of them, either.

Meanwhile Temple's mom had taken the bus in freezing snow & slush and bought her own ticket. When she got there someone was aghast that Temple's mom had purchased a $27 ticket to hear her own daughter, so they told her she could have a free ticket to something else at the Y, an offer she snapped right up.

She told us something interesting.

She said the Bettelheim era hadn't affected her because she lived in Boston and everyone was a Calvinist. They didn't believe in Freud, and they didn't get on the couch.


The Creation of Dr. B by Richard Pollack