Daughter and I had a date this past Monday evening to meet at an upscale restaurant in midtown Manhattan to take advantage of New York’s Restaurant Week, an event where it costs $35 for a three-course gourmet meal that would normally run twice that. It’s practically our favorite thing to do and we perused online menus for two weeks in preparation. This year we decided on David Burke Townhouse on East 61st Street between Lexington and Park. I don’t know which item sent us over the edge, the pretzel crusted crabcake and sweet chili prawn appetizer, or the entree of corn flake & grains of paradise seared salmon with garlicky spinach. Either way, it was game on.
I was excited to tell Daughter about an article I’d read in a magazine about a new movie starring Claire Danes. Claire Danes holds a special place in our mother/daughter history because the landmark television show she starred in back in 1994, My So-Called Life, was a standing date for us to watch together. Daughter was 13 that year, the same age as Danes, and the brilliant precision and naturalness of the show’s writing, plots, acting, and characters spoke to both of us in different ways, as the best shows always do. Now Danes was in an acclaimed biography of animal behavioral scientist Temple Grandin. I had no idea who that was so I did some further research.
Temple Grandin was born severely autistic at a time in the late forties when children showing autistic symptoms were institutionalized as retarded. Even the word ‘autism’ had yet to be coined. Because Temple’s mother believed in her daughter’s right to a normal future, she refused to send her away and did everything she could to find avenues of treatment. But it was the summer Temple spent at her aunt’s ranch in Arizona that changed her life and the lives of so many, human and animal alike.
Temple realized that her mind worked like a cow’s. She thought in pictures rather than words, and was easily distracted and agitated by stimuli. This awakening as a teenager led her to seek a higher education in the field of animal behavior, ultimately revolutionizing the manner in which livestock are handled. Her vision of humane animal treatment and her ability to see things from a cow’s point of view led to the cattle restraint systems now used in over half the ranches and slaughterhouses worldwide. She is a most effective proponent for humane treatment because she eliminates the emotional factor since her own emotions are blocked by her affliction. Her point is simply that we raise cattle for our own needs so we must assure that their lives and deaths are as painless as possible. We owe them that.
Along the way, Temple Grandin has become a best-selling author of books on both animal behavior and autism. She is credited with being the first person to convey to the non-autistic world just how it feels to live inside her head. She is respected by both the medical community involved in autism treatment and research, and the families whose lives autism has impacted so deeply. In the livestock farming world, she is a rock star. Traditionally an all-male arena, it took Temple years to be accepted, both as a different thinker and a woman. Recognized across the globe, her insights and singular determination have proven that in a man’s world, Grandin is king.
As Daughter and I dove into our mustard crusted tuna over compressed watermelon and avocado mousse, I told her about Claire Danes and the new movie she’s starring in about someone I had never heard of, Temple Grandin. I was all set to explain who she was when Daughter looked up and said, “Really? The autistic animal behaviorist? I read all her books. Oh, I can’t wait to see it.” As a parent and lifelong student, there’s only one thing I love more than telling my kids something I’ve learned, and that’s finding out they already know it.
Daughter’s Featured Fotos say Take a Picture
burt times two
spinning wheel
more than a decade
posed
