An Anthropologist on Mars is a book about seven neurological patients. One of them is Temple Grandin, the autistic woman who has invented world-renowned livestock handling systems to decrease the fear and suffering of cattle, sheep and hogs as they go to slaughter. She has an unusual empathy for them, and is known for her uncanny ability to calm terrified animals.

The author, Oliver Sacks, writes ~~

“Some employees in slaughterhouses, she notes, rapidly develop a protective hardness and start killing animals in a purely mechanical way:
‘The person doing the killing approaches his job as if he was stapling boxes moving along a conveyor belt. He has no emotions about his act.’

Others, she reveals, ‘start to enjoy killing and ... torment the animals on purpose.’

Speaking of these attitudes turned Temple’s mind to a parallel:

‘I find a very high correlation,’ she said, ‘between the way animals are treated and the handicapped ... Georgia is a snake pit — they treat [handicapped people] worse than animals ... Capital-punishment states are the worst animal states and the worst for the handicapped.’ ”

An Anthropologist on Mars was published in 1995.

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9:18 a.m.

This is Don’s third day home with a cold. Intuition and experience tell me to make a doctor’s appointment and get him an antibiotic against a sinus infection.

Barney’s school is in the midst of its bonspiel, and I’ve volunteered to help on the ice today from 11 to 12. Don will come with me and watch, while I do whatever it is they need me to do.

It’s the time of year when the ice has gotten soft and it’s not too cold out there, and kids across Canada are in last rehearsals for the annual spring ice carnivals, where they’ll show off their costumes and strut their figure-skating stuff.

That’s my little sister and me, up there at the top. I was in Grade 1 that year.