Living Without That New Car Smell

The other day on Twitter I saw a post from a lawyer saying he and his wife had traded in their second car for a Zipcar membership. On the front page of today’s New York Times is a story raising doubts about whether G.M. and Chrysler can ever prosper again -- even with substantial taxpayer bailouts. Posing the question “Can American drivers live without that new car smell?” Micheline Maynard writes that people are keeping their cars a lot longer than they used to, sometimes choosing not to own a car. Is it possible that cars are no longer the status symbol they once were?

During the ‘60’s, I remember a post card arriving at our home from Aunt Belle. Uncle Maury, a high school principal and former biology teacher, had gotten a summer gig in Wood’s Hole, at the Oceanographic Institute. “We are surrounded by Cadillac’s and maids,” she marveled. My father drove a two tone, light grey and charcoal Desoto at the time, but at our summer home in Lake Mahopac, we too witnessed the Cadillac as status symbol.

That’s not to say members of the Mahopac Woods private beach association didn’t flaunt their success with other pricey cars. Al Feldman, a dentist from Brooklyn with an enormous paunch hanging over his swim trunks and a voice that made it sound like he was just waking up, drove a maroon Lincoln Continental. A lovely blonde whose daughter turned up earlier this year on a list of Bernard Madoff victims, drove a Ford Thunderbird. Mr. Weintraub, a diminutive, down-to-earth entrepreneur who never uttered a word about the fortune he’d been rumored to make, drove a very old Caddie but also a brand new Corvette.

Those were the years when people with lesser brands always felt a tad defensive when they said cars were nothing more than a means of transportation – particularly at Lake Mahopac. The car was a dining room when you went to A&W and ordered burgers, fries, onion rings, and mugs of root beer -- using a speaker that you hooked to your car window. Similarly, the car was a living room of sorts from which you watched movies at the drive-in.

But if my immediate family is any indicator, I think cars are no longer a status symbol. Of necessity, Daphne is still driving the Honda Civic that had 67,000 miles on it when I gave it to her in 2002. There are times when I worry and want to remind her to drive extra carefully on rainy days because it doesn’t have anti-lock brakes.

Dennis, who once drove Lincolns, but also reveled in owning a half-share of a Rolls Royce with his law partner, Peter, is now fine about driving a Geo Prism of indeterminate age and mileage well in excess of 100,000. We jokingly refer to my 2006 Honda Civic, with more parking garage scrapes than I like, as the “family car.”

Though my father always believed one was supposed to get a new car when one’s existing car reaches 70,000 miles, few of us are in a position to do that any more. Though I’m not yet ready to swap the second car for a Zipcar, I think the New York Times' prediction about most people not expecting to purchase a new car any time soon is correct.

Links:

Industry Fears U.S. May Quit New Car Habit

Requiem for Pontiac & Saab (Bonnie's On It)

Renewing Connections at the West Newton Cinema

It’s been more than a year since the supermarket I loved to hate was literally demolished. The Star Market that became a Shaw’s will ultimately give way to a new, bigger supermarket, now under construction. The Star Market holds memories for me: Daphne as a toddler screaming when the guy dressed up as a Planter’s Peanut approached her in the checkout line, and of seeing women shopping in their tennis whites, fresh off the courts at Longwood Cricket Club.

What I miss about the Star Market is not its food or service -- neither of which seemed adequate after I began buying most edibles at the Whole Foods in Newton -- but the opportunity to connect with parents of kids who went to the Baker School with Daphne. Baker is a K-8 elementary school in a suburban part of Brookline, and the Star Market always provided chance opportunities to discuss what we liked or didn’t like about how the school was being run.

People move to Brookline specifically for its schools, and Brookline parents, by and large a well-educated lot, are known as effective advocates for their kids or just picky, picky, depending on whom one asks. So those discussions about building management or which teacher should be requested for the coming year were perhaps as much as anything else a pretext for connecting on a human level.

It’s been more nearly 20 years since Daphne graduated from Baker, but once a Baker parent, always a Baker parent. The images of that sprawling one level, white-washed brick building with the circular driveway, and tennis courts and a nature sanctuary out back, will be forever embedded on my hard drive.

So what happened last Saturday seemed almost magical. Daphne, her husband, Etan, and I were headed to the West Newton Cinema to see “The Soloist.” Passing a café with outdoor seating, I spied two middle-aged women sipping espresso. Almost simultaneously they called Daphne’s name, followed by “Mrs. Sashin.” Also heading to the same movie were Daphne’s kindergarten teacher, Carole Crehan, and her first grade teacher, Johanna Roses.

I didn't recognize Ms. Crehan, whom I remember as a very young woman with a deep tan and long brown hair with lots of blonde highlights. She was always responsive to my concerns, such as the time I questioned whether Daphne and her friend, Kendra, should be permitted to give each other manicures or trade shoes during the school day. Ms. Crehan will retire later this month, proud that she's taught generations of children to share.

Ms. Roses, now doing a post-retirement gig teaching at Boston College, and I tangled with each other, and I recognized her immediately. I frequently pressed her to give Daphne homework and more challenging reading assignments, and she told Daphne’s dad she thought I pushed Daphne too hard. The evening Daphne burst into tears -- after using the worn down eraser on the end of her pencil so hard that she put a hole in her penmanship assignment -- I thought Ms. Roses might be right.

A New Yorker who grew up in Greenwich Village, Ms. Roses went to the High School of Music and Art. Her edginess can be hilariously funny, and I still remember her introducing herself to parents at the first open house, saying that despite her youth, she’d done everything, including sell bathrobes. But I found it off-putting when she asked Daphne’s dad about his occupation. “You must make lots of money,” was her wry response to learning he was a psychiatrist.

She also has a good heart. She told Daphne that after reading about her marriage to Etan in The New York Times last November, she wrote her a note. She said she also enclosed a photo of Daphne and her dad that she’d taken in first grade. Daphne was in her last year at Baker when she lost her dad, and the outpouring of sympathy and concern from teachers, students and parents was overwhelming.

Deeply touched by Ms. Roses’ recent act of kindness, I felt sad knowing that the envelope had not been delivered because we no longer lived in the house we had on the block of the Baker School. She said she’d soon be leaving for her home in Martha’s Vineyard for the summer, but we exchanged cards and plan to reconnect over lunch or dinner in the fall.

Now if only the new Star Market gets completed. When I run into other parents, I can tell them that I ran into Ms. Crehan and Ms. Roses at the movies.

Madoff Fallout Continues

There’s an interesting debate on Wikipedia about whether J. Ezra Merkin would have been worthy of an entry had he not made headlines in connection with steering clients to Bernard Madoff, allegedly while collecting $470 million in management fees. Described in the Wikipedia entry as a “money manager, financier and philanthropist,” Merkin now faces a civil suit filed by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in connection with the Madoff scandal. Before his name got linked with that of the king of all Ponzi schemes, it seems that Merkin -- in addition to being a graduate of Harvard Law School and a hedge fund manager – was merely the scion of a very rich family.

If the civil suit is all that he faces, he’s at risk of taking a substantial financial hit over and above whatever personal funds he himself lost by investing with Madoff. Unlike Madoff, he won’t be looking at any period of confinement. So the item in The New York Times about him declining the nomination to be chairman of The Fifth Avenue Synagogue, the Orthodox congregation founded by his father, was even more interesting than the Wikipedia debate. It must have been humbling for Merkin to have to decline the honorary post that would ordinarily follow his having been president.

A number of Jews are quoted, including a Brandeis professor who seems to have found his niche in producing sound bites about all matters Madoff related and the American Jewish community, as well as a Rabbi Kermaier, intent on not sounding critical of a guy and his family who can be assumed to have been major donors.

According to the Times story, “the congregation as a group lost more than $1 billion in the collapse of Mr. Madoff’s scheme.” Is it fair to assume to believe that both J. Ezra Merkin and the congregants used each other?

Presumably he was asked to serve as president because of his fund-raising capabilities rather than his good looks. The photo in The New York Times shows a chubby faced, bearded guy with wire-rimmed glasses. No doubt he delivered. But he also used the synagogue, described by the Brandeis professor as “probably the wealthiest Orthodox congregation in the world,” as his eager pool of prospects.

I’m not saying that Merkin and the congregants deserved each other. Nor am I taking glee in Merkin’s ultimate humiliation inside a house of worship. My own Jewish identity intact, I can’t help observing that those claiming the highest degree of piety have the greatest distance to fall.

Home at Last

“Homes everywhere can be defined as much by their past occupants as their present ones. . .” – From a May 16, 2009 story in The New York Times by Al Baker and Matthew R. Warren

The front page story in The New York Times spoke of a schoolteacher who moved into an Upper Manhattan apartment he thought was a great find – not knowing drug dealers had once used his new home, and kept returning to try to recover a stash they believed was buried beneath the floor boards. Aside from my fascination with urban crime, I thought the story captured an essential truth, that whatever past occupants leave behind -- good or bad, tangible or intangible -- affects the lives of their successors.

Fifteen years ago this weekend, my doorbell rang. Daphne and I were living in the house in Chestnut Hill, the only home she had ever known. I peered outside to see a middle-aged couple cheerfully announce they were Bill and Toby Albert. The previous owners of the house, they asked if they could come inside.

The whole experience struck my daughter as odd, in part because she didn’t understand how this couple could have formed such a strong attachment to a house they had owned for just one year, before returning to Detroit to be closer to their families. Bill and Toby thought the home looked dramatically different, maybe because I had removed their light yellow wall-to-wall carpeting. We had also removed all their wallpaper, red velvet in the upstairs bathroom, pink with gold foil in the dining room, and a trellis pattern in the kitchen. Never crazy about the house, to me it looked essentially the same as the day I first saw it.

Expressing seller’s regret, they knew the current market value of my house, and said the house they’d purchased in Detroit had not done nearly as well. Our interaction was a lot more cordial than that of the schoolteacher in Upper Manhattan with the previous occupants of his apartment.

I’m not sure when it was that real estate agents began staging properties, removing all personal photos and expecting the owners to be out of the house during showings. That was not the case when I bought the house in Chestnut Hill in 1976.

Toby and her three children under the age of six were home, and one had to navigate a lot of baby equipment. Very pregnant at the time, I don’t think I minded. This was a house of necessity rather than love, and I never expected to be there for more than 30 years.

When my offer was accepted, the agent assured me she would have the sellers sign the necessary papers immediately. Hours later I learned that Toby wouldn’t write on the Sabbath. Overly anxious to get things over with, I never knew whether she was motivated by religious piety or hopes of getting a better offer. When I met her 18 years later, I realized I should have given her the benefit of the doubt.

With their last child about to go off to college, perhaps Bill and Toby hoped venturing inside the house in Chestnut Hill would recapture a special time in their lives. It’s been more than two years since I sold that house, whose only charms for me were the neighborhood and a prime school district.

Having been both widowed and remarried while living in that house, I was determined that my next home be brand new. Having a husband who’s a lawyer came in handy on the purchase. The fact that he’s an artist came in even handier on the décor.

Although Daphne might have other ideas, I have no plans this Memorial Day weekend to go knocking on the door of Shaju and Sujita, the couple who purchased the house in Chestnut Hill. There are no previous occupants to knock on the door of my condo, and I find that comforting. Home at last!

iPhone As Mini-Boom Box?

My confession. . . Though I grew up in New York and have made my home in Brookline, MA for more than thirty years, I go online to look at The Orlando Sentinel at least once a day. I enjoy reading whatever stories and blog entries my daughter, Daphne Sashin, and her husband, Etan Horowitz, may have posted. As a woman who thinks of herself as an involved and caring mom and mother-in-law, I also set up Google alerts for both, friended them on Facebook, and follow @Dsashin and @Etanowitz on Twitter.

A consumer technology columnist, Etan writes about new gadgets or new uses for gadgets already on the market. He frequently uses Daphne as the guinea pig, such as yesterday, when he wanted to try the new Qik video application for his iPhone and got her to jump up and down inside the bounce house at the Orlando Fringe Festival. I saw this because the link to the video came to me on Twitter. Athletic and seemingly free of inhibition, Daphne seems not to mind.

Having had computers in their homes as young children, Daphne and Etan take gadgets for granted, and often tutor me on how to use my own, limited supply, consisting of just an iPhone, Flip Video Mino, digital camera, and a MacBook. I grant them Cook Kid status.

Still, Etan’s latest column, published this morning, gave me pause. Acknowledging that there are people – myself included – who do not like putting iPhone buds in their ears, he spoke of a new mini-boom box craze, the result of people using their iPhones and other smart phones to play their “own personal soundtracks,” sans headphones.

Etan, I beg your pardon. I was doing that long before reading your column – much to the horror of your wife, Daphne. The first time I did it was last November, the weekend of your wedding. When I went into the “fitness center” at the Congress Hall Hotel early Sunday morning, I realized that the likelihood of other guests competing with me for the single treadmill, elliptical machine or stationery bike were remote.

Without benefit of ear buds, I peddled away to the sounds of The Four Tops, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Archie Bell and the Drells, and for some contemporary flavor, Usher. I assured Daphne that I completed my workout before anybody else was even awake.

During the March visit to Florida, I needed something to keep me going during a punishing 60 minutes on the treadmill at the Grand Bohemian at 4:30 a.m. Praying that nobody else would enter the once again tiny exercise room, I felt my heart sink as a middle-aged man walked in mid-way through my workout. As etiquette required, I offered to turn my iPhone off. Thankfully, he declined my offer.

My personal soundtrack for that particular workout was a bit heavy on Philadelphia Soul, with ample doses of both the Delfonics and the Stylistics. Fearing that “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time?” and “Break Up to Make Up” may have been too much for others at that hour, I offered a mitigating remark, saying I hoped he didn’t find my choice of music annoying. He thanked me and said he loved my music.

Etan, you make reference to boom boxes, capable of playing rap, hip-hop, and I suppose classical music, at decibel levels evoking displeasure from non-aficionados. My own frame of reference is a small, Motorola transistor radio. Although that, unlike the iPhone, came with just a monaural ear cord, people like me never worried about whether others shared their musical tastes. The difference was that the transistor radio could only play Cousin Brucie at relatively low decibel levels.

I hear what you’re saying about people in their own little bubbles. Earlier this week, I found myself walking through the Public Garden. A man was playing tenor sax, and I put a dollar in his basket. He wasn’t David “Fathead” Newman, but I was glad there were no iPhone mini boom boxes to drown out his sounds.

Fun Links

Orlando Fringe

Smart phones become tiny boomboxes — is it polite to blast tunes in public?

Do Families Twittering Together Stay Together?

Inside my jewelry box are two plastic T passes that I acquired for use by Daphne and Etan when they come to Boston. I added money to the passes more than two months ago – fully aware that my daughter and her husband would not be visiting until Memorial Day weekend.

Dennis and I had just returned from visiting the kids in Orlando where they write for a newspaper, and I needed to do something in anticipation of our next get-together. We see each other once or twice a year at each of our respective home bases, supplemented by meet-ups at family events in New York and other cities, and I always wish our visits were more frequent.

Whether Daphne or Etan even use the T passes will depend on whether they want to take the train down to Newbury Street or Harvard Square. But adding money to the passes helped me visualize the prospect of their visit. I could even imagine the three of us getting on the train together, perhaps getting brunch or stopping in at J.P. Licks, where Etan can get the soy ice cream his lactose intolerance demands.

Please don’t talk to me about living in the moment. I’ve heard it all. I know I shouldn’t be visualizing that moment when I’m dropping them off at Logan airport late Monday, feeling sad about their going home – when I still have more than a week to go before I even pick them up at the airport.

Not to mention the fact that I still need to clean our condo to that illusory eat off the floor standard, despite the fact that it’s reasonably clean. I’m also agonizing about whether I should take next Friday off from work, ostensibly to do major food shopping in anticipation of Daphne and Etan’s arrival.

Yes, there are those who use online grocery shopping services such as Peapod. But even if Peapod had what I needed, I’m one of those people who relishes the experience of walking up and down the aisles of Whole Foods and Trader Joes, wondering what special treats I might find for these grown children.

The fact is that aside from a family barbeque at the home of Dennis’ brother-in-law in Point of Pines, Revere, we will most likely eat out. Still, I would feel inhospitable if I didn’t have the “everything” bagels and soy cream cheese that Etan likes, and the red pepper humus and carrots Daphne enjoys. My own self-image as a good enough mother requires that I go to Finagle A Bagel in the absence of H&H.

Earlier this year I was at a wedding in Atlanta. The mother of the bride told me she felt sad that her daughter would be living hundreds of miles away. She then turned to me and said it must be just as hard for me to have Daphne living so far away.

Chalk it up to my being the mother of an only child if you want, or even my pride about not seeming needy. Posturing more than necessary, I told her I’d reared Daphne to be self-reliant and independent. Indeed I expected her to go to college in a different city, just as I had. Citing the "convenience" of airplanes, I said I was fine about Daphne living in Orlando.

The old cliché that life is short applies even more so to visits. Then there’s life as we experience it. I’m still savoring that last visit in Orlando, and anticipating both the arrival and conclusion of our visit next weekend – wishing we had more time together.

Daphne may cringe when she reads this -- reminding me it just two weeks after Memorial Day weekend, we will all be seeing each other in New York. Dennis and I had planned to be there anyway for the engagement party of my oldest friend, Bonnie Merzer Izen. When I heard that Etan is speaking at what’s been billed as the largest Twitter event in the world, Jeff Keni Pulver’s 140 Characters Conference, I couldn’t resist adding a few days to our stay in New York.

Electronic Devices, Public Transit & Firing For Cause

It wasn’t until I saw my Boston Globe this morning that I realized there had been another accident on the Green Line – just as hordes of people were heading to a Red Sox game. The story reported no loss of life, but 49 people were injured. The operator of the train, an unnamed 24 year old, reportedly admitted he was text messaging his girlfriend at the time his train crashed into another train between Government Center and Park Street Station.

It has not been a good year for the MBTA, trying to cope with horrendous deficits, and a culture of entitlement fostered by the car men’s union. Not surprisingly Dan Grabauskas, the general manager of the MBTA, citing a zero tolerance policy for use of electronic devices while driving, said the operator would “probably be fired.” The word “probably” elicited sarcasm on the message board of www.boston.com from readers showing zero tolerance for due process accorded even those employees who threaten the lives of others.

Nearly a year ago, there was another accident on the Green Line, this one resulting in the death of an MBTA operator, a 24 woman named Terrese Edmonds. Though news accounts questioned whether the accident might have been caused by her use of a cell phone, investigators later reported finding no evidence that was true.

As the investigation proceeded over many weeks, I hoped the dead woman would be exonerated. Though I knew exoneration would not give her back her life, I hoped it would bring a small measure of comfort – providing her grieving family with the knowledge that she had not contributed to her own death, and the not inconsiderable pain and suffering of a badly injured passenger.

One evening last month, I was traveling on the Bolt Bus, heading back to Boston after the Blogwell conference in New York. Had the electrical connections for laptops been working, I would probably have been too absorbed to notice.

But since the battery on my MacBook was really low, and I’m rarely able to sleep on buses, trains or planes, I noticed the driver pull out his cell phone, look at it for a few seconds, and then make a brief phone call. While this was happening, the bus was traveling at a speed high enough for the driver to be tailgating a small car.

I thought about using my iPhone to Twitter about him using his cell phone while driving. Had I done so, Dennis might have categorized me as a “common scold.” It troubled me that the driver was doing something I considered risky. In truth the reason I chose not to Tweet anything about his behavior was that he struck me as a nice guy. He was friendly as passengers were boarding in New York, and very apologetic about the laptop electrical connections not working.

Had he been in any way rude, I might have been guilty of an act of pettiness, reporting his behavior to the online world. That my act related more to my assessment of his attitude than his driving behavior would have been unkind.

The fact that I hate seeing people use cell phones while driving cars has more to do with my impatience at their slowing down traffic because they’re not paying attention to the changing of a light than any concern I may or may not have about their safety.

Indeed Daphne was mortified to be sitting in the passenger seat during my visit to Orlando in March. Circling and circling to find a parking space at the Orlando Premium Outlet Mall, I rolled down the window and said something not very nice to get the attention of a woman obstructing traffic with her SUV as she chatted away on the phone.

The night I got home from my trip on the Bolt Bus, I bolted for a cab at South Station. During what seemed like an endless journey to my home in Brookline, I was subjected to the cabbie's non-stop cell rant in a language I could not understand – interspersed with English colloquialisms related to money.

Though I rarely if ever talk on a cell phone or even dream of text messaging while driving – precisely because of concerns about safety – I admit that my irritation at the cab driver’s being on the phone was more about my need for peace and quiet after a long day than about personal safety.

The cab ride reminded me of those nights when Dennis and I still lived in the suburbs, and I often took cabs home from late night events. It seemed like every Boston cabbie talked non-stop on his cell phone, sometimes apologizing at the end of the ride, just as I was calculating the tip.

When I boarded the Green Line last night at Copley Square after an event at the Westin, I had no idea there had been an accident a few hours before. The train was crowded but I was fortunate to get a seat. I thought how lucky I was to be able to take the T home – not having to listen to a cabbie on his cell phone.

Mother's Day

Several weeks I found myself writing a condolence note to a friend whose mother had died. At a complete loss for words, I realized that the only details I knew were that she was a mother and that she may have had Alzheimer’s disease. Then it came to me that whatever she might have done in life, probably nothing was more important to her than being a mother.

Knowing that my friend is a successful lawyer, and also a kind and decent person, I made the judgment that his mom had done a good job. Given the era in which he grew up, I imagine his mother was a stay at home mom.

This Sunday will be Mother’s Day, and for many of us moms, a day for taking stock. It occurs to me that as much as I enjoy my career in public relations, nothing is more important to me than being Daphne’s mom, and more recently, Etan’s mother-in-law.

Daphne has asked me about my first Mother’s Day as a new mom. All I recall is that her dad came home with an orchid corsage from Seltzer’s Garden Center in Newton, and that we went out to dinner. I can’t tell you what ran through his mind as he made his purchase.

What I can tell you is how I experienced his gift. It struck me as a tongue in cheek gesture, reminiscent of the ‘50’s and ‘60’s when my own family would walk into restaurants on Mother’s Day and see mothers of all ages wearing corsages, presumably given to them as a token of appreciation for the work they did as stay at home moms.

Suffice it to say that when Daphne asked me about corsages for the moms at her wedding last November, I nixed the idea very quickly. Had I known what would transpire in the years since my first year as a mom, I might not have been so touchy about that Mother’s Day corsage.

But in 1977 I was struggling with my identity as a mom. Despite wrapping up four and a half years of psychoanalysis, I was filled with angst about whether I could successfully balance motherhood, marriage and a career. Though I was also completing a master’s degree in English lit and knew I enjoyed writing, I wasn't sure how I would support myself in the event the need arose.

Had I known the career would fall into place, I would have been able to relax and enjoy the privilege of being a stay at home mom during my daughter’s early years. In a turn of events I could neither have predicted nor planned, I ultimately found a great job as the communications director of a non-profit through the mom of one of Daphne’s pre-school classmates.

There was a time in life when I knew what I wanted for Mother’s Day, and that was usually the latest Coach bag. Though 1989 was not the last time I got a Coach bag, it was the last time I got one from Daphne’s dad. Old enough to have some perspective at the time, she asked me how many Coach bags one person could use.

I spent Mother’s Day of the following year crying, unable to leave the house. In a span of just a few cruel months, Daphne’s dad had been diagnosed with lymphoma and died. Without a husband to share parenting, I found myself unable to celebrate my role as a mom.

A divorced friend told me I needed to do better, and use the next Mother’s Day as an opportunity to go some place really special for brunch with Daphne. So began a tradition that included Upstairs at the Pudding in Harvard Square, the Charles Hotel, and elegant restaurants whose names I no longer remember.

In recent years Daphne and I have celebrated Mother’s Day on Memorial Day weekend. Living and working in Florida, it makes a lot more sense for her and her husband to visit on a three-day weekend, and get together for an annual barbeque with my husband, Dennis, and his children.

The real gift will be having Daphne and Etan home for a visit. As for the annual self-appraisals of my performance as a mother, perhaps it's time to let them go. Daphne has turned out well, and I hope she thinks I have too.

Mom Responds to Daughter's Blog

This morning, in a suburb of Orlando, a doggie derby will be held in advance of the Kentucky Derby. According to an Orlando Sentinel blog called “Animal Crazy,” the event is a benefit for the non-profit that maintains the dog park on Lake Baldwin. I will not be there.

For one thing, the closest I ever came to having a dog was helping take care of Grandma’s cocker spaniel, Boy, when she and Grandpa went to Florida for two weeks every March. I was a small child at the time, and remember Boy getting the flu on one occasion and needing to be taking to the Spire Hospital in New York.

Right after college, I also helped care for Jason, a collie belonging to my in-laws when they went to Florida for the entire winter. Despite the gender difference, people loved stopping to pet Jason because he looked like Lassie. He ultimately succumbed to arthritis and old age, but I liked him.

In the interest of disclosure I should tell you that “Animal Crazy” is written primarily by the Orlando Sentinel reporter who covers several Orlando suburbs, including Winter Park, and usually writes about growth and development intersecting with local government. The reporter’s name is Daphne Sashin, and she happens to be my only child.

Daphne volunteered to pick up “Animal Crazy” only last month, when she realized the person who used to write it was no longer at the Sentinel. Seeing a New Yorker cover dedicated to Bo, the First Dog, only a week or so later, I told her the move was fortuitous. I observed that a lot of people were probably more eager to hear about Bo than about foreign policy.

Still I find it ironic that my daughter is blogging about animals of all types. The fact is that animals can be messy, and I hate messiness. My daughter would say I’m something of a control freak who knows animals – like people -- can be unpredictable, and once wigged out when a bird flew into our home on a very cold winter day. At age ten, she and her friend, Sara Pildis, found my hysteria incomprehensible.

So I never allowed Daphne to have a pet. Still she loved being sent to pre-school in a pastoral setting with plenty of exposure to animals. The school was called The Apple Orchard, and the kids began their morning by feeding the chickens and visiting a pig called Maple Mocha. Inside the classroom was a blind black Lab.

Following a trip to a shopping center with friends, Daphne once returned home with scratches all over her face. When I queried her, she said she’d been playing with a cat at a pet store.

When Daphne became a journalist I realized she had a special gift for writing about animals, in part because she’s a pro at picking up on life’s quirkiness. I felt very proud the day she got to attend the Westminster Dog Show, doing a ride-along with a family from Connecticut’s Fairfield County. By then, knowing of her allergies, she still looked forward to doing the story, even if it meant sneezing and wheezing inside Madison Square Garden for hours.

The week Daphne did a try-out for a Tribune paper in Newport News, Virginia I decided to go online and just by looking at the story titles, figure out which story she might have written. Clicking first on a piece about dogs competing in a sheepherding contest, I found immediate gratification.

Since arriving at the Sentinel a few years ago, Daphne has written about the migration of cattle ranchers from Orlando to Texas, describing in exquisite detail the sheer terror experienced by animals being herded onto an enormous trailer. She’s written a number of stories about the controversies pitting advocates for lakeside dog parks against advocates for clean lakes.

But the stories that grab me are the ones dealing with people’s relationships with their animals. It was more than two years ago that Daphne had to cover a grisly murder suicide at a subdivision, knocking on doors to approach neighbors. One neighbor who’d taken her card later called to talk about something more important to him.

He told her he didn’t have much of a relationship with his ex-wives or his daughters. What really mattered to him was Chucky, a Pekin duck living in his yard by day, living inside when temperatures required heat or air-conditioning. Threatening daily monetary fines, the homeowners association demanded that the man get rid of this non-domestic pet.

I smiled each time I read one of Daphne’s stories about this unfolding saga, and was relieved to learn that her stories elicited numerous offers of a home for Chucky, including one from a woman on the Gulf Coast offering to send her private plane for the duck.

Chucky ultimately found a new home with a woman who owned a small farm. Still, Daphne was concerned about the emotional well being of Chuckey’s owner. She sounded amazingly calm and soothing as she called him to make sure he was o.k. with the arrangements for his animal.

One of the things I love about Daphne is that she always pursues whatever resonates in her own heart and mind, without regard to material considerations. Though I’m not animal crazy, I always look forward to reading her blog.

Animal Crazy