Codger’s Column: We’ll see

In times of anxiety, Codger recalls his father’s mantra: “Nothing is ever as good or bad as your imagination can make it.”

That’s always been wise counsel for Codger, especially lately as his energetic imagination has been running amok. What’s going to happen? He actually caught himself thinking too imaginatively about those Presidential recess appointments that don’t require Senate approval.

Would Jerry Siller be brought back as an Advising Supervisor? Was that what he and Amber were discussing at lunch last week at The Islander?

Stop that, Codger. It’s not amusing.

O.K., how about the bill giving the Treasury Department authority to designate any nonprofit as “terrorist supporting” and deny its tax-exempt status, thus putting it out of business? How long before it gets to the Shelter Island Senior Citizens Foundation with its grants to the library and the Historical Society, two groups that help people think?

Whoa! Is Codger descending into ridiculousness as an escape from reality? The bill was narrowly defeated last week, but will surely return next year in the new administration. Can the freshly elected Gordon Gooding and his A Better Island for All bloc beat it back?

It had better.  Shelter Island’s former congressman and a thankfully unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate, Lee Zeldin, is up for leadership of the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin thinks climate change is a switch on an HVAC dash-board. Given free rein he will demand that Island McMansions be built on top of the wetlands.

C’mon, Codger. This way lies madness. You better talk to someone.

With his father unavailable, Codger sought out his oldest counselor, the famous cartoonist and commentator Jules Feiffer, who is approaching 96 at full stride.

Sadly, Jules said, “This is not the country I loved and grew up in.”

“What can we do?” asked Codger.

Jules began singing the 1930’s song, “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.”

Jules was sitting on a hill overlooking meadows and a lake in his new home near Cooperstown, N.Y., where he and his wife, Joan, moved from Emerson Road last year. Like Shelter Island itself, this was a bubble, a geographical and emotional bubble,  insulated from the news battering the world. At least for now.

“I’ve never had less hope for the American dream,” said Jules. “All you can do is just keep on doing your work.” He excused himself to get back to his latest book of cartoons and text, a memoir called, “A License to Fail.”

Codger moved on to his next oldest adviser, Michael Coles, 92, a veteran of the Royal Navy and Goldman, Sachs, who was sitting in his sun-splashed front room off Tuthill Road overlooking the water and Mashomack beyond. Michael agreed they were in anxious times but took solace from living on the Island.

“One of the great early appeals of Shelter Island for me,” he said, “was how much it reminded me of the small town in Devonshire in which I was raised. People looked after each other as they do here.”

He and Codger talked about common ground, the shared space in which people of diverse opinion could come together in mutual cause. Michael had done that, working on improving Mashomack and creating the FIT Center and once was an avid aviator buzzing in and out of Kleniwicus Airport.

Jules and Michael had calmed Codger enough for him to dare call his oldest friend on the other side, Gerard, 72, who was surprised and delighted to hear from him. “It’s going to be great,” said Gerard, a retired lawyer who founded and runs a successful youth sports league. “You are going to have freedoms you never had before. No more woke stuff. No more words you aren’t allowed to say or even think.”

“No more human rights, equality, decency, safety …”

“Relax, the guy has coarsened the language, O.K., but most of what you’re afraid of is just his stand-up comedy,” said Gerard.

Codger quickly retreated to common ground, basketball. Gerard sent his best regards to Crone. Codger got off the phone and collapsed in front of her.

“What now?” he bleated.

“We’ll see,” said Crone.

Codger had heard this before but needed reassurance.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll see means,” said Crone, uncharacteristically patient, sensing Codger’s anxiety, “that we will wait and see, that we will not make ourselves crazy.”

“Just wait? Sounds too passive.”

“It’s a creative space. While we contemplate in our minds and bodies the clear calm water, the steps to take, however small, will begin to emerge. They always do, in time.”

And so, from their cabana (in his mind it’s striped) on the Will Sea, Codger and Crone watch the waters. They go about their lives on the common ground we all share on Shelter Island.

…

EDITOR’S NOTE: It was just announced that our Robert Lipsyte is one of the 2025 Columbia Journalism School Alumni Award Winners. These prestigious awards were selected by the Awards Committee, which consisted of three previous award recipients, the Alumni Board Chair, and the Director of Alumni Relations.

Recipients of this award are recognized for an exemplary body of work or a singular outstanding accomplishment in any journalism medium, a notable contribution to journalism education, or related fields for alumni at any career stage. Bob, Columbia Class of 1959, was honored for his work as an author and as a columnist for The New York Times.

Congratulations, Bob, from all your colleagues at the Reporter.