Codger’s Column: Feed me
Codger still feels buoyed, weeks after seeing “Little Shop of Horrors.” What a show. Not only was it terrific as sheer entertainment, but it also made the case yet again that a town without school kids — without their energy to inspire and their future to nurture — is really not much of a community.
All of this has particular relevance with a vote on the school budget coming up next week. The decision to “pierce” the tax cap and thus allow property taxes to rise to cover the new higher school budget means a super majority of at least 60% approval is necessary to pass the budget. Codger thinks it should be approved. A key issue raising the price — and causing opposition — is restoring the Pre-K program for 3-year-olds.
Codger understands how people under financial pressure might consider that a form of free baby-sitting is something they don’t want to subsidize. And yet, it’s just the kind of essential start in education for kids and an enormous boost for families that need to work that ultimately enriches everyone in town.
The call to outsource or merge Shelter Island education also keeps popping up when taxes become an issue, although it’s not clear whether that would actually save money. There’s no question that the expense and problems of schooling a small number of students, including an increasing number requiring free lunches and specialized teaching, are formidable.
Yet all reports indicate Shelter Island is doing a fine job. And while the class size may limit the pool of potential friends, there are more opportunities for meaningful relationships among teachers, coaches and students, as well as more opportunities to participate in sports and cultural activities — like the play.
At a recent public forum sponsored by the Reporter, Jackson Rohrer, a junior who transferred from a larger school, said, “It gives you better prepping for life after high school.”
Who could be against that besides the blood-drinking monster in “Little Shop of Horrors?”
For anyone perplexed at this intrusion of town affairs into a celebration of the school play, Codger reminds that there’s allegory at work here. The original story the show was based on was a political satire. The greed of capitalism was symbolized by a human-hungry plant from another planet. By the end of that first version, a cheesy 1960 film, most of the characters, even the lovers Audrey and Seymour, had been seduced by the promise of profits, then betrayed by the evil plant, Audrey II, who ate them.
The film was remade in 1986, one year before “Wall Street,” with its iconic line “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” In “Little Shop,” the demand “Feed me, Seymour,” was Audrey II’s call for more human blood. Test audiences hated the remake’s closing scene, so an expensive end of the world climax, in which Audrey II and its spawn gobbled up everything, was scrapped for a happy ending. Well, temporarily happy — the last shot was an evil plant surviving outside Seymour and Audrey’s cottage.
There were various endings of the on- and off-Broadway versions, but the monster was rarely completely vanquished. In its spirit of political satire, Codger imagined that the creepy remnants of Audrey II resembled Lee Zeldin, who is even now lurking in our current big shop of horrors.
Codger is currently terrified at the possibility that Zeldin — who as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would be in charge of alien vegetation like Audrey II — may actually be appointed Attorney General. It’s horrifying to imagine his voracious appetite for destroying environmental safeguards set loose in law enforcement scenarios. While the odds in his favor diminished lately after President Trump installed his personal lawyer as interim AG, the mere fact that Zeldin was an announced front-runner after Pam Bondi was weeded, is chilling.
Zeldin, you may recall, served as our congressman for four terms. Among his memorable turns was co-sponsorship of the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act which would allow licensed gun owners from any state to bring their weapons to any other state, regardless of local laws. It is still rattling around in Congress, another evil plant waiting to bloom.
Locally, Zeldin did get good marks for helping to protect Long Island Sound, but his congressional record on protecting the national environment was abysmal. That, along with a boot-licking scorecard on all matters Trump, got him appointed EPA Administrator.
He gutted the agency, fired hundreds of senior scientists, stripped protective regulations, canceled billions in climate grants and declared a pro-coal policy. The president has called him “our secret weapon.” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D – R.I.) called him “the most ardent stooge of the fossil fuel industry there is.”
Codger imagines Zeldin declaring Audrey II the national plant.
