Codger’s column: Heat from the kitchen

The dedication last week of the Chris Lewis Kitchen at the Presbyterian Church was about as symbolic an event as Codger expects to witness on Shelter Island this year. An oven light was lit for good government and humane living. That’s especially important now as the powerful villains of the piece, Donald Trump, Nick LaLota and Stefan Soloviev, pump up their evil-doing.   

Chris and Codger became telephone buddies as president and vice-president of the Shelter Island Senior Citizens Foundation during the last couple of years of her life. A nurse by trade and community-minded by temperament, Chris was smart, salty and practical. In her short time as president, she led the Foundation to buying the town’s Senior Services a 22-seat wheelchair-accessible bus known as the “Silver Streak,” contributing the lead donation for the library’s recent expansion, supporting the Historical Society’s Living History project, and joining the Lions Club to provide vision-enhancing machines for seniors with macular degeneration.

Renovating the kitchen was also a project she championed; besides being a major spiritual center on the island, the Church is an essential food hub for seniors. And before enabling all those good works, Chris spent 16 highly-productive years on the Town Board as the voice of reason.

Chris died three years ago, at 88, as the villains were emerging in full force. President Trump’s second term has turned out to be far more damaging than his first. The violence, divisiveness and anxiety created by his immigration policies are a pall over America.

While Shelter Island officials and its police have pledged to remain independent of ICE, there’s a looming danger from the local congressman, LaLota. He ratcheted up his claims to Trump fealty by threatening to defund East Hampton unless the town and village repealed its new laws calling for more transparency in joint immigration actions.

Meanwhile, Stefan Soloviev, Chairman of the multibillion-dollar Soloviev Group, proudly took credit for closing the pharmacy, an act as symbolic as re-doing the church kitchen. One was an affirmation of life and humane purpose, the other a grubby betrayal.           

Soloviev was the lead character in a recent New York Magazine piece by Reeves Wiedeman entitled “Raider of the North Fork.” As the self-described 14th leading owner of American land, he described himself as a “land trader” as if to erase any notion that he might envision himself a steward of the land he was buying up or a member of the community. He was here simply to make money, which Codger thinks plays better with the Trump Group in Kazakhstan.

The New York piece was not entirely unsympathetic to Stefan, whose arrogant posture as a billionaire’s boy with a chip on his tattooed shoulder seems like something the Reporter’s resident shrink, Nancy Green, might examine. His unhappy childhood and his fathering of 22 children seem like pathetic red flags as ubiquitous as those Soloviev Group signs dotting the North Fork.

The New York piece, recommended as evidence, was published just before reports of an overnight carbon monoxide evacuation on June 15 at his Chequit Hotel. Local police and EMT evacuated the hotel’s only guest (reportedly at $700 a night), who was also its only occupant.

In outrage, residents have called for a boycott of Soloviev businesses and properties. Others warn that could only lead to fewer jobs and yet another place lost to eat and drink.

What would Chris Lewis say? At the least, says Codger, she’d repeat her famous all-purpose line, “Every problem doesn’t have a solution.

“Sometimes you just have an outcome.”

Codger would add: “Sometimes it’s up to us to provide the outcome.”

In Trump’s case, nature seems to be handing over his reins to Stephen Miller and other keepers, trickling down to LaLota, who can be outcomed in the mid-term elections with a victory by Chris Gallant, his Democratic opponent. The land trader, along with other local oligarchs, presents a less clear-cut path to an outcome.

Rolling over for the rich is not unique to Shelter Island, reminds Codger, from selling to them and then complaining when the new house blocks the sun and water, to eschewing rules enforcement because they have well-tailored lawyers. To be fair, it’s hard to stand up for a vision of the future when you don’t have one.

That’s called a comprehensive plan, the first step toward depicting a world you would like to live in.  Preferably with a professional town planner attached. Affordable housing? Great! So who gets to live in those houses besides restaurant, hotel and yacht club employees? A safer water supply? Who tests and treats it?

And what happens when a sweet-talking money bag shows up? A plan might not provide an immediate solution but it would certainly give a positive outcome a fighting chance.