Sunday, March 25, 2012

PS to “Just when you think…..;” The power of suggestion, or the suggestion of power?

Have you seen Father of the Bride I and II with Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Dianne Keaton?  We saw them right around the time our daughter was about to be married, so they were especially poignant for us.  Not to mention the great comedy acting.

If you have, surely you remember ‘Fronk’ the Wedding Consultant, played by Short, and the great line “may I suggoost the chipper chicken, Mister Bonks?”

Segueing into the subject of the moment, Brunswick’s Town Manager got back to us Friday night after we had posted the ‘Just when you think blah blah’ item.

He reported that he has “been told by different people that this idea has been circulating throughout the community.”  And that “Bowdoin reached out to me about it on Wednesday. Given the significant ramifications of this, it was decided by the Council to discuss this in a public forum.”

So, we gather, Chair King is not the originator of this inspired act of charity.  Or suggoostion, if you prefer.

It does seem, though, that if the right people ‘suggoost’ things, special council meetings are scheduled in a finger-snap.  Somehow, we’ve never been able to crack that chicken wing.

We’ve made suggestions to the council year after year on all sorts of things, most having to do with budgets, expenditures, and ‘business practices.’  We’ve watched lots of others make suggestions as well. Yet hard as it is to believe, not a one resulted in a special meeting to discuss them in a public forum.

Maybe it’s something about the Naïve (Evian spelled backwards) water they drink on the Bowdoin campus, or the ‘natural’ water we drink.  Maybe it has to do with the School Department realizing that poppycock coming from Bowdoin has the veil of academic freedom to give it gravitas. 

Remember Professor Klingle, that paragon of historic knowledge?

Perhaps town fathers are telling us none too subtly that Bowdoin elites have bigger chops than the town hoi-polloi.

Or that their lobotomies were more successful than ours.

Anyway, thanks Town Council, for calling a special meeting because of suggestions coming from the College and ‘others.’

We hope that some day we’ll figure out how to join the special interest club.  We’ll start by suggoosting that the town spend 50% more on schools, and that the homes of those who don’t like it be seized to pay for it.  Maybe that will demonstrate enough chops for a place at the scheduling table.

Till then, we can only look through the knothole in the outfield fence of Brunswick inside baseball and dream.

BTW, if Bowdoin would just pay their fair share in property taxes, the School Department would have more than enough revenue to remedy every possible educational injustice, and erect statues of Polar Bears in the lobby of each school. 

We hope they preserve them when they tear down our tired schools and build new ones.  It’s the least we can do for the children.

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