Chapter 9: Seeds (4/28)

Let's Go Golfing

May 09, 2022

I never, ever thought we’d run out of seeds.

We’re not exactly known for being a garden supply store but with all these young professionals trapped in their house by the health authorities, many of them—mostly the young women—have decided to try some gardening on the porch of their apartment building/digital gulag. (Apparently they still have free time in between doing “marketing” on Zoom calls for, ostensibly, the largest slave-master of all time: Jeff Bezos.)

One young woman is buying seeds with her mother. She has quite a few, including some corn and some squash. “Do you really think you have room to grow corn, honey?” her mother asks.

“It was the only thing left,” she says as she points to the nearly-empty seed display.

… We’ll get back to this story in Chapter 24.

Addendum: In my years as a journalist here, I got to know many local reporters, but since the 2016 election and its after-math, fewer and fewer of them would talk to me. One of them who was the best reporter in the city. She covered crime for the big, established newspaper and we always got along, regardless of politics.

One of the only things the government allowed you to do at this time was golf. The idea was you were far enough apart to not spread any of the virus around, so you could go outside and golf on a golf course.

We met up and she insisted we stay 6 feet apart and I reluctantly complied. The course was fairly busy,—because people were desperate to go somewhere with someone. There were big “X”s on the pavement, 6 feet apart (of course) leading up to the public clubhouse. Being a city-run facility, there were signs and warnings everywhere. Disinfectant sprays were readily available—hand sanitizers and so forth. (I was astonished at how insane it had become out here).

So, after a thorough sanitization of our rented golf clubs, we took to the course.

She started to tell me how insane things had become at the big blue newspaper.

For one thing, ever since the election of 2016, CNN was on in the newsroom 24/7. There was not to be any derivation from their narrative. Essentially, CNN was directing the narrative of every newsroom nationwide. And that totally made sense to me.

And she also told me how, lately, as a crime reporter, she was being censored. For example: She recently reported on a massive drug and weapons bust. M-16s, kilos of cocaine, and so forth. What should have been an above-the-fold hard-nosed news story was relegated to page A-17.

When she asked why, it was inferred that “reporting about crime was racist” against “people of color.”

Yes, really.

She then started to tell me about how Trump broke the system inside the newspaper, and how she didn’t really care one way or another who the President was. I agreed, but everyone else our age felt the exact opposite. To them: The election of Trump was the end of the world.

Then we started talking about the Q-Anon phenomenon, the origins of COVID, the true story behind its release, local politics (the insane Mayor Marty Walsh) and so on and so forth... It was the most thought-provoking conversations I had had in months.

We then got lost on the course.

Clearly, the course had not been fully-staffed for the last few weeks and the course was in disrepair. In particular, some signage was down. The unkempt course left us relatively in the wind and we didn’t know where to go at times, so we just knocked it around. Then we came upon a flock of geese that had taken to a particular fairway.

There was no way around them, so I cracked a drive that just barely cleared the herd. We played onto the green and she was putting—when we heard a loud quacking and rustling. Looking up, we could see a golf cart barreling through the flock. On it rode a true Bostonian, complete with cigarette and a beer in his cup holder…

“I think I just hit a duck!” he yelled (in a thick accent) careening on by.