4:30 p.m. EST
Sunday, May 25, 2024
Pompano Marina
Homestead, Florida
With gusts of wind building to thirty knots, Biscayne Bay a churning bowl of four-foot white caps, his Sunday routine jilted by Mother Nature, fate, whatever, Zackary Stearn called it quits and set his heading ten miles south of Miami, for his home port, Pompano Marina.
His fiftieth birthday a month ago, despite nearly forty years of on-again, off-again smoking, Zackary still maintained the undergraduate weight he carried as a middleweight boxer at Notre Dame. His nose, flattened by many left hooks, rested a quarter-inch off-center. His full head of short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair enhanced a brown boater’s tan that resembled the glow of natural leaf tobacco. Muscle solid, stomach flat, shoulders squared, neck void of sagging flesh, his slate-gray eyes projected his prior life’s authority.
Pompano Marina in sight, he glided into his rented mooring, tied up, threw out two extra side bumpers and decided to get some back-burner work done before going to dinner.
Sitting in the galley of his RV and home, a forty-foot refurbished Chris Craft he had dubbed Veracity, he nursed a Glenlivet on the rocks and looked over yellow-pad draft editorial notes:
In the beginning, the story goes, there was darkness upon the face of the deep. From there the tale gets complicated. One supposition suggests there was some sort of Big Bang in the darkness—the Big Bang must have been really big because it was the beginning from which there evolved many mysterious things; one being (which may or may not have been before the big bang) Time. Another wondrous thing that followed the Big Bang was Planet Earth which separated itself from a plethora of other things and placed itself in an ordered course around another mind-blowing object—the sun.
He looked up and mused to himself: It’s not that there is nobody out there beyond the Milky Way…that’s easy. Well, kind of easy. The really scary stuff begins if there is somebody out there and what you are going to say to the out-there somebody. Probably best to say nothing, just get on your face and shut up.
He went back to his notes:
After many evened revolutions around the sun, there came upon Planet Earth living things—one of which evolved into word-making mammals (one male and one female) who multiplied and subdued the earth. Then came capitalism, then came journalism, then came television news, then came the current President of the U. S. of A.–Benny P. Armstrong.
Which bring us to the glut of news and the cannibalism of information on the Internet–blogs, social media. In short, the whoring of so called news, coupled with the shrinking number of newspapers in the U. S. of A, presents a problem––manipulation of the news to achieve a desired end.
He turned to his computer, accessed Google, keyed in DAILY NEWSPAPERS, clicked search and read the first hit:
Dailies, newspapers, circulation - Spurred by the Internet’s ever-expanding presence combined with mega-media international corporate takeovers, bloated staffs, albatross plants and soaring newsprint costs, many daily newspapers have gone the way of T. Rex. Adding to their demise is the economics that forced them to share a shrinking piece of advertising dollars with television, radio, Internet, and cable news operations.
A few giant newspapers still survive in print form: The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald. In some larger communities, small, cost-efficient weekly gazettes have become reliable niches for what is called in some circles ‘the meat of local news.’ One of the more popular is The Boca of Miami, Florida, a weekly which is run by a former Jesuit Priest, Zackary Stearn.
Zack said, “Hear, hear,” printed the page then read articles he had clipped as source material for a future editorial.
Wall Street Journal
New York—Blue Chip industrial stocks soar to record numbers amid rumors of President Armstrong’s global military posturing.
New York Times
Over 5,000 people lost their lives when a powerful explosive device toppled the Eifel Tower. An Internet message from the terrorist group UR2 claimed responsibility. French officials, saying violence only begets more violence, remain committed to peaceful solutions. Citing the United States supplying Israel with nuclear weapons coupled with other policies in support of the Jewish State, a government spokesperson blames the United States for the world’s chaos.
The Washington Post
Washington, D.C.—Vermont’s pugnacious in-your-face Senator Nancy Beno is making a strong November run at incumbent Benjamin P. Armstrong for the Presidency. Beno, the World Socialism candidate, pledges to open a dialog with Islamic States and, while guaranteeing Israel’s security, calls for the dismantling of Israel’s nuclear weapons.
The Boca
Miami—Johnny-come-lately politician President Benjamin Armstrong has reacquired the historic presidential yacht, U.S.S. Sequoia. In re-naming the storied vessel Benny I, the former ABC sit-com star and converted television evangelist said, “It’s time America got back to her bedrock Christian roots.” Some say Benny should get back to his South Carolina roots too, and for good.
Zack sipped his Glenlivet and smiled. Partial to his own writing, he liked the last article best. The others, every time he read them, conjured wonder about words, reality and fiction.
His cell phone began to ring. Checking caller ID, he saw it was Mary O’Brien, thought about answering, decided not to and, the phone still ringing, left for a cold Bohemia beer and his favorite torrid Mexican food at The Bimini Road Café.