Hi! For those of you that don’t know me — I’m Jamie, a vegan blogger who loves animals and is traveling the US in a van. I’d like to talk briefly today about how I got here, what I’ve been up to recently, and what’s next.
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Cover image taken during the day on September 9th, 2020 in Half Moon Bay, CA. [1]
As tragedy after tragedy flash across the headlines of the news, I find myself stuck in a paralysis. The statement “it is 2020″ and its variants “this is 2020″ and “it’s 2020 after all” all come to mind. For many of us, 2020 has become synonymous with the word crisis taken to an absurdist extreme. It feels like an absurd amount of time has passed since January 1st, or rather that an absurd amount of absurd things have happened. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown and restrictions. The Australian Wildfires, the Impeachment and resultant Acquittal of President Donald Trump, the tragic passing of Kobe Bryant, the conviction of Harvey Weinstein, the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin and subsequent worldwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism, multiple hurricanes striking the Southern US at the same time (Marco and Laura), and now the most destructive fire season in CA in modern history combined with record-breaking heat waves.
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Cover Image is of a Pallid Bat [1]
The initial headlines most of us saw earlier this year probably still ring in our heads: “Novel coronavirus spreads throughout the world”, “COVID-19 pandemic reaches the United States”, “Global stock markets post biggest falls since 2008…”[2], “COVID-19 suspected to originate from a bat in a wet market in Wuhan” and even the infamous “China Virus” statements from the White House administration.
Underneath these headlines lie a number of implicit questions that are all an exploration of “how did this catastrophe happen?” Where did this originate and who is responsible? What could we have done differently and what can we do to prevent the next one? This piece will be an exploration of these questions and a meditation on the themes of blame and prevention in the narratives surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Sometimes we don’t know the weight of a moment until it becomes a memory. Other times we are lucky enough to recognize these moments as they come to pass. This day was one of the lucky days.
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Lakewood, WA
This year Tim and I decided to go to Cyclocross Nationals. Going to a cross race together had been a dream of ours for a while.
For several years I have watched on NBC the European pros race cyclocross (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclo-cross for the non-cyclists), and so seeing a World Championship event in person would be an amazing experience. Unfortunately none of these were really accessible in the US this year, but USA level nationals was in Seattle, and was only a $90 plane ticket away, so away we went.
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