Veganism/Animals

Traveling for Good — The Bunnies of Best Friends Animal Sanctuary

Dedicated to all the wonderful people and animals I met and got to know at the Best Friends Bunny House.

What does it mean to be someone? To me, it means … for there to be no-one else quite like you. Indeed, every person I’ve ever met cannot really be compared to anyone else. There’s just something fundamentally unique about each and every one of us that defines what it means to be someone. Uniqueness defines the individual, defines a sense of personhood and defines the concept of a being in this world. 

One day in the autumn of 2020, I realized that this applied to my rabbit back home, Marley.

My Message: An Update and Mission Statement

How We Got Here

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.

“It’s 2020”: Reflections on a Time of Crisis

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.

Blame and Prevention: Musings on Pandemics, Animal Agriculture, and Xenophobia

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.

2050: How Diet Causes Catastrophe

Image: NASA satellite image of the 2018 Camp Fire, currently the most destructive wildfire in California history. Image from https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144225/camp-fire-rages-in-california

If you are usually critical of veganism or feel apathetically hopeless regarding climate change, this is for you. I only ask that you hear me out and give me the benefit of the doubt and read through this piece. I know it is long, but I promise you that it will be worth it and that it could change your perspective on the environmental crisis, the next 30 years, and what you can do.