Blogging in the time of SARS-2

I started this blog with a question, "what am I going here?", and the question still stands twelve years later. To be honest, I've never had a single clear conception of who my audience is or what my blog's purpose should be, and my approach to writing it has no doubt shifted over time. But I'm still here twelve years on, long after many of the blogs that have interested me and inspired me have gone dormant, and so there must be some purpose after all.

In large part I write for myself. Whatever else this blog may be, it is in part a repository for photographs and other memories. It probably ends up being, to a certain extent, a record of whatever has held my attention at the time, but it should not be read too literally in that sense: while there is much of my personal life in Flyover Country, it is by no means a complete record, and obviously there are facets of my life, sometimes large facets, that are not reflected here.

I sometimes think that my true external audience may be "posterity", in the form of Ellie and any other children I may one day have, inshallah, with Jessa; in my cousins and hers; in our nieces and nephews. And I wonder on occasion what they will make of the gaps in the fossil record alluded to above.

Here we are, for example, four years into what may be considered "the Trump era", and not a word to this point—I know, I just checked—on the shitshow of cynicism, corruption, and incompetence that is the Trump Administration. For the record, I don't subscribe to the theory that Trump is America's Hitler; I see him as America's Mussolini, and hope he may someday meet a similar end. (We have plenty of filling stations...) My explanation for this otherwise puzzling omission is that some things are simply too big, too complex, too fast-moving, and/or too depressing to deal with in this particular forum.

Likewise with the current pandemic, designated "COVID-19", caused by a novel coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2. This is decidedly on-topic for this blog; see previous posts "Stellaluna and Wilbur will kill us all: a review of Contagion" and "Spillover reviewed". [Note also my description of "SARS as a lucky escape, an epidemic that could have been so much worse than it was (and one that may yet get another bite at the apple)."] But, until now, I've avoided the topic as too big, too complex, too fast-moving, too depressing. Particularly depressing is the schizophrenic societal response to the virus, as people simultaneously over- and under-react to the new circumstances.

Today, as Jessa and I helped Ellie move from her dormitory to an off-campus flat, I saw a whiteboard message left by another departing student:

COVID BACKWARDS IS DIVOC
WHAT DIVOC IS GOING ON?

What, indeed.

While the pandemic is an undeniably real-life topic, I'm happy to say that there are other topics that also represent real life, and I hope that readers—my friends, blog neighbours, and even "posterity"—will not mind if Flyover Country focuses for the time being on some of those. New photographs, new memories...perhaps, if I'm lucky, an insight here or there.

We're recently returned from the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi, so expect more soon. Thanks for reading, whoever you are, and be well.