How the pandemic ruined happenstance and serendipity
I wrote in the Literary Review of Canada. It’s an idea I had for "Field Notes from a Pandemic" that never really made it into the book.
In the television series The Newsroom, the young producer Maggie Jordan lands her biggest scoop when she overhears a bureaucrat on a train. It’s not really that far-fetched: I once sat beside a Liberal operative on a flight to Vancouver, and our conversation became the basis of an article I published in the Independent. A friend, an interior designer, got her start when she sat beside her future boss at a conference. I also know an artist whose career was sparked while queuing for a music festival. A random sixtysomething man simply asked her the most random of questions: “What do you think about when you aren’t thinking of anything?” Until then, she seemed destined to be a mechanic.
Now with COVID-19, we take fewer train and plane rides; our conferences and festivals are virtual; and with physical distancing measures and many venues accepting only pre-bookings, our interactions with the outside world are increasingly antithetical to chance. We no longer talk to strangers. We have fewer serendipitous encounters. And we lose something important as a result — even if it’s hard to define and quantify.
That is from an essay I wrote in the Literary Review of Canada. It’s an idea I had for my book Field Notes from a Pandemic that never really made it into the book.
In other ideas that never made it into the book, I wrote in TVO:
As a journalist and frequent FOI-request [Freedom of Information] filer, I see one of the most underrated consequences of the pandemic as the breakdown of the system that deals with such requests … Transparency is not a privilege but a right, and a right needs no justification, for the books of the government are the books of the people.
A deleted chapter of Field Notes from a Pandemic is published in Great Canadian Longform:
No matter what country you govern, no matter your position, there is something nearly every world leader has done amid the COVID-19 pandemic: making a war reference … Perhaps, like how bones ache ahead of the storm, in that primal part of us, there was an inkling that the impact of COVID-19 will be like that of war.
Upcoming public appearances, all times Eastern
10:15 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 11, CTV Calgary Morning Live
1:50 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12, CTV Calgary Noon News
9 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12, Calgary’s Wordfest
9 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18, Calgary Public Library
CBC Calgary The Homestretch with Doug Dirks, taped interview to air soon.
TVO’s The Agenda, date to be confirmed.