Anissa Thompson
During my hour of designated media consumption, I realized that this experiment of immersion was no different than normal. It really hit me particularly hard that during this Covid-plagued era, I personally have been living near 24/7 in an environment jam-packed with technology and disruptions from other people. Speaking of Covid, as I sit here on my laptop and listening to CNN I’m made aware of all of the new variants from around the world that have now made their way into the United States. Next, a clip of Dr. Fauci once again trying to explain to people that by taking the vaccine they will not only protect themselves but protect others by halting the alarming spread of new variants which will consequently result in another surge of cases if not taken seriously. I turn to MSNBC and am greeted by the changes in the White House revolving around climate change. I knew that a lot in this department had been going on but hadn’t really yet taken a good chunk of time to actually listen to the changes. I’m most excited to hear about conservation efforts for federal water and land being put in place after 4 years of seemingly nothing going on in that department along with the suspension of the Keystone pipeline. After few ads ranging from campaigns for charitable organizations and insurance companies, I decide it’s time for another change. I end up back at CNN where their own chief medical correspondent, Dr. Gupta, to reiterate the safety and importance of the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson vaccines. I feel bad for these doctors working in public health just trying to better our society, they must feel so ignored. Now they know what it’s like to be a climate scientist. I also feel like I’ve been watching the same sad news for almost 11 whole months now. Inside it feels so hectic.
For my hour of receiving information from the outdoor naturalistic environment, I got as close as I could to a complete removal of myself from other people. I live near old town Alexandria so the best place I could go to with very little human disturbance. The location that I sat in for an hour was part of the Arlington National Cemetery and I’m not sure if this counts because they’re technically are people here, I just didn’t see any of them. The information that I’m receiving is that it’s quiet, cold, lightly snowing, and I only saw one small rodent quickly scurry up a large tree for a brief moment. After walking around all the other nearby cemeteries within the larger complex, there’s a huge increase in the new plots. Although there are no funeral services occurring now, I see somewhere around 50 freshly dug plots becoming lined at their bottoms with the falling snow, way more than there would usually be a year ago. For those who still believe that Covid isn’t real, I would hope that they have a different opinion after seeing what lies in the cemetery. At the very least, the outside is calm.
From these two hours of gathering information in different settings, I realized how repetitive the news we receive through media truly is if we are constantly surrounded by it. Seeing the uptick in Covid cases and deaths on the news seems as if it is part of our normality now but when walking outside and seeing the true effects without any human bias around it feels rawer than hearing updated numbers every day. Being in an environment that’s not disturbed by human input forces you to look at the deeper meaning behind what you’re seeing as there are no distractions to pull your mind away from what’s in front of you.