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Since we are being urged to think that we are in a “war” with Covid-19, I thought that I’d file the occasional dispatch from the front, from our very comfortable fox hole, distressingly much more comfortable than many dealing with Covid in other parts of the world.

This post is particularly timely since, had the world remained as it was on Jan 1, 2020 we would today be arriving in Istanbul en route to Iran for the beginning of a trip that both V and I were very much looking forward to. We had often thought about traveling to and in Iran for a number of years but something always came up and we continued to put it off. Finally last summer we decided that given our age and the storm clouds on the horizon over Washington and Tehran, we felt that we should do it sooner rather than later.
V’s researches turned up a clever, sophisticated, young Iranian woman who was a food blogger and who ran a cooking school in Tehran and we asked her if she would help us plan an itinerary and be our person on the ground locally. Since we don’t travel with tour groups, who usually take care of all the details, experience has taught us how important it is to have a local advocate on the spot if there are problems, to make sure we know the things to be aware of and to help mediate with local travel agents. V arranged a fee with her and set it up so that she was working directly for us and not for the local travel agents and hotels. We then spent a number of very interesting WhatsApp video meetings with her over the fall as we hammered out the itinerary and finalized the details of our trip.
Sadly it has all come to nought and I’m not sure that in the current state of the world now, and for the foreseeable future that this is a trip that we will ever be able to take. This is reminiscent of a trip that we were planning to take to Syria only to have our plans overtaken by the Days of Spring uprising in 2011 so this is not the first time this has happened. However our travel problems are of no consequence in the context of the devastation suffered by the Syrian people and the continuing turmoil in Iran.

I have been corresponding in recent days with a very good friend in Australia, a friend since the early 1970’s. I’ll just restate a couple of points that I wrote in my last email to him, I hope he won’t mind.

Point 1. Covid should be an instructive lesson for climate change deniers who seem to believe that any problems that might arise from their beliefs will manifest slowly and give coming generations lots of time to fix them. Systemic failures when they arise, as we are witnessing, replicate exponentially and will be fast, sharp and brutal, not gradual and manageable.

Point 2. The one thing that has had really very worried me since the beginning of the covid turmoil, as economies started shutting down and being force-fed with government debt, is the likelihood, already beginning to be seen, that governments faced with mountainous debt, will start printing money and rapidly expanding the money supply. Very high or stag (i)nflation is as worrying as Covid and its effects will last much longer and will ultimately cause even more pain and suffering. All fingers and toes crossed that this does not happen.

On a more cheerful note, as I was driving along River Street yesterday, my car being only one of three to be seen on a normally very busy street, I saw a young woman carrying a shopping bag on which was printed, “Sex, Drugs and Pinot Noir”. I thought it a recipe to help make the passing of the ample amounts of self-isolation time that we now have in abundance much more enjoyable and I determined to make this my motto. Now to tell V!

Stay in touch, much more to come!