Ehlana and Ethan:
Happy 14th Birthday, Brandon Green!
Our last day of March has been very busy, and while we offered Brandon best wishes and a little birthday gift and card; we left it up to his family and friends to handle making his special day a good one. Weather-wise, we’ve had a mixed bag with some rain, thunderstorms, and breaks in the weather that were still warm with a high this afternoon that still hit the low-eighties. That didn’t matter that much to us because we needed to be indoors most of the time for school, band practice, and our final teen praise team practice ahead of the Easter sunrise service.
There wasn’t any special news from our academic adventures – though there was one test and we turned in a project ahead of the deadline on Thursday. The school band practice was good; we had a break for dinner with Mom and Dad and a bit of studying; and then we moved on to the church for the teen praise team practice. That was a full rehearsal for the sunrise service, so we had all of the teens involved for the music, skits, and everything else; we where there for more than two hours; and then we came home to a work and Magi lesson session in the office with Mom and Dad. Time phasing allowed us to get about three hours of work done; and now we’re wrapping up our day and the month with the bedtime computing and twin chat fun.
While we’d like to take another night off from world news, we should report that the Iran war idiocy continues; and the politicians are continuing the nonsense on all fronts. Today, our own leaders managed to do everything from claim victory to insult western allies for refusing to join the war effort and ‘save themselves’ from the economic harm that we’ve instigated by attacking Iran. President Trump is also declaring that the Gulf nations will be required to pay ‘our’ costs for the war; claims that ‘we’ are going to take over the Iranian oil and gas fields and infrastructure; and they will all allow that to happen because he will force them to do it. Ethan and I are sure that this war will not end that way, but then we are still most-worried about having Israeli or American leaders will get desperate and escalate to nuclear war. If that happens, it will not matter if they use tactical nukes or larger ordinance.
That’s too-dark for any night, but before we wrap this up we want to cover some economic issues that continue to escalate around the world. While market prices are heavily skewed by attempts to control them, actual economics on the ground are starting to happen. Jet fuel prices are in the news as actual shortages show up in different countries, and price isn’t really the issue – it is having jet fuel available at any price in some countries. That might not seem like a big deal, but beyond rising costs for all of those military operations in the Middle East; the rest of the world has more to worry about as we head toward summer and travel seasons that will definitely be affected if prices rise to the point that commercial flying for things like vacations become unaffordable. Add in extra costs for freight flights; and that will damage industries from online retail to hotels and tourism. Other stories include shortages for fertilizer that will cause problems for crops through the rest of the year; since that could affect crop yields through the summer and fall and then cause food shortages for a year or more. There are other raw products that will soon cause issues for production of everything from computer chips to plastic garbage bags, but energy shortages are also starting to require some countries to ration various fuels and natural gas. That will eventually require the need for some high energy use manufacturing to slow down or stop production either due to shortages or because costs rise so high that they can’t make money on their products or stay competitive. Our point here is that even if the war stopped tomorrow – and not as an April Fool’s Day joke; it will take months or more than a year just to recover from the damage already being done. That isn’t new news for our journals, but it deserves repeating; since every day that the war continues; the worse the damage will be to the world economy.
Ethan and I are ready to get some sleep; so that’s all for this update and we’ll be back with our next report next month.
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
