Reporter’s Notebook: The Ups, But Mostly Downs of Traveling From West Virginia to Rome During COVID

ROME - “All changed, changed utterly,” Ireland’s WB Yeats once lamented in a poem. Being caught between the past and something as yet undefined being born is indeed discomfiting. Everything is familiar yet different. Yeats came to mind during my two-day journey this month back to my European home from the United States.

I am not sure I want to repeat the experience. The halcyon pre-COVID days of international travel are over — at least for the time being, and maybe for longer than we are willing to accept. “I call it COVID-crazy,” a JetBlue pilot lamented the night before I flew out from New York’s JFK airport. He agreed with President Joe Biden’s recent remark that the U.S. is on the move again — but he had a different perspective on it.