Placing an order for a coronavirus/positivity vaccine

AT LEAST WE’RE BEING KIND - The state or the ferry folks posted an electronic sign this week near the intersection of Cape Henlopen Drive and Freeman Highway on Lewes Beach. It’s visible primarily to folks getting off the ferry – when it is running. A two-part message: OUT OF STATE RESIDENTS - MANDATORY QUARANTINE STAY HOME. It’s a temporary sign, we hope. Beneath and just behind the sign is another smaller sign, a more permanent installation, a more permanent message: Thanks For Visiting.

APRIL IS THE CRUELEST MONTH - Poet T.S. Eliot. And here comes April. As I’m writing this, it’s gray and blowing outside, 42 degrees. April 1 but no April Fools joke. Still, the daffodils, the redbuds and the tulips sing out their perennial chorus of beauty. Keep the Faith.

ENGINEERING A VIRUS OF POSITIVITY - Placing my order now to those brilliant scientists working to understand the trending coronavirus.

As you’re working your beautiful minds, employing mystical technologies like that gene-editing crispr approach I keep reading about, please tweak the fundamental human genetic structure to allow it to release more positive creativity.

I’m thinking about a hybrid vaccine that not only stops the negative and debilitating effects of the coronavirus, but which – while circulating in our blood systems – also helps mutate the genetic structure of our electrical systems so that our positive actions and attitudes naturally outweigh our negative actions.

I think about this when I study a photograph in the Cape Gazette of volunteers preparing bag lunches for hungry people struggling – particularly in the time of corona – to make ends meet. I think about that when I hear stories of local restaurateurs and friends preparing dozens and dozens of lunches, and delivering them to healthcare workers at Beebe facilities.

Selfless kindness. That’s what drives hope and faith.

And no, my hybrid virus idea didn’t come to me when I was smoking an exotic varietal, and no, I don’t have any of it to sell, and no, it didn’t arise when I was staring in the fire I lit this morning for ambience on this April 1 morning.

The fire is because of April’s cruel start and the fact that last night when I was carrying in firewood I left the porch door unlatched, giving the wind an opportunity to open it while I slept, allowing the plunging mercury to steal its way in from the outside, and combining with a broken heating system to chill the house.

But the crackling fire did punctuate my dawn meditation and coaxed my thoughts toward the hybrid positivity vaccine. If the vaccine could ease the nuclear energies locked up in the ego center of our brain and allow those energies to make their way toward the more creative reaches of our minds – like firewood releasing its stored energies to create heat (look up entropy) – then perhaps we would see even more of the kind and caring acts that are spicing this current catastrophe.

Yes, as with my good friend Bruce, “Pollyanna” is one of my favorite movies. That and “Forrest Gump.”

CHIP THOMPSON OF ATLANTIC Transportation is a man who appreciates gratitude and wears his heart on his sleeve. He has placed full-page ads from time to time in the Cape Gazette trumpeting gratitude, and he was in the thick of organizing local post-Hurricane Sandy relief efforts several years back when that storm created such devastation in the seaside resort communities of our cousins up in New Jersey.

Now, with his fleet and employees idled by corona’s economic hurricane, Chip’s positive juices are flowing. He was asked to bring one of his large buses to a southeastern Sussex community and join in an evening celebration of community – of course with proper distancing and isolation. The idea is, he would post positive messages on the brightly lit sides of the bus and drive slowly through the neighborhood spreading encouragement as part of the organized effort.

The initiative is akin to a plan by a group in Lewes to meet at a certain time in proximity to Beebe’s main hospital in Lewes and overtly express their appreciation for the healthcare workers and first responders.

Chip is wondering now whether he should do the same with his bus in communities around Lewes and Rehoboth as part of the antidote to the depressing virus. That would help punctuate the bond and connections among all of us, especially when people are isolated in their homes with far less social contact than usual.

I say go for it, Chip. The more positive we are, the stronger we are.

ABRAXAS STRIKES AGAIN - My artist friend, who drew attention recently to old ship wreckage at the point of Cape Henlopen, sent me a related image.

Howard Pyle, part of the Brandywine school of art that also includes such notables as N.C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Ethel P.B. Leach and Orville Peets, was also part of the scene that led to creation of the Rehoboth Art League. Known for his depictions of pirates, Pyle used Delaware’s coastal scenery for some of his illustrations.

The image Abraxas sent me shows a Pyle painting titled “Marooned” depicting a despondent sailor totally alone and presumably abandoned by his shipmates. Brax wrote: “Apparently, the idea is that it’s the point... Crashing ocean waves in the distance and bay waves lapping in the foreground.”  Look closely for the subtle but distinguishable lapping waves.

Looking at the marooned sailor makes me think he could definitely use a dose of that positivity vaccine.