Valentine's Day

I have been reading about how the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine works.  Unlike most vaccines, it does not contain weakened or inactivated virus.

“It instead contains a small stretch of genetic material known as messenger RNA or mRNA.  It instructs cells in the body to make a small piece of material that looks like a part of the virus. Those bits, in turn, get recognized by the immune system as a foreign invader, and it starts to make antibodies and immune cells that can recognize and neutralize the virus if the vaccinated person ever gets exposed.”

This process is at work already, my immunity building over the next two weeks.  A week or so after we receive the second shot on March 12, we will reach that 90% to 95% protection.  Of course, we still won’t be able to let our guard down as far as face masks and social distancing, but it undoubtedly will make us feel a little better about traveling and staying in motel rooms and perhaps even eating lunch in restaurants – distant memories all!  The alarming graph showing new infections in our country is finally heading downward.

I am thinking about all of this on this Valentine’s Day, which Martha and I are going to celebrate with take-out from a restaurant in Atlantic Beach called On The Rocks, which we have never patronized but which comes highly recommended.  We will have Oceanfront seating here in the condo!  And can listen to whatever kind of music we like, perhaps some nice Dinner Jazz.  We will try to avoid talking about what happened yesterday, when culminating several days of powerful and overwhelming evidence, the U. S. Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump of inciting an insurrection.  It was a foregone conclusion, of course, but I have to think that it accomplished some good by presenting to the public such a clear and irrefutable case against him.  We were also privileged to hear some eloquent and powerful speeches by the House Managers, which no doubt will be remembered in history.

I am an optimistic by nature, and I have to believe that, although he holds sway over most of the Republican Party, Trump’s power will begin to fade now that he is out of office.  Our new President has surrounded himself with competent and intelligent people, and he has distinguished himself throughout the trial by not making any comments about it, instead concentrating on his Covid-relief  package and vaccine distribution.  He is providing the leadership we so desperately need at this time in our history.

And Jill Biden!  Is there anybody other than the most die-hard anti-Biden people (and there are many out there according to what I still see on Facebook) who cannot admire this down-to-earth, intelligent, kind First Lady?  This is the display she erected on the White House lawn this week, her Valentine’s Day message for the nation.

Love.  Kindness.  Unity.  Compassion.  A kind of Messenger RNA to combat the virus of hatred and divisiveness that, while it will surely infect us again and again, may perhaps help us build up some immunity against it.

Politics has absorbed too much of our Sabbatical this winter, as I have said before in this blog.  Now perhaps we can turn the TV off and turn our attention again to practicing gratitude, delighting in the passing of the hours, the coming and going of the tides, the rise and fall of the wind, and the cooing of the Mourning Dove.