ghost of miles

Getting worse in Monroe County, though not "bad--real bad." Yet.

Yes, the USPS has become political, much like the pandemic. I'll refrain from expressing who bears the overwhelming burden of responsibility for that, and say this instead--it's hard to keep politics out of certain topics when certain entities, governmental and otherwise, insist on making them political.

Yeah, that was the daily outrage for yesterday. Unbelievable, what's happening in this country. But that's been an MO in more than one instance--instead of actually trying to do whatever's possible to significantly contain the pandemic, distort or downplay its effects by any means necessary.

Florida reports record single-day number of Covid-19 deaths. Also second-highest day of new infections.

Yeah, I don't know--I did a search for the latest articles about Arizona on Twitter after reading your post, and they didn't really reflect an improvement in the situation. I assume you might be referring to these two AZCentral articles? Arizona hospital numbers stay high, fall short of record Arizona data shows "some encouraging signs" that outbreak is moderating ... but even those signs seem to indicate only a potential flattening after a number of record-shattering spikes. So not sure there's much positive to report in that regard... just that it may not be getting worse, bad as it's already gotten? Obviously that is good news, if they might at least be plateauing. From the first article: For the second day in a row, none of the hospital-reported metrics hit new records. Over the past several weeks, at least one of the measures had hit a record nearly every day. Inpatient hospitalizations, ICU beds in use, ventilators in use and emergency department visits by suspected and confirmed COVID-19 patients all hovered near their highest recorded levels, according to Wednesday's hospital data reported to the state. Public health experts have begun to notice signs Arizona's COVID-19 outbreak may be moderating, but more time is needed to know for sure. Identified cases rose to 134,613 and known deaths total 2,492, according to the daily report by the Arizona Department of Health Services. Thursday's dashboard shows 87% of current inpatient beds and 89% of ICU beds were in use, which includes people being treated for COVID-19 and other patients. Overall, 53% of ventilators were in use.

Thanks for such an in-depth review--you've really whetted my appetite to hear it.

Toronto Blue Jays may have to play home games in New York or Florida The Canadian govt understandably doesn’t seem too keen on letting them travel to and from one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to coronavirus response and current infection rates.

Red Sox place three pitchers on the IL Erod (their top starter) and two of their primary relievers. Reason not stated in the announcement, but apparently all three tested positive for Covid-19.

Thanks much for the update. Looks like Ricky's new book is slated for a Sept 1 release: Heart Full Of Rhythm: The Big Band Years Of Louis Armstrong

Up today in honor of Paul Gonsalves' centenary: Off The A-Train: Paul Gonsalves 1957-1963

That's a damn good book! Yankee closer Aroldis Chapman tests positive for Covid-19 ...and all players who test positive have to test negative twice after their quarantine before coming back. So Chapman's most likely not going to be on the field until several weeks into the season at the earliest--and that's assuming that he has a good recovery. He's reportedly experiencing mild symptoms at this point. Also, Joel Sherman predicts many more players will opt out of playing the 2020 season, especially once they hit whatever number of service days advances them another year in that regard. I think organized sports in general is going to be operating at near-disaster status (if at all) in the coming months.

Yet another: San Antonio patient in 30s dies after attending "COVID party" I read the Richard Rose story this morning before seeing the latest posts on this thread and had an initial reaction of compassion, thinking that I don't take any told-you-so pleasure in reading these ever-increasing stories about COVID truthers who've gotten sick and died. But OTOH I have nothing but rage for the whole climate of toxic leadership (if you can call it that) that's contributed not only to such stupidity that endangers other people's lives as well as those who get sick and die (and that's the point of Medjuck's post--and if you read anything at all about Rose's behavior, it's quite likely that he may have infected quite a few other people, judging from his Facebook check-ins, etc) and the partisan ignorance and hatred that's made it impossible for us to fight this virus collectively. And yes, the blame for that goes 100% to one "side," the same "side" that's chosen to make everything a g.d. side and demonize those who disagree. It's one thing for us to differ about the best policies or general ideologies to govern a country, quite another when blind hatred and willful delusion results in a plague getting further and further out of control. So while I feel genuine compassion even for somebody like Rose, part of my compassion stems from his being a buying-in victim of the vitriolic crap that helped enable this mess to become such a disaster in the first place. I worry for myself, most certainly, but I also worry for my girlfriend, my father, my two brothers who both work in "essential jobs" that require a high degree of interaction with others, and I worry for older friends (and younger ones as well). So I'm pretty fucking furious, especially when I look at how other countries responded to this so much more effectively. Life's hard enough without narcissistic partisan knuckleheads making everything that much more deadly. Bingo.

Just arrived, now playing!

On the very same page with you in all respects, Rooster.

From today's NY Times (it's from their Covid update stream, so I can't link directly to one specific piece)--we set another record for newly-reported cases in a single day yesterday with almost 60,000. Oh, and the death toll is starting to climb again, too: The growth in cases in the United States has continued to accelerate at alarming rates, even as other early hot spots curbed the spread of the virus. Italy set its single-day record for new cases on March 21 with 6,557, but it now reports fewer than 200 a day. Spain, which was averaging 8,000 new cases a day during its peak in April, now averages a little over 400 a day. And Britain, which was averaging 5,500 new cases a day in mid-April, now averages 537. In the United States, on the other hand, the outbreak is getting worse. Officials had hoped that the virus had reached its peak in the country in the spring, when it set a single-day record of 36,738 new cases on April 24. New cases did initially begin to decline after that, but continued to average more than 20,000 a day. And as states have eased restrictions and allowed more businesses to reopen, new cases have exploded in recent weeks. The contrast between the United States and the early European hot spots was underscored when, as hospitals across the American South and West were being flooded with virus patients, a hospital in the hard-hit province of Bergamo, Italy, which was once the center of the global outbreak, reported that its intensive care unit had no Covid-19 cases for the first time in 137 days.

From that article: (Ohio State athletic director Gene) Smith shares that concern about a fall season taking place. "I'm really concerned. ... I'm very concerned," Smith said. "In our last conversation, whenever that was, I was cautiously optimistic. I'm not even there now, when you look at the behavior of our country and you consider that in May we were on a downward trajectory with our [coronavirus] cases. ... Now we're, if not the worst in the world, one of the worst in the world. "I am concerned that we may not be able to play. Which is why we took the measure we took -- in order to try and have September available to us for conference games and give us the flexibility and control to handle disruptions if we're able to start a season. I'm concerned about where we are, just across the board, relative to the management of the pandemic as individuals." We didn't have to be here, but here we are. Deleting the rest of my comments because they are oh so very political. I think the point is that sadly plenty of people still seem to think or act otherwise, despite the wealth of information on this topic.

From Richard S. Ginell's notes to the Contemporary box-set, which reference the same Stereophile interview: Oddly enough, (Roy) DuNann was not a modern jazz fan; he liked the country-western tunes that he had been recording over at Capitol, and his favorite act in Koenig's stable was, of all things, the Banjo Kings on Good Time Jazz. One doesn't have to imagine his reaction to the Ornette Coleman sessions ("I would have sent him home," he told Stereophile Magazine in 2002). John Koenig remembers that DuNann used to scrawl sarcastic comments in pencil on the tape boxes (he labeled one of the selections from Coleman's first album "Butchered Blues"). Even so, DuNann and his former Capitol colleague Howard Holzer quietly engineered a legacy of recordings that have terrific presence and balance, and still sound better than many of the latest digital wonders.

Yeah, gotta admit I didn't know about the classical side of Contemporary, or had forgotten till I started rereading Ginell's essay for the box-set. Also that Koenig had worked as an assistant to William Wyler on films such as The Best Years Of Our Lives, Detective Story, and Roman Holiday, and that his career in the film industry was apparently derailed by his refusing to name names before HUAC. Or that he started Good Time Jazz as a vehicle for Firehouse Five Plus Two, and then essentially used the proceeds from the success of that label to indulge his more progressive bent with Contemporary. This reading stuff, I'll tell ya--it's educational!

Ditto--as mentioned on the jazz box-set thread, I just pulled this out for revisiting last night, and African-American artists seem well-represented. I realize it's almost as much of a cliche now to say "'West Coast jazz' was much more diverse than you've been led to believe!" as it's always been to say it was Chet Baker and a buncha Lighthouse All-Stars all playing on a beach somewhere, but Contemporary in particular has a really interesting discography.

I realize Jazzbo already answered your question--I snagged it a few years ago when the Fantasy box-sets were turning up online as cutouts at bargain prices, and when I was going through a period of new appreciation for such anthologies. It's an excellent overview of the label, with good historical notes by Richard S. Ginell, and really shows the range of so-called "West Coast jazz," at least as recorded by Lester Koenig. Well worth picking up if found for a reasonable price.

Last week’s Night Lights show highlighting pianist Ahmad Jamal’s run of albums for ABC and Impulse from 1968 to 1971 is up for online listening: The Second Great Trio: Ahmad Jamal On Impulse