Personal Note: I got Covid, Urgh

Today is Monday the 10th.  So last Wednesday night (the 5^th) it felt a little funny in my chest.  I thought I might be coming down with something.  I woke up Thursday nauseous with dry heaves.  I even teleworked in the morning and took the afternoon sick.  Eventually I was just out of it.  It became hell.  The fever wasn’t high (less than 101F) but I wonder if I was even reading it right.  I was in a delirious state.  Waking up at one point I thought it was the next day. I noticed on Friday morning from my daily pill box that I had already taken Friday's meds.

It felt like my body was encircled by some electric charge and was just trying to survive.  He was ready to have me go to Emergency Room. My screaming out scared Matthew, who had come in the bedroom to check on me. Probably should have sent me to the ER. If it were me watching someone else in that state I would have too. I don’t think my wife ever realized what state I was in.  I had crawled into bed in the middle of the day and time seemed to vanish. 

I felt better on Friday morning but someone suggested I check for Covid. I had my wife pick up a test kit and sure enough I tested positive. I called my doctor and we set up a telehealth visit as they call it. He asked about my temperature (which was oscillating between normal and 101F), looked over my recent blood test on file, asked when I felt it come on, and prescribed Paxlovid.  Doctor said I should quarantine through Tuesday.  I still had recurring chills but after the first dose of Paxlovid that night I started to feel better. There was no fever on Saturday, Sunday, nor today, but a general weakness. 

Today even the nasal congestion seems to have let up.  I feel pretty well.  I happen to speak to a nurse today—about something else actually—and she said that today the flu might be harsher than Covid.  Hmm, I would agree except for what I experienced on Thursday afternoon.  When I spoke to the doctor on Friday, he seemed surprised this was my first time getting Covid.  Is it that common that everyone gets it now?

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The story has more to it than my experience.  My wife had been sick before me and was still coughing and occasionally feeling run down.  I told her she should check herself for Covid, so she got herself a test kit and also tested positive.  So this was beginning to make sense.  Her mother has been in a nursing home for over a month and a half.  More on that below.  But the floor of my mother-in-law’s room had a Covid outbreak last week, and still does.  My mother-in-law didn’t get Covid but my wife must have picked it up in one of her daily visits.  Nursing homes are just germ magnets, depositories, and dispensaries. 

My wife’s symptoms were nothing as severe as mine, though hers seem to be lasting longer, probably because she has not been prescribed Paxlovid.  This makes me wonder why my body reacted so to the Covid initially.  It reminds me of my first reaction to the Covid-19 vaccine which I detailed here several years ago.  That post was titled, “Knocked on My Butt By the Vaccine.”  Perhaps I’m more reactive to Covid than others.

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My mother-in-law fell at the beginning of the December.  She fractured her skull, had a brain bleed, they resolved the bleed, but that developed into blood clots, blood clots got into her lungs which nearly killed her, but they resolved that.  You can see I've honed that story down to its bare elements from frequent retelling.  She was three weeks in the ICU.  The day before Christmas Eve she was discharged to a nursing home, and she's been there since.  As you can imagine, this was pretty challenging, especially for my wife, and it still is. 

As it happens, the nursing/rehab facility is very close to our house.  It's less than a mile.  We go back and forth regularly.  The first time she seemed out of it but in time her brain seemed to be getting sharper. Initially she responded very slow and deliberately but now seems to have total comprehension. It took her a while to get up out of bed.  There was nothing physically wrong with her body but perhaps atrophy from being in bed so long.  After a good month of rehab now she has been able to walk up and down the floor with a walker and a cane, go up and down stairs, and fully function as a solitary person.  Today we even got the great news she will be discharged from rehab facility at the end of next week.

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So let’s end with a song that came to mind as I reflected on my Thursday afternoon delirium.  It’s a song that came off the Rolling Stones’ album that came out last year, “Sweet Sounds of Heaven” of the album Hackney Diamonds.   Many of you know I’m a big Rolling Stones fan, and, while I would agree their later years have been of mixed quality, this album is a glorious return to what I think is just short of their all time great ones.  I highly recommend Hackney Diamonds and perhaps one day I’ll have a post on it.

For now I’m going to highlight “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” a gospel tune that is uncharacteristically Christian in outlook for the Stones.  Featured on the record are Lady Gaga (vocals), Stevie Wonder (piano and organ), and saxophonist James King.  Wow is not nearly expressive enough.  Here’s the song first, but then I’ll explain why this song came to mind after.

 

Here are most of the lyrics as well.

 

Sweet Sounds of Heaven

(Jagger/Richards)

 

I hear the sweet, sweet sounds of Heaven

Fallin' down, fallin' down to this Earth

I hear the sweet, sweetest sounds of Heaven

Driftin' down, driftin' down to this Earth

 

Bless the father, bless the son

Hear the sound of the drums

As it echoes through the valley

And it bursts, yeah

Let no woman or child

Go hungry tonight

Please protect us from the pain

And the hurt, yeah

 

I smell the sweet scents, sweet

Sweet scents of Heaven, Heaven

Tumblin' down, tumblin' down

Tumblin' down to the Earth (Oh)

I hear the sweet sounds, sweet sounds

The sweet sounds, ooh, the sweet sounds of children

And they're praisin', praisin'

The land of their birth (No)

 

No, I'm not, not goin' to Hell

In some dusty motel

And I'm not, not goin' down

In the dirt (Yes, yes, yes)

I'm gonna laugh, I'm gonna laugh, I'm gonna cry, I'm gonna cry

Eat the bread, drink the wine

'Cause I'm finally, finally quenchin'

My thirst, yeah

 

You can't have a light without a little shadow, yeah

Always need a target for your bow and arrow

I want to be drenched in the rain of your heavenly love

Oh, yeah, c'mon (Oh)

 

Let the music, let the music play loud, play loud

Let it burst, let it burst through the clouds, through the clouds

And we all feel the heat

Of the sun, yeah

Yeah, let us sing, let us shout, let us shout

Let us all stand up proud

Let the old still believe

That they're young, yeah

 

Sweet, sweet sound

 

Sounds so sweet, oh, so sweet

Sounds so sweet, so sweet

Heaven, Heaven

Down

Fallin' down, fallin' down

To this Earth

 

That’s pretty religious for Mick Jagger.  You know he supposedly had converted to Catholicism for his first wife, though he’s never spoken about any religious upbringing, so I doubt it was much.

So why am I reminded of this song?  Well, lying in bed in a delirious state felt so isolating, so other worldly that it felt the end was a possibility.  The verses, “No, I'm not, not goin' to Hell/In some dusty motel/And I'm not, not goin' down/In the dirt” resonate.  If you’ve ever been a way alone (business trips for me) in some crappy hotel, the isolation feels overwhelming with perhaps a sense that if I died here no one would really know.  It’s actually a horrible feeling that I’ve had more than once.  Perhaps in that delirious state, eyes half open in a darkened bedroom, alone and feeling almost out of body, might be as close to a premonition of death as one gets.  At least as I’ve gotten.

But then the sweet grace, the sweet sounds, the sweet sense of heaven came down and revived me.  Thank you Lord.

Edit: It's unclear whether Mick Jagger converted to Catholicism or even had a need to convert.  From what I found on the internet, Mick Jagger's father, Basil Fanshawe “Joe” Jagger, had a Catholic funeral.  There are places that claim Mick was raised Catholic.  Still I doubt religion was a big part of his upbringing.

Music Tuesday: Violets for Your Furs by Frank Sinatra

When John Sterling, the great radio announcer for the NY Yankees, retired on April 15^th this year at the of 85, I caught a few outgoing interviews, and in one interview that got into his life and loves he was asked his favorite song.  His reply surprised me.  It was Frank Sinatra’s “Violets for Your Furs.”  I have a few of Frank Sinatra’s discs, and I not only did not have that song on any of them, but I had never even heard of the song.  Of all the great Sinatra songs, he loves that one the best?  I have forgotten everything from that interview, except for this tidbit of a factoid.  I searched the song out and heard it and it has really grown on me.

It was recorded by Sinatra in 1941 with the great Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, and it’s a song describing a man giving his love violets for her fur coat.  It is said that Sinatra sang this for Lana Turner, his current love at the time. 

 

Violets for Your Furs

by Matt Dennis with words by Tom Adair

 

It was winter in Manhattan, falling snow flakes filled the air

The streets were covered with a film of ice

But a little simple magic that I heard about somewhere

Changed the weather all around, just within a trice

 

I bought you violets for your furs

And it was spring for a while, remember?

I bought you violets for your furs

And there was April in that December

 

The snow drifted down on the flowers

And it melted where it lay

The snow looked like dew on the blossoms

As on a summer day

 

I bought you violets for your furs

And there was blue in the wintry sky

Then you pinned the violets to your furs

And gave a lift to the crowds passing by

 

You smiled at me so sweetly

Since then one thought occurs

That we fell in love completely

The day that I bought you violets for your furs

 

Here is the lovely rendition.

 

It’s definitely in the early Sinatra crooning style.  It’s a lovely song, and I can see how the song can bring memories of a love.  I love the musical arrangement which I think highlights a piano, a violin, and I think a clarinet.  It may never be my favorite Sinatra song—it must have particular memories for John Sterling—but one I will never forget.

Music Tuesday: Rest in Peace Jimmy Buffett

Jimmy Buffett passed away on September 1^st from a form of skin cancer.  In memoriam I decided to post a commemoration.  I am not a huge fan, but the man did have a few songs I liked.  Let’s start with an obituary.  I think The Guardian captured it well.  

Jimmy Buffett, who has died aged 76, was an American singer-songwriter whose country-tinged soft rock celebrated the laid-back culture of the Florida Keys on the Caribbean coast of the US. Sometimes known as the “tropical troubadour”, his songs often featured the voices of characters who appreciated the aimless pleasures of beach life: smoking weed, drinking rum and eating boiled shrimps, messing around in boats and generally watching the world go by.

His life is summarized with three paragraphs.

Buffett was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi, but grew up in the nearby port town of Mobile in Alabama, where his parents, James and Mary (nee Peets), both worked in administrative roles for the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company. After attending McGill–Toolen Catholic high school he went to Auburn University in Alabama, where he took up the guitar, neglected his studies and dropped out after a year. Restarting his education at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, he graduated with a history degree in 1969.

 

After a period playing in clubs in New Orleans, Buffett moved in 1970 to Nashville, Tennessee, to record his first low-key album, Down to Earth, while working as a journalist on Billboard music magazine.

 

In 1971 he gave up on writing in favour of relocating to Key West, an island in the Straits of Florida that is nearer to Cuba than Miami. In what was then a rather run-down, pre-tourist-boom setting, he generally lived the life he sang about in his songs – busking, playing in bars for drinking money, hiring himself out as a crew member on yachts and lazing around in the sun.

What is interesting in that little summary is that he grew up Catholic, and there are a number of articles that expressed how Catholicism influenced his work.  Here is an article from the National Catholic Register, “Jimmy Buffett: More Catholic Than You Think?”    

 

The “Margaritaville” singer was raised Catholic, though he did not — at least openly — appear to practice his faith later in life. But according to one commentator, Buffett’s music contained — at least upon closer examination — some deeper, and arguably Catholic, themes, especially when it came to the importance of balancing work and play.

Frankly, I’m unconvinced.  Buffett doesn’t express a balance of work and play.  He played in a semi-hedonistic way.  As I surveyed his songs, I was surprised how much boozing and drugs were on display.  He was indulgent to the max.  His biggest hit is “Margaritaville,” with the central verse, “Wasted away again in Margaritaville.”  He has songs titled “Why Don’t We Get Drunk,” and I won’t repeat the verse that follows the title verse, and another called “The Wino and I Know,” “Too Drunk to Karaoke.”  I would say more songs than not have abuse of alcohol or drugs or sex involved.  So no, I don’t think he had much Catholicism in his music.

At his best he had an ability to present a story within the structure of a song, and often those songs have nifty, winsome lyrics.  Here is his greatest hit where he tells the story of some botched affair. 

 

In addition to the story of being stone drunk from a split with a woman, his progression in the closing of the chorus lines (from “Some people claim that there's a woman to blame/But I know it's nobody's fault” to “Now I think, - hell it could be my fault” to finally “And I know it's my own damn fault”) shows a sobering contrition, and really makes the song special.

Some of his other hits include “Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes,” “Cheeseburger in Paradise, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” “Come Monday,” and others.  His songs seem to break down into three types: a winsome story, a story of indulgence, and a contemplative song.  I found his contemplative songs to be more interesting.  I had not realized until I did this research how contemplative his songs could be.  Here is a very early on in his career, one where he had not developed his Gulf Coast subject matter.  “He Went to Paris.”

 

Here’s the closing stanza

 

Now he lives in the islands, fishes the pilin's

And drinks his green label each day

He's writing his memoirs and losing his hearing

But he don't care what most people say

Through eighty-six years of perpetual motion

If he likes you he'll smile then he'll say

Jimmy, some of it's magic, some of it's tragic

But I had a good life all the way

 

And he went to Paris looking for answers

To questions that bother him so

It’s a folksy, country song but it shows most of the style of his later work: the highly developed storyline, the frequent internal rhyming, and the settling into the Gulf lifestyle.

I think one of my favorites is “A Pirate Looks at Forty.”  Here is a live version with Sarah McLanahan.

 

The lyrics are worth having in front of you.

 

Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call

Wanted to sail upon your waters

Since I was three feet tall

You've seen it all, you've seen it all

 

Watch the men who rode you

Switch from sails to steam

And in your belly you hold the treasure

That few have ever seen, most of them dreams

Most of them dreams

 

Yes, I am a pirate two hundred years too late

The cannons don't thunder there's nothin' to plunder

I'm an over forty victim of fate

Arriving too late, arriving too late

 

I've done a bit of smugglin'

I've run my share of grass

I made enough money to buy Miami

But I pissed it away so fast

Never meant to last, never meant to last

 

I have been drunk now for over two weeks

I passed out and I rallied and I sprung a few leaks

But I've got to stop wishin'

Got to go fishin', I'm down to rock bottom again

Just a few friends, just a few friends

 

[Instrumental]

 

I go for younger women, lived with several awhile

And though I ran away, they'll come back one day

And still could manage a smile

It just takes awhile, just takes awhile

 

Mother, mother ocean, after all these years I've found

My occupational hazard being my occupation's just not around

I feel like I've drowned

Gonna head uptown

The ocean as a mother image and his desire to sail and live off the ocean, good and bad leads to some reflection and assessment.

“Biloxi” perhaps a return to folk music seems to hint at his autobiography.

 

Down around Biloxi

Pretty girls are dancin' in the sea

They all look like sisters in the ocean

The boy will fill his pail with salty water

And the storms will blow from off towards New Orleans

 

Sun shines on Biloxi

Air is filled with vapors from the sea

Boy will dig a pool beside the ocean

He sees creatures from his dream underwater

And the sun will set from off towards New Orleans

 

Stars can see Biloxi

Stars can find their faces in the sea

We are walking down beside the ocean

We are splashing naked in the water

And the sky is red from off towards New Orleans

And the sky is red from off towards New Orleans

 

Down around Biloxi

Pretty girls are swimming in the sea

They all look like sisters in the ocean

The boy will fill his pail with salty water

And the storms will blow from off toward New Orleans

 

Is he the boy with the pail?  It seems so.

I would be remiss if I didn’t provide an example of a fast paced, Caribbean sailor song.  Here’s “One Particular Harbor.”

 

Finally, let end with one song I think captures the essence of Jimmy Buffett, storyteller, native sprout of the Gulf coast, and contemplative rascal, “"Son Of A Son Of A Sailor.”  Here is a live version with an interesting intro.

 

His fans are referred to as "Parrotheads," and you can see people in the audience wearing those funny head wear.

The lyrics are wonderful.

 

As the son of a son of a sailor

I went out on the sea for adventure

Expanding their view of the captain and crew

Like a man just released from indenture

 

As a dreamer of dreams and a travelin' man

I have chalked up many a mile

Read dozens of books about heroes and crooks

And I've learned much from both of their styles

 

Son of a son, son of a son, son of a son of a sailor

Son of a gun; load the last ton

One step ahead of the jailer

 

Now away in the near future, southeast of disorder

You can shake the hand of the mango man

As he greets you at the border

 

And the lady she hails from Trinidad

Island of the spices

Salt for your meat and cinnamon sweet

And the rum is for all your good vices

 

Haul the sheet in as we ride on the wind that our

Forefathers harnessed before us

Hear the bells ring as the tight rigging sings

It's a son of a gun of a chorus

 

Where it all ends I can't fathom, my friends

If I knew, I might toss out my anchor

So I'll cruise along always searchin' for songs

Not a lawyer, a thief or a banker

 

But a son of a son, son of a son, son of a son of a sailor

Son of a gun, load the last ton

One step ahead of the jailer

I'm just a son of a son, son of a son, son of a son of a sailor

The sea's in my veins, my tradition remains

I'm just glad I don't live in a trailer

 

Well, he is no longer sailing and searching for songs.  May he have found peace in the Lord in the end and his Catholic faith shaped his destiny.  Eternal rest in peace.

Tony Bennett, In Memoriam

I’m sure you have heard the great singer, crooner Tony Bennett died on July 21^st.  He was 96 years old, and in recent years suffered from Alzheimer’s, diagnosed back in 2016.  Still he performed several times in recent years.  From the L.A. TimesObituary.  

 

Tony Bennett, the enduring New York City crooner who famously left his heart in San Francisco and melted hearts all over the world during his more than seven decades on the music scene, died Friday. He was 96, just two weeks short of his birthday.

His birthday was on August 3^rd, today, and the Federal government has declared in his honor to be Tony Bennett Day.  

I’m going to honor him with a few selections that captures his style and grace.  He had a lovely slow way of crooning, shown here in “When Joanna Loved Me.”  Notice the articulation and phrasing.  Just perfection.

 

 

From an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, “Stranger in Paradise.”  The pitch of the long  notes makes the song.

 

I think Bennett excelled in the jazzy pieces from the American songbook.  “The Best is Yet to Come” is probably more associated with Frank Sinatra but I think Bennett outs his personal stamp on it that makes it his own.

 

But if you think Bennett and Sinatra were rivals, Sinatra paid him the highest compliment.  From the obit:

“He excites me when I watch him — he moves me,” Sinatra said in a 1965 Life magazine article. “He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more. There’s a feeling in back of it.”

Tony had a special relationship with Lady Gaga in his later years.  Here he does a duet with her, “The Lady is a Tramp.”

 

This Irving Berlin song for me is the quintessential Tony Bennett song, jazzy, American, and with a hint of living a classy life.  I love his rendition of “Steppin Out With My Baby.”

 

There was something very American in Tony Bennett’s voice.  I can’t put my finger on it, but his voice just exudes an American.  Yes, he was an Italian-American, but his voice speaks of the melting pot of the big American city.

 

Anthony Dominick Benedetto was born Aug. 3, 1926, in Long Island City, N.Y., the third child of Giovanni Benedetto, a grocer, and his wife, Anna. He grew up in the working-class Astoria neighborhood of Queens, which Bennett once described as “a lot like a small Midwestern town.”

 

When he was 10, his father died and his mother struggled to maintain the family as a seamstress.

 

Always interested in singing, Bennett made his first public performance at 9 at a local political gathering, and by the time he was a teenager, he was performing in clubs as Joe Bari, a name he chose because he thought it sounded less ethnic. He attended the School of Industrial Arts in Manhattan, although he didn’t graduate. By 16, he was trying to make a living working as an elevator operator and a copy boy for the Associated Press, before breaking into show business as a singing waiter in Astoria.

From Astoria to perhaps the song of the city he is most known for, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

 

Finally, this rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” just blows me away.  This shows exactly what Frank Sinatra said in the quote above, Bennett captures exactly what the composer had in mind.

 

Somewhere over the rainbow, Tony Bennett now rests in eternal peace.  Thank you dear man.