John Prine peeled back the mysteries of ordinariness for Chicago fans - Chicago Tribune

Commentary: John Prine peeled back the mysteries of ordinariness for Chicago fans - Chicago Tribune: Commentary: News of John Prine's coronavirus diagnosis prompted tributes from across the country. The singer died Tuesday of complications of COVID-19.

John Prine And Stephen Colbert: "That's the Way the World goes Round" - YouTube

(11) John Prine And Stephen Colbert: "That's the Way the World goes Round" - YouTube: Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

Da

This movie is why I have decided I would like Cassius Costello to call me Da. It's a favorite of mine with Martin Sheen and my former acting teacher Bill Hickey. - Da

Van Morrison in lockdown: ‘I am trying to get back into writing songs’ | The Independent

Van at the Armstrong House in Queens, N

Van Morrison in lockdown: ‘I am trying to get back into writing songs’ | The Independent

by Martin Chilton

strange times. We were due to meet in London, during his Palladium residency, but instead he phones from Belfast, on the dot of the appointed time, joking about how he is “twiddling his thumbs”. He says that “like everyone else, I’m following the guidelines”.

Over the next hour, he talks with passion about books, jazz, blues, his youthful football-playing days and penning his memoir. Morrison, who turns 75 in August, has a sharp memory. Although he has been known to have fractious interviews, I find him friendly and happy to share anecdotes, his voice a mixture of a low drawl interspersed with sudden moments of lightness.Morrison has a new book of lyrics out with Faber called Keep ’Er Lit (the title tips a nod to his first book of lyrics, 2014’s Lit Up Inside). He is disappointed that his appearance at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival was cancelled. I wonder whether the enforced break has at least given him time to pen new songs? “I want to write, but I am kind of getting a bit lazy at the moment,” he says. “I was supposed to be doing six gigs in London, so I went from touring to basically just being at home. I am trying to get back into writing.”

***

His friend Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. Does Morrison consider lyric writing the equivalent of poetry? “Some of my works are just straight poetry, some could be a song or a poem and some are poetry with a music back-up, like ‘On Hyndford Street’, which was based on my early days, listening to my father’s record collection and Radio Luxembourg,” he replies. Morrison grew up in a street of small, terraced houses barely a mile from the Lagan river that runs through the centre of Belfast. “I have a book of Cole Porter’s songs and his lyrics are just poetry. I don’t think there is a lot of difference.”

Morrison’s work has always been full of literary references, from William Blake to Seamus Heaney, and he sometimes uses book titles for the names of songs, such as “Haunts of Ancient Peace”. He is intrigued when I tell him the phrase was first used by Alfred Tennyson in the 1840s. “Oh, was that a Tennyson thing?” asks Morrison. “I took that from a book title by Alfred Austin, but he must have got it from Tennyson.”

John Prine - critical CV19

An update on John pic.twitter.com/fPQbv0tLyB

— John Prine (@JohnPrineMusic) March 29, 2020

How they flattened the curve during the 1918 Spanish Flu

How they flattened the curve during the 1918 Spanish Flu

National Geographic

Biden on pulling together in this crisis

Today ⁦@jaketapper⁩ asked ⁦@JoeBiden⁩ what his message is to Americans who are afraid. If you’re feeling uneasy, uncertain or scared right now, listen to him talk about how we will get through this and how he’s so darn proud to be an American. pic.twitter.com/Hvk5FPOgzG

— Kate Bedingfield (@KBeds) March 24, 2020

Alarm sounded by Johns Hopkins Director of Health Security

We are stranded with a fool for a President, prancing in front of the cameras daily, unable to golf, suggesting we are going to be "opening up our country" soon.  Walking right off a cliff if we follow him.  This thread by Tom Inglesby the Director of Health Security at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health is a must read. - gwc

Alarm sounded by the Director of Health Security, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. https://t.co/YDGtCla9bi

— George Conk (@GeorgeConk) March 24, 2020

“Chinese Virus,” World Market | Online Only | n+1

“Chinese Virus,” World Market | Online Only | n+1

1. “Wuhan Virus”?

THE CITY OF WUHAN, CHINA is rich with historical significance, but for much of the world before this year it was hardly a household name. A portmanteau of three historical cities at the mouth of the Yangzi and Han Rivers—Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang—Wuhan served as the site of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, which ended the last Chinese Dynasty, and in 1937, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government temporarily made the city its national capital, as the military fled from Japanese forces along the eastern coast. In recent years, passengers boarding one of the hundreds of ferries that glide through the city center every day would have seen soaring glass and concrete skyscrapers adorned with the names of hotel chains and national banks—an intimidating skyline, but one increasingly common across Asia. Beyond this photogenic core is the familiar combination of new architectural projects, historical landmarks, residential university neighborhoods, and designated free-trade zones for industrial export processing. It is a massive and sprawling metropolis of over eleven million people, more populous than New York City, but by the high standards of contemporary China, and in the unsentimental parlance of the Chinese media, it is a solid “second-tier city.”

But these days, of course, Wuhan is at once more internationally infamous than ever and associated only with one thing: the global spread of the disease now known as Covid-19. During the first weeks of December, several individuals began to report to hospitals in the Wuhan area with severe flu-like symptoms, including fever, dry coughing, fatigue, body aches, and pneumonia-like symptoms. Only later did doctors recognize that many patients either worked at, or were connected to, the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market in the city center. The symptoms soon worsened, paralyzing older patients and killing many. On December 30, lab results finally confirmed that the source was a novel coronavirus strain that shared traits with the 2003 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak that claimed over eight hundred people worldwide and the MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) virus that emerged in 2012 and has killed nearly a thousand since. The virus has now ballooned into a pandemic with cases in 183 countries. As of this writing, 11,147 people have died from 265,495 cases. In China alone, 3,248 of 80,967 cases have died, almost all based in Wuhan.

For weeks, American news services referred to the disease as the “Wuhan virus.” Last month, the World Health Organization renamed the virus “Covid-19” (Coronavirus disease of 2019) with the explicit goal of minimizing the social stigma of a name that referred to a specific place—and, by extension, a specific people. Not ones to pay heed to international norms, conservative politicians in the US have continued to insist on the phrase “Wuhan virus,” or “Chinese coronavirus,” in a transparent effort to scapegoat and distract from their own catastrophic mismanagement of the worst public health crisis in recent American history. On Monday, a White House official reportedly described the virus as the “Kung Flu.” The following day Donald Trump defended using the term “Chinese virus,” explaining, “’cause it comes from China. It’s not racist at all, no, not at all. It comes from China, that’s why. I want to be accurate.” Less equivocal, Arkansas senator Tom Cotton paired a tweet last week about the “Wuhan coronavirus” with a suggestion that China would have to “pay” for what it had done to America.

There is no question that such terminology is racist and xenophobic. Yet the fact that this global pandemic started in Wuhan, and not elsewhere in China, should not be simply overlooked, either. In recent decades, Wuhan has been caught up in the latest stage of globalization, in which international capital continues to extend further inland in pursuit of cheaper land and labor markets, spawning international links for goods such as steel and automobile parts, which remain hidden to the average consumer. It is a major Chinese city, yet outside the core of glittering metropolises along the nation’s coast. It is precisely the unexceptional status of Wuhan as a second-tier Chinese city that is notable. What the global spread of the novel coronavirus from Wuhan suggests is that the culprit here is not the unique circumstances of a particular place, but rather the now-extensive commercial connections that bring ever more of these kinds of places closer and closer together, into a larger and larger whole. In recounting the story of the novel coronavirus, it becomes increasingly clear that its movements have thus far mimicked the pathways of the 21st-century global market.

THE SPECIFIC ORIGINS of the coronavirus within Wuhan remain unclear.

Stay Home say Respiratory therapists, nurses, doctors - from Belfast Trust

Now is the time to stay at home. Our respiratory team have a clear message- stay at home to save lives #stayathome #fightback #COVID19 #jointhefightback pic.twitter.com/8fLhug8xTC

— Belfast Trust (@BelfastTrust) March 22, 2020