This is this week’s Playing Favorites, in disguise with a different title.
Last year, we watched the Super Bowl at my daughter’s house. Not likely this year since theyve moved to Texas. Anyway, the halftime show included an assortment of hiphop-rap-whatever performers and when it was (blessedly) over, I said, that was awful. My daughter turned to me and said, What do YOU want for a halftime? Jazz? Not likely. It seems to me jazz has fallen hard times, at least as far as getting any airtime, except perhaps on streaming services’ specialty stations. It wasn’t too long ago that groups like Steely Dan added flashes of jazz to their top-twenty hits and, occasionally, a jazz number would make the pop music charts, like Chuck Mangione’s Feel So Good in 1970 which reached number 4 on the pop music charts. (more…)
In my mother’s later years, one of her favorite sayings was, The old gray mare ain’t what she used to be. She certainly had more than her share of maladies to deal with as she aged. To my mind, it is proof that God or nature (depending on your stance on spiritual matters) doesn’t dole out maladies according to virtue of the recipient, otherwise she would have had a much easier time of it. On the other hand, I had reached 77 with virtually no major maladies. That may prove the same premise because although I have tried my best to be a good man, I am not the saint that my medical history would seem to indicate. 
On Tuesdays here in Springhouse Village, it’s Bunco night. You know. Bunco. That mindless little dice game designed as much to socialize as to amuse. No … you don’t know it? It is played with three dice. You score points by trying to roll a particular number with the number progressing through 1 to 6 with each round. Let’s say the number is 1. You get one point for each 1 you roll and you get to keep rolling as long as you are scoring points. If all three dice come up as the number, that is a Bunco and you score 21 points. If all three dice come up any other number, that is a Funco and you get five points. It is played with 2 two person teams at each table where the number of tables is determined by how many players turn up each week. Now, the social part. After each round, the winning team moves to another table … BUT you can’t stay partners with the same person. So, in the course of an evening (we play three rounds, with the number going from 1 to 6 in each round), you get to spend some time with lots of different people. Wikipedia says that the skills required to play Bunco are counting and simple mathematics. Indeed. 
It has been 5 weeks since my birthday. It was a wonderful birthday … followed by what can best be described as a shit-storm. Sorry if my choice of words offends you. On the evening of my birthday, our son texted me with some legal issues he needed help with. Never good. The next day, my daughter told me they are moving to Texas, which is really hard to take, since to my recollection their promise not to leave Utah was one of the reasons we moved here. The sense of betrayal that brings has been keeping me awake nights. Then, we both came down with COVID. A trip last weekend to Virginia to attend the Bar Mitvah of the son of our dearest friends left us exhausted but probably kept me sane. It was a joyful occasion but seeing them surrounded by their kids and grandkids was also a reminder that ours would be moving away. So, the last time I posted Playing Favorites, the song of the day was the saddest song I know, 
Wednesday I woke up with an annoyingly persistent cough, the kind of cough I’d probably had hundreds of times in my 78 years and thought, Shoot, I must be getting a cold. But that was before the arrival of COVID 19. As a senior with several medical issues, I tested myself one of the COVID self-test kits President Biden sent (for free, imagine that). In case you haven’t seen one of these, it looks like a pregnancy test. I was neither infected with COVID or pregnant. After 24 hours of worsening symptoms, I tried again and tested solid positive. Welcome to The COVID Club. I received a club T-shirt in the mail from Biden and a card from Trump that said, See? I told you it wouldn’t kill you! DONATE NOW TO STOP THE STEAL! 
It has been a long week, a descent from a very happy birthday through the news that my daughter’s family will be moving away to my own futile attempt to avoid the sadness through denial, anger and bargaining (see 
Many people think grief means deep sadness, particularly due to the death of a loved one. But grief is more than that, it is a process we as humans must go through to come to acceptance with any loss, from the death of a loved one to the end of a relationship or the end of a dream or a life phase. According to 
No, that’s not a typo in the title. In spite of my advanced age, I know what year it is (2021, right?). But I was born on this date in 1944, making this my 78th birthday (2022-1944=78. See? I is still good at math). So the question of the moment is what a music loving septuagenarian music lover will play on his birthday. The obvious (if not original) choice is the classic Happy Birthday we been forced to sing since we were kids. My favorite version:
Looking back a bit on the eve of my 78th birthday …
We have all heard the old saying You can’t teach an old dog new tricks and speaking as an old dog, I can testify that it is often true. We old dogs do like things our way. Mostly. But every once in a while, life intervenes in a way that breaks through our old doggedness and makes us change. As I mention a while back in my post, 
Older Eyes 