Hogan announces plan to honor victims
More than 900,000 Marylanders are vaccinated; case count grows by 786
Two days before the state will recognize the one-year anniversary of its first coronavirus infections, more than 900,000 Marylanders have received at least one dose of vaccine. Here’s where Maryland’s stands with the virus as of Wednesday morning.
Cases
Maryland reported 786 new infections Wednesday morning, bringing the total count of confirmed infections in the state to 383,956. Of those, 100 have been the various COVID-19 variants that have emerged in recent months, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Friday marks the one-year anniversary of Maryland’s first confirmed cases. Gov. Larry Hogan announced Wednesday that he will declare Friday a day of remembrance for the thousands of Marylanders the virus and its effects have killed. In recognition, buildings across the state will be lit amber, and a twilight ceremony will be held Friday evening at the State House.
“One year ago at this time, we could not have fathomed the toll that the pandemic would take on each and every one of us,” Hogan, a Republican, said in a statement. “On Friday, we will pause as a state to remember all those we have lost, and express our gratitude to the health care heroes and front line workers whose many sacrifices have saved lives and kept us safe.”
Deaths
The state reported 14 more Marylanders have died of the coronavirus or its effects. In all, 7,737 residents with confirmed COVID19 infections have died.
Wednesday’s additions mean the state has reported more than 2,000 virus-related deaths in the first two-plus months of 2021.
Hospitalizations
There are 863 patients in Maryland’s hospitals facing the effects of COVID-19, 33 fewer than Tuesday. Of those, 228 cases require intensive care, down four from the day before.
The 863 hospitalizations are the state’s fewest since Nov. 12. The next day, the figure rose above 900 and didn’t fall back beneath that bench mark until last week.
Vaccinations
Another almost 22,000 Marylanders received their first doses of coronavirus vaccine Tuesday, meaning more than 900,000 residents — 14.9% of the state’s 6 million-plus — are at least partially vaccinated. About 8.2% are fully vaccinated, meaning they have received both of the shots needed for best protection.
The state has administered almost 1.4 million doses in all.
Vaccines by age: All Maryland residents 65 and older are eligible to be vaccinated based on the state’s plan and have been for more than a month. According to state data, 42.4% of Maryland’s 65-and-older residents have received at least the first dose of vaccine.
Vaccines by race and ethnicity: About 65% of Maryland’s doses have gone in the arms of white residents, who represent 59% of the state’s overall population. Comparatively, Black Marylanders (31% of the population) and Latino residents (11% of the population) have gotten 16.6% and 4.1% of doses, respectively.
Vaccines by county: Prince George’s County, the state’s second-most populated jurisdiction, remains the only one in the state that hasn’t yet partly vaccinated at least 10% of its population and fully vaccinated at least 5% of its population. Baltimore City ranks third worst among jurisdictions in both metrics.
Nursing homes
Maryland provides updates on the virus’ impact on nursing home residents and staff every Wednesday. Fewer than 13,000 cases have been at facilities that are considered “active” — meaning those that have had a new case or pending test in the past two weeks — whereas that number exceeded 15,000 in last week’s update.
Over the past week, there were 24 new virus-related deaths among staff and residents of nursing homes and similar longterm care facilities. Those groups account for 44.6% of all the virus’ victims in Maryland, yet 8.3% of the infections.
Positivity rate
The state’s seven-day testing positivity rate, which effectively measures the percentage of tests that return positive results in a weeklong span, declined to 3.28% Tuesday, down from 3.35% Monday.
For the second straight day, all 24 of the state’s jurisdictions reported positivity rates beneath 5%. They previously hadn’t done so since mid-October.
They couldn’t silence Billie Holiday’s voice, a voice that took her from an Upper Fells Point alley to New York City concert halls and into history as a performer and civil rights icon. That’s the premise of the new biopic “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” which debuted last week on Hulu.
The Lee Daniels-directed film reveals the torture she faced throughout her career: racism, persecution, drug addiction, censorship, child sexual assault. The biopic was honored by the Hollywood Foreign Press, which awarded lead actress Andra Day with the Golden Globe for best actress in the motion picture - drama category.
In an emotional acceptance speech, Day thanked the jazz legend who was born in Philadelphia but called Baltimore her childhood home.
“And to the amazing, transformative, dynamic Billie Holiday who just transformed me with this role and with her presence and with her spirit,” Day said.
Holiday was 22, already a critical triumph, when she returned to Baltimore to perform at The Royal Theatre in October 1937.
She was singing with The Count Basie Orchestra. Her male singing counterpart was Jimmy Rushing. Count Basie and Billie Holiday were a smash, newspapers reported at the time.
A reporter from the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper interviewed Holiday backstage. Holiday said she always wore white gardenias and liked Evening in Paris perfume. She wore a ring with 19 diamonds along with other jewelry.
“Having been born in April, her birthstone is a diamond and she wears a long, slender wristwatch, lavishly set in birthstones,” the article said. “Billie Holiday herself is a fashion writer’s delight for she is neat and dainty, even in her dressing room, and her clothes show that they have been chosen with care.”
The trailer for the film opens with a voiced-over question, “don’t you know who this is?” as it pulls back to reveal Day, playing Holiday, choosing from a selection of fine diamonds at a jewelry store.
Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia in 1915 but moved to Baltimore with her mother when she was 3. She became a child of the city in many ways.
She grew up fast. She lived with her mother in Upper Fells Point on a classic one-lane row house street, not wide enough for parking on either side.
Holiday’s biographers say she attended preschool at Saint Frances Academy on East Chase Street. She was raised by her grandparents and other family members.
Her penchant for skipping class brought her before a juvenile court on Jan. 5, 1925. She was then sent to a Roman Catholic reform school, the House of the Good Shepherd. Eleanora, not yet Billie, dropped out of school at age 11, according to biographer Stuart Nicholson.
Records also show that on Christmas Eve, 1926, her mother arrived home to find a neighbor attempting to rape Eleanora. She fought back, and he was arrested. Officials
placed Eleanora temporarily in the House of the Good Shepherd, again, this time under protective custody. She was released in February 1927, then 12 years old.
After being released, she lived in West Baltimore on Argyle Avenue, just west of Pennsylvania Avenue. She ran errands and scrubbed stoops among her other duties. At this point in her life, she said in an autobiography, she first heard the the 78-rpm shellac phonograph records of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong.
She later followed her mother to New York’s Harlem. In a few years, after another scrape with the law, she was musically discovered and her singing career took off.
Baltimore Sun writer Carl Schoettler wrote of her “extraordinary musicianship, the incomparable diction, phrasing, sense of timing and dramatic delivery that made her singing unique . ... She forged one of the great American singing styles from a childhood lived poor and hard and mean on Durham Street in [Upper] Fells Point.”
Several years ago a neighborhood-based arts project paid homage to the block where Holiday lived, if only for a relatively brief time, in the 1920s. There are painted screens and murals and other inventive references to her.
She also is honored locally with Billie Holiday Court in East Baltimore. There is a park named in honor at Pennsylvania and Lafayette avenues where there’s also a large bronze statue of her.
Bridget Cimino, a mural artist and Maryland Institute College of Art graduate, painted an oversize depiction (on the back wall of the Fells Point Corner Theatre that faces Durham Street) of Holiday signing autographs for children outside Pennsylvania Avenue’s Royal Theatre, perhaps a reference to her 1937 appearance.
Holiday is often identified with the song, “Strange Fruit,” whose lyrics reference lynching. The song is featured heavily in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” as a point of contention. She was targeted by the U.S. government for singing what was considered a “protest song.”
“You think I’m going to stop singing that song? Your grandkids are going to be singing that song,” the character Holiday proclaims in the film.
Vanessa Bryant said she is focused on “finding the light in darkness” in an emotional interview with People magazine detailing her attempts to push forward after her husband, Kobe Bryant, and daughter Gigi died in a helicopter crash early last year.
Vanessa Bryant said the late NBA superstar and Gigi continue to “motivate me to keep going” in the magazine’s Women Changing the World issue, which will be released Friday. The issue salutes the activists, innovators and role models who are making a difference.
The 38-year-old widow of the Los Angeles Lakers legend expressed how she has been trying to navigate heartache while trying to rebuild a life for herself and three daughters.
Vanessa Bryant said her devotion to her daughters Natalia, Bianka and Capri have been a saving grace.
“My girls help me smile through the pain,” she said. “They give me strength.”
On the magazine cover, Vanessa Bryant sports a Lakers jacket with Kobe Bryant’s No. 24 on the right sleeve.
Parton sings rewrite before shot:
Dolly Parton has written hundreds of songs, and it turns out her tune “Jolene” is just the right one for getting her COVID-19 vaccine.
“I even changed one of my songs to fit the occasion. It goes, ‘Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, I’m begging of you please don’t hesitate,’ ” she sang in a social media post on Tuesday, just before receiving her shot.
In 2020, the Grammywinning legend donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for coronavirus research. Parton had said earlier that she was going to wait until the vaccine became more
widely available because she didn’t want to look like she was jumping the line.
“That didn’t hurt. Just stung a little bit,” she said afterward. Then she smiled at the camera saying, “I did it! I did it!”
Gordon-Levitt, Erivo cast in ‘Pinocchio’:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt will provide the voice of Jiminy Cricket, while Cynthia Erivo will play the Blue Fairy in Disney’s live-action retelling of “Pinocchio.”
That means GordonLevitt will sing “When You Wish Upon a Star,” which has become an anthem of sorts for the Disney brand.
The actors join a cast that includes Tom Hanks as Geppetto and Luke Evans as The Coachman. In addition, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth will voice Pinocchio, with Keegan-Michael Key as the voice of Honest John and Lorraine Bracco as the voice of Sofia the Seagull.
Bell, Shepard to host game show:
Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard are teaming up for a one-hour game show entitled “Family Game Fight” on NBC.
The broadcast network has ordered 10 episodes of the new series that will feature Bell and Shepard as hosts and competitors. Each episode will see Bell and Shepard be “adopted” into individual families of four to compete in a series of games for a cash prize.
The series is inspired by the couple’s antics on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”
March 4 birthdays: Actor Paula Prentiss is 83. Actor Kay Lenz is 68. Musician Emilio Estefan is 68. Actor Catherine O’Hara is 67. Actor Mykelti Williamson is 64. Actor Patricia Heaton is 63. Drummer Fergal Lawler is 50. Drummer Jason Marsalis is 44. Actor Audrey Esparza is
35. Actor Andrea Bowen is 31.