Great World Cup Weekend -- Off the Field, Too

6/15/2014

Marie, Carmela, Ron Swoboda, Irene. Gina, front row. Carmela's Birthday. Italy-England.

The World Cup has been amazing already -- Van Persie's header, Costa Rica's upset, Drogba's impact (more on that later), Switzerland's stunner.
It has also been an occasion for great social events -- as I keep calling the World Cup in the USA: at the very least, a quadrennial party.
Local legend Ron Swoboda came back to town for some events with the Mets, and happened into a private birthday celebration for Carmela Lamorgese, one of the three DeBenedettis sisters who run Mama's in Corona, not far from the Mets' ballpark.
Italy's first-round matches always induce considerable ansia and this one was no different. The match was scoreless for 35 minutes, but then Marie DeBenedettis, who also cooked much of the meal, decided to use a house special of lowering the lights in the back room to change the flow of the match. Zip. Italy scored, and went on to a 2-1 victory.
Mama's is not doing public viewing of the World Cup, but the meal we enjoyed can be replicated, Tuesday-Saturday. Ron lives in New Orleans now -- and was impressed with the cucina at Mama's.

Same kitchen, same food, Si mangia bene qui. Photo by Marianne Vecsey

The World Cup and my new book got me invited onto Steve Kornacki's Sunday show on MSNBC, along with Bruce Murray, in the studio, and Brianna Scurry, from elsewhere -- two World Cup veterans. .
The highlight for my wife Marianne was to meet Kornacki's father and sister, and her weekend hero in person.
Isn't soccer wonderful?

Bill Wakefield

6/15/2014 04:56:21 pm

Great photo. Ronnie looks like he could still hit. Spring Training 1965. I did not intentionally throw him a back up slider for him to hit to end the Mets exhibition game at Williamsport in 1964.

George Vecsey

6/16/2014 01:07:19 am

I'll have to ask his version of it.
Same guy, currently reading a hard-cover book about the geopolitics of Asia.
Have you been to Mama's? A Mets haven about a mile from the ball park. .
GV

Laura Vecsey link

6/17/2014 05:29:34 am

Great. Thanks, Pop. Now I'm starving! Tell Steve Kornacki he MUST find the smoking gun on ... BRIDGEGATE!

George Vecsey

6/17/2014 11:47:29 am

Laura, intrepid reporter that you are, you need to join the mix. Kornacki is a good guy with a lovely family.
As for Mama's, you need to be a regular there. Paul Simon wrote about the Queen of Corona. There are three of them at Mama's.
It ain't no Starbucks.
Pop!!!

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QUOTES
More and More, I Talk to the Dead--Margaret Renkl

NASHVILLE — After my mother died so suddenly — laughing at a rerun of “JAG” at 10 p.m., dying of a hemorrhagic stroke by dawn — I dreamed about her night after night. In every dream she was willfully, outrageously alive, unaware of the grief her death had caused. In every dream relief poured through me like a flash flood. Oh, thank God!
Then I would wake into keening grief all over again.
Years earlier, when my father learned he had advanced esophageal cancer, his doctor told him he had perhaps six months to live. He lived far longer than that, though I never thought of it as “living” once I learned how little time he really had. For six months my father was dying, and then he kept dying for two years more. I was still working and raising a family, but running beneath the thin soil of my own life was a river of death. My father’s dying governed my days.
After he died, I wept and kept weeping, but I rarely dreamed about my father the way I would dream about my mother nearly a decade later. Even in the midst of calamitous grief, I understood the difference: My father’s long illness had given me time to work death into the daily patterns of my life. My mother’s sudden death had obliterated any illusion that daily patterns are trustworthy.
Years have passed now, and it’s the ordinariness of grief itself that governs my days. The very air around me thrums with absence. I grieve the beloved high-school teacher I lost the summer after graduation and the beloved college professor who was my friend for more than two decades. I grieve the father I lost nearly 20 years ago and the father-in-law I lost during the pandemic. I grieve the great-grandmother who died my junior year of college and the grandmother who lived until I was deep into my 40s.
Some of those I grieve are people I didn’t even know. How can John Prine be gone? I hear his haunting last song, “I Remember Everything,” and I still can’t quite believe that John Prine is gone.
-----
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/death-grief-memory.html
Jan. 30, 2023

Great World Cup Weekend -- Off the Field, Too

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