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!!!

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Great World Cup Weekend -- Off the Field, Too

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