Friday, January 25, 2019
Our morning was all about saying a final farewell to . . .
Attilio Chiurato
As compared to the USA, burial rituals occur rather rapidly in Italy. Attilio, 79 years old, passed away in his sleep on Tuesday night, his Rosary was said last night and his funeral Mass was celebrated this morning.
Just as was the case for his Rosary, his parish church of San Maurizio was packed with mourners paying their final respects to this good man. The size of the crowds both nights was a clear sign of what Attilio's life meant in the lives of others.
After the Mass, we all walked him to his final resting place in the cemetery in Vedano Olona about a mile from the church.
R.I.P. Attilio
I saw this GLAM hairdressers
on the way to the train as I headed
to the funeral
In our family, years ago, GLAM was coined as an acronym for, in chronological order, George, Laurie, Andy and Mike.
Many of us gathered at the
Ristorante alle Fontanelle
for lunch after Attilio's funeral
The food and friendship were both at a high level but why the statue of a Native American?
As I sat listening to the conversation, Enzo Petrillo who was the team contact man who along with Dario D'Adelfio convinced me to come to Varese last year, observed me and made a funny comment.
His comment was based on having seen the old film The 13th Warrior, where a Muslim ambassador is exiled from his homeland and finds himself in the company of Vikings heading to their homeland, probably Upplands-Väsby in current day Sweden.
One of the groups many culture clashes with their new Muslim companion is their shared inability to communicate in the others language.
Our Muslim hero sits quietly for about the first quarter of the movie listening to the Vikings in dialogue with each other absorbing their speech patterns. Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, he opens up speaking the Norsemen's language like a native.
This is what Enzo believes is happening with me as we dine.
The actor playing the Muslim ambassador in The 13th Warrior is is none other than Antonio Banderas. While the physical similarity between the two of us is undeniable, my ability to absorb the Bella Lingua that is Italian simply by listening is far off the mark.
But I digress . . .
Buosi Gelato is one of our
Skorpion team sponsors
Their gelato is fantastic and not to be missed if you are visiting Varese at the right time of the year.
By right time of the year I mean Spring, Summer and early Fall. As it turns out, Buosi makes so much money in the warm weather months that they close for the cold weather months.
Nice work if you can get it.
Hard to make out exactly what this
old sign says in the light of the
setting sun
It looks interesting to me and will warrant another look when the lighting is improved.
In the evening, Giorgio Nardi and I drove down to Milano in the company of Gigi Bravin and Pietro Caprioli to meet with the administration of the 2017 and 2018 Italian DI National Champion Milano Seamen.
The purpose of the visit was to discuss getting one of their young backup QBs to play and develop as our Skorpion signal caller this season.
The reality of the matter is that at the DI level an American import QB will get 95% of the snaps leaving little time for Italian QBs on the roster to get playing time.
Our situation is simply that our stellar QB of last season, Omar Passera, somehow tore his ACL playing Flag Football in the off-season and can not play this year. Our current QBs are iffy at this point so we need help which the Seamen are happy to give so as to further develop their future players.
We had a long talk about and with the Seamen's young third string QB who is also the QB for the Italian National U19 team. Although the Seaman see it as a win-win situation for all of us, I'm not so sure that our prospective young QB was sold on the transfer.
On a brighter note, the Seamen also had us meet with a veteran wide receiver and a rookie defensive end about joining the Skorpions. They both seemed excited about the opportunity to play and develop.
We'll see . . .
As we were leaving, the Seamen
were just starting their 9:00 p.m.
Friday night practice
We stayed for the first thirty minutes of their workout before agreeing that we were all hungry.
There was only one place to go for dinner in Milano on a chilly Friday night . . .
Piedra del Sol
Restaurante Mexicano
From left to right you'll find Pietro, Giorgio, Gigi and me.
As usual, the food here was good but I can't really call it authentic Mexican cuisine.
Reading Is FUNdamental
An Uplifting Read
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