Budka Suflera, the top Polish rock band of the 1970s, played the Miccosukee Resort and Casino Sunday evening. The concert fell on Polish Independence Day, so the crowd of several hundred that had gathered to hear hits from their student years had to sit through speeches, folk dances, a slide show covering the history of Poland from 966-2012, and clips of movie stars (Tom Hanks, Russell Crowe, etc.) giving their impressions of the country.
After which it was announced there would be a 10-minute break.
When the band finally appeared, people made their way up to the front of the stage, swaying, raising their arms, singing along - doing what people do at concerts. But there was more than enjoyment; there was also meaningful emotion. Rock was the music of rebellion everywhere, but especially in countries ruled by communists.
"We listened to Led Zeppelin," my friend Krzysztof said to me during the folk dances. "Then Budka Suflera came along and showed us: Hey, we can do this too."
Sunday night Budka Suflera transported Poles from the state of Florida back to the days of their accelerated youth.
Thirty years ago today (the Feast of the Assumption) I wandered about the monastery of Jasna Gora in Czestochowa. The day before I had arrived in the city with thousands of other pilgrims from all over Poland. The majority of us had walked from Warsaw, covering 150 miles over nine days, and we had been greeted on arrival like a liberating army. Poland was under martial law in 1982, and the annual religious rite took on a strong political significance.
High atop the fortress walls I came upon a young man who told me that things would have to change now; the government could not last when almost the entire population was against it. I thought he was being overly optimistic; the government had already survived nearly 40 years of unpopular rule, who was to say it couldn't double that?
But the young man was right. By 1990 the government was gone.
To say that "Poles share a difficult history with Russia," as many Euro 2012 commentators are doing, is like saying "Syrians have a strained relationship with their government."
Thirty years ago today I walked with hundreds of Poles through Warsaw's Old Town in a demonstration against General Jaruzelski. Our own little May Day parade. Special ZOMO forces blocked main streets and - before the afternoon was out - they gave me my first taste of tear gas.
In the evening I joined Hania at a party, and I remember feeling invigorated, and very happy. Yes, we were living under martial law, but it was spring and we were young.
Tuesday I was browsing in a bookstore - the Travel section, if you can believe it - and came across Nancy Pearl's Book Lust: To Go. Pearl is the Seattle librarian who rose to fame with Book Lust (the original) and then had the great distinction - unprecedented for someone in her profession - of inspiring an action figure.
I immediately checked the index for my name. It wasn't there, even though - I soon discovered with increasing dismay - there was a section devoted to Poland. Among the books listed to give Americans a feel for the country was Alan Furst's The Spies of Warsaw. This is another in Furst's series of World War II novels and conveys little of the atmosphere of Warsaw back then, partly because few of the characters are Polish, and partly because the author (as he told me when I interviewed him in Miami a few years ago) spent less than a month in the city. It became clear after a few minutes of talking to him that he had little interest in the place; it had simply provided an exotic backdrop for his - at least in this case - rather workmanlike thriller.
I e-mailed Nancy - we met years ago in Portland when my second book came out - and told her about my first book, the result of living for two and half years in Warsaw, marrying a Pole, learning the language, becoming so attached to Poland that I now regard it as something of a second homeland. I said that I hoped she didn't think my e-mail impertinent, but that when one invests so much time and emotion in a subject, one wants to receive some recognition for it. And, I added, unless I write e-mails, I don't. As the Poles say: Always speak well of yourself; others will speak badly.
She e-mailed me back within an hour, saying she'd look for a copy of Unquiet Days and perhaps tweet about it. It's still true - as the Russians say - that what is in print cannot be removed with an axe. But what is not in print can now, swiftly and sometimes effectively, be acknowledged.
Thirty years ago this month Czeslaw Milosz won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the two-month-old Solidarity movement was gaining strength at home and support abroad, and - on Oct. 11 - I was married to Hanna Matras in the Palace of Weddings in Warsaw's Old Town. It was an overcast day (Polish golden autumn). The gathering was small and the ceremony brief; it ended with me wearing my new wedding ring on my right hand and then getting kissed three times on both cheeks by the few people in attendance, including my best man. At home, Hania's aunt greeted us at the door holding a loaf of bread with salt atop it, a traditional symbol of good luck. It has lasted for three joyous decades.