Today is Polish Constitution Day (commemorating the document adopted in 1791) and yesterday was Polonia Day (Polonia is the term for the Polish community abroad). As I write in my memoir, the fact that the diaspora has been given a name testifies to its long and significant history.
We had a small but very attentive group at PRIME Expo on Saturday. People nodded in recognition and laughed at my jokes. During the Q&A, a man stood up and, leaning on his walker, said that he had worked with the U.S. Embassy in Poland in the mid-70s. Then he told a story about one of his colleagues, on his morning jog through Krakow, stumbling across a man kneeling at a shrine. He apologized profusely, and the man not only brushed off the collision but asked him to stay and chat. In introduction, the American said that he worked at the American consulate. The Pole said that he worked at the cathedral. He didn’t mention that he was the archbishop, Karol Wojtyła – the man who in a few years would become pope.
I thought the Polish joke had finally been retired – thanks to people like Lech Wałęsa and Pope John Paul II – but it was brushed off and presented last night on, of all the places, the Daily Show. In the middle of his well-aimed attack on Tucker Carlson – for his adoring visit to the country that invaded Ukraine Jon Stewart made two gratuitous cracks about Poles, the people who have taken in over a million Ukrainians. Apparently that massive and ongoing humanitarian action cannot save the country from being the butt of jokes in America.
Today is Fat Thursday (Tłusty Czwartek) in Poland. Why the Poles celebrate on Thursday and not on Tuesday I never found out, probably because I was too busy eating the traditional doughnuts (pączki) filled with rose-petal jam.
Saturday afternoon we drove to the Polish church in Pompano Beach, where the parish hall had been turned into a voting space for what the writer Timothy Garton Ash called “the most important elections in Poland since 1989.” That year we were living in Philadelphia, and took a chartered bus, with dozens of Poles, to their consulate in Manhattan. Then, pretty much everyone voted for Solidarity (having already voted with their feet to leave Poland). This year, the vote was surely more divided between the ruling Law and Justice Party and the opposition. (Clever name that: How can you say “I’m against Law and Justice”?) Which is why Hania voted for the first time since 1989: Normally, she doesn’t think it fair that she has a voice in choosing a government whose policies won’t affect her.
After she handed in her ballot we drove to the Polish market on Federal Highway, which was more crowded than I’d ever seen it: The tables in the front were occupied by young couples and families, and the aisles were thick with people stocking up on pickles and pierogies. Having thought about their homeland in the voting booth, Poles now wanted to taste it.
This morning I read on Facebook that my friend Andrzej Stawiarski died in Krakow after a long illness. I first met Andrzej in the mid-90s when he came to the Sun-Sentinel on a journalistic exchange, and – because of the Polish connection – we became friends. He had a manner that I would describe as breathlessly philosophical: He was easily excited by current events, Polish politics, even the minutiae of everyday life, but he still managed in most things to take the long view. He was a joy to be around. I visited him a few times in Krakow – where, for a time, he worked in the Gazeta Wyborcza offices just off the main square – and I remember walking with him across that square on a bright summer’s day as he led me to his favorite pierogi place – the best pierogi place, he assured me, in the city. The world seemed full of possibilities.
The last few years I sent him messages that were never answered, which made me suspect that something was wrong. I never met his wife, though I did meet his son once, a self-assured teen mature beyond his years, and had no other way to get information about him. Last month in Warsaw, I picked up a photography book in a bookstore that featured work by some of the best photographers in Poland, and there was a large section of Andrzej’s photos. The world has lost a great photographer and a beautiful man.