Today is Polonia Day, honoring the approximately 20 million Poles who live outside Poland. It is such a large and historic diaspora that it has not only its own name, but its own day.
from Falling into Place: A Story of Love, Poland, and the Making of a Travel Writer:
"The morning of May 1st, as I dressed to go out, Hania once again urged me to be careful. A service was going to held in the cathedral, after which a protest march was planned, as a counter-May Day parade.
"On the street I passed a worker, a tragic figure in a comic book outfit: a soiled cloth cap; an ill-fitting grey suitcoat, shiny with age; purple bell-bottom trousers. He was walking away from the buses that would have transported him to the parade in his honor."
Later, after the service, marching through the city:
"We soon made a right turn, to avoid a paramilitary unit holding carbines. "ZOMO do domu!" (ZOMO go home!) people chanted. Also, "Who are you serving?" A young mother watched from a balcony with a baby in her arms; another woman leaned out of her window and clapped rhythmically as we passed. I took in my fellow marchers, the trees green with buds, a world awakened, and thought: Prague. Warsaw. The Eastern European spring."
Yesterday evening I was back on my bike after 10 days away. The young ducks in front of the house on SW 7th Avenue had grown since I last saw them, but the restaurant Sakana was still “Coming Soon.” People strolled or walked their dogs along the Riverwalk (south bank). I said “hello” as I rode past them, but very few acknowledged my greeting; most studiously ignored me. At one point I almost yelled: “You’ll have to excuse me – I just got back from the Midwest.”
We arrived home yesterday from a 10-day trip that started in Buffalo, NY, and ended in Gambier, OH, with stops in Akron and Cleveland in between. It began with Dingus Day in Buffalo – that evening, listening to the band Those Idiots at the Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle – and concluded with a concert at Kenyon College put on by the Knox County Symphony, an orchestra made up of students, professors, and townspeople – including our hosts, and old friends, Jane Cowles (oboe) and Dan Laskin (trumpet). Outside the hall, five tall columns lifted five horn-playing angels into the evening sky.
I'm heading to Buffalo and Cleveland (aka the Lake District) to eat some pierogi and do some book readings. Back here on the 29th.
Tuesday evening I joined two friends at The Field for Seinfeld Trivia Night. We made up one of about twenty teams, many of them with very clever names (my favorite: These Questions Are Making Me Thirsty) that should have suggested we were in for a rough night.
I was struck by how much trivia I no longer retain from the show, and by how much that bothered me, even though a depth of Seinfeld knowledge is not a great asset in everyday life. (This despite the fact that the show was about everyday life.) But there’s something about hearing a question – no matter the question – and not knowing the answer that annoys a person. Luckily, my friend Greg knew every answer except one.
His Seinfeld smarts were of no help though, as music was played – blared – after each question, and bonus points were given if you could name the artist. So it was really a Seinfeld and Loud Execrable Music Trivia Night. The first trivia night I attended, at Tarpon River Brewing, also consisted of long stretches of ear-shattering music. Somehow I thought the subject of Seinfeld would make for a quieter evening. Fat chance. The American appetite for loud music apparently is unquenchable. (Been out to eat lately? To a baseball game?) I walked out of the pub vowing never to go to another trivia night.