Last week on Fresh Air, Terry Gross paid tribute to her recently deceased husband, Francis Davis, by reading from some of his work. (Davis was a writer and critic, primarily of jazz.) This is the wonderful thing about being a writer: your writing – books, stories, articles, essays – survives, even if, eventually, it goes ignored. But anyone with a genuine interest can read the words you wrote, at various points in your life, and feel your presence. Gross said that, alone now after four decades of marriage, she finds comfort in her late husband's work.
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.