Sad Day in Poland

Today is cold and dreary. It is about 39 degrees which is at least 10 degrees colder than it has been for the past couple of weeks. It is rainy and gloomy. Myles is still in Holland (he comes home tomorrow). We were having a lazy morning and I was messing around on Facebook. I first noticed that my neighbor, Anita, who is 19, put this: [*] as her status. Hmm, that did not mean anything to me. Within a minute or so, Inga, who is 15 and a classmate of my kids at school here, put the same thing as her status. That struck me as odd. I did not think they knew each other. While they are both young, four years is a pretty significant age difference at ages 15 and 19. They are both Polish so I just thought it was some Polish, young person thing that I was unaware of.

Then moments later, one of our Fulbright friends in another city posted a link to the story that there had been a plane crash and that the president of Poland was likely killed. Wow. I had to read the headline several times before it sunk in. This is a huge blow to Poland. Very quickly, several of our Polish Facebook friends had changed their profile pictures to a black ribbon.

I had just learned about Kaczynski when I was in Warszawa in December. On the way to a Fulbright lunch, the cab driver drove us by the presidential residence and told us all about Lech Kaczynski. He and his twin brother were the President and Prime Minister at the same time for a year and a half back in 2006-2007. The Kaczynski brothers' father was a vetran of the Warszawa Uprising. Wow again. Lech Kaczynski has strong ties to the Gdansk area as he was involved in the Solidarity Movement in the 80s. The current Prime Minister is Donald Tusk. He was here in Gdansk this morning. He immediately headed back south to Warszawa when he learned of the crash.

As of this writing Bronislaw Komorowski, the Parliament Speaker has already been named acting President. Within 14 days, he is required to arrange a special presidential election that will take place within the next 60 days.

We join all of our Polish friends in their days of mourning. While Kaczynski was the most well known of those who perished in this accident, many others died. His wife and many high ranking cabinet members lost their lives as well. This is tragic. Turns out that [*] means "Rest in Peace."