At the end of a post about Casimir Pulaski getting posthumous citizenship, John Arivosis adds:
Note from John: Pulaski is a well-known street in Chicago. I never knew the history. Fascinating.
For you non-Midwesterners, this is funny for this reasons: While Pulaski is indeed a well-known street in Chicago, that’s not actually why most Chicagoans, nay, most Illinoisans would have heard of Pulaski. That would be, oh, THE STATEWIDE HOLIDAY IN HIS HONOR. Shoot, back in my day, you got that fucker off of school.
(On a side note, Illinois has a Pulaski day because it has the city with the second largest Polish population in the world after Warsaw, and they like their war heroes. Ha, no, actually, I’m not sure what’s going on here. Pulaski day was made into law in 1977, a year after Daley died. There had been great animosity between the governor, Daniel Walker, and Daley. I’d be curious to know if this was some left-over Chicago powerplay–“We will inflict our heroes on the whole state and Walker will just have to take it.” or if this came very early in Thompson’s run, in which case it might have been a signal from Springfield to Chicago that hostilities were lessening. I don’t know. But with all things having to do with Illinois politics, you can bet the answer is far from what it appears to be on the surface.)
Tiny Cat Pants 