Casimir Pulaski is a magnanimous plenty in the Midwest . In Chicago , the Polish - nobleman - turned - Revolutionary - War - hero ’s birthday is still wide celebrate ; he has park , streets , and school named after him , and Obama made him anhonorary citizen in 2009 . His name has also been commemorated in song on more than one social function — most of late by the Chicago - born Andrew Bird .
Bird ’s 2013 EP , I Want to See Pulaski at Night , is n’t really about the Polish submarine sandwich . It ’s about a street in Chicago named for him which , as Bird explains inthis live performance on YouTube , is “ not a pretty pot . ” But crooned in Bird ’s warm voice , it sounds like somewhere grand to which we ’re being invited . He is n’t the first songster to mention Pulaski , though — Sufjan Stevens ’ 2005 album Illinois includes a track namedCasimir Pulaski Day .
Who was Pulaski ? He start off life as Polish royalty — but through a chronological sequence of event including exile from Poland and a meeting with Benjamin Franklin , he finish up in Philadelphia in 1777 , recruited to avail America in its fight for independence . After helping Washington develop a operable horse cavalry , he died from wound sustained at the siege of Savannah , years before the warfare would end .
But most of us , more than 200 years afterward , know Pulaski not as a state of war hero but as a lieu name — or , in this cause , a song title . [ Spotify ]
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