Kasia grew up on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in Warsaw. There was no coddling there. When she was in first grade, her teacher took her on a field trip to the site of a recent plane crash, where she stared at the charred sneakers of dead passengers. The lesson seemed to be: Bad things happen, and there is no point in pretending otherwise. Oh, yeah, and build better planes. That plane, by the way, was headed to Warsaw from — where else? — the United States. The symbolism went deep.

I don't know if that's supposed to be a dig at Communist Poland for something or a lament about how Americans were victims somehow. But glad to hear the US has always had a trend of crashing planes, makes me feel much better. Build better planes, West.