Every day, at 3, 4 or 4:30 pm, depending on the paper, the editors of the most influential US dailies: The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, hold meetings that determine the content of the most important newspaper page: the front page.

Section editors present their picks and a collective decision is made to select the articles from the national, foreign, metro, business, arts and culture and sports desks that will start on "Page One."

The front page stories become the subjects of the day. The stories that continue throughout the week become the subject of the week. Those running for weeks or months contend for the subject of the year. Stories dominating the front page for many years become the subject of the decade.

In the 80s, the subject of the decade was Poland. In the eight decade of the 20th century, Poland remained on the front pages for weeks on end. There were days when a front page carried three, four or sometimes five stories about events in Poland. Such was the case of the "Polish August" of 1980, and the gloomy months of December '81 and January '82. And the months of June and August of '89. Even during the less dramatic, relatively speaking, period of '84-88, the front pages of each of the three dailies carried more than 100 stories a year devoted to coverage of Poland.

Every day new and old Polish émigrés in Chicago, Detroit or New York breathlessly followed the newspaper stories dotted with familiar names and faces. They spent their days teaching their American friends, neighbors and strangers in Los Angeles, Boston, or Miami, how to pronounce Gdansk, stocznia (shipyard), Kopalnia Wujek (The Wujek Coal Mine), Solidarnosc, Walesa.

The front page photos and headlines lived only one day, but they often left a deeper imprint in our memory than the fleeting images seen on television.

The fabric of memory was woven with other images too. An elderly lady waiting at a bus stop near Central Park staring at the photo of Mieczyslaw Moczar. A Chinese man in Chinatown wrapping fresh salmon in The New York Times adorned with the mug shot of General Jaruzelski. A copy of the Washington Post left on a table at MacDonald's with the blank stares of the murderers of Father Popieluszko on the front page.