Why I Don’t Wear My Orange Athletic Shoes Today
An homage to the Irish famine.
I have a busy work schedule today and no plans to gadabout. Nobody will see whether or not I’m wearin’ the green.
So why did I put my orange running shoes back in the closet this morning? Even though they are the most comfortable on my aging bunions?
Why is orange an insult to everything Irish, you may ask?
It’s certainly not because they clash on the color wheel.
My heritage came to mind several days ago when Soliel Ho, food editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote a piece worrying about whether she was Asian enough for some of her reviews of the restaurants she lauds in her columns.
Apparently, some readers question her creds when she steps outside the lines of her Vietnamese roots to review Latino, Chinese or South Asian restaurants that abound in and around her beat.
As a somewhat backsliding food writer myself, I found this column curious. How different is her experience from my own as a first-generation Irish American growing up in the 1940s Bronx.
Back then, my friends and I certainly boasted of our Irish, Italian, Scottish, and German roots (we had one Spanish family on our block, but heartthrob Steve…
