#old irish money

[oldcurrencyexchange]

Irish Coin Daily: Confederate Catholic Sixpence - Counter-marked on a Silver Sixpence of James I

Date: 1642-43 Kilkenny (countermarked once) Sixpence on a Sixpence of James I (Second Coinage, 3rd bust, mm Rose) Description: Kilkenny Rebel Money Sixpence; issued by the Catholic Confederacy of Kilkenny from 1642-43 and counter-marked on a silver Sixpence of James I (his Second Coinage, 3rd bust, mm Rose 1605-06) for Ireland, in 1558); one counter-mark struck on the monarch’s bust in the form…

[banrionceallach]

Holy shit, someone attacked Roderic O'Gorman while he was canvassing.

For context he's the leader of the Irish Green Party, one of the parties in the current government coalition.

[orangerosebush]

not to invade ur inbox with af headcanons but I love the idea that minerva and artemis did date for a while and artemis was really oblivious that he was bisexual until minerva was like "you are bi. you like men. also I like women."

I have no doubt in my mind that Minerva and Artemis had a short-lived teenage fling — that results in them primarily communicating with the other through a neutral third party that is willing to put up with the eerily similar neuroses they have (Butler).

[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

Me: God I fucking hate the UK, it’s a racist, xenophobic shit hole and it’s impossible for me to move out of my parents house or have my own place because of how bad the cost of living crisis is, I would so much rather we just move to fucking Ireland like my grandparents did

My family: *actually start talking about possibly moving us to Ireland*

Me:

[jacks-weird-world]

The then 14-year-old Jack reunited on an excursion with other children from the Kennedy family and Ted Kennedy. (2010).

[boldlyygo]

"it's only 5 gigs, it won't be that bad" I thought. and I was right! sort of.

[sentienttoast]

I am going to murder the ceo of one4all vouchers

[rootbeerfloats]

Im on the raven king finally in my trc reread and it makes me sad how henry was just like... Squeezed into the narrative 😭 like its REALLY obvious maggie stiefvater wrote him in last minute because of complaints abt how white the main cast is

[overthegardenwirtt]

funniest things in interview with the vampire:

the fact that we got reverse-queerbaited and there was levitating gay vampire sex in episode 1 and then never again :(

"he ain't white he french!"

lestat showing up to louis' family dinner in the gayest outfit he could wear in 1910, pretending to eat, and hypnotizing paul when he really was trying to make a good impression

florence du lac clocking louis as gay because of his acrylic nails and tinted glasses

"what's wrong with that man?" @ lestat

louis with the "no whites allowed" sign despite lestat being inside the building

"i'm not sure how i feel about that pleated skirt" "it's chiffon it has movement"

grace calling lestat louis' white daddy

louis, lestat, and claudia treating nosferatu like a comedy

louis telling the police they should be ashamed of how they treated "law-abiding, taxpaying citizens" and forgetting that it's illegal to be gay

"we sell...incinerators. to various american cities." "we bring our clients here to demonstrate the product"

louis throwing lestat's coffin out the window

tom anderson not seeing louis and lestat for 17 years but for some reason he has a picture with them in his desk drawer

the fact that rashid was not just a character armand made up but a real employee of theres who was mysteriously absent for a week while seemingly consensually being played by his boss

armand and louis walking up to daniel holding hands like two people who have never held hands before in their life

armand had a threesome with a father and son while watching now, voyager, something louis didn't even know about

armand telling daniel his own armandstat fanfiction, stopping at the scene where they fucked in the theatre box, and daniel wanting more

"are you schizophrenic louis?" "...no"

the insinuation that the real irish playwright samuel barclay beckett was a vampire. not only that, but that his most well-known work, "waiting for godot," was originally written for the theatre des vampires. not only that, but that he is now an unspecified DJ

french man yelling at louis and armand that they should blow each other when they're kissing in the public park

daniel molloy being so unbelievably gay in the 1970s and being immediately into fucking louis in the coffin

daniel molloy having his body comandeered by armand and still offering to suck his dick

daniel molloy trying to escape from armand and immediately running into the wall

armand walking back into the dubai penthouse being the silliest he's ever been, nourished, happy only to find out that his husband and weird gay boy situationship have unionized

armand gaslighting his way out of the situation he gaslit himself into by telling louis he asked him to erase his memories

armand animating the raccoon into the projections during the trial

santiago small dick reveal

lestat still wearing a 150 year old leyendecker robe and playing a wooden piano, but somehow having the money for an ipad, speakers, and wifi

"siri pause"

[roseverdict]

it is 4 AM which means it's Desperately Claw At Hobbies In An Attempt To Make Some Form Of Money To Set Aside So I Can Go Be An Adult Instead Of The Parentals' Puppet time!

[oldcurrencyexchange]

Irish Coin Daily: Confederate Catholic Shilling - Counter-marked on a base Shilling of Elizabeth I

Date: 1642-43 Kilkenny (Rebel) Money (counter-marked twice) to denote a Shilling on a base Shilling of Elizabeth I Description: Kilkenny Rebel Money Shilling; issued by the Catholic Confederacy of Kilkenny from 1642-43 and counter-marked on a base Shilling of Elizabeth I (her first issue of base coinage for Ireland, in 1558); the counter-mark is struck on either side of the monarch’s bust in the…

[froody]

Imagine you hired an obscenely drunk Union soldier in a saloon to kill your husband. He manages to accomplish the deed by removing the bullets from your husband’s gun through a sleight of hand trick before challenging him to a duel. This is somewhat impressive but what is more impressive is his strong work ethic, ingenuity, Irish accent, subtle chivalry and big brown eyes. You marry him and move onto the 15 acres of semi-arid land on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert he stubbornly wants to farm. He wants to name your firstborn daughter after his cavalry horse in the Civil War and your firstborn son after his commanding officer. He calls you widow woman as a term of endearment. He’s a good shot, he’s a good cattleman, a great husband and a subpar father. But what else can you ask from a man who lost his entire family in the Famine and came to this country alone at the age of 14?

Imagine you are a former Union soldier. You are 22 years old. You were only 19 when you enlisted, an Irish immigrant who worked in a livery stable in Cleveland until the outbreak of the war. You fought valiantly. You survived. In lieu of wages, you accepted a parcel of land in New Mexico territory. You’ve never had anything that was truly your own. Except for, perhaps, your horse. You arrive in New Mexico for the first time in your uniform, your horse goes lame the second you step onto your parcel, it’s so dry and rocky and red and you do not think it’s arable. You have to put down your horse. She dies with her head in your lap and you cry so hard you think you’ll die with her. When you’re done giving her a wake, knowing you have no ability to bury her, you begin walking in the direction of Las Cruces. Maybe you can sell this cursed land. Maybe you can get a job. First, a toast to Lula, the mare, the closest thing to family you have had in this country.

You’re seeing double by the time a little woman with an appraising expression approaches you. She is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, perhaps even better in double. A little older than you. Long, dark wavy hair that cascades over her shoulders, a perfect round face, a warm brown complexion and the most troubled eyes you have ever seen on a woman. What is most miraculous is that she wants to talk to you. You, drunk, sunburnt, covered in dust, the blood of your horse soaked into your pant leg. She motions to your pistol. She says she will pay you to do a job, pay you handsomely, enough to buy another horse. She says her husband is rich, he enticed her away from her family when she was very young, he holds her captive in his hacienda, he hurts her. He must be killed so that she can return to her sisters and live without fear. You will do it, you must do it. You do not care how much of the story is factual. You do not care if she intends to have the sheriff string you up after the deed is done. You do not care if she cannot pay the money she promised. You would do anything to remove the sorrow from her eyes. You kill her husband and sleep fine afterwards.

You do not buy that horse. You stay in the hacienda while she is out selling the bits and pieces of her husband’s life. You meet her sisters when they come, you help her pack away the pieces of her life so that she may start anew. You tell her of your own plans to start anew, of the patch of rocky soil that is your own. She tells you she grew up on land like that, tells you that it has always been her dream to work it. When her sisters leave for the mountains, she leaves with you.

[fuzzytheduck]

I think a lot of Americans have a hard time grasping the idea of Jewish indigeneity because they dont know where their own ancestors came from. Maybe they'll have vague ideas like German, Italian, or Irish, but what they know has very little bearing on their day-to-day lives. They don't dress any different, they don't speak the language their great grandparents spoke, they don't hold regular ceremonies and rituals that harken back to the old days.

The idea of an ethnic group maintaining a constant identity over thousands of years is patently absurd to them. "You're telling me you're still mourning something the ancient Romans did? That's ridiculous! Clearly you've fallen for modern Israeli propaganda, otherwise you're deliberately arguing in bad faith in order to justify land theft and genocide!"

It's very frustrating, because when I say these things I do not say them in bad faith. My friend once said "it's a very American thing not to understand large timescales", and I think she was right on the money. The process of American assimilation has cut peoples ties to their ancestors to such a degree that they can no longer comprehend a continuous identity spanning millennia.

So I'm going to say this in the clearest language I can:

There is a genuine, historically provable, continuous connection from ancient Israelites to modern Jews. By the laws and customs of those ancient Israelites I am one of them. Let me reiterate. I am an Israelite, a Hebrew, like from the Bible, and the fact that my identity has been so mythologized and talked about as if it's a thing of the past will never change that.

[justjudethoughts]

"yOu'Re nOt GeRmAn, yOu'rE AmErIcAn"

Okay, bestie, let me explain something to you that is very important to American culture — very, very few of us are ethnically American. When an American says they are "German" or "Irish" or "Italian" they aren't talking about citizenship. They are talking about ethnicity.

The U.S. is primarily a country of immigrants. Everyone says we "don't have a culture" or we have a "bastardized version of *insert culture*" but that's not true!!!! Our culture is made up of American Immigrant Culture!!!! American Italian food isn't "fake Italian food" — it's the innovation of Italian Immigrants who used traditional Italian food along with the ingredients that were more accessible to them in the States. It might not be the food "of Italy" but it is the food of proud sons and daughters of Italy who are also proud Americans. And you can be both.

When American culture is treated as a rip-off of every other culture, we are essentially dishonoring the memory of very brave men and women who chose to leave their homelands under unfortunate circumstances. Men and women who didn't have much money, but did what they could. Used the materials they had. And still managed to make something beautiful out of it. When you leave your home, it doesn't stop being part of your identity — it just looks a little different now. You pass on your old traditions to your children and your children's children, and along the way, new ones are created. Cultures mix and create subcultures. And it's beautiful. It's good. It's primally human.

If I'm not "German" care to explain to me my pasty white skin? Or my last name? Or all the post cards written to and from Germany that we have upstairs in a box? Or the name of my town? Or my grandparents' first language? Or the fact that my American Church, in the year 2024, still sings "Stille Nacht" at every Christmas Eve mass? Sure, I'm not fully German, but the awareness of where I have come from makes up a huge part of my understanding of myself and my place in this world. I was raised in a German Catholic farmtown, and it shows. It shows in the way we worship, and our work ethic, and our reverence for family life.

When an American calls themselves "German" or "Irish" or "Italian" they mean that's where their blood comes from. And it's okay for them to care about that. It's okay for them to care about their roots. It's a major part of American culture.

If you want to "respect" world cultures, you can't just pick and choose which ones are "real" according to you.

[an-spideog]

Don't Use Duolingo if You Really Want to Learn Irish

That title is a bit dramatic, but I really don't think that duolingo is a useful tool for Irish, especially in its current state, so I want to talk a bit about why, and I'll also talk about some alternatives.

Pronunciation

The first and most egregious issue is that at some point recently-ish, duo decided to start using Text-To-Speech for their Irish course, rather than recordings of a native speaker. The problem here is that their TTS is not trained on native speakers of Irish and pronounces words incorrectly. It doesn't make consistent distinctions between broad and slender consonants for example.

Irish has no standard pronunciation, so I understand how it can feel weird to choose just one dialect for the purposes of pronunciation (the old recordings were from a speaker of Galway Irish), but having just one dialect is much better than TTS which sounds like a learner, imagine if they had TTS for the French course which sounded like an anglophone schoolkid trying to pronounce french, and claimed they were teaching you how to speak french!

Grammar

Duo tends to be correct on grammar at least, which is a start. But often people using it get very confused about the grammar because duo doesn't explain any of it. I think there's a place for immersion in language learning, and I don't think everything has to be explained like that, but within duo's system of sentence testing and exercises like that, not having any explanation for why it's "mo chóta" and not "mo cóta" can be really confusing. Duo used to have more grammar information, it's a shame that they removed it, I wonder why they did it.

Money and Motivation

Duolingo is a business, and their motivation is not to help you learn a language 'fully', but to keep you using their app and hopefully have a higher chance of sharing it with others, competing with others, buying or causing others to buy memberships or lingots or any other in-app purchases.

I don't want to make it out like duo is some big conspiracy and they're tricking people, I don't think that's the case, but it's good to remember that their primary motivation is to keep people using the app, rather than help people move to a level in a language where they don't need the app anymore.

Keep this in mind whenever you see people trying to sell you stuff for language learning.

Why do people use Duolingo

I do get it, and I don't want to make anyone feel bad for using duo, there's a ton of reasons people tend towards it at first 1. It's really well known, so especially if you're learning a language and haven't heard of other resources for it, you'll check duolingo 2. It's very motivating for a lot of people, checking in every day and forming that habit is a really good way of sticking with a language 3. It's fun, people enjoy it

If you use it for reason 3. and you still like it, then don't worry about this post, I'm not trying to yuck anyone's yums, keep having fun!

If you use it for reasons 1. or 2. you can still keep using it if you like, but I want to suggest some other things which you might find helpful in trying to get to a higher level in Irish.

Other Resources

To address the pronunciation issue, I'd heavily recommend you disregard the pronunciation in duolingo, if you're looking for more reliable sources of pronunciation, I'd look towards recordings of native speakers, you can find that on:

Teanglann and Foclóir (they use the same recordings)

Fuaimeanna

and a really useful and underused one: https://davissandefur.github.io/minimal-pairs/ where you can hear the difference between similar sounds that English speakers often mix up in Irish.

A lot of people like duolingo because it's nice to have a clear path forward, a progression that you can get into without too much decision-making. For this I recommend getting a good textbook or course and working through it, the ones I'll recommend also have native speaker audio on them.

Learning Irish by Mícheál Ó Siadhail, this book teaches Galway Irish, not just in pronunciation but in grammar too. It's quite dense but it's well thought out and well explained.

Teach Yourself Irish (1961) this book is available for free online, and is a really good option if you're interested in Cork Irish (Munster), and have some experience with grammatical terminology. I used this book myself and really liked it, but it's very intense and not for everyone. (If you do end up using it, feel free to skip the appendices at the start, they're more of a reference and sometimes put people off from actually getting to the first chapter. Also if you have any questions about it or need any help just let me know.)

If you want a video course, there's a great course called "Now You're Talking" which is available for free online, along with audio files and worksheets here. It features Donegal Irish and leads into the more intermediate level course called Céim ar Aghaidh also available online.

There's other textbooks that I have less experience with (Buntús na Gaeilge, Gaeilge/Gramadach Gan Stró, etc.) but if they work for you, stick with them, there's nothing worse than not making progress because you keep switching resources trying to find the "perfect one"

Whether or not you continue to use Duolingo, I would really really encourage you to try engaging with media in Irish. People often shy away from this when they're learning because they don't feel like they're "ready" yet. But you basically never feel like you're ready, you just have to try and find something near your level and try to get comfortable with not understanding everything. This is where you learn a huge portion of the language, you hear how things are pronounced you see what words mean in what contexts, getting input in your target language is so important!

I know content can be kind of hard to find, so I'll make a few recommendations here: There's a wealth of content available for free online (more if you're in ireland but some internationally) on TG4 If you're still starting out, I'd recommend trying to watch some kids shows since they'll have simpler language and will be easier to follow. I wouldn't recommend using English subtitles when you watch them. Some good options include:

Dónall Dána: an Irish dub of Horrid Henry, silly and childish but the actors have good Irish and importantly the show has Irish language subtitles, they don't always match but if you're still beginning and can't necessarily get everything by ear, they're really useful. (Mostly Galway Irish)

Curious George: another dub, again with Irish language subtitles (I can't remember what dialects were in it off the top of my head but I'd assume mostly galway again)

Seó Luna: No subtitles, but a good option if you're aiming for Munster Irish, the lead character has Kerry Irish

Miraculous: No subtitles but a better show than most of the other kids' ones and more bearable to watch as an adult (Mostly Galway Irish)

Ros na Rún: Moving away from kids shows, a long running soap opera, this has Irish subtitles and a really good mix of dialects within the show. If you're finding the kids shows boring or too easy I'd really recommend it, but it can be complex because of the amount of characters, dialects, and plotlines. I'd recommend starting at the beginning of a newer season and just trying to catch on to what's happening as you go.

There are a lot of books, if you live in Ireland you can get nearly any Irish book for free from a library, so please check out your local library or request some of these from other libraries in the system:

There's a series of fairytales (Rápúnzell, Luaithríona etc.) by Máiréad Ní Ghráda which are illustrated and for children, which are a really good option for when you're just starting out reading

There's kids books about Fionn and the Fianna by Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin

There's a cute little kids' book in Kerry Irish about a cat named Mábúis

Leabhar Breac has a lot of graphic novels, some of them based on Irish mythology, some on other stuff. The fact that they're illustrated can make it a lot easier to follow even if you don't understand all the words at first.

Gliadar has just released their Scott Pilgrim translation

If you're looking for something a bit more advanced you can look at some of the books for adult learners by Comhar, they contain simplified language and glossaries but have full original adult stories.

And if you're wanting full, natural, native-level Irish there's a load of books by those same groups, and others like An Gúm, Cló Iar-Chonnacht, Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne, Éabhlóid, Coiscéim, and more.

And don't shy away from older books written in Seanchló either, they can be more challenging but it's a whole extra world of books

If you're trying to improve your listening comprehension, I definitely recommend listening to shows on Raidió na Gaeltachta, hearing native Irish speakers talk at full speed is really good practice. But I get that it can be overwhelming at first. Here are some things you can do as you build up to that:

Watching those same TV shows I mentioned without subtitles is a good way to build up listening skills.

Vifax is a website where you can practice listening to short news segments and answer questions on them, then getting to look at the transcript with notes afterwards.

Snas is kind of the evolution of vifax, now using clips from both the news and Ros na Rún.

I really hope that this post can help people move away from duolingo if they're looking to take their Irish learning to the next level, if you've got any questions, just let me know!

[maidservant-hecubus]

My father is an Ashkenazi Jew. His parents were first generation Americans. Their parents escaped the pogroms in Russia and Ukraine and came to find their American dream. They fought in wars and opened businesses and assimilated and my generation barely has a few words of Yiddish between us. My mother is as much of a WASP as it gets. American Revolutionaries and Signers and some household name civil war feature players. Not old money, but old America and undoubtedly white. I'm patrilineal. Not a Jew to a lot of Jews. Not a Jew to a lot of my Jewish family. Even though i was raised Jewish. Even though I look like my father. Even though i got enough of something in my DNA to get asked "What are you?" more often than not. More often than I'm just accepted at face value as "white". When i was little we lived in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. Like the 5-10 kids in every family sort of Irish catholic neighborhood. The kids calling me a christ killer and refusing to play with me because they heard it from their parents sort of irish catholic neighborhood. For some reason my parents tried to send me to the catholic school down the street. I lasted less than a week because i didn't understand their rituals and their language and they found out my father was a Jew and they couldn't have a christ killer in their midst. I was just sad i didn't get to wear the cute plaid skirt anymore. So i went to the public school and my well meaning shiksa mother who never converted but learned the Chanukah prayers and helped cook Seder dinners came to the school to teach the class about Chanukah. She taught them songs and all the kids got dreidels and had so much fun spinning the top for chocolate coins. It was nice to feel normal. A few weeks later a boy in a higher grade attacked me on the way to the bus and smashed my art project (we had made pig noses from solo cups to celebrate reading charlotte's web) into my face and called me a filthy jew. I didn't understand, i was more upset to lose the project i was so proud of. Other things happened. Things I wont talk about because putting them in context would doxx me. But a million reminders that i wasn't one of them. I wasn't welcome because i was Jewish. My parents divorced. My mother left. Far away so I'd only see her a handful of times growing up. And I went to live with my Dad in a city that seemed like it was overflowing with Jews. Everyone knew my holidays! In public school the teachers looked like my family and had familiar sounding names. We had the high holy days off just like christmas or easter. We sang Chanukah songs in the winter recital and nobody's mom had to come teach them to the class. Finally I belonged! My friends and cousins started planning for their b mitzvah celebrations and i asked for my own. I asked to go to hebrew school so i could be more like the people i belonged with and celebrate the things i loved about myself and them. "But you're not jewish." My father would say. This was news to me. The christ killer. The filthy jew. But a 10 year old has little power over their lives. So i didn't go. I didn't have a bat mitzva while my cousins had theirs. It was okay because i still belonged more than i ever had. But i was still jewish enough to keep the holidays and pray and fast and get sent with a box of matzo to my WASP grandmothers for easter, and have matzo packed in my lunch to eat in AP algebra in 7th grade and get asked if I'm a "Yid" by the teacher. And still to this day not know if it was endearment or insult but by then I knew even in this magical city being a Jew wasn't always safe. in highschool I tried to take hebrew lessons with a friend in a similar situation as me. She was also hungry to reconnect. I don't remember why the classes or the friendship fell through, but they did. My next "friend", a goy raised catholic from another neighborhood, liked to accuse me of being money driven when i picked up a penny on the sidewalk or tried to ask who was going to pay for the zine's she wanted to publish.

 "What are you?" I'd get asked a lot on the street by curious strangers, "Where are you from?" "Are you Italian?" Always Italian. I never really understood that, but its become code in my head for "You look like you're white but something about you is very not white and I just can't place it, so Italian seems safe and polite." I'm not here to unpack the Italian part of all that. I don't even know what I'm unpacking for myself by writing this except I've been sick for days and I'm so tired and this is all that my foggy brain can wrap itself around. Later I'm an adult and on my own and getting bloodwork done. The Nurse is a black woman and so sweet to me. She can tell I'm nervous about the needles because I've already stumbled through my apologies for my herd to find veins. So she distracts me with small talk. Where do i live? I tell her. She looks worried for me. Tells me that it used to be a nice neighborhood before white people took it over and she warns me like she's my own mother to be careful because they aren't safe. I doublecheck the skin she's putting a needle into. Whatever she sees isn't white. I love her for it. For a moment I belong there with her. She doesn't ask what I am or where i'm from, but she knows what i'm not. I'm the only one keeping the holidays with my family. We celebrate Passover because I go home to my fathers and cook the dinner and print out the Haggadah and lead the Seder to the tune of my drunk catholic stepmother eating my food and telling me i'll never be a jew. She's more of a jew than I'll ever be because she grew up in a jewish neighborhood and her friends were all jews and she married a jew and i was just playing pretend. I stopped going home for holidays and they stopped observing anything except Christmas. I marry a goy. "Is he a jew?" is the first thing my father asks and he's disappointed when i say no. He's abusive, i run. I end up living in the attic of this older old money WASP couple who need a live in house sitter. They're pillars of their church and they know someone from the WASP side of my family very well and its a funny coincidence and they think i belong there. I know from their divest from Israel bumper stickers that i don't. Then they find out I consider myself Jewish and i see the light in their eyes die and its replaced by something hard and disappointed. Now, while writing this, i can laugh about being the jew in someone's attic. But then, it was only a few months after that they started coming up with excuses for why I needed to move out. I did, their excuses never manifested into reality. I got married again. A jew this time! a Jewish medical professional liek grandma always wanted. She's a convert and her ex was a rabbinical student. I think maybe i'm home finally. She has to understand. I'm not Jewish enough for her. We don't keep holidays at home because i'm not a jew. I cry every year when pesach comes and goes and i haven't recited the plagues or eaten matzo piled high with horseradish. She insists on putting up a christmas tree. She turns abusive. I run.

I'm alone now and no longer in that magic jewish city. I'm far away and surrounded by mega churches and cows and the bagels suck and people quote the bible at me like some call and response that i don't have the cheat code for and I don't belong here at all but i'm finally finally free to light my menorah and recite the plagues and study torah with the group i found here on tumblr who love and accept me even though i'm patrilineal. Oct. 7th happened a few weeks after I moved here. I worry about my family back home and i think no one will look for Jews here among the cows and mega churches, so I can be a safe place for them to run if things get bad again. But i still don't fit in here. I don't look right. The last name I have now is common here and too white for whatever people see when they look in my face. I get interrogated about it a lot. But i learned quickly how to smile and say "have a blessed day". I hide my menorah when maintenance comes to work on my apartment. I flew home last month. Just for a visit. I've never been away from home this far or this long. And I'm the type that covers nerves and anxiety with chattiness, so at the airport i made a for-now-friend while we both waited for the plane to board. She's Puerto Rican. We talk about our lives. Our families. Her twin sister and i go by the same nickname and so we're family now. We talk about food. So much food and how much we love cooking and how important food was at home. "Are you Italian?" she asks as we're stepping through the hatch into the plane. Why always Italian? I wonder for the millionth time in my life. And I freeze up for a moment between fighting my carry-on over the gap and terror that I'm about to see the light go out behind her eyes and i'll lose this for-now friend. "No," i laugh but its not a real laugh and i see the concern in her face as we squeeze through the aisle because she can hear the apprehension in my voice, "I'm Jewish." And something strange happened because her face lit up and she smiled and said "No way?! You guys have GREAT food!"