The secret handshake

I just give them a big old wet one - handshake is just too impersonal.

Speaking Yiddish, even just a bissel.

They have an American flag visible - as a car/window sticker, on the front lawn, etc. The bigger, the better.

great question boom.

I'll have to sleep on it.

It's my accent. People ask where I am from and then we either talk about
their one quarter German background or their vacation trips to the Octoberfest.
Works like a charm!

I dread the prospect of other Americans learning i am of Irish descent. What passes for Irish "heritage" among most Americans reeks of commercial exploitation, and resembles absolutely nothing of the people and the culture of Ireland as i experienced it there on those occasions upon which i travelled and briefly resided there. I avoid as much as possible going out in public on St. Patrick's Day, a holiday which most Americans seem to think was invented to excuse public drunkenness.

What is really hilarious to me (in a pathetic kind of way) is when people will tell me "you don't look Irish." This is part and parcel of the commercial stereotype of the Irish, seeing them all as freckled, red-haired gnomes like the little creep in the "Lucky Charms" ads. When i was in Ireland, and especially when i was wearing clothing i had purchased there, the Irish reacted to me as to any other of their fellow citizens, which is to say they didn't react at all. It was only when i spoke that they'd realize that i might be an American, and many would ask me if i were from Dublin (an accent very close to the bland, northern American-Canadian accent is common in some Dublin neighborhoods, and the news readers on RTE, the national radio and television services, sound just like Americans or Canadians). Tall people with dark, curly hair and pale skin are so common in Ireland, you'd be hard pressed to throw a brick into a crowd without hitting one.

When i detect the Irish-American "secret handshake," i slip out of the room.

I can tell fellow dedicated runners/joggers by one of the following:
1. They can tell you the distance from home to any place on their favorite
running route down to a tenth of a mile.
2. They say things like "pronate" and "supinate".
3. They wear beat-up old running shoes around, NEVER new ones.
4. They wear t-shirts with more ads on the back than a NASCAR racer.
(On the front it says something like "Feaster Five Road Race Thanksgiving
1999".)
5. They are on a first name basis with an orthopedic surgeon.

Accents and language seem to be a unifying factor!

What does a flag say, Foofie? I have a big flag outside my house but I'm not sure it really says anything about me to the outside world. I fly it as a salute to my brother. I buy a new one every time he ships out.

I think Setanta just told us he wouldn't join any club that would have him for a member....

Running and bicycling is certainly a culture of it's own. You can tell a lot about the seriousness of the person by their attire. It used to work that way with cameras - you could tell a lot about the kind of photography someone did just by looking at their camera. Like shoes, a camera has (well, had) a lot of handshakes.

You mean when Dennis Day sang "O Danny Boy" on the Jack Benny Show (in black and white) you did not get misty eyed, even though a young lad?

Regardless, I have heard that NYC has an amazing amount of Irish culture, even though the demographics is not the 1/3 of all New Yorkers, as it was in the 1950's. NYU has Irish house, so Irish musicians, etc. can stay there when in New York. The Bronx still has a neighborhood where many young girls enjoy step-dancing, as elsewhere in the tri-state region.

And, as I was told by a close relative, if anyone in NYC, in the early 20th century wanted to appear more American, the advice was learn to speak like the Irish.

Watch any 1940's black and white movie that takes place in NYC and notice all the Irish names that are in the script for the newpaper reporters, lawyers, etc., etc.

NYC would not be what it is now, if it was not for the Irish having been one-third of its population in the first half of the twentieth century. Many other groups are now enjoying the labors of a few generations of Irish.

P.S. I remember a NYC where my mother told me as a child that if I was ever lost, go to a nice policeman (that was likely of Irish descent). They made the term New York's Finest a truism.

A flag says to me that the owner of the flag is not alienated from his/her American identity, and even though the individual may have few other things in common with me, my concern is that I am happy to see another person that does not consider himself/herself a "citizen of the world," but rather a citizen of the U.S.A.

I'm borne of the eastern USA, eastern Canada irish immigrant folk, but not raised in a wash of the followup culture. I tell some bits that together make up some stories, but I consider myself more of a Los Angeles person first, for better or for worse.

I've a lot of handshake connectors.. too many to list.

The idiot strikes again. "Danny Boy" is based on a version of a traditional tune, called "Londonderry Air" by Herbert Hamilton Hardy, an English Protestant living in Ulster. Anyone who refers to Derry (Doire in the Gaelic--it means an oak wood forest) as Londonderry immediately brands himself a Sassanach and a foreign oppressor.

No, nothing that Herbert Hamilton Hardy wrote makes me misty-eyed. Some or your posts make me misty-eyed, much as the pain of getting my pecker caught in my zipper makes my eyes water.

When i was born in New York, it was the second largest Irish city in the world, second only to Boston. We didn't have any of that commercial Irish bullshit in the Bronx in those days.

As a Heinz 57 American, I suppose the only tag I get stuck with is "Texan." I really don't give a ****. I would do the same things in California or New York that I do here. Only the tag would change.

When I see somebody working on a laptop that has Linux instead of Windows installed on it. This worker is guaranteed to belong to a sect of nerds that I'm friendly with.

When I see somebody read sheet music. Usually happens on the C train or around Juilliard School.

My family has some heavy load, in that my dad edited (read 'saved', a film called Hills of Ireland in the early fifties that was shown in a lot of grammar schools of that time, across the usa, and worked with Father Peyton, irish priest, think Miracle of Fatima, of the Family Rosary Crusade (don't get me going), and its offshoot, Family Theater. My uncles were part of the irish involved in early Hollywood production, one an attorney, one a treasurer (probably for a short time) for Selznick, and one a treasurer for both Disney and CBS.

And so?
My friends were almost never of irish descent. Usually latino/a or jewish, or once in a while, both.

My connections, "handshakes", are re interests - which I've quite a lot of.

Four-finger lock, lumberjack saw, bump-up, bump-down,
and around-the-world with back-snap.

You say you are not immersed in the Irish culture, yet you know the origins of music that made many a New York Irishman misty-eyed? Ah, begone with ye.

Liar. At no time did i make any remark relative to being or not being "immersed in Irish culture." I simply objected to the commercial Irish "culture" of the United States.