From: A (Northern) Irish Reader [Email him]

I have lived in Portland.

It is a wonderful city and the people were warm and eclectic—and so far up their own posteriors it was hard for a guy like me from Belfast to comprehend.

I came to Portland from London, where I had been studying. Every Friday I would treat myself to a feast of that traditional British staple, fish and chips.

It was only later—when I noticed that the people who owned the fish and chip shop were Kurdish—that I realized I had been an accomplice in a cultural appropriation crime.

Needless to say, when some of my Portland friends invited me for dinner and suggested making potatoes (because I came from Ireland), I reported them to the authorities and had their kitchen bulldozed.

We must remember that the traffic can only go one way.