Gotham City Soul

My home state of New Jersey apologized for slavery yesterday. I wasn’t going to blog about it until I read what a Republican assemblyman had to say about it according to the Associated Press: “But this was a sin that was atoned for in blood 150 years ago by the death of 650,000 Americans,” [Richard] Merkt R[epublican]-Morris [County] said, referring to the Civil War. “America does not and has never accepted the notion of collective guilt,” Merkt said. "We can all, and should all, express profound sorrow about the evils of slavery, but none of us can truly apologize for the institution because neither we nor anyone we represent was in any way responsible for it.” PLEASE! I’m so tired of that “our ancestors came here after slavery, we have nothing to do with that” mantra, I can’t tell you. TIRED. He couldn’t let his fellow legislators do a good thing, he just couldn’t. Here’s what I have to say to Assemblyman Merkt and all those other white folks who have the temerity to ask me “...

So I arrived in Newark Airport from Savannah yesterday around 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I prefer Newark to LaGuardia and JFK for a couple of reasons, not the least of them being state loyalty. Yes, I will travel out of New York City to Jersey paying the $15 surcharge to the Taxi and Limousine Commission to fly out of Newark. Newark Airport makes sense to me. It’s laid out in a way that I can navigate. I just like it better. I traveled to Newark via cab last Friday because I just couldn’t get up early enough to do anything else, and bless the Supershuttle for being so cheap ($21, one-way; 12 for additional people in your party) and proletarian, but it has its issues (namely, you’re packed in like a sardine; they pick you up way too early for your flight—3 am for a 7 am takeoff, for example; there’s always somebody who is stunningly late for his or her flight (because he or she lied to the dispatcher about the time of the flight) and is killing the driver in a death by a thousand irri...