twotoner

Keeping my one post a month tradition alive right here and will focus on the Garden State.

On Monday I rolled into work in record time for a weekday. The MLK holiday really helped me out on that one. Downtown Woodbury NJ is a former center of commerce for South Jersey where white middle class families came to shop, dine, worship and conduct their business.

It's also the county seat.

Nowadays it's predominately African-American with its fair share of vacant businesses, like most towns.

Anyway, the last few miles of my trip to work was pretty disheartening. Driving with the windows down, I witnessed two young people engaging in a shouting match standing on the corner.

Once I got into work, I declared quickly to the newsroom that "It's great to see that the youth of the city are continuing the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by calling each other the N-word."

And I think to myself "what a wonderful world."

Seriously, have we not learned anything?

Today I had to travel down the one of the more southern counties in New Jersey to cover a court case. A change in venue was asked for and granted, therefore I had to drive an extra 30 miles past the office to get there.

The details of the case are pretty unique. The first black mayor of the township has been at the center of racial issues for the past three years. He has been involved in multiple lawsuits for various reasons, but today's hearing involved an accusation that a police officer shoved him after the mayor voted against promoting said officer.

It has to be the strangest town I've ever covered, full of scandal and intrigue. All in a small farming town.

What struck me as strange was that there was a group of people there to testify in the case, yet in the lobby, everyone was cordial. Just makes no sense to me -as if they thrive on drama.

Not sure where I was going with this blog, but it's surely off-track. Maybe next month I'll have something more important to say.

Philly Beer Week and Footie season can't get here soon enough.