$85 or your life – pay attention and stop walking the talk
Walk, talk, text ... BAM! CRUNCH! DEAD! (photo: abcnews)
This is one time “walk the talk” is a bad idea
I am not sure we need a study or poll to tell us this but there is one that says, “ Texting while walking can be a distraction.” Reality tells us even more: It can get you killed.
In the town of Fort Lee, New Jersey (across the Hudson from NY), population 35,000, the police now issue $85 tickets if you are caught texting while walking. Because they have had three fatal pedestrian accidents this year. Thomas Ripoli, chief of the Fort Lee Police hopes the crackdown on people who display dangerous behavior while walking and texting will make his town safer. According to the New Jersey Record, over a 117 tickets have been issued so far. Eric Lamberg, co-author of the study, told Long Island Business News, “We want to raise awareness that a real disruption occurs because of texting. Texting disrupts your ability much more than talking.”
Hey you! Look up ... the light is red, the bus is big (photo: libn.com)
Of course, in our social media crazed culture not everyone is on board with the idea of $85 tickets. One woman, Sue Choe, said, “When I walk I still look around. I’m not like constantly looking down the whole time.” Yeah, that’s what the more than 5,500 people said last year before they were killed while driving, texting and talking on their phone (see earlier blog: “Hey Mom, I’ll be home soon … I think”). Another woman complained that the tickets were “a lot of money.” So stop walking and texting. Sit down, take a break, enjoy life. Besides, $85 is not too much to pay if it helps you overcome your addiction.
“People are the worst”
Coming 2026
My personal history is the stuff they write books about. And that's what I am doing. The working title, "Chains of My Father: Marry White."
"The ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds." - Barack Obama
This perspicacious line from the Prologue of Barack Obama's "Dream from My Father" wrenched my aspiration into action. I started writing, furiously. Unlike Obama's perspective, my pain had been for the opposite reason: I was not seen by whites as a "tragic mulatto," rather I lived every day of my childhood hoping whites were not "searching my eyes for some telltale sign" that I WAS mulatto. This is my story.
It's historical fiction because I cannot find enough records to substantiate all facets of the story. I've combed the genealogy, traveled to my father and grandmothers' birthplace, walked the graveyards, searched the churches and ... well, all the facts aren't there. I have written three books based on the genealogy of other families but my ancestors emerged from a journey that left too few records – slavery.
My paternal, great grandmother was a "freed slave." My grandmother, Amelia, was born to a mixed race slave named Mary (we do not know her last name) and a white, French plantation owner, the Count de Poullain, in Grenada, West Indies. Amelia was raised in the "Big House" and in adulthood, in an attempt to escape her black heritage disowned her mother, telling her, "Get out and never come back." Amelia, as a mother of twelve children, enshrined into the family commandments, "Marry white." Many did, including my father. My mother was a lovely, white, Anglo-Saxon protestant born in England. They met in Canada where my dad studied and became a doctor.
It has taken five generations for the descendants of Mary to free themselves from the stigma of their black heritage but today my children embrace it. Unfortunately, the past 250 years have been a wasteland of bigotry, racism and bullying. But, on closer look, we see not only the brutality, fear, violence, and murder but also the self-respect, dignity, love, kindness, perseverance and indomitable spirit.
As of the spring of 2025, the depth of historic perspective and the sweeping inspiration of oppressed people has created a two-volume duology of which I have only arrived at the middle of the 19th century. 1840 is the year my great grandfather was born, the beginning of Volume II, and he's pushing me to make sure our story is published by the summer of 2026.
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