For some 25 years, I worked as a librarian, first at the New York Public Library, then at Trenton State College in New Jersey. My life has always been with, around, and for books.
I worked as a teacher in the public school system in New York City for several years, and I was a victim of the layoffs, you know, in the mid-'70s. And then I worked as a sales engineer for a company in New Jersey that was selling industrial filtration equipment.
I was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956, with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins - I was only 16 years old - we went down to the public library trying to check out some books, and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors. It was a public library.
I was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956 with my brothers and sisters and first cousins, I was only 16 years old, we went down to the public library trying to check out some books and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors! It was a public library! I never went back to that public library until July 5th, 1998, by this time I'm in the Congress, for a book signing of my book "Walking with the Wind"
My mother is a first generation American. Her father worked in the Roebling Steel Mill in Trenton, New Jersey.And yet my mother became the first person in her family to get a college degree.
I spent my youth playing music, and I worked a lot in New Jersey and New York clubs. At 18, I worked all around Hudson, Essex, and Bergen counties.
I was born into a middle class family in New Jersey. My dad came home from serving in the Army after having lost his father, worked in the Breyers ice cream plant in Newark, New Jersey. Was the first person to graduate from college.
New Jersey is very big. There are different areas of New Jersey. There is North New Jersey. There is like the center. There are a lot of actors from New Jersey that don't speak with a New Jersey accent.
Yeah, I was only in New York from the age of six months until five years old. But my very first memories are all of New York. I remember my first rainbow on a beach in New York. I remember jumping on a bed in New York.
In 1887, Oregon became the first state to make Labor Day an official holiday, with Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York quickly following suit.
When I was 18, I was moving to New York to start college at The New School. I had done a year of college in Toronto and wasn't happy there. I didn't have any friends in New York City, but I applied and got in. It was pretty overwhelming, but everyone in New York is so ambitious and creative.
I may catch some flack for this, but the Jersey style I feel is just very different from New York. When I hear a Jersey MC spit, I can just hear New Jersey in them. To where as NY, that style has been broadcasted so nationally that it's just a natural sound in music.
I grew up here in New York City and New Jersey, performing on Broadway shows, surrounded by some of my closest friends from the LGBT community. My father, a minister from New Jersey, shaped my view that love is love, that we are all equal.
I've never been one for sitting on beaches. Let me tell you who I am: I'm a girl from New Jersey who moved to New York and worked in a bar while trying to make a living at what I really wanted to do, which was act.
One of my greatest sources of pride as president of the New York Public Library is the continuance of the library's open, free, and democratic posture, the fact that we are here for Everyman, that we are indeed Everyman's university, the place where the scholar who is not college-affiliated can come and work and feel at home.
Restaurants, shows, night life, art exhibits, readings - New York is such a cultural epicenter, and while Jersey makes so much sense right now, I really am hoping to have my own future New York City some day.
I had worked in this New York theatre company for my first eight or nine years out of college, acting and directing there, and I'd begun to write a little bit.