Note from Preet: A Ripple of Hope

Dear Reader,

The summer of ’88 was a hot one. But maybe I remember it hotter than it was because back then there was no air conditioning on the subway. In those months, the New York City subway was the final leg of my morning commute to an unpaid state government internship with the Office of the Ombudsman, where I did constituent work.

I had just finished my sophomore year of college, and living in the City was out of the question. So I lived at home in Eatontown, New Jersey, with my parents. Every morning my mother would drive me to the Little Silver train station, where I would join the hordes of commuters for the hour-long trek to Penn Station in Manhattan. Then I took the sweaty subway to a downtown government office building.