Thursday’s Headlines: The Spirit of Kwanzaa Edition

We were excited to get Assembly Member Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn’s email newsletter the other day reminding us that we’re in the midst of the seven-day Kwanzaa celebration. True, Hermelyn spelled her own surname wrong — “Heremlyn” — in her press release, but that doesn’t take anything away from Kwanzaa, the nearly 60-year-old holiday timed to the traditional start of the harvest season in Africa.

The holiday — which focuses on unity, self-determination, collective work, cooperative economics, personal purpose, creativity and faith — runs through Jan. 1. Today is the third day of Kwanzaa, or “unity day.”

We hope Hermelyn, who initially opposed congestion pricing as well as the McGuinness Boulevard street safety redesign, will reflect on those seven principles.

In other news from a generally slow day:

• First, let’s honor yesterday’s generous donors to our annual year-end fundraising drive (and offer a reminder that you can join them merely by clicking the image to the right): Thanks. Sonny! Thanks, Christopher! Thanks, Terry! Thanks, Michael!
• In case you missed last week’s Bloomberg’s analysis of the MTA’s finances (TL;DR: they are very much in trouble), you can read it on the paywall-free Mass Transit site.
• The MTA put out a list of stats for the year, including the coveted busiest subway station award. (amNY. Gothamist)
• Speaking of which, amNY did its “best transit stories” of the year story.
• There was no formal ribbon-cutting, but the city celebrated completion of the second phase of the renovation of Pelham Parkway. (NYC government)
• Buried in an otherwise fascinating Business Insider piece about former (and disgraced) FBI New York counterintelligence chief Charles McGonigal was this fascinating paragraph that says a lot about corruption and how numb we all are to it: “In New York, prosecutors said, McGonigal continued to wield the privileges and leverage the contacts that he’d enjoyed as the FBI’s New York City counter-intelligence chief, even though he no longer held that job. … McGonigal continued to put an FBI placard on the windshield of his car, so he could park wherever he pleased.”
• Don’t miss this Times obit on Pope.L, truly a public space artist.
• The Daily News had more on Saquan Smith, the moped rider killed on Christmas morning.
• Delivery-worker-on-delivery-worker violence in Queens. (Fox5)
• And, finally, we had some fun with data at the office yesterday: