The Latest from Hank Kalet

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Adelaide Literary Award.

My essay, “Philosopher’s Stone,” was named a shortlist winner in the Adelaide Literary Award — Best Essay contest for 2019.

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Philosopher’s Stone

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1.
The fear, always, is that blood is destiny, that the confusion I see in her eyes will be visited upon me. I hear her repeat herself. I watch her obsess — over her phone, her bag, my niece’s baby. I hear her tell the same stories, ask the same questions.

We’re watching television in the den, my dad asleep in my reading chair. Football had been on, but with the big man asleep, I flip the channel, find an old favorite show of hers. “How about this, mom, The Wild, Wild West?” Victor Buono is chewing up the scenery. Robert Conrad is all cool and bad-ass in his waistcoat, a cowboy, a spy, facing off against another surreal sci-fi threat.
 

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“I think I remember this,” she tells me, and she watches.

“That’s Robert Conrad, James West,” I say. “That’s Artemis Gordon. You used to love this.”

She smiles. It goes to a commercial for My Pillow.

“That’s supposed to be the best pillow,” she says. My dad rouses. “They don’t tell you how much it is,” she says.

She’s right. No price. A two-for-one offer but no price. She says it again, tells me again that it is “supposed to be the best pillow for sleeping.”

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Notes on Black Mama, Hero Worship, and Complicated Legacies

Even in the aftermath of such a tragic death, we have to avoid hagiography and the deification of celebrity and politics.

Read my essay here.

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Immigrants and Advocates Drive the Debate
From The Progressive

Activism matters. Direct action can change minds and create environments that are ripe for change. That, as much as anything else, is the lesson that should be taken from the successful effort in New Jersey to win driving privileges for undocumented residents.

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Broken Cord Anthology Coming This Spring

I’m editing an anthology of Alzheimer’s and dementia essays and poems, which will be out in the spring. To donate / buy in advance, visit our Go Fund Me page.

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Facebook

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Twitter

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Link

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Website

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Copyright © 2020 Hank Kalet, All rights reserved.
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Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.
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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

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