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.

New Dylan on the way

News for Bob Dylan fans — a new disc is due by summer’s end.

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Bob Dylan (music) will issue “Modern Times,” his 44th album and first new set in five years, on Aug. 29.

According to Columbia Records, the album features 10 new Dylan originals he recorded this winter with his touring band–guitarists Stu Kimball and Denny Freeman, multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron, bassist Tony Garnier and drummer George Recile. Dylan sang and played keyboards, guitars, and harmonica.

The “Modern Times” tracklisting includes “Thunder on the Mountain,” “Spirit on the Water,” “Workingman’s Blues” and “When The Deal Goes Down.”

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Bring them home, says Bruce and Pete

Bruce Springsteen offers a pointed critique of the war in Iraq, through the lens of Pete Seeger on the song “Bring Them Home” — which is only available as a audio stream from the Boss’ Web site (in Real Audio, Quick Time or Windows Media).

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Another turning point, another ebbing tide

Tom Englehardt of TomDispatch offers this bit of perspective in the death of Abu Musad al-Zarqawi:

Every now and then, you have to rely on history as your guide. And hasn’t this happened to us enough? Don’t we know that, in every turning-of-the-tide moment in Iraq, it soon turns out that, despite the hoopla, our tide was ebbing and someone else’s invariably rising? A number of experts are already suggesting that Zarqawi’s death will have “minimal impact” on the Iraqi resistance and may, in fact, serve to strengthen it by removing the most divisive and detested oppositional figure in the country; or perhaps, as the superb independent journalist Nir Rosen suggests in a thoughtful obit at the Truthdig website, Zarqawi’s death “was the greatest advertisement for his cause” and the path he blazed into sectarian warfare is now unstaunchable.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Deadly questions

Aren’t we just quibbling here? Doesn’t anyone see that discussions about particular methods really just obscure the ethical and moral failings of state-sponsored revenge killing?

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Traffic jam — Route 27 along Kendall Park

I was driving along Route 27 the other day when I came to a realization: The stretch between Finnegan’s Lane and Route 518 has all the traffic without any of the charm of Princeton Borough.

Rather than a quaint downtown — obviously, not something that can be manufactured from scratch — we have a series of strip malls on the Franklin side with closed supermarkets and sprawling parking lots and a bunch of residential developments, back turned as if they were shunning the road.

The problem comes from a series of bad decisions and shortsightedness by elected officials of both parties in both towns, residents and the state. The goal has been to avoid developing like Edison, rather than to craft a real plan for development and in the end we get a sort of Edison-lite — not as bad as that north-county town, but still haphazard and painfully annoying.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press