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.

A ’70s pop masterpiece was his legacy

It always was the sax line that got me, like the sax in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” a rare sax solo that captures the memory.

And while Gerry Rafferty didn’t play the solo, he wrote the basic melody and the song the sax made famous. “Baker Street,” though, was more than the solo; it was a shimmering bit of mid-’70s pop that stands among the best music of its decade. That Rafferty managed only a couple of minor hits from the same album — the underrated City to City — ultimately doesn’t matter. What matters is that he gave us “Baker Street” and “Stuck in the Middle” (recorded with Stealer’s Wheel), a feat few can claim.

Rest in peace, Mr. Rafferty.

  • Read poetry at The Subterranean. 
  • Send me an e-mail.  
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.  
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
    Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

    The correct response is ‘Hell no!’

    John Nichols, in a useful rejoinder to so much of the economic and political nonsense flying around as the GOP readies to take control of the House, that it is the people who created the mess we are in who should pay to fix it.

    Our sputtering economy and exhausted federal budget was not caused by entitlement spending, but by a regulatory climate that turned the financial markets into Atlantic City casinos and two endless wars that are daily sucking the cash from our bank accounts and leaving the blood of soldiers and civilians on both sides to stain the countrysides.

    And yet, we still hear from the “Washington elites … that the U.S. had spent itself into a financial mess” and that “it was going to be necessary to put Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs at risk to balance the books.”

    That is both foolish and immoral.

    As Nichols says,

    there is a place for fiscal responsibility. But there is also a place for moral responsibility. Those who created the mess should shoulder the burden of cleaning it up.  Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid did not create this crisis, war profiteering and Wall Street speculation did. So before any working family sacrifices, the first demand should be that the profiteers and the speculators pay for their crisis.

    • Send me an e-mail.
    • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
    • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
    • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
    Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

    East Brunswick: Every town New Jersey

    The East Brunswick Township Council is preparing for what it expects will be a nightmare budget season — which is exactly what every town in the state should be expecting to face. The reason? About 15-18 years of games and gimmicks at the state level that has made it impossible for the state to help local government and a current governor with an ideological predisposition to slash and burn.

    • Send me an e-mail.
    • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
    • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
    • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
    Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

    Let the games begin

    The Republicans who have taken over the House of Representatives have scheduled a vote to repeal the Obama healthcare law, a maneuver guaranteed to fail while also winning them political points among their paranoid base.

    The Democrats are — finally — attacking the anti-democratic filibuster, a maneuver that will raise the ire of every single Republican in the Senate.

    And this is just the beginning. Things are not going to get any less ugly anytime soon.

    • Send me an e-mail.
    • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
    • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
    • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
    Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

    Typical Christie

    Nothing is ever Chris Christie’s fault. The failures of local and state plow crews? Blame the mayors, not the single-minded focus on slashing budgets. Being in Florida? I would have been doing the same thing here as I was doing there. But you weren’t here. We were.

    I should point out that, before this past year of budget cuts, South Brunswick road crews were second to none and always — and I mean always — out-performed the state and county when the white stuff fell. But with fewer public works employees, too many streets were left with too much snow as late as Tuesday.

    I could blame the mayor and council. I could blame the public works staff. But that would be wrong-headed, given their past responses to bad weather. I blame the governor, even if he refuses to take any blame for anything.

    • Send me an e-mail.
    • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
    • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
    • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
    Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.