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.

Doggie diaries: The story of Rosie and Sophie It’s going to get better, I know it will

Things are rarely as dark as they seem when you’re stuck in the moment.

The dogs are sleeping on the couch and chair behind me, having spent a couple of hours in their pen while I was at a poetry reading and Annie was out with her sister.

After last night, we were scared that we couldn’t leave them together — they went at each other at we were unable to break the tension afterward — but Pat, the trainer, called this morning and talked us down.

Rosie and Sophie, she said, are like teenaged sisters. They’ll fight over almost anything and then move on. At the same time, we have to minimize their opportunities. So all toys are now put away and to be doled out only when we want them to play. If they get territorial, the toys get taken away.

And we need to make sure we make them work, both physically and intellectually, both to tire them out but also to address their innate need to work.

Annie and her sister Susan took them for a 25-minute walk before and Annie and I played a few attention-span games before I showered and left.

I think we’re both still anxious, but it is better. We will get through this. The dogs will get through this.

Doggie diaries: The story of Rosie and Sophie Why can’t we break this cycle?

I am at a complete loss on this. We’ve been working pretty hard at reining in the dogs (pictured from the other day), making it clear that we are the alphas, the pack leaders and keeping them under control.

And yet, tonight, while Annie and her sister were in the office, the dogs went at it. I’m not clear on the details, but it appears that Sophie went for a ball and Rosie reacted, but that may not matter. What matters is that we broke the fight up quickly, but we have not been able to de-escalate the bad energy and it is going on two hours.

Sophie is acting scared and defensive; Rosie is being the aggressor.

The night started well. Both of them listened when my brother and sister-in-law were over with the kids and they played with the kids. But maybe there was too much excitement for them, maybe we should have done something to help calm them more when Mark and Ana left. I just don’t know.

It was probably less than 30 minutes after they left that the dogs went at it.

We broke them up, separated them and slowly brought them back together. But Sophie remains in defensive mode and Rosie went to bite and was barking. It is scary and both of us are shaken.

Annie has Sophie in the bedroom and I’m in the living room with Rose. We have two gates separating them and we’ll see if a night apart calms things. Both of us are terrified that something broke tonight that we won’t be able to fix, that we may have to — well, I don’t even want to think it at this point.

I just want them to get along.

Rosie is starting to fall asleep on the chair and I’m going to lie down on the couch. I hope that both of us get some sleep tonight, but I just don’t know if that’s possible.

We’re both worried about leaving them alone tomorrow and when we go to work on Monday.

I’ve Tweeted the trainer, and I think Annie’s checked in via Facebook. I’m hoping to hear from her early tomorrow and we’ll just take things one moment at a time.

I don’t know what else to do.

Treason they say; hokum I say

There is something more than a little troubling about books like the ones pictures, by Glenn Beck and Jerome Corsi and Michelle Malkin, that equate liberalism with treason. It's one thing to disagree — Ross Douthat and George Will, who I find off base most of the time, at least engage in debate — but it's another to transform philosophical arguments into concpiracy, which does nothing more than degrade the public discourse. That these treason tracts are the only political books — aside from the Kennedy memoir — available at the big box store we're shopping at today makes me just a bit sad.

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required.

Doggie diary: The atory of Rosie and Sophie Watching the television

Rosie and Sophie, as I've said before, like watching “The Dog Whisperer” — maybe a bit too much. Rosie is good, but Sophie goes after the flat screen. It'd be funny if the TV wasn't in the line of fire.

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

Where in the world is South Brunswick?

I know where it is — smack in the middle of New Jersey, between New Brunswick and Princeton and along four major north-south highways (Routes 27, 1 and 130 and the N.J. Turnpike). But not everyone knows, which this is why you get this kind of misleading press info, published in the Princeton University Bulletin in September after Segal’s work was donated to the university:

Segal, a painter and sculptor associated with the Pop Art movement, lived in North Brunswick, N.J., for most of his adult life.

Segal, one of the more prominent artists of the last century, lived not in North Brunswick — though he had a North Brunswick mailing address — but in South Brunswick. Frank Chrinko, a former South Brunswick mayor, called my attention to the error, saying that it offered proof that the township needs a single, South Brunswick mailing address. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s time.