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 Surf sand saltwater and sunsh

The dogs are resting after some fun — and too much salt water — at the beach today. They were body surfing — at least it looked that way — running into the water and getting carried back to land.

It was all fun and games until the saltwater did its black magic on Sophie (you try and prevent a 7-month-old pup from drinking the ocean waves) and things got a little messy.

So now, I'm sitting and reading Nixonland with a beer on the deck with twosleeping pups, listening to the hum of a hot tub and some bird trilling in the distance.

It's beautiful here, finally, and I canLt believe we're past the halfway point of this vacation.

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.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Time to be aggressive with second stimulus

Another day and more bad news on the economic front. President Barack Obama has take the right tack in seeking solutions, but I am afraid he is being too timid — especially with unemployment continuing to rise, bankruptcies hitting pensions funds hard and foreclosures continuing to be a plague on the nation.

I’m not sure we can wait much longer for stimulus part two.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Doggie diaries: The story of Rosie and Sophie The new puppies become beach bums


We made the short trek to the beach this morning with the dogs, bringing along a pair of 20-foot leads and some water toys. Both took to the water like fish, or at least like the parts of them that are retrievers.

They splashed a lot and liked to chase the incoming waves, and I was successful at keeping them from drinking the salt water. (You don’t want to know what happens when dogs ingest too much of that. We learned the hard way with Honey a couple of weeks after 9/11 at Sandy Hook. We enjoyed it immensely — until the salt-water kicked in and Honey into a fountain. But I’ve said too much.)

A woman was jogging past and the dogs ran over to her — it is difficult to control dogs on 20-foot leads — and Sophie promptly did her stop, drop and roll, seeking a belly-rub from a total stranger. She did it again a bit later to this woman who was down here from Massachusetts — Sophia is a fiend for the belly rubs.

My niece Kim was in charge of Rosie (right), but Rosie is incredibly strong and Kim and my sister-in-law Susan had all they could do to handle her. And then, as if Annie’s vacation hasn’t gone badly enough (she is sick), Sophie pulled hard on her sand-coated leash and scraped Annie’s leg up pretty badly.

So now, we’re back at the house resting and I think I’ll go for a run. It seems like a nice time for one, after all.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.