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.

Listening to Bowie

I'm sitting and waiting for Annie, music pumping — Those 1970s Bowie hits were aggressively danceable.

But that's starting in the middle. I grabbed David Bowie's Changesbowie — the double-length best of originally issued as two albums — and found myself singing like I was on stage, like I was Wayne and Garth and their buds in the car in Wayne's World.

It's easy, I think. to forget how great a songwriter and recording artist Bowie was (I'd say “is,” but I haven't been crazy about much of the little he's done in 20 years.

My only questions are is: Why “Fame '90 Remix” and not the far superior original? And what about “Panic in Detroit” or TVC15? Just wondering.

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Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Let’s vote for senate replacements

It’s time we change the way we fill vacant U.S. Senate seats.

The sturm and drang surrounding the vacancies in Illinois and New York, the initial attempt to replace Sen. (now Vice President) Joe Biden with his son, and the surprising choice of an unknown in Colorado to replace Ken Salazar, should not be viewed as isolated instances, but as examples of a systemic problem that needs to be addressed.

Basically, we should fill vacant seats in the Senate the same way we do in the House — via special election.

John Nichols, a columnist for The Nation, makes that point as part of a larger blog entry on Caroline Kennedy taking her name out of contention for the New York seat.

The speculation game will go into overdrive now that Kennedy has quit, and every prospect will be analyzed not with regard to his or her potential contributions to the Congress but with regard to his or her potential benefits for Paterson.

That’s what is wrong with allowing senators to be appointed by governors. If political and personal considerations by governors may not always be Rod Blagojevich ugly, but they are always ugly.

Governors appoint senators with an eye toward helping themselves and their friends. And the appointed senators become frontrunners for vacant seats. From a small “d” democracy standpoint, the process is doubly compromised.

None of this is new and none of this should be surprising. It was just three years ago that newly elected Gov. Jon Corzine appointed Bob Menendez to the Senate seat Corzine was vacating — a move designed to shore up his standing with the Latino community, but also because he viewed Menendez as the stronger fundraiser and the best chance to keep the seat in the capital “D” column.

Menendez has done an admirable job in the Senate, but there is no denying that his appointment was about politics. Winning the appointment cleared the field for him in the primary and kept the party together, which generally means a Democratic win these days in state races. (Memo to Chris Christie: Regardless of the polling, you face the steepest of uphill battles trying to unseat an incumbent Democrat in New Jersey).

What are the alternatives? We could let the state legislatures make the appointment, but that is no better than having a governor handle it — and it contradicts the 17th amendment, which ended the original practice of having the legislatures pick senators in favor of direct election.

The best solution, of course, is to hold a special election. But don’t expect the people in the state capitals to back that one — they like their power and they will offer an array of excuses for opposing it.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Making radio waves

Here is a follow-up to yesterday’s news that G-Rock radio, 106.3 FM, is changing from modern rock to pop:

Less than a week after the Jersey Shore station WHTG (G-Rock) 106.3-FM switched from an alternative rock format to contemporary hits, a group calling itself “Bring Back G-Rock,” with a Facebook page, is planning a protest at noon Saturday, outside the station’s studio at 2355 West Bangs Ave. in Neptune.

“Over 400 people have RSVP’ed and will be there,” said group organizer Elyse Jankowski of Middletown. “It will be done in an organized manner, completely peaceful – we don’t want to make anyone nervous or the police and authorities alarmed – however we want to make it known how upset we are.”There are more than 3,500 in the group, Jankowski said.

Um. OK.

I agree with the group’s goal, as I think yesterday’s blog post makes clear. But I have to wonder whether the 400 people planning to march on the station could be using their energy in more important ways. For instance, the state is conducting a homeless persons census and needs volunteers to do the count and distribute food. There is a need for volunteers for stream cleanups, food bank sorters and soup kitchen servers. They could be protesting two wars, helping to organize communities and workers, helping out at their cash-strapped local library.

There are a lot of issues that need addressing. I’m just not sure that fighting to keep a commercial radio station from changing its format should rank very high on the list.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Poetry: A journal of place

Exit 13, edited by Tom Plante, is a neat little journal of place, poems whse souls are connected to the soil and streets of the world — both real and imaginary.

Tom, who read for us in South Brunswick, has a background in geography and a love of travel that is apparent in the poetry.

To get a copy, write EXIT 13, PO Box 423, Fanwood, NJ 07023 or exit13magazine@yahoo.com.

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Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.