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.

Runner’s diary, Wednesday

I was hoping that a run would clear my head and kill this sinus headache, but I'm still suffering. I hate to take anything — a huge change from my misspent youth. I'm think I have no choice.

That said, I put in a slow three while listening to a mix and then did some crunches. It's time toget serious.

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Sent from my Verizon Wireless LGVX9900 device.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Obama song

The coverage of some of the peripherals surrounding the inaugural the last few days was, to say the least, the kind of solipsistic nonsense that gives celebrity its bad name.

There on Oprah were Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, intellectual lightweights, talking about themselves as if this historic moment offered insight into their holiness.

And there were others — both on the celebrity shows (Oprah, GMA) and the news programs.

It was enought o turn me sour to the whole thing.

And then I catch Beyonce on GMA this morning before leaving for the gym. She was truly proud and grateful to play the smallest role in the Obamas' moment and the nation's history that I can put the pretentious nonsense aside and focus on what yesterday really says about us and where we as a nation are headed.

It reminded me, as someone wrote on Facebook, that America needed a celebratory day like yesterday.

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Sent from my Verizon Wireless LGVX9900 device.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Thoughts on Wal-Mart — sort of

I posted the following status update to Twitter and Facebook yesterday, which triggered an unexpected bit of commentary:

“Hank is thinking he should write a poem about WalMart.”

Here are the responses:

  • Wouldn’t a dirty limerick be more fitting?
    “Walmart sucks” should be in there somewhere.
  • Ah, I don’t know about that…I’m a single parent and appreciate the low prices there, as well as Target. There’s a place for everything in the world. Though I also use Amazon and Overstock.
  • I come from the land of wall mart. The middle class, wanting to free us “prols” got rid of all our factory jobs, and, now because they don’t want us to be “exploited,” they’ll get rid of the crummy service jobs we have left. Before anyone mocks wall mart, they should talk to the workers. The owners aren’t effected by your well meaning but misdirected hatred. The working people are– those who can’t afford Wegmans or yoga lessons. I am as scared of liberal and leftist scoffing as I am of conservative moralism and pro-big business. Both come from all too comfortable places (the suburbs or urban yuppieville) Wall marts is easy to mock. What’s not easy is offering viable alternatives to shit jobs like that.
  • I don’t like Walmart because of the way they treat their employees. They actually encourage their employees to go on Welfare so they don’t have to pay them more money. Sounds illegal to me. Yes, you get great savings, but at what cost?
  • There are a few in my family that work for Wal Mart both full and part time. Wal Mart pays much more then any Mall store or any grocery store. They give benefits health insurance, vacation and personal days plus a discount card for their families. Plenty of morale booster meetings and gatherings. I have never seen a Borders or Hot Topic offer that. There is nothing wrong with a company making money, nothing.
  • Why would you want to spend any energy on Walmart?
  • Kudos, Becky! I knew I liked you in high school. Say hello to your brother, Bill, for me. Absolutely nothing wrong with a company being competitive and offering a place for everyone. I’m actually rooting for a Super Wal-Mart to come into the area I live…the Pineys. It would be great to have more options to shop versus BJs. And anytime I walk into Wal-Mart, I’m welcomed. I like that, given I choose to spend my money wisely.
  • http://www.walmartmovie.com/
  • Wall marts is an easy tarket. Much harder is for leftists and radicals to admit they abandoned the working class issues in the late sixties and turned toward “life style” leftism. Wall Marts exists because both the left and right have surrendered to the corporate nexus (it’s no longer cash nexus) and to a “globalization” that only favors the elite of other countries and of our own and enslaves working people. As a person who worked in a shit hole of a factory for twenty years I am qualified to speak from experience, not knee jerk liberalism or conservatism. For working people, a job is a job. Wall Marts is a travesty, but so is a country that looks down on manual labor and skilled jobs where people actually make things and that hog ties small business with taxes and regulations only the big guys with big lawyers can survive. We need to get rid of the new eminent domain laws, and we need to organize- for small, responsible businesses that can offer competitive prices.
  • There is a pretty good poem by a West Virginia writer named Mark DeFoe: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2008/12/22
  • A couple of points:In much of the country, WalMart is the only game in town for both merchandise (affordable or not) and employment. I look at the city of New Brunswick and note that all of the department stores have closed in town and been replaced by restaurants–many of them I can’t come close to affording. Although I make something less than the average NJ resident, I know I make more than many, if not most, of the residents of New Brunswick. So they schlep out to the WalMart on Rt. 1 in North Brunswick. If you get past the $70 hunks of cheese and hit the core of Wegman’s, it’s actually shocking less expensive than going to ShopRite, Stop & Shop or PathMark. Milk, canned veggies, yogurt, etc. are all appreciably less expensive at Wegman’s. (At least in NJ)
  • True, but up here, the professors shop at Wegmans and the townies shop at Wall mart, and I think it’s asinine. It’s all classicism. Unless people can provide viable job opportunities for the poor, near poor, and working class, they ought to stop dismantling the little economy they have left. Truth: groceries, rent and just about everything else is proportionately higher in poor neighborhoods than in middle class suburbs. Just go to a bodega. These little mom and pop stores can’t compete, and we make laws that assure they never will.
  • (Me:) There is truth in everything that has been said. WalMart acts as a corporate bully, aggressively fighting union organizing and using its size to set wholesale prices, often driving small wholesalers out of business. They have been hell on the mom and pops, who have suffered less because of regulatory imposition than because of the cut-throat way in which we have structured our economic system — though both have created terrible hardships on the smallest of businesses. That said, WalMart offers generally decent goods at reasonable prices and has allowed people who are nowhere near being rich a level of comfort that they otherwise would be denied. The reality is that we have an economic system that rewards the wrong behaviors. The casino metaphor has become so overused that is is cliche, and yet it remains apt. We bail out banks that took advantage of poor homebuyers, offering them loans they couldn’t afford and telling them they could, while playing three-card monte with the economy.
  • True Hank. When I was a kid working stiffs like my dad could afford to go the butcher– actual butchers. The rag man came down our street and bought and sold towels and rags. My mom was home making sure there was a family dineer every night, and we talked for hours. We’ve destroyed our country. The kids have no sense of communion even with their own families, and our stores are souless. My dad, a factory worker, could afford a four bedroom house. Those days are over.
  • (Me:) Yep. I come from the suburbs, but I’ve seen how these changes have killed communities, simply wrecked cities like Trenton and New Brunswick, with the problems spilling out to the places people would escape to in the past. We can’t keep exporting jobs and assume all will be well.

Wow. And all I was suggesting was to write a poem.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Doggie diary: The story of Rosie and Sophie 12 days in

I’m thinking the puppies have adjusted. Rosie and Sophie have been with us 12 days now and have turned into little balls of energy. Rosie still has a bit of a cough, but they spend much of the time that they’re outside their pen in some form of wrestling frenzy. It is fun to watch — for us, not sure about you, dear readers — though we sometimes have to break them up.

Rosie is the quicker of the two, so she gets the better of Sophie indoors — mostly because she can use the furniture to keep Sophie off step. Sophie, however, is stronger and tends to win outside when they tumble around in the snow.

And they certainly are getting more comfortable by the minute, taking over the house (but not exceeding their bounds — at least not yet).

What is striking to me is that after just a dozen days — and way too many people in and out of the house — these little mutts are incredibly attached to us. They follow us around, climb into our laps if we sit on the floor and look for us when we get up in the morning and sneak into the living room.

Annie asked me tonight — jokingly, of course — if I was having second thoughts. The dogs were in active mode and I was trying to write a column. My answer was simple: No. No second thoughts. None at all.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.