Hank Kalet

A mother and daughter are the first township residents to die from the pandemic.

Read the story here.

Delivery Drivers, Warehouse Workers, Home Health Aides, Landscapers, and Gig Workers Deserve a Raise and Job Protection

Instacart shoppers, Amazon workers and others have engaged in work stoppages this past week, some long term, some for a single day, but all focused on the ways in which the new-economy companies for whom they work are taking advantage of them, paying them little but expecting them to continue engaging in physically stressful or potentially dangerous work.

We don’t often think of the delivery people and store clerks we interact with everyday as heroes. But they are, in so many senses of the word. And like their counterparts in the health industry, most remain underpaid and overworked even as they are forced to toil in unhealthy and sometimes dangerous conditions.

At Amazon, workers have long reported harsh work conditions — tight control of work pace, limited breaks, repetitive stress injuries — that have been exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis,, which has turned the the month of March into a reprise of the Christmas season. Workers walked out of a Staten Island warehouse in one-day protest, which was met by Amazon firing the organizer and issuing public statements about how much they care for their employees.

Workers at Whole Foods and Instacart also walked out to protest a lack of protective gear and obscenely low pay. Other who work new-economy gig jobs are striking for the same reason.

And, make a no mistake, these are strikes.

Read the full story at Medium.

Gov. Murphy is closing state parks, because too many people have been ignoring social distancing rules. Township parks remain open for limited use — but that could change.

Read the story here.

I couldn’t help the Lenny Bruce reference, but this is not a post about the iconic comic. Rather, I am posting a brief, haiku-ish poem I wrote yesterday about our excursion to ShopRite.

Like masked bandits, we
rush in
but keep the getaway car ready.

Here, by the way, is Lenny Bruce animated.

I admit this is a bit rough, but I think it works. It is a video version of a slide-show lecture I was planning to give my freshmen comp students. The video is shorter than the classroom presentation, because it can’t allow for questions and discussion. Feel free to comment and discuss.

I will post a Works Cited page later — the one in the video may not be complete.