Hank Kalet
Back from the precipice
March 31
Never got to update the Web log last week a bit busy and I was down with a cold. So now that I’m healthy or at least it seems that I’m healthy it’s back to work.
Not so super(intendent)
March 31
The South Brunswick Board of Education appears ready to appoint Leigh Byron as its new superintendent. (See Post story and editorial.)
The question remains: Why?
The board points to a solid resume and said he interviewed well, but I have to wonder.
Dr. Byron served two years in Bound Brook and two years in Holmdel as superintendent, for a sum-total of four years as a top administrator not exactly what I would call a lot of experience.
And his tenure in Holmdel, at least, seems to have been a rocky one, ending as it did with a buyout of his contract and a no-confidence vote by the teachers union.
There are too many major issues facing South Brunswick schools to take a chance with so much baggage, baggage that already has left him open to the kind of criticism that is not likely to end with his first day of work.
Let’s go back to the drawing board.
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Between a rock and a hard place
March 31
Jamesburg voters should give the school board some slack when they go to the polls April 15. (See Press story.)
While the proposed 19.6 percent school tax increase is difficult to swallow, I don’t see what can be accomplished by defeating a budget that already makes significant cuts. This budget already calls for larger class sizes and a cut in after-school and athletic programs.
The culprit here is rising costs at Monroe Township High School and growing tuition for special education students neither of which the district has control over. The state needs to pitch in, but also is strapped.
Defeating this budget would accomplish nothing and could lead to deeper cuts than are already in place. Remember this when you go to the polls.
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War on television
March 31
Frank Rich in Sunday’s New York Times Arts and Liesure section offers this strong piece on what I would call the failures and falseness of the TV coverage of this war we’re waging, TV coverage that has stoked the fires of patriotism, that has fetishized high-tech weaponry and newsmen in khaki vests and helmets.
Definitely worth a read.
Speaking of TV coverage, Anthony Swofford tells us why embedded reporters cannot live up to their billing and provide the kind of behind-the-scenes detail we’re expecting. Mr. Swofford, author of the memoir "Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles," explains in a piece in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine that "embeds" are outsiders and can never become a part of the world of the functioning soldier. And they tend to offer the cliché of the proud fighting man without getting at the reality of the soldier’s life.
Check it out.
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Beane on baseball
March 31
Want to know why the Oakland A’s have been so good, despite their relatively tiny payroll? Read the Times Magazine piece on Oakland G.M. Billy Beane.
Beane is an acknowledged baseball genius, finding ways to win even when forced to let superstars like Jason Giambi walk for financial reasons.
More teams should model their operations on Oakland’s build with youth through the farm system, conserve your money for the right players and find pitching, pitching, pitching. But also, and more importantly, teams need to rethink their connection to the old truths of baseball that batting average is the best way to gauge hitters and that flamethrowers make the best pitchers and focus on other, somewhat more obscure numbers (on-base percentage, for instance).
And he’s also quantified in dollars what success means so that the A’s have been able to avoid overpaying for talent, thereby keeping their payrolls down and their win totals up.
I wish the Mets would take a page from Beane’s book.
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Dispatches
March 27
Check out this week’s Dispatches on the need for dissent.
Athletic opinions
March 21
Athletes are not usually thought of as politically concerned.
Yes, there are the handful who get involved former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), former U.S. Rep Tom McMillen (D-Md.), current Reps. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) and J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) come to mind. But the general approach is to remain silent.
Michael Jordan, for instance, has yet to talk about Nike’s use of oversees even though he’s taken in millions in endorsement money from the sneaker company. And Tiger Woods has said publicly that it is not his responsibility to talk about Augusta National’s policies on membership (Augusta National does not allow women to join).
Steve Nash, point guard for the Dallas Mavericks, however, is not your average athlete. As I’ve said in the past, he reads. He thinks. He listens to an eclectic mix of music.
Nash, as ESPN‘s Marc Stein writes today, "emerged as a prominent anti-war spokesman during All-Star Weekend in Atlanta, where he wore a T-shirt reading: ‘No War. Shoot for Peace.’ The shirt was designed by a former high school classmate in British Columbia, and Nash insists that the reaction has been ‘unbelievably positive compared to negative.’ "
"I’m not embarrassed by America," he told Stein. "I’m embarrassed by humanity. More than embarrassed, I think it’s really unfortunate in the year 2003 that we’re still using violence as a means of conflict resolution. That’s what I’m speaking out against."
Byrd on war
March 21
Here is the speech given U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.) on Wednesday, before this war began. It is worth reading.
No shame in dissent
March 21
Bob Herbert offers a powerful column in Thursday’s New York Times outlining why this war remains unwise, even though it appears to be going well.
"(T)he fact that a war may be quick does not mean that it is wise," he writes. " Against the wishes of most of the world, we have plunged not just into war, but toward a peace that is potentially more problematic than the war itself."
Dispatches
March 20
Check out this week’s Dispatches on the war with Iraq
Democracy challenged
March 19
A good piece yesterday in the Chicago Tribune by Stanley I. Kutler, author of "The Wars of Watergate," on the lapdog style the media has adopted in the run up to war and on the paucity of dissent among the mainstream.
The piece outlines the ways in which the American press and the Democratic Congressional opposition has failed to meet its obligation and has given the Bush administration a free hand to make his highly suspect case while allowing war supporters to tar critics with the "anti-American" brush.
Makes me a little concerned about what this war will do to our Democracy.
Soundtrack, part II
March 19
Salon is offering a collection of antiwar songs as free downloads, including a Woody Guthrie-esque tune by John Mellencamp called "To Washington."
It is worth checking out though the songs are only available to subscribers. Click here for your antiwar sampler.
Thoughts on Iraq
March 19
I offer the following columns and essays as a compendium of recent thought on Iraq, with a decidedly antiwar spin (this is my weblog, afterall).
Paul Krugman in the New York Times worries about the aftermath of the war in his Tuesday column.
Gardner Botsford, author of "A Life of Privilege, Mostly," reminds us in an op-ed in today’s Times that civilians are likely to make up the largest number of war dead in Iraq.
Bob Herbert’s column in the Times on Monday laid it out straight. It was called "With ears and eyes closed." Need I say more.
The Boston Review offers a four-story forum in its curent special issue on "War and Democracy." The issue is worth reading and try to check out the poetry.
Two new poems
March 19
Here are two of my recent poems. Enjoy.
PARANOID LOVE POEM
(To America in the age of Ashcroft)
We live in the land of comfort,
too soft and satisfied to
understand the subtle threats that
chip away slowly
at the stony foundations of our love.
The tiny pinpricks of mistrust
the wary eyes, are you listening there
on the other line or is this
phone tapped, is my e-mail being read?
I check your letters, read your notes,
read the messages you’ve sent
out into the vast wired grid of
knowledge nothing is sacred
any longer, no bit of privacy too
important to breech.
I look over my shoulder, into
your eyes, wonder if it’s
you or me who’s crossed this line,
or maybe Gary next door or
Sid across the street.
How can I be sure?
LETTER TO DANIEL, ONE DAY OLD
for my new nephew
"We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born."
Albert Einstein
It is raining today, Daniel,
a cold, icy rain
and the fog makes it difficult
to see the road.
Perhaps it is fitting, then,
when headlines scream out about
an imminent war,
that a gray mood hands over us.
Here is what
The New York Times says,
one day after you came into this world,
"Top General Sees
Plan to Shock Iraq
Into Surrendering,"
3,000 "precision-guided bombs in
48 hours" and then
come the ground troops
War planes on TV,
troops massing,
the world is in crisis,
so depressing to think of this world
under gray skies,
under threatening skies,
waiting for war.
And yet, there is your
tiny body
in the bassinet behind
the nursery window
how can I not think better
of the future?
How can I not believe
there is something better
to believe in?
Who to support
March 14
Two writers, in columns on the Common Dreams Web site, offer reasons to keep protesting even after the bombs begin falling in Iraq.
The pieces by Ted Rall and Fran Schor are responses to the positions taken by Democratic presidential candidates Howard Dean and John Kerrey. Both say they oppose the war, but both are ready to sit on their hands and support our troops and government, hoping for a quick and victorious war.
I find the notion that I have to suddenly forsake my own moral objections to the war to show the soldiers that I care a little disingenuous.
Of course I’m concerned for their welfare it’s one of the many reasons I’m opposed to President Bush’s ill-advised adventerism. But to suddenly say, as Sen. Kerry has, that "they need a unified America that is prepared to win" is, as Mr. Rall points out, a mistake.
My problem, however, is that his column called "Don’t Support Our Troops: Win or Lose, War on Iraq is Wrong" leaves opponents of the war open to accusations that we are opposed to the average men and women doing the fighting.
Mr. Rall is right to say that the kind of unity Sen. Kerry and Gov. Dean are calling for is no different than the moral apathy shown by Germans during the Holocaust and World War II. If this war is morally wrong and he, like I, believes it is then we have a responsibility to challenge the president and question his policies until the end.
"Members of our armed forces don’t deserve insults, but their role in this war doesn’t merit support," he writes. "Cheering them as they leave and holding parades when they return would certainly be misinterpreted by citizens of other countries as popular support for an inglorious enterpriseand it would make it easier for Bush to send them off again, to Iran or Libya or wherever. Let’s keep our flags under wraps."
And I can live with that.
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Imperial policy
March 14
Michael Lüders an adviser at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which is closely tied to Gerhard Schröder’s Social Democratic Party, writes in the Frankfurter Rundschau of Frankfurt, Germany, that the Bush administration’s attempt to alter the landscape of the Middle East will do little more than inflame an already inflamed region.
He says in the piece, available in an English translation on the World Press Web site, described the conflict as "two trains … speeding toward a collision: the yearning of the Arab populations for freedom and democracy and Washington’s imperial will, in which the government speaks of freedom and democracy but means the accomplishment of its power goals."
He says that, "In Iraq and the entire Arab world (with the exception of Kuwait) this war is seen less as one of liberation from a despotic regime than as one, first and foremost, directed against Arabs and Islam. The situation is not like that in Germany in 1945. Neither the masses nor the intellectuals have the feeling that they utterly failed, as the Germans did then. The idea that they have only one choiceto start over, with American helpis not a popular one in the Near East. And Iraqi history teaches that Iraqis have never accepted foreign rulers. The British colonial authorities learned this in the 1930s and ’40s, and paid for it with bloody losses in officers and men."
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Korean standoff
March 13
Bruce Cumings, professor at the University of Chicago and an expert on North Korea, believes North Korea could be next in the president’s sights if he gets his way in Iraq though, he thinks any military action would only aggravate already fraying relations between the United States and South Korea.
In a commentary in The Nation (unfortunately, not available online), he says South Korea wants dialogue and is looking to a future in which the hostilities between the two Koreas come to an end.
President Bush and his people, however, seem unconcerned. And that, Mr. Cumings says, is destined to leave us isolated in the region, a dangerous position to be in.
Also in The Nation, an interesting piece by Richard Goldstein of The Village Voice on the culture of machismo and its poisoning of American politics.
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Medicare sham
March 13
President George W. Bush wants to replace Medicare by handing at least a part of it over to the private insurance industry. He says Medicare is antiquated and too costly and that privatizing it will mean better services for the seniors that rely on it.
The problem is, he’s dead wrong. Marie Cocco tells why in this cogent analysis in New York Newsday.
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Antiwar songs
March 13
Some good antiwar tunes are available on the Web.
Billy Bragg, the English protest singer, offers "The Price of Oil" available as a free download on his Web site, BillyBragg.com.
Also, the Beastie Boys offer "In a World Gone Mad," also available as a free download on their Web site, BeastieBoys.com.
You can also go to DaveyD.com to listen to antiwar beats by hip-hop acts Chuck D & the Fine Arts Militia, Michael Franti, Saul Williams and Hannifah Walidah.
I’ll let you know about more as I find it.
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Dispatches
March 13
Check out this week’s Dispatches on the upcoming baseball season.
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Want fries with that?
March 12
CNN reports that the House of Representatives no longer will be serving french fries or french toast, and not because they’re concerned about their cholesterol.
Instead, the House cafeteria will be changing the names of the menu items to "freedom fries" and "freedom toast."
The reason? Anger over the France’s refusal to rubberstamp President George W. Bush’s desire to wage war with Iraq.
Other restaurants such as the Old Bay in New Brunswick, which has dumped its stock of French wines are doing the same.
I can understand protest and the desire to boycott, but it seems to me the boycotters have misplaced their anger, mistaking French resistence to war with support of terrorism. And it makes the rest of us look like unthinking bores, the prototypical "Ugly American."
So I offer this little ditty (sung to the tune of David Bowie’s "Young Americans"):
Have you have been an ugly American?
Just you and your french fries and toast railing ’bout
Those French, those French everywhere, and
Not a wit left in your head-o
Well, well, well, would you carry a pistol
In case, just in case of al Quaeda?
Sit on your hands with a Bush declaration
Blushing at all the towel-head Arabs
Ain’t that close to peace?
Well, ain’t that war for peace?
Well, it ain’t that Exxon oil
Your mind’s been wiped clean just like there’s have
All night
You want the ugly American
Ugly American, ugly American, you want the ugly American
All right
You want the ugly American
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Rock and Roll
March 12
I’m not sure where I was when I first heard the Clash, the Police or Elvis Costello. I only know that their music was an important element in the soundtrack of my life.
The three bands along with Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles, Dire Straits and some others helped move me away from the mediocre pop music and commercial hard rock that I was listening to in high school. They were real, energized, committed everything that Kansas and Styx were not.
So I plan to find a space on the couch Sunday night to watch VH1’s broadcast of this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony which was taped Monday night.
I’ve written about the Clash and Elvis before, but it is important to reiterate what they meant. And the Police well, it would be easy to dismiss them because of the pap that Sting has been responsible for in recent years, but that would be a mistake. Their ska backbeat, intelligent and witty lyrics and tight guitar/bass sound were a far cry from the bombast of Meatloaf and Boston.
I saw the Police live twice in 1981 at the Liberty Race Track in Philadelphia during a break from their recording sessions for "Ghost In the Machine" and at Shea Stadium in 1983 for what would be their swan song, their tour for "Synchronicity." They were an amazing live band, somehow sounding so much fuller and bigger than one might expect given their three-piece lineup.
I got the chance to see Elvis over the summer (see Dispatches, June 27, 2002). Definitely not a disappointnment.
I wish I could have seen the Clash almost did, but, for some reason, I passed. I don’t remember why or at least Joe Strummer’s last band Los Mescaleros (a fine disc, "Global A-Go-Go") before he died.
Rest in peace Joe and congratulations to the rest.
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More from The Onion
March 12
This is from The Onion, "Bush Orders Iraq To Disarm Before Start Of War":
"WASHINGTON, DCMaintaining his hardline stance against Saddam Hussein, President Bush ordered Iraq to fully dismantle its military before the U.S. begins its invasion next week. "U.S. intelligence confirms that, even as we speak, Saddam is preparing tanks and guns and other weapons of deadly force for use in our upcoming war against him," Bush said Sunday during his weekly radio address. "This madman has every intention of firing back at our troops when we attack his country." Bush warned the Iraqi dictator to "lay down [his] weapons and enter battle unarmed, or suffer the consequences."
The Onion is always a good read. I also recommend "Congress Accidentally Approves Arts Funding." Need I say more?
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Random thoughts
March 12
Yesterday’s cartoon from Tom Toles is worth checking out.
So is this piece on church-based social programs by Adam Cohen, which ran in the Sunday New York Times.
And on Sunday, The Times offered this incisive take on President Bush’s war fever. Finally, one of the major papers makes the case against war.
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Worldy students
March 6
The protests yesterday by students at South Brunswick High School and at other schools around the area Lawrence, Montgomery, Princeton were part of a larger, coordinated effort sponsored by the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition to show the Bush Administration that America’s youth are not buying its war arguments.
While the political analysis may not have been sophisticated too much talk of oil it shows that students are not as apathetic as the mainstream media seem to believe. There are some on both sides of this issue and across the political spectrum that are willing to risk suspension to make their voices heard.
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Rock pioneers
March 6
I have a deep and abiding interest in all things rock and roll. And I especially love anything that takes an intelligent and respectful look at the history of the music.
That’s why I was glad to see the New York Times begin recently on a rather ambitious and worthwhile project. In "The Music They Made," the paper of record is offering Page 1 stories on Sundays focusing on the pioneers of the art form. So far they have profiled the great Bo Diddley, the even greater Chuck Berry and the wonderful B.B. King (this past Sunday).
It is definitely worth checking out especially because the online versions also boast an interactive feature that lets you view video clips and listen to the music made by these legends.
Check it out.
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Welcome nephew
March 6
My brother Mark and his wife Ana are parents for the second time. Daniel Archer Kalet was born March 4 at 4:33 p.m. He weighed 6 pounds and was 17¼ inches long.
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More on war
March 6
I offer this reading list of recent columns and news articles as an update on what seems to be, more and more everyday, a foregone conclusion.
President George W. Bush is likely to give the go ahead for an attack this month, according to most news sources. That said, it is important to continue to make the case against this misguided adventure because war rarely solves problems, because the taking of innocent lives, as this war will do, can never be condoned, because we should never act as the aggressor and because a massive military presence in Iraq is likely to enflame an already enflamed situation in the Arab world.
Here is some worthwhile copy from the last few days:
An analysis piece "U.S. in a Tough Position As Isolation Increases" in today’s Washington Post that looks at the administration’s actions within the context of the opinion of the larger world community.
in An editorial in The Madison Capital Times (Wisc.) that asks the Bush Administration to support our troops by bringing them home, out of harm’s way. Also in the Capital Times, a column by former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ed Garvey that calls on citizens to take to the street to stop "the madness."
James Carroll in the Boston Globe offers us in "A war policy in collapse" a compendium of the absurdities and hypocrisies of the administration’s war fetish.
A href="http://www.latimes.com">Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer in "Bush Pushes the Big Lie Toward the Brink" criticizes the administration for repeatedly moving the finish line so that the United States can continually justify war, regardless of what Iraq may or may not be doing.
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Dispatches
March 6
Check out this week’s Dispatches on the dispute between South Brunswick Township Councilman Ted Van Hessen and Township Manager Barbara Sacks.
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Baseball in the air
March 3
Baseball coverage during spring training is pretty strange, a mix of hopeful and hopeless stories and the occasional contrived bit of nonsense.
Today’s New York Post offers the latter with a story that handicaps the race for the fifth starter slot in the New York Met rotation based on one bad outing from 25-year-old Mike Bacsik. David Cone, who is attempting a comeback at age 40 after a year off from the game, is suddenly in a position to steal the rotation spot, according to the Post, despite having not pitched to live hitters yet.
I like Cone, but isn’t it just a bit too early to be framing the conversation in this way?
And, by the way, it serves the Yankees and David Wells right for the mess they are digging themselves out of today. The Yankees know that Wells is a party animal who has shown little regard for physical fitness and Wells has made a reputation for himself as some kind of manic biker. So it should surprise no one that he is boasting he was drunk when he pitched his perfect game a few years ago. Everyone needs to just get over it.
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Radio news
March 3
CNN offers a great take on the demise of my beloved radio station, WNEW-102.7 FM in New York called "How to kill a radio station."
For years, WNEW was the home of rock and roll, the place, to paraphrase their own motto, where rock lived. It was the station I grew up with, the station that taught me about rock and roll. Its jocks loved the music, understood it, knew its history and they imparted their love to those of us listening in our bedrooms at night and in our cars during drive-time.
What was special about WNEW in its prime was its adventurousness, its willingness to mix and match musically and to rely on its on-air personalities to lend the station a musical personality.
But as the late-’70s became the ’80s and the ’80s wore on into the ’90s, the station lost its way, lost its soul until it turned its back on rock and roll and opted for the dull ramblings of shock jocks who populate the new talk radio.
That proved profitless and they pulled the plug Jan. 26. Call it a mercy killing.
Now the future is up in the air the station is playing bland Top 40 (Mariah Carey, Nelly and the like) until it unveils its new format.
"It’s a different station now," Richard Neer, a disc jockey who spent 28 years at WNEW and now has a sports talk show on WFAN-660 AM, told CNN. "The only unfortunate thing is that it still bears the same call letters. It’s like a disreputable pretender using your identity."
For my own reflections on the demise of rock radio and WNEW, see Dispatches, April 12, 2002.
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Bruuuuuce!!!!
March 3
So I got Bruce Springsteen tickets after all, thanks to our friend Charles Brown.
Unbeknownst to me, the Boss added two shows July 25 and July 26 to his stay at Giants Stadium. I found out about the new shows at about 1 p.m., tried, got some horrible seats, decided against buying and gave up and went to the mall.
While there, we get a call from Charles. He has eight tickets. We can have four 100 level, near the stage, fairly solid seats for a stadium show. And yes, I’m psyched.
Thanks Charles.
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Obsessed, I guess
March 1, 2003
So, I get up early this morning, make some coffee and log into the computer.
I have the cordless phone next to me, fire up the music a mix of Bruce Springsteen songs from across the years and get ready for some serious frustration.
My mission: To procure at least two tickets to one of Springsteen’s three July shows at Giants Stadium.
This is a regular endeavor for me when the Boss is on tour, a generally unsuccessful endeavor, but one that seems worth the time. After all, success means tickets to the greatest performer around, a man of seemingly unbound energy.
I’ve seen Bruce five times, not including that special night down in Asbury Park at the Stone Pony when he showed up near the end of a Clarence Clemons show and played five old-time rockers with Clarence’s band. That was probably 1983 or, more likely, 1984, just before the E Streeters went into the studio to record "Born in the U.S.A."
We had gone to see Clarence the night before at the Royal Manor, a dance/concert club on Route 1 in North Brunswick that’s long gone now, replaced by a pair of car dealerships (Toyota and Saturn). It was a great show the Big Man’s band was tight, an old-fashioned rhythm and blues outfit on the lines of the band John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd fronted in "The Blues Brothers." At the end of the show, Clarence tells the audience that they would be at the Stone Pony the next night and that it would be the last show for his band (The Red Bank Rockers) before he headed into the studio with Springsteen.
Lightbulb! Clarence in Asbury Park, about to head into the studio with Bruce, last show of his minitour it didn’t take a Springsteen fan to do the math. We made plans to head down Route 33 to the Stone Pony the next night.
Clarence was in great form, but the place was packed, too packed really, a mass of bodies shoulder to shoulder, immovable like chickens penned in at a major corporate poultry plant. You couldn’t even get to the restrooms without serious effort and forget about the bar.
The frustration mounted until we were ready to give up it was hard to enjoy the sound under the circumstances and we made up our minds to leave. But, my girlfriend (now wife of 13 years) and I had become separated from the rest of our party. We walked outside and sat on the curb in front of the bar and decided that, if we didn’t hook up soon with our friends, we’d go take a walk on the beach.
Over the next 10 to 15 minutes, our troupe of music fans managed to regroup and we agreed to leave.
And then we saw him. A smallish figure in a leather jacket being whisked around the side of the bar by two of Clarence’s bandmates. We bolted inside, rushed past the bouncer and found ourselves maybe 15 feet from the stage.
The bar had emptied, there was maybe 50 people left. Someone lifted Annie onto one of the bars so she could see better. He played five song, as I said. The only one I remember is "Lucille," the classic Little Richard song. (According to the Web site Brucebase, there was a May 19 show in 1984 in which he played "Fire," "Midnight Hour," "Lucille" and "Twist and Shout" this could be the show, but my memory is foggy. Perhaps Clarence meant they were preparing to rehearse for the tour, perhaps there were four songs and I do vaguely remember this song list, but is it just the power of suggestion?)
So I try for about two hours this morning to no avail, of course. And I’m sitting here now with a half cup of cold coffee, "Mary’s Place" playing on the CD player, disappointed, yes, but at least I gave it a shot.
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Big Fella
March 1
Number 33 now hangs from the rafters at Madison Square Garden, where it belongs, alongside numbers 10, 12, 15 (twice), 19, 22 and 24, alongside 613 (the number of wins that coach Red Holzman racked up leading the Knicks).
Patrick Ewing, a player of "boundless potential and eternal misfortune," ( Mike Vaccaro in the New York Post), got his due Friday night. He is one of only two players to be honored by the Knicks to not win a championship the other was old-time point guard and long-time coach and scout Dick McGuire.
He was the reason to watch the Knicks. For 15 seasons, he gave Knick fans hope And he deserves our appreciation.
Thanks, Big Fella for a great, great run.
