Posts by Hank

My best friend Jeff as my best man, with his soon-to-be wife, Joan. (1972) My friend Jeff started life as a cat person.  I well remember Twotone from our growing-up years, and then M’hija, from Jeff’s young-adulthood with his…

Of all the unbendable rules governing weddings and marriage that millennials have inflicted on the world, and themselves, the one that intrigues me most is: get a dog before you get a baby.  (Sometimes, before you even get engaged.)  The thinking seems to be: Might be a good time to break in that…

[Here, the second installment of my epic poem from 2016.  A related ode, “The Dogs of Sunville,” appeared last summer and celebrated Kemba’s life on the beach.  The rhythm and theme of all three follow Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat,” which is, more or less, the only poem I know.] &nb…

A close friend who’s from Ukraine forwarded to us this report — “Waiting for Death.”  Kemba, Ricky, and I thought all of our BEAGLE MAN followers should see it, too.  It was written last Sunday by a resident of Mariupol, Nadiya Sukhorukova, and translated by Laura Olla AZ Palmer: I go outside in …

Nope, that beat-up ball in my Chuckit (photo, right) is not the one we had when we started out at the dog park. It is the one we ended up with, though. This ratty tennis ball is pretty much your generic dog park ball.  Here’s…

Note:  Other than the fact that my dog, Kemba, is named for Kemba Walker, and the somewhat peripheral mention of the UConn “Huskies,” this post has little or nothing to do with dogs.  Okay, nothing. “I hope the Knicks get destroyed tonight,” I said to Carol. That’s a verbatim quote — from a lifel…

Neither the lure of a dog party . . . Go, Dog. Go!, the kids book by P.D. Eastman, is, and has long been, a Herman family favorite.  I’ve read that book to my three sons, and now all my grandsons, at least 9,000 times: ….

This is Kemba during the Jets game yesterday saying, “Can we please do something?!” It was Saturday, September 25 — first full day back in town after spending the summer out in Montauk. Kemba, still in thrall to his beach addiction, dragged me down Soundview (yes, he had me on a …

Ricky was my co-pilot on the first 3 of my 5 cross-country road trips. (Here we are in San Fran in 2011) Last weekend we hosted Carol’s book group out here in Montauk. While Kemba was the only dog present (he liked, did not love, Moonglow by Michael Chabon; complained that the only pet wh…

Who’s this handsome dude named for? Kemba. KEM-ba. K-E-M-B-A. Seriously — is that so hard? Robby named him. For Kemba Walker, of course — the ex-UConn star who is now, I’m thrilled to say, a member of the New York Knicks. It was Robby who also named Ricky the B…