Monday, May 3, 2021

What's Up


"Sneakers" (Jan Barry photo)


Stumbling Around

Three small strokes
Rearranged my brain—
Trying to see what still works

Wobbly balance exercise
Revives muscle memory of toes
In cross-country skiing

First base catch move
Restores arthritic right hand
When an errant ball appears

A month of hard core PT
Turns shuffling waddle
Into senior citizen steps

--Jan Barry

Sunday, March 14, 2021

Covid Year


Mask with Birds (Jan Barry photo)

By Jan Barry

A year of hair
Unfurls down my neck—
I’ve outlived a pandemic
So far

Millions dead and dying
As preening politicians bicker—
What’s there to celebrate
In this covid time

Lost my job, my livelihood,
Quarantined from friends
And family gatherings,
Hunkering from death’s breath

Only the lucky
Are still living—
Living like moths
Flitting amid the flames

This is what depression
Looks like, as year 2 looms—
I’d rather soar with eagles
And migrate with the seasons

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Morning on the Hackensack River

Bald Eagle Eating Fish at Secluded Stretch of Hackensack River (Jan Barry/photo)

By Jan Barry

A confluence of eagles
at a narrow bend in the river
lined with gnarled old branches
leaning over the water
flowing between snow-crusted
stretches of woods—
the silence broken by commuter
trains, truck engines, Canada
geese, mergansers foraging for fish

Saturday, February 20, 2021

Anne Crumb, RIP

My aunt, Margaret Anne Crumb, died recently in Amarillo, Texas. She was 85 and in ailing health but had a much younger, spritely spirit. For years I stopped by to visit during cross country road trips, trading travel tales and other yarns. She’d seen much of the world in an Air Force career, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. Among other things, she drove long haul, semi-tractor trucks during a colorful life after moving to Texas.

My first vivid memories of Aunt Annie have to do with “slow poke passing” in our 1950s cars on a country road when I was a teenager. About that time, she joined the Air Force as a physical therapist. About a year later, I joined the Army and visited her on a weekend pass at her bayside place outside Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Then I went to Vietnam and she went to Libya. Our lives went in different directions. But we stayed in touch over the years.

Home base was the Taughannock Falls area of New York’s Finger Lakes, where we occasionally met up at family gatherings. One summer Anne announced that she preferred living in Texas. When I swung by her place in Amarillo on a drive to California after I retired from newspaper work, I learned why. She liked the wild flowers, the wind-swept vistas, the wide open skies of the high plains. She had friends who’d turned an empty shopping center into an artists’ colony. She loved rambling out of town to the jaw dropping splendor of Palo Duro Canyon.

About a decade ago, she moved into a senior living complex, as various ailments cramped her hands and walking became progressively hazardous. She gave her kayak to younger relatives. She enjoyed entertaining visitors, venturing out to a favorite Mexican restaurant next door. Checking in on her during the Covid crisis last summer, I found she’d moved to a state veterans’ home.

Amarillo Senior Link magazine in 2019 profiled her in a special issue honoring military veterans. My favorite anecdote in this account tells how after graduating from college in 1957, “Anne took a job as a physical therapist at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas. She drove from New York in a 1952 Ford with $100 in her pocket.”

Thursday, January 28, 2021

Breaking News

"Winter Day" by Jan Barry


Snow flurries this morning,
A wondrous break
In a bleak winter

A flurry of eagles flits
Along the Hackensack River
Turning Jersey into a winter haven

--Jan Barry

Monday, January 11, 2021

Insurrection 2021

By Jan Barry

An insurrection in Washington
In January set off
An horrific new year—
Aiming to nullify the results
Of November’s election for president,
It gained added fury when a black man
And a Jewish man won a special election
For US Senate seats in Georgia—
The mob rampaged through the Capitol building
With nooses, Confederate flags,
Neo-Nazi slogans—
“Camp Auschwitz” read one—
And broke into the House and Senate chambers
Seeking scurrying lawmakers—
“Hang Pence!”
Hate-contorted men and women shouted,
Hot on the trail of the vice president—
Breaking into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office
With guns and plastic police handcuffs

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

World Sustainability and COVID

"Fog at Overpeck County Park" December 2020 (photo/Jan Barry)


The fall 2020 semester at Ramapo College opened in the midst of global crisis due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Only a few students and faculty were allowed on campus, primarily for lab courses. Most classes were held online. Despite precautions, COVID-19 swept through my World Sustainability class of 31 students and their families. Suddenly the concept of studying global environmental and social crisis was no longer theoretical.

The possibility of impending catastrophic climate change took on a new perspective, as within a few months the United States of America staggered from a once-in-a-century public health crisis that triggered economic collapse in much of the world’s trend setting economy. In many ways, our society seemed to be wandering in a fog.

An international cast of undergraduate students dug into what was happening around the world—researching and writing case studies set in India, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Russia, Poland, Greece, Syria, Africa, Australia, Latin America, Canada, New Jersey, New York City and elsewhere.

Probing discussions were stirred up and guided by fellow World Sustainability professors Harriet Shugarman and Amanda Nesheiwat and environmental activists Paula Rogovin and Sam Difalco, who joined the class via Zoom. The entire class attended an online conference on youth climate activism and the presidential election hosted by Ramapo Green, a campus environmental group. Students were also encouraged to write about what they learned from their experiences.

Here’s a selection of their work in the midst of the COVID crisis:

http://ramapolookout.blogspot.com/