Tom and I are heading to Chicago to celebrate two family milestones:
Kirk’s and Jen’s (my son and future daughter-in-law) engagement and Sharon’s (my sister-in-law) retirement from teaching.
While we are away, Poly is sure to keep an eye on things.
See you in June with more stories.
I drive, but I’m not driven by cars.
What I mean is I’m not a car guy.
I value them as a mode of transportation, not a status symbol.
As long as it’ll get us there, I’m happy.
What you see here is a younger, heavier me posing with my new Hyundai Sonata in May 2012.
Thirteen years ago, Obama was living in the White House.
Not much has changed since then, right?
It may surprise you to know Tom and I still own and drive this car today.
It gets us to and from the store, the gym, the library, our doctor appointments, my chorus rehearsals.
The odometer reads almost 132,000, but this Illinois remnant remains a constant in our Arizona life.
Fortunately, in spite of its engine seizing at 98,000 in 2021, our indigo friend remained under warranty.
So, we had the engine replaced free-of-charge four years ago.
I don’t know how long our somewhat-saggy-but-still-sensible sedan will last.
We change the oil regularly. We buy new tires, batteries, windshield wipers as needed.
They whither in the Arizona heat faster, but its body remains sturdy. Like its two owners.
With the threat of tariffs hanging heavy in the desert air, we have no need to buy new soon.
We will ride through life with our trusty old friend, as long as it’ll get us there.
I began this blogging odyssey seven years ago today. That’s longer than I stayed in all but one of my jobs during my communication career, and the most obvious measure I can think of to show and tell you how important this is to me.
The crux of it is this. I continue to write here and trade comments with you, because it is the best way I know to express my individual voice at a malignant time in our country. I don’t want our voices to be denied.
But, from a purely literary standpoint, I write and publish my thoughts at least once a week to keep me sharp and centered–despite the rust that has gathered around my edges.
Tom and I gave this angel to my mother many Mays ago when she lived in Winfield, Illinois. It anchored the container garden on her balcony patio.
I remember how much she loved it.
When we moved to Arizona in 2017–four years after she passed–I knew I had to bring it west with us. I knew it needed to adorn our patio in Scottsdale.
So, the angel and her companion bird rest there on this Sunday morning … blowing wishes into the universe and hoping for a better day tomorrow.
Thank you for being my companion on this long-and-winding road.
April exits stage left,
bidding adieu, waving her
Sonoran brush of trade winds
and soft apricot. They dance
down walls to touch natural oak,
warming, welcoming, watching
every moment of our lives.
Outside, hours before midnight,
cottonwood trees sway.
They whisper of mad
May days to come,
while we will find comfort
in what we can control,
who we greet with love,
even as we ponder what
western treasures to
embrace and behold
in the desert lodge
of our Arizona abode.
I haven’t stopped in lately.
I won’t apologize for that.
I’ve had important things to do.
Pressing places to go.
Unexpected treats to devour.
Birds to stalk. Make sense?
I know you’re busy.
New flooring tomorrow?
But it’s Easter, right?
Like my grand entrance?
Anyway, just dropping by,
To shake your tree,
Add a little levity,
Which only I deliver,
And then I’m outta here,
Cause that is what I do best.
April has always been a harbinger of change.
In a natural sense, it produces turmoil in the Northern Hemisphere … growth and beauty laced with intense storms and wild swings in temperatures.
Of course, those meteorological transitions pale when you compare them with the societal turmoil, which I feel daily living in the United States in 2025.
My only recourse is to try to make a difference in my own way: stay visible, protest beside like-minded friends …”Hands OFF our Social Security” … all the while remodeling my home with Tom, singing, writing, and leading my memoir writing workshops. (Twelve aspiring writers are meeting with me later today in the middle of three workshop sessions at the Scottsdale Public Library.)
It’s appropriate that my Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus comrades and I will perform an inspiring arrangement of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ at our Rhinestone Rodeo concert on June 6 and 7 at Tempe Center for the Arts.
Because they most definitely are … and you better start swimmin’, or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times, they are a-changin’ …
On to more personal transitions that fly under the radar. It is the grimy stuff of life. A friend’s mother dies. Another grieves the loss of his wife. A third deals with a cancer diagnosis. I will do my best to continue to be there for all of them.
If you live in the Phoenix area, come in from the heat and attend one of our June concerts. We will entertain and energize you … make you smile, laugh, shed a few tears, too … as we lift our voices.
No one can stop me from being who I am … who I love … who I care for … who I sing with.
Sculpted or not, spectacular public art soothes the sharp edges of our daily lives. For just a few moments in the center of any city, it frees our minds of responsibility and replenishes our spirits … especially when it pays tribute to local nature and history.
Mark Rossi’s Three Blacktail Jackrabbits, located at 700 S. Mill Avenue in downtown Tempe, Arizona, reflect the natural history of the Phoenix Salt River Valley. His Groomer Rabbit, Guard Rabbit, and Restful Rabbit (built in 1993) welcome passersby with whimsy and provide a year-round oasis.
When Tom and I landed permanently in our Scottsdale condo, it was an odd year.
Odd in a meteorological sense; when we pulled into our carport, it was 112 degrees outside on July 12.
Odd in a traumatic sense; I had suffered a minor heart attack six days before on our 60th birthday.
Odd in a serendipitous sense; the cardiac trauma happened in St. Louis (where I was born) in the middle of our move.
Odd in a numerical sense; it was 2017.
That year, we did our best to settle into our new life. We focused on the most essential items: buying a new air conditioning unit and creating a new healthcare regimen to rehab my heart and restore some sense of normalcy to our lives.
We were two mid-century guys, doing our best to settle into our mid-century condo, happy to have survived a scary personal experience, grateful for the chance to write a new chapter in a space that had been home to Tom’s grandparents (and, in a more limited sense, his parents) years before.
Sadly, by 2017, they were all gone. Even so, we had an important remnant of their lives to keep us grounded. It was our turn to–slowly–make it our own.
Under more normal circumstances (i.e., not enduring a heart attack in the middle of our move), we might have pushed more aggressively to transform our condo. But surviving together superseded remodeling and refreshing.
With time, I regained my strength. Tom and I both began to breathe more easily. When a little thing called Covid arrived in 2020, it prompted us to rethink our space, because–of course–we had more time to stare at our condo walls.
In 2021– it was odd again — we hired a paint crew to turn both bedrooms green and serene. We replaced the carpeting there. Later that year, we remodeled our bathroom.
Now it’s another odd year: 2025. Odd (as well as disturbing) in more ways than I care to enumerate in this essay. Let’s just say it’s the perfect time to wave goodbye to dingy off-white walls and adorn our living room and sunroom with a splash of two new colors.
With all of that as my preamble, I’m in the mood to tease you a little. Guess which two colors on this palette will appear inside our home beginning next week.
When the work is done (and we have replaced the tired grey/blue carpeting in our living room and sun room, too), I think it will feel like we have finally created the Arizona space Tom and I imagined eight years ago in April.
That’s when we put our suburban Chicago home on the market as the daffodils bloomed on another chilly midwestern day.
That’s when we began to pack up our most important possessions in Illinois for a chance to create a new life of unforeseen friends, books, blogs, stories, movies, and memories in the Valley of the Sun.
In the course of any life–whether you are a woodpecker, hummingbird or a species without wings–sometimes the best you can do is to find nourishment where you can … and just hang on.
It’s late Friday afternoon in the desert. The mockingbird outside our backdoor is singing his or her heart out. It’s a tender, hopeful, pre-weekend serenade … a chirpy, lyrical refrain coming from the top of a telephone pole that connects our heavier world of technology and dissonant news and noise.
None of us knows what tomorrow will bring … ever. But especially now.
Case in point: early this afternoon as Tom and I devoured a few remaining slices of sausage and veggie pizza from the night before, a military jet zoomed overhead.
The sudden surge of decibels jarred our nerves. Though we live near a military base at Papago Park, we rarely hear that intense noise. Only an occasional squadron of helicopters arriving or departing.
We are a nation of divided people living on the edge of time, sound, and sensibility. Each day when we climb out of bed, we are aware of the dismantling of institutions we have come to know and respect.
Each day we are threatened by another batch of edicts tossed out the sidedoor by an authoritarian regime bringing shame and constant anxiety to those of us raised to believe in a country that once valued high ideals over low morals.
I don’t pretend to have the answers. But I know silence will kill us.
I won’t pretend to be someone I’m not. Or as I have said frequently to friends lately, “I’m not putting this genie back in a bottle.”
What do I mean? I spent too many years as a teenager and young adult (of the 1970s, 80s and early 90s) denying my true gay identity, subverting my whole self to try to fit into a predominantly straight, suburban culture.
That caused me (and others in my life at the time) tremendous personal pain. And, on a larger scale, denying the truth kept our society from advancing to a higher plain of equality, freedom, and human possibilities.
Yet now our federal (and some of our state and local government officials, too) are attempting to wipe away the contributions and accomplishments of our “diverse” people from websites and history books.
For instance, native code talkers who–by virtue of their distinct language–were instrumental in helping to bring an end to World War II.
Did you know that recently pages on the Arlington National Cemetery website–highlighting the graves of Black and female service members–have been removed?
These and other efforts are designed to erase the accomplishments of women and people of color.
How far will this attempt at whitewashing our history go? I don’t pretend to know. But I do know that the best attributes of our diverse culture exist in the past and present and people need to know about these contributions.
My husband Tom, an aficionado of films from the 1960s and 70s, has been leading a film series this winter and spring at the Scottsdale Public Library, titled “Movies That Matter: the 1970s.”
Each Monday afternoon, between 75 and 100 people attend this free series. The audience is mostly white people who love great films.
Last week, Tom screened “Dog Day Afternoon”. Directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Al Pacino, the film–based on a true story that occurred in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1970s–chronicles a botched bank robbery in the heat of the summer.
It’s an intense and sometimes funny film early on. Pacino plays Sonny. He’s desperate to get the money his partner needs for a sex change operation. But we don’t know that until more than half the movie has spooled through what once was a movie projector.
It’s a must-see flick. I won’t spoil the outcome if you haven’t seen it. But the most meaningful and important aspect of this story is that 93 people attended. They listened to Tom’s stage-setting intro for historical context. They watched the film, and then they talked about it. Together.
They talked about what it meant. They examined the techniques employed in the film to tell the story effectively. They existed in that space for three hours as a community of people in a shared experience.
I don’t pretend to know all of the political affiliations represented in that room. But I’m certain they left with a greater appreciation for film and how it can shed light on the differences and pressures–like them or not–that have existed in our American society for decades.
Mark Johnson Stories 