Tag: Heat

Christmas Creep

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I know. It’s odd for me to write about Christmas in August. Particularly because the temperatures outside in Arizona are oven like.

However, today–like a kid on Christmas morning ready to rip open presents–I jumped out of bed at 6:30 when I heard the thunderclap. I raced to the window, threw up the sash, and pressed my nose against the glass.

I didn’t see Santa or a team of reindeer but witnessed the next best thing. Actual rain drops pounded the sidewalk. They pinged on the top of our metal carport and disappeared into the thirsty mouths of malnourished cacti.

Get this. In addition to forty days of 110-plus temperatures so far in 2023, we hadn’t seen rain in Scottsdale since March 22. (Okay, evidently there was a brief storm here on July 26, but Tom and I missed it. We were in Flagstaff.)

The lack of moisture falling from the sky has led some of us in the Valley of the Sun to refer to the summer of 2023 as the year of the non-soon versus the monsoons that generally produce a few gully washers. Typically, they account for much of our annual rainfall.

Back in the winter wonderland of my creative mind, over the past month I’ve been channeling the holiday season. Why is Christmas creeping into my psyche? Because I’ve been writing about it.

I’ve just completed a draft of another libretto for the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus (PHXGMC) 2023 holiday show. This one is titled Thanks for the Memories: A Gay Christmas Carol.

In addition to writing for PHXGMC, I will be standing on stage, performing in the concerts December 16 and 17 at the Herberger Theatre in Phoenix.

It will be a musical mash-up–nostalgic, glitzy, whimsical, and spiritual–embedded in a story of a Scrooge-like character, who is transformed by the power of beautiful music, personal truth and a trusted community.

It will also be the final holiday concert for Marc, our artistic director for more than twenty years, who has decided to move on to pursue other creative endeavors when his contract ends next July.

Tonight, is our first rehearsal for the new concert season. There will be old and new members to greet and new music to hand out.

Of course, it’s just the beginning. But whether I’m concocting a story or singing the first notes of an unfamiliar tune, it is the creative process that has always captured my joy and attention.

Most of all, I am thankful for every magical moment that lies ahead with my friends on stage and off as we create another batch of musical memories.

Clean Slate

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For the first time in a month in the Phoenix area, the high temperature failed to reach 110 degrees yesterday. (Unrelated, the kids –reluctantly or not–returned to school for a fresh start. Not my kids, but somebody’s kids.)

108 or 109 isn’t exactly pumpkin-spice latte weather, but it represents a clean-and-slightly-cooler slate for all of us Sonoran Desert rats, though the mercury is due to rise again later this week.

Coincidentally, the first day of this new month (not yet spoiled by the trauma of breaking news) is also the major league baseball (MLB) trading deadline.

MLB teams that feel they have a chance to advance to the playoffs and contend for the World Series title are adding players to their slates, who they hope will get them there.

Others (like my beloved St. Louis Cardinals who have bungled their way through the 2023 season and uncharacteristically reside in last place in their division as August begins) have decided to retool.

They have opted to prepare for a 2024 clean slate, by trading players whose contracts are about to expire for up-and-coming pitching talent that might trigger a positive outcome in the future.

Beyond the ball fields, I feel a sense of relief emotionally as we turn the page to August.

July’s heat–plus the grief of saying goodbye to my aunt, supporting my sister from afar as she recovers from surgery, and remembering the loss of my mother on her 100th birthday–has left me reeling like a rag doll cast into the corner.

While I’m healthy and vital, I think the malaise I’m feeling is probably common for those in my age range. It’s the realization that the world I once knew is shrinking and unfamiliar. Or worse yet, evaporating. That includes the people I love and the institutions I once knew.

For instance, I saw in the news that Yellow (a long-standing trucking company) has filed for bankruptcy. 30,000 employees will lose their jobs. I have no special allegiance to Yellow, but they were a client of mine when I was a consultant for Towers Perrin in the 1990s.

In 1995 and 1996, I caught a flight once a week from Chicago (where I lived) to Kansas City (near their headquarters). I met with the company’s human resources management and helped strategize their employee benefits and pay communication.

It wasn’t rocket science, but I felt I was helping people understand the options before them. Anyway, those workers that remain with the company in 2023 will now begin with a clean slate, too … whether they like it or not … as they work to parlay their pink slips into something of value that has nothing to do with Barbie-mania.

Of course, I’m thankful to be done with the traditional workforce. For Tom and me, we are fortunate to pursue our passions–the appreciation and preservation of classic films for him, the exploration of creative writing and poetry for me–on our own terms.

To close out the month of July, we manufactured our own clean slates by traveling to Flagstaff, Arizona, last week for three days and nights.

It helped me to retreat to cooler temperatures (highs in the upper eighties, lows in the upper fifties) to regain my energy.

We stayed at a lovely and contemporary B&B there: the Bespoke Inn Flagstaff.

Samantha, the manager, surprised us with a complimentary bottle of champagne (when she learned we were commemorating my mother’s milestone birthday).

I surprised her with a complimentary copy of my book of poetry as a parting gift.

Tom and I discovered a fabulous cafe in town–Tourist Home–where we did some reading and writing. The proprietors bake and sell phenomenal gluten-free crullers with sprinkles.

To counteract the calories, we also enjoyed hiking Buffalo Park in Flagstaff. It’s positioned on a plateau just a few miles from the base of the San Francisco Peaks.

Walking the path there with my husband helped me regain my creative footing as I attempt to reignite a fictionalized story that continues to rattle through my brain.

I started to write it last year, but then got derailed. It’s about a young gay man struggling to find his way and write his story in the high altitude of northern Arizona.

For now, that’s all I’ll say, but I’m open to any positive creative vibes you choose to send my way.

On Friday, July 28, 2023, a swatch of sunflowers lined the path at Buffalo Park in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Send Away … Get Away … Give Away

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I don’t know why it’s taken me so long. Especially because over the past ten years I’ve written extensively about my family, my lineage, and our propensity to seek, find, and carve our own paths. Plus, our impulses to leave behind a trail of our own observations. All of that runs through my DNA.

At any rate, last week I finally bought an Ancestry DNA kit. I opened the cardboard box. Read the directions. Spit my saliva into the provided vial. Put a cap on it. Closed up the box. I sent it away in the mail. I expect to receive the results via email in six to eight weeks.

From my mother’s branch of the family tree, I know I am Scots Irish; from my father’s family, German, Swedish, Norwegian, and French lineage. But maybe there will be a surprise or two.

This additional family research is also prompted by my mother’s one hundredth birthday–coming next week on July 26–and the personal reflection that comes with this significant milestone.

Meanwhile, with nineteen days of 110-plus temperatures under our belts here in the Valley of the Sun, Tom and I are poised for an escape to celebrate Mom’s birthday.

We’re planning a three-day, mountain getaway to Flagstaff, Arizona, where–at an altitude of 7,000 feet–we will be (blissfully) twenty-five degrees cooler than Scottsdale.

Because my mother’s life story (and my associated grief) has served as a catalyst for my writing, I’m offering my first book as a Goodreads Giveaway through July 26th. One hundred readers (chosen randomly) will receive a free download of my book.

Simply enter by July 26. If you’re a lucky recipient of my book, you’ll be notified right after. Then, find a quiet corner away from the heat (I think it’s hot everywhere right now) and get lost in my three-generation story of love, loss, and our family’s passion for writing.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and would appreciate your rating/review online.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

From Fertile Ground by Mark Johnson

From Fertile Ground

by Mark Johnson

Giveaway ends July 26, 2023.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

No Big Deal

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Two weeks and counting.

I hear you moan and sigh.

You scurry in sunglasses and sandals.

You hide away from July’s heat.

But nothing ruffles my fur.

I pad place to place.

I pause in the shade of cool tile.

I curl and twirl.

I inch closer to appease you.

I take what you leave me.

I move on to the next door.

Don’t worry about me.

I’ll get by.

The sun and stars are my home.

It’s no big deal.

It’s just who I am.

***

To read more of my poetry, look for my latest book, A Path I Might Have Missed, on Amazon.

Not That June

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This is not that June I used to know of lush eastern or midwestern gardens in better neighborhoods or blushing brides posing on the covers of magazines that used to be familiar.

It is an under-the-radar, sun-soaked, almost-summer, alternative universe of early-bird lizards, spiky saguaros, freshly trimmed palms, empty pool chairs, and fiery sunsets.

All of them wait in triple digits for a hint of the season’s first monsoon, an uncertain wet chapter and swirling desert drama that has yet to unfold in a land where the clocks never change.

I captured these images in my south Scottsdale-Arizona community between June 17 and 20, 2023.

If you like the above poem and photos, check out my latest book A Path I Might Have Missed on Amazon.

After and Before

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Remarkably, here in the Valley of the Sun, we have enjoyed a relatively comfortable early June. Seventies in the mornings. Low-to-mid nineties in the afternoons.

I’ve made the most of these breezy bonus days. Walking, hiking, swimming outside to rediscover my energy after a few weeks of long rehearsals and performances on stage indoors with my pals in the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus.

Of course, all of us Sonoran Desert rats know the mild temperatures won’t last.

We now brace ourselves, before triple-digit high temperatures arrive later this week and stay like unwelcome houseguests through most of September.

I’m not complaining. The summers here are quiet, beautiful, and hot–gorgeous sunsets, rugged buttes–away from the rush of the world and the traffic generated by snowbirds.

Our sizzling stillness is punctuated in July and August by monsoon storms that boil down from the mountains that surround us.

Now that Tom and I have lived here almost six years, our Midwestern years and associated memories have begun to fade like colorful t-shirts, hanging on a clothesline, bleached by constant exposure to the sun.

This day-in, day-out aging awareness, as we approach our shared 66th birthday in early July, makes me especially thankful that I wrote stories about my Illinois, Missouri, and North Carolina memories when they were fresh in my brain.

I guess you could say I’m between creative projects. I don’t know what I’ll decide to write next, beyond the weekly ramblings that appear here.

There is a fictionalized story I set aside late last year, when I devoted more time to writing dialogue for the chorus and completing my book of poetry.

In my mind, the main character of this yet-to-emerge family drama is living in the mountains near Flagstaff, Arizona–trying to come to terms with a significant loss he has experienced.

The good news is Tom and I have made plans to spend several days in the higher, cooler altitude of that area in late July to commemorate what would have been my mother’s 100th birthday.

Maybe this journey north, several thousand feet over the saguaros and into the ponderosa pines, is exactly what I need to rekindle my next story away from the scorching sunsets of our regular Sonoran life.

Snapdragon Saturday

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It’s a sizzling Saturday in the Phoenix area … 97, 98, and climbing. Hats and water bottles for protection and hydration are in order. They are now regulation gear for the next several months.

When Tom and I left the Phoenix Farmer’s Market mid-morning–clutching a clump of chard, a few red peppers, and a bouquet of snapdragons–I could feel the crackle and pop of heat bouncing off the sidewalks. Pulsating through the air.

Tom has since trimmed the pink and magenta snapdragons. He arranged them in a cobalt-blue-glazed ceramic pitcher I treasure. My mother left it behind.

We began buying fresh-cut flowers three years ago as Covid raged and tightened its grip on the world. It was our way of bringing natural beauty into our home, while we worked to avoid the bombardment of fear and disease.

Thirty-six months later, you might say this practice has taken root and grown into a full-fledged tradition.

Certainly, there is beauty outside in the surrounding rugged buttes, startling sunsets, chirping birds, and April cactus blooms.

But this bouquet (featured on a table beneath our Brokeback Mountain poster we bought when we lived in the Chicago area) provides us with a more private splash of color. Tucked away from the heat of the day both meteorologically and metaphorically.

Sizzling Septemperatures

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The calendar says September, but August-like heat abounds across the American west.

Thanks to a dome of high pressure, triple-digit Septemperatures in the Pacific Northwest, California, the Intermountain West, and (of course) here in Arizona are expected through the Labor Day weekend.

In the desert, we know how to navigate the heat. Carry a water bottle everywhere. Slather on sunscreen. Wear a hat. Exercise early. Do your chores in the morning. Stay inside during the heat of the afternoon. Reemerge at sundown to catch another dazzling sunset.

But there are troubling resource ramifications for this region that lie beneath the stark beauty, beyond late-summer-heat inconveniences.

Lake Powell, our country’s second largest reservoir–it straddles the Utah and Arizona border–now stands at its lowest level since 1967.

According to a recent article on scitechdaily.com by Michael Carlowicz of the NASA Earth Observatory, on August 6, 2022, the water elevation of Lake Powell’s surface at Glen Canyon Dam was 3,535.38 feet. That’s 98 feet lower than August 2017 … and only twenty-six percent of its capacity.

In August, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced it will reduce the amount of water apportioned to states in the region.

Arizona will receive 21 percent less water from the Colorado River system in 2023. That is certain to hit farmers in the Grand Canyon State particularly hard.

Fortunately, water conservation efforts are trickling down across our state and communities like Scottsdale have begun to more aggressively manage the use of water. Plus, a wet monsoon season in our state has alleviated the drought in the short term.

But, with burgeoning population growth and climate uncertainties in this region, what will the future hold for the Colorado River basin and 40 million people–Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Diego–who rely on it for electric power and water?

In June 2021, I captured this photo of Lake Powell at Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona.

In the Pink

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August has always felt like an insufferably hot way station between the sparkling summer playground of July and autumnal possibilities of September. In short, it is my least favorite time of year.

If this is your birthday month, I apologize. But, after the scorching temperatures of July 2022 in the Northern Hemisphere, we have landed squarely in the dog days of summer. September can’t come soon enough.

Even so–nearly a month after celebrating my sixty-fifth birthday–I am in the pink. I realize this is an old-timey phrase that describes the essence of feeling fit, but I don’t care. I’m a pretty traditional guy with a love of language.

According to Investopedia, “in the pink” first appeared in the late 1500s in a version of Romeo and Juliet as a reference to an excellent example of something.

Somewhere along the way, the expression evolved into a health-and-vitality reference that my parents both used. At any rate, if the phrase was good enough for William Shakespeare to include in his classic play nearly 500 years ago, it’s good enough for me.

I’m not saying I have the vitality of fifteen-year-old me pictured here in pink in 1972. But, aside from typical muscle aches after yoga or an intense workout at the gym, a new-found intolerance for gluten, and the normal forgetfulness that comes with my new Medicare status, I generally feel well for a guy who survived a mild heart attack five years ago.

And I still have a thick head of hair, though it no longer falls in my face. At this stage, I wear it short. Often under a hat to please my dermatologist and protect my fair skin from the intense rays of the Sonoran sun.

I also remember the ribbing I received from classmates for wearing this pink shirt (and other closely related pastels) back in the 60s and 70s.

At that moment in time, I wish the current much-older-and-wiser Mark Johnson could have magically appeared through an adjacent door to counsel fifteen-year-old me.

In my pink fantasy, he would simply have said …

“Never hide. Stand tall. Forget the haters. Be proud of who you are. Wear whatever colors you want. One day you will find your way. You will stand on stage. You will sing songs. The pain of the past will fade. You will raise two sons and live your own definition of masculinity. You will meet a man, fall in love, and marry him one day. The two of you will move west and create a quieter life. You will choose to wear pink again and again–and do it in style. You will survive. You will discover an open, authentic life. You will write books. You will tell stories. You will even write lyrics in your sixties. You will rise above the fray.”

Never Too Late

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Around the age of fifty, Tom and I nurtured our creative ritual.

On cold Chicago-area Sunday mornings, we bundled up and drove east from Mount Prospect to the Barnes & Noble in Evanston to browse books and movies, sip coffee, play Scrabble, and imagine “what if.“

Fifteen years later, I’m living on the other end of the temperature spectrum. Today, in the oven-like heat of this Sonoran summer, we drove to Barnes & Noble on Val Vista Drive in Mesa, Arizona. It’s about fifteen miles from our Scottsdale condo.

Remarkably, they’re stocking my books on their Local Author and Biography shelves. It feels like I’m living a dream come true.

If you’ve ever doubted your ability or passion (as I certainly did when the grind of life had worn me down), don’t give up. It’s never too late to carve a new creative path.