Tag: July

I’m Still Standing

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It may or may not surprise you to learn that I’m sipping hot herbal tea–lemon and ginger–as I write this.

Ordinarily, that would feel counterintuitive to surviving the summer desert heat. (We are expecting 115-degree temperatures in the Phoenix area again today.)

But I am determined to eradicate the nagging remnants of Covid congestion. Plenty of rest, fluids, hot tea, Sudafed, and throat lozenges are helping me slay this beast. (I am no longer Covid positive or contagious.)

I want to be clear-headed for my sixty-seventh birthday on July 6th. (Actually, it’s OUR sixty-seventh birthday. In a gift from the cosmos, Tom and I are exactly the same age. I’m no mathematician, but what are the odds of that?!)

We will celebrate by seeing a production of Fiddler on the Roof at the Phoenix Theater–it’s getting rave reviews–followed by dinner at a Phoenix restaurant.

Then, early next week, Tom and I will travel to Minneapolis for the quadrennial GALA choral festival. 7,000 LGBTQ singers (representing hundreds of choruses from the US and around the world) will be participating in this massive community choral event.

It will be more than five days of non-stop music, singing, listening, cheering, and applauding. It will be a giant uplifting and affirming dose of camaraderie, which all of us in the LGBTQ community–the entire world really–need right now.

If you aren’t familiar with GALA, it’s a phenomenal program–gay music camp, of sorts–which happens only once every four years. Of course, the 2020 program was Covid-cancelled.

Therefore, GALA 2016 in Denver was the most recent festival. I still have fond memories of standing on stage with my mates from the Windy City Gay Chorus.

We were asked to perform the song I Love You More from Tyler’s Suite at the closing ceremonies in front of 3,000 people. It is a positive moment seared in my memory … and it happened on my 59th birthday.

Evidently, the GALA 2024 organizers were able to repurpose countless stacks of 2020 lanyards, which someone must have purchased four years ago. Look closely, and you’ll understand what I mean.

Anyway, on Friday, July 12th, at 12:30 p.m. (Central Time) I will perform with my Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus mates on the Minneapolis Convention Center auditorium stage.

We will sing six songs: Bridge Over Troubled Water, You Are Enough, Proud, For Me, I’m Still Standing, and Sing to the World Our Light.

For more information, go to http://www.galachoruses.org. If you love choral music, you can purchase a live stream pass for $35 and see any/all of the chorus performances you like.

Trust me. No matter where you live, the quality, scope, magnitude, magic, and healing power of the music at this exhibition will dazzle you.

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.

Walking the Shore

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My aunt, Frances Ferrell Rogers Christenbury, passed away on July 8, 2023, at age ninety-one.

She was the younger sister of Helen Ferrell Johnson, my mother, who died ten years ago.

I wrote the following poem on July 9, 2023, as a tribute to Frances, Helen and their devoted sisterhood.

***

Through high points and hardships,

We blazed new trails and distinct paths.

One of us stayed. One of us flew away,

But both of us grew and endured.

With capable hands, we shaped red clay.

We loved our families and neighbors.

We welcomed creatures great and small.

We nurtured magnolias and gardenias,

Through early frosts and hard winters.

Now the light sleeping and heavy lifting are put to rest.

We feel the ebb and flow of the tide together,

Walking the shore with the wind but without a care,

Embracing cool waves as they wash over our bare feet.

Revealing the truth of our favorite shells to keep.

Helen and Frances–walking a South Carolina shoreline and searching for shells–sometime in the 1990s.

***

If you’d like to read more of my poetry, you’ll find my latest book, A Path I Might Have Missed, on Amazon.

July’s Serendipity

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I received a sad text message on July 2 from Lu, my cousin’s wife in North Carolina. She told me Frances, my beloved ninety-one-year-old aunt, is in her final stages of life, suffering with the effects of Alzheimer’s.

Frances is my mother’s smart and sassy younger sister–the only one remaining from that generation of my Ferrell family. Her passing–whenever it occurs–will mark the end of a significant chapter in my life … one I wrote about in From Fertile Ground after my mother’s death ten years ago.

When I last visited Frances in September 2015, I sat beside her on the couch of her Davidson, North Carolina living room. It was an important and healing moment for both of us. The loss of her only sister and my only mother was still relatively fresh.

I realized then that returning to North Carolina (where my mother was born) was my way of putting to rest Helen Ferrell Johnson’s earliest life experiences–and some of mine, which included Frances, her sons, warm summer days, and barefoot adventures exploring my grandparents’ Huntersville, North Carolina farm in the 1960s.

Now–just a day away from my sixty-sixth birthday and three weeks from what would have been my mother’s 100th–the knock of grief in July appears once again on the other side of the door.

It ushers me back to July 6, 1974, (my seventeenth birthday) when I stood beside Frances at my grandmother’s (her mother’s) funeral.

We leaned into one another that day in the Asbury Methodist Church cemetery in Huntersville. I needed to feel her love and reassurance, just as I would in September of 2015.

Back in July 2023, my wish is that my aunt’s transition moves swiftly.

In my mind and heart, Frances Ferrell Rogers Christenbury (forever the first child born in High Point, North Carolina, on New Year’s Day 1932) will always be that spunky adventurer.

Frances loved me for who I am … saw and accepted the handwriting on my gay wall before most of the rest of my family … brought joy to my frolicking on the farm … and ordered extra copies of From Fertile Ground to share.

I think it was because reading it helped her heal after the loss of Helen. More than that, because it tells the story of our family’s survival across the generations.

One that will live forever on the pages with Frances and the fertile ground of grief.

One Step Closer to Midnight

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At six, I ducked. I covered. When Cronkite broke the news, I grieved for JFK. I wondered what might have been. I watched John-John salute his dad’s horse-drawn casket as it passed by.

At sixteen, I drove and grew. I discovered the stage. My long hair hid my face, but through the blond strands I watched the lies and disgrace of Nixon and Watergate unfold and consume our nation.

At twenty-six, I cradled my first-born son. I played ad man in the tallest building in the world. I watched the AIDS epidemic rage without relief. Reagan stood by to pontificate.

At thirty-six, I grieved for my father and raised two little boys–alone. Clinton signed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In short order, I watched the military expand its closets. Meanwhile, I found a way out of mine.

At forty-six, I climbed the ladder, fed our dog, and paid more child support. I watched my weight escalate. My blood pressure and responsibilities soared as George W fanned the flames in Iraq.

At fifty-six, I grieved for my mother. I shed my corporate skin. I wrote. I sang again. I photographed dragonflies. I watched Obama change course and support marriage equality. I felt hopeful.

Now, six days before my sixty-sixth, I cleave to my husband and pray that the masses will continue to support Biden–our buffer from total mayhem–while insanity lurks on the horizon.

We watch and sigh as another wave of misguided declarations from the misnamed Supremes–and their perpetrators–land on the doorstep of freedom and turn back the clock on once-protected classes.

What has become of our red-white-and-blue country? The country I still love–that beacon of hope–no longer exists. Now we are black and blue. Punch drunk from the previous administration. Bruised from an insurrection that took us to the brink nearly thirty months ago.

Still, we watch and wait for justice and accountability. Will it ever come? Or are we simply poised for another distraction? Another round of fireworks to illuminate our darkness and denial?

It certainly feels like we are one step closer to midnight.

***

If my poem moved you, check out my latest book A Path I Might Have Missed on Amazon.

What Lingers

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She’s been gone nine-and-a-half years. I no longer feel the frequent weightiness of her loss. But on this day–what would have been Helen Johnson’s ninety-ninth birthday–I do.

My mother was a lifelong gardener and nature lover. So, this morning–as a symbolic gesture–Tom and I walked the Desert Botanical Garden. It was quiet and muggy there; just us, a few other couples, and a parade of random reptiles doing push-ups on the concrete path before scampering off.

Grief is a tricky thing. If you’ve lost someone you loved (and who hasn’t?), the discomfort appears as an uninvited clunky extra, who wanders on stage to disrupt a scene … only to vanish until the next anniversary, birthday, favorite song, or serendipitous moment.

As a soothing balm, I have kept the treasure trove of hundreds of letters my mother sent me. They represent a lifetime of her wisdom–her pain, joy, uncertainty, pride, denial, and acceptance. It only became wisdom and the catalyst for my first book, because she had the foresight to share it.

Perhaps the image of her–sitting at her desk or dining room table composing another letter–is her greatest gift of all to me in my literary, later-in-life years.

Out of her death and my grief, I was able to comb the beaches of her life (and mine) and make sense of it. Her letters–like this joyous one from 1999, which I included in From Fertile Ground–are the meaningful shells that washed up on shore and remain.

***

July 11, 1999

Dear Mark,

I really enjoyed your visit! It is good to see you happy and at peace. The fact that you plan to end your group therapy indicates a confidence in your life’s path that is reassuring. I wish for you continued growth and success in every area of your life. The next 20 years should be your best!

The boys are growing up. Nick seems to have recovered some of his old verve and displayed more of the child of old than I had seen in a few years. As he matures and charts his own course as a man, more of that lovely, lovable child nature will return and be revealed to his family members. Kirk is still an adorable rascal and much fun to have around. Enjoy it. Everything can change quickly …

Love to you and the boys. Hello to Tom.

Mom

***

Two years before, in the fall of 1997 while vacationing with her sister Frances, Mom wore a light blue hat in this grainy photo. She scoured the South Carolina shoreline for seashells and shark teeth. She marveled at the way the ocean’s high and low tides polished their sharp edges.

Twenty-five years later, I marvel at the wisdom and intellect my mother shared and left behind. It is her letters and my love for her that linger.

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.

Over and Over

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We live in an over-inflated, over-heated, over-zealous world.

There is plenty of blame to go around. In my mind, greedy politicians and media conglomerates are two of the biggest culprits. The worst of them scream at us through our screens to woo us over and over. All for the sake of personal swagger and the almighty dollar.

I do my best to follow the important developments in the world and tune out the bluster, though–in this summer of 2022–that is virtually impossible in the United States of America.

That’s why I typically pepper my blog with stories of sweet cats, eavesdropping cacti, brilliant sunsets, lazy lizards, and personal reflections. However, I’m over-exposed and need to rant.

A simple drive down the street here in Scottsdale, Arizona (and I imagine in most American communities) snaps me back to the realities of the day.

We are surrounded by political signs and crack-pot endorsements on street corners in advance of our August 2 primary. Unfortunately, a fierce monsoon storm here on Sunday night didn’t obliterate them all. The best thing I can do is vote. My husband and I performed that democratic duty–early–on Monday.

Of course, the bluster of our society isn’t confined to politics. On Tuesday night, I tuned in to watch a few innings of the MLB (Major League Baseball) All-Star Game. The over-produced coverage on Fox assaulted my sensibilities. Over-hyped celebrity ballplayers wearing mics for in-game interviews over-shadowed the action on the field. It bored me.

That’s saying a lot, because–if you follow me–you know I’m a die-hard baseball fan. More specifically, I root for the St. Louis Cardinals. This passion flows back to the 1960s, sitting in the bleachers with my dad with my transistor radio and watching legendary players perform on the field.

My fascination and fixation with baseball was all about the relative innocence of escaping into the strategy of the game, wondering what might unfold next. In 2022, that sense of mystery has vanished.

Maybe this is really a story about what it feels like to grow older. To see the world through wiser, more questioning eyes. To demand more from our polarizing politicians, fragmented society, and ever-posturing media outlets … while the world I once knew evaporates before me.

I’ve always known I am overly sensitive–overly aware of my fair skin and frailties. According to my dermatologist on Tuesday, a cancerous patch of squamous cells (removed from the top of my left hand in mid-June through minor surgery) has over-healed.

Evidently, I was too good at smearing Aquaphor lotion on the wound, so he froze the scar tissue. It will fall off in a few weeks, and my life in the desert will go on with another chapter of survival in the books.

On Wednesday evening, I joined a group of my Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus friends at a funeral home in Mesa, Arizona.

We sang a beautiful arrangement of Over the Rainbow. It was our way of saying goodbye to Cy, our friend and long-time chorus member, who passed away recently.

It was an evening of tears, funny stories, and reflections–a tribute to a man who lived well, sang beside us, and fought hard.

It was also a good reminder for me to do my best to tune into the important stuff of life. To embrace what really matters each day. To keep doing it over and over again as long as I can. Because none of us knows what tomorrow will bring.