Tag: reflections

Wrist-banding Together

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When you’re living through a full-blown constitutional crisis–and feeling vulnerable–you need to find ways of coping and caring for the ones you love.

So, I bought two of these beaded rainbow wristbands from the Human Rights Campaign for Tom and me to wear.

We are wrist-banding together.

This is a symbolic gesture. I want the world to know that this gay couple isn’t going anywhere, though it is a period in the United States where some would prefer that those of us who are different would go away.

But I–we–remain visible.

As I write this blogpost, I realize it is number 500 … a true milestone for any writer.

When I began blogging in May 2018, I had no illusions of where it might lead.

I simply wanted to give my books and literary voice more room to grow, more visibility.

For that reason, I suppose it is fitting that today I choose to write about my gay identity and continue to exercise personal aspects of my voice … visibly.

In many respects, the life my husband and I lead is not all that different from any couple.

We shop for groceries together. Go to the gym together. Enjoy quiet moments and meals together. Love and nurture each other.

We do our best to support each other and our family members during highs and lows.

We spend time with our friends. They are young and old, straight and gay, black and white.

We love and respect them, and they love and respect us.

I think it’s accurate to say this about our friends: we enrich each other’s lives, no matter our skin color, religious beliefs, cultural perspectives, gender identities, or sexual orientations.

It is a personal jolt to realize–and read on trusted news sources each day–that our differences are under attack and being eroded in my home country … the country I still love.

I don’t think I’m depressed. But I am definitely sad and angry. Definitely grieving. Me and a boatload of others of all backgrounds and persuasions.

There are times when I want to scream from the top of a mountain. “This is my country, too. How dare you try to take that away from me!” But then I wonder, “Is anybody listening?”

So, I bring this here, instead and I type these words in blogpost number 500.

At any rate, thank you for joining me–possibly even enduring me at times–on this blogging journey since May 2018.

As long as I continue to feel I have something important and relevant to say (to shed light on the topics of the day … to celebrate a literary success or the latest Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus performance … to pay tribute to those I love … to tell a funny story about our stray cat Poly … to observe and honor the beauty of nature … to share a vivid, meaningful memory about my childhood … or to pen a poem that is in need of artistic space and oxygen) you will find me here.

I hope you have been informed or entertained and will continue to tag along with me on this organic literary odyssey, wherever it may lead.

As I walked the treadmill at the gym this morning–on Abraham Lincoln’s two-hundred-sixteenth birthday–a weird, dark, and discomforting question swirled through my brain.

What if we–all the diverse people in this country, all the people of color, all the LGBTQ folks–were gone?

That fearful quandary led me to write this poem.

****

If We Were Gone

If we were gone,

you would miss

our minds, our hearts,

our beauty, our tenacity,

our sensitivity,

our sensibility,

our kindness, our love,

our compassion, our humor,

our leadership, our style,

our guidance, our wisdom,

our friendship, our support,

our joy, our pain, our truth,

our sun, our moon, our stars,

our books, our movies,

our artistry,

our contributions,

our serendipitous stories.

But, most of all, you

would miss us.

You would miss

the clarity and

strength of our

distinctive lives

and beautiful voices.

That would be

the greatest loss of all.

Mr. Big

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I thought I’d seen it all,

towering above,

connecting parched earth

to every blazing sky

with few monsoon

storms racing by.

But something sinister stirs,

threatening those who dare

to gaze high and pass my

lofty four-generation station

to seek aid and find shade.

I can’t bear the crash,

our tumbling down

never again

to stretch or grow

in our forever dreams.

Yet my weary branches ache,

because I suspect

without our canopy

of truth, strength, and justice

our best days together

will have come and gone.

***

According to the Arizona Forestry and Fire Management Agency, “Mr. Big” is the largest red gum eucalyptus in the U.S. Located in the picturesque desert confines of Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Superior, Arizona, he stands 117 feet tall with a circumference of 22 feet. He was planted here as a three-year-old sapling in 1926. A wooden fence and security camera surrounding the base of the tree are designed to discourage thoughtless people from carving their initials in the trunk. On February 6, 2025, I captured this photo of Mr. Big with my husband Tom during our Boyce Thompson visit. Mr. Big’s presence, threats to nature from global warming, and the upheaval in our country have inspired me to write this poem.

Nostalgia

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Music is a great elixir for what ails you.

What ailed me for three years–2013 to 2016–was grief spawned by the loss of my mother.

Listening to Annie Lennox’ soaring voice–her Nostalgia--pulled me through and beckoned me to complete my first book From Fertile Ground.

You see, Annie’s rendition of twelve stirring and mostly southern-sometimes-smoldering tunes written in the 1930s and 1940s primed the pump of my southern sensory memories.

Sometime in 2015, I unearthed a tender memory of making homemade peach ice cream with my grandmother Georgia on the rickety porch of my grandparents’ North Carolina farm.

It was Annie who reminded me that I had Georgia on My Mind. Sherrell Richardson Ferrell, too–S.R. for short. He was my farming grandfather who left behind more than fifty years of diary entries.

Annie’s music, Georgia’s love, S.R.’s spartan stories (primitive blog entries really), and Helen’s litany of letters (she was my wise mother) gave me all the creative inspiration I needed to finish and publish my first book in 2016.

Why is this all relevant today? Because I have Helen on my mind. She died twelve years ago on January 26, 2013.

For the most part, my writing and the constant love and support from my husband Tom have helped soften the grief as the years continue to roll by.

Helen would have been happy for me on both counts. She suspected Tom and I would retire in Arizona one day.

However, I doubt she would have imagined the entirety of this literary chapter for me, which lately includes teaching memoir writing at our local library. (I’ve been asked to lead a third workshop in April.)

Or the growing community of loyal followers Tom has inspired with every immersive movie series he hosts (also at the Scottsdale Public Library). His next series–Movies That Matter: The 1970s (a tribute to six film directors)–begins tomorrow and continues on most Mondays until early April.

I firmly believe it is the arts and the artists–like Annie Lennox, even the less renowned ones like Mark Johnson and Tom Samp–who through their music, writing, painting, poetry, and true cultural perspectives will help pull us through this dark and uber-turbulent period in our once-proud country.

For now, that is the hope I cling to. Along with the memories of love and gratitude–the nostalgia–framed by indelible moments with family and friends past and present, who I love dearly.

Sparkle, Magic, and Joy

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No, those aren’t the names of three of Santa’s reindeer that will pull his sleigh tomorrow night.

But if you were one of more than 100 singers, dancers, and musicians on stage–or any of the 900-plus jubilant audience members who attended three sold-out shows–you felt sparkle, magic, joy and a lot more positivity, lush music, spectacular solos, and elfin storytelling pulse through your bloodstream at the Herberger Theatre (Stage West) in Phoenix over the weekend.

What you see here is the culmination of Recycle the Fruitcake, just breaths away from the end of act one of Lights, Camera, Elves!

I think it’s fair to say this number brought the house down in laughter, music, and mayhem.

Squint and look to the far right. That’s me wearing a giant gingerbread man costume. (My chorus pal Ezra played the other gingerbread man on the left side of the frame.)

Billy and Michael (two other dancers and chorus members) helped me perform a quick-change backstage.

They inflated my costume in about thirty seconds, so that I could return to bounce on the apron of the stage.

I waved my arms like a seven-year-old … not the sixty-seven-year-old guy I am … for twenty seconds. It was exhilarating and as close to skydiving as I will ever get.

Moments before I marched across the stage–arms extended carrying an enormous tin of toxic fruitcake, wearing a full-body orange hazmat suit, and teasing the dancers and the audience–“cause you never really know where fruitcakes might have been.”

Today–the day after our final holiday performance and an exuberant and playful cast party around Dale’s and Jim’s rainbow Christmas tree–I give thanks to the entire experience.

Even a slightly pulled right calf muscle didn’t deter me from hitting the gym with Tom at 9 a.m. and looking ahead to a quiet Scottsdale Christmas Eve with him … followed by a low-key Christmas Day with my older son Nick and his family.

Because as Derik (another second tenor, who played our Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus Santa) proclaimed near the end of our performance with a pink garland wrapped around his neck and the twinkle of Darlene’s piano keys over his shoulder …

“The magic of Christmas isn’t just in the gifts or decorations. It’s in the stories we share, and the music that brings us together.”

See you here in 2025 for more stories and more music.

O Christmas Tree

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What I share here always comes from my heart and the firing (sometimes misfiring) synapses of my brain.

Lately, I have been drawn to writing more poetry. It helps me to process the pain–personal and national–which I have been wearing like a cape that shrouds my best impulses and intentions.

Today, as Christmas and the end of the year approach, I am taking a different path.

Before I take the stage next weekend for my holiday concert with the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus, I want to reflect on bright-and-shiny moments–present and past–which have been tempered by devastating-and-unavoidable losses in 2024.

***

Tom and I are among the dwindling few, who continue to send Christmas cards in the mail to our closest friends and loved ones.

It’s something that brings both of us joy, and in my book that means it’s something worth doing–no matter what other Americans do.

I know that practice places us in the minority (rather like the disastrous outcome of our presidential election), but I don’t care.

Since childhood, I have always identified as “different” or–more specifically–as an outsider. Maybe it was my brain’s subconscious attempt at preparing me for the obstacles I would face as a gay man.

At any rate, conformity is for the faint of heart. It takes courage to stand by your differences, and I have a feeling I will need to muster a boatload of courage as we head into 2025.

Maybe that approaching storm is why I have taken comfort recently in an old Christmas memory.

For several years in the late 1950s and early 1960s, before Dad had his first heart attack, he took Diane (my sister) and me in our old, green Plymouth to search for our family Christmas tree.

We didn’t have much money, so he usually drove us to a tree lot adjacent to a Site filling station. Strangely, I remember the price of gas was 29 cents a gallon on the sign that swayed in winter’s wind.

Dad was a tall man–six feet, two inches. One day I would reach that same stature, but going back sixty-five years, I was a little tyke with a wool stocking cap covering my crew cut.

Dad wanted to select a natural tree (usually balsam, because they were cheaper than Scotch Pine) that was at least his height, so when it was placed in a tree stand all of us (he, Mom, Diane, and I) could gaze up at the beauty of its lights, ornaments, and tinsel hanging on every branch.

In the cold and damp St. Louis air, it usually took us several rounds up and down the aisles of the tree lot to find the best shaped tree. But we always found one to our liking and–with heavy twine–somehow tied it to the roof of our sedan.

When we got home on December 4 or 5, our family practice was to cut a small notch off the bottom of the tree trunk, then deposit it into a metal bucket of water to keep it fresh.

Inevitably, the water in the bucket froze, but with a little heat from the Midwestern sun, around the middle of December we were able to pry it out of the bucket, screw it into our stand, and decorate our family Christmas tree in our living room.

***

Back to reality. We lost a few friends in 2024. Peggy’s passing in mid-November is the most recent.

I was touched and honored when Glenn–our dear friend, neighbor and one of the kindest and most dependable people I know–asked me to write his wife’s obituary.

Peggy’s memorial service last week was a beautiful reflection on her meaningful life as a teacher, wife, mother, grandmother, animal-lover, and upstanding citizen. I will miss her.

In general, I am aware of the “shrinkage” (and greater vulnerability) that comes with age–the loss of friends and family one by one, the institutions that close their doors, the connections that fray (literal or otherwise), the visits to the dentist to replace crowns and teeth that wear down and require repairs.

I experienced all of those in 2024. But there were inspiring moments, too.

Tom and I traveled to Minneapolis in July for the quadrennial GALA chorus festival. The singing, listening, bonding, and carousing with other LGBTQ friends and chorus members filled our cups and our hearts.

It was also a privilege to share England and Scotland with my husband in late September. That week-long tour–from London, to Bath, to Lake Windermere, to Shakespeare’s home, to Liverpool, and the cobblestone streets of Edinburgh–was our tenth wedding anniversary gift to each other.

And 2024 was the year I began to teach again. I had fun in October and November coaching a dozen aspiring and diverse writers in my first memoir writing workshop at the Scottsdale Public Library. I will do it again in January 2025 with a new batch of students.

***

It feels like the best way to end this meandering post is on a high note. So, why not share a photo of the pre-lit artificial Christmas tree Tom and I decorated and adore in our Arizona home?

On Christmas Eve, we will sit together in front of our tree, open our presents, and give thanks for the love we share and the diverse branches of family and friends in our lives who adorn our world.

For me, one of those branches is sharing ideas and stories with all of you.

Happy Holidays!

***

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,

How lovely are your branches!

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,

How lovely are your branches!

Not only green in summer’s heat,

But also winter’s snow and sleet.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,

How lovely are your branches!

Desert Moon

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As we count our losses,

we brace for shadows

and ripples lurking

in the darkness.

The comfort of an

undeterred desert moon

shines stillness.

It conjures hope

and the ebb and flow

of constancy living

on their own cycles.

It rises with flickers

of unfulfilled promises

and etched memories

of loved ones gone

but never far away.

They Fought So Hard

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Albert, Louise, and their three adult children–Thelma, Violet, and Walter–led ordinary lives.

In the fall of 1944, they were a big-hearted, hard-working, working-class family–living in a flat on Labadie Avenue on the north side of St. Louis.

To be precise, Thelma and Walter lived with their parents. Violet and her husband Harry lived nearby.

At any rate, they were a close family with strong opinions, loud voices, and a propensity to gather around the radio for FDR’s inspiring Fireside Chats.

Like all patriotic American families of that era, they planted a Victory Garden to grow their own vegetables, rationed household supplies, and bought war bonds to support American troops fighting overseas in Europe and the Pacific.

They did it all for the sake of protecting and maintaining freedom in a war-torn world.

Walter, Albert, Thelma, Louise, and Violet in late 1944.

When Walter was drafted and deployed to Europe (Harry, too) you might say the family had extra skin in the game of war.

He left New York Harbor–aboard the Queen Mary ship with hundreds of other soldiers–on New Year’s Eve 1944.

Five days later, he landed at the Firth of Clyde in Scotland … and, in short order, he found himself on the front lines scurrying from foxhole to foxhole in the Battle of the Bulge in the forested Ardenne region of France.

As the war in Europe wound down in 1945, he marched with the first group of US army personnel who met with the Russian army on the Elbe River on the eastern front of the war.

Walter survived the ordeal–in part because of the regular flow of love letters and encouragement he received from his sisters and parents.

Walter returned to the US on the U.S.S. Monticello in July 1945 … for a thirty-day leave prior to going to fight in the Pacific.

He was supposed to depart in mid-August, but on August 6, the US dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan and the war ended shortly thereafter.

Walter’s fighting days were over. He was discharged from the service on October 11, 1945.

A few years later–sometime after he met his future wife Helen in January 1948 at Westminster Ballroom in St. Louis–he confided that the Russian soldiers were some of the roughest, battle-hardened men.

At any rate, despite the “shellshock”, nightmares, and frozen feet Walter brought home with him, he (and Harry) came home in one piece.

***

I’ve thought a lot about Walter and Helen (my dad and mom), Thelma and Violet (my aunts), Albert and Louise (my grandparents) … the Johnson family … since the election last week.

All of them have been gone a long time, but in a sense–today–I feel I am grieving my own loss of freedom, as well as their legacy. The one they fought so hard to uphold.

I’m not giving up, but that is how I feel on Veterans Day 2024.

Early this afternoon, I pulled out Dad’s World War II army trunk.

It contains pieces of his uniform–including the wool hat and golden medallion he wore eighty years ago as he was preparing to preserve freedom on behalf of his country.

Finding it there with his few remaining possessions gave me strength.

In the coming days, weeks, months, and years, I’m going to do my best to draw from the resiliency in my family’s DNA to find specific ways to uphold democracy in my Arizona community.

You can be sure I also will continue to exercise my voice–through prose and poetry–and influence others in a positive fashion as we head into an uncertain and potentially ominous period in our country’s history.

Down, But Still Out

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When I saw you

from across the room

high-five your conspirators,

the simmer of my sadness

escalated into a boiling frenzy.

What audacity … to celebrate

at the funeral of my beloved,

to dance on graves and marble stones

that ripple and repeat on rolling hills.

While I grieve for her and them,

I grieve more for all of us

and what will come next.

Yes, I am down … gutted really.

But I am still out and

I am determined to rise up.

I still have my past and present,

even if I don’t know my future.

I still have my passion.

I still have my chosen family.

I still have my truth.

I still have my identity.

I still have my voice.

Blue Light Special

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There is no deep discount

for you to collect,

no razzmatazz reward

or ragged punch card

for you to accrue,

no extra credit

for you to capture

from the check-out lane,

no savings to realize

on the way out the door.

It is just these twinkling

blue lights of hope

that exist to frame

our fleeting worldview,

that implore us all

to imagine better possibilities,

that remind us

if we act now

to salvage our future freedom,

if we move forward

to heal from the past,

we may still be able

to rescue our civilization

from the jaws of decay.

Shadows and Memories

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Our funhouse shadows

lead us on new adventures

that unfold and stretch

in September’s sharp light.

We depart on weightless legs,

newborn colts

weaving and wandering,

ready to gallop

in the golden glow,

transformed with

magical memories

to carry home and savor.

***

I’ll be traveling for the rest of September. While I’m away, purchase my latest book, A Path I Might Have Missed, and enjoy more of my poetry.