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.
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.
Tom delivers his opening remarks at a screening of Dog Day Afternoon at the Scottsdale Public Library on March 17, 2025. Photo by our friend and neighbor Diego.
Late April’s breezy interlude and May’s certain pre-heating oven conspire to scare and sweep them from one escaping path to another. As they scatter and vanish into familiar cumulus clouds, space and silence walk with those who remain and remember.
My title doesn’t quite have the ring, rhythm and dreamy sway of April in Paris (the 1932 song composed by Vernon Duke with lyrics by Yip Harburg).
But then the Sonoran Desert, which we in Scottsdale inhabit in the Valley of the Sun, is nothing like the iconic French city (or so I’ve heard).
Late March rains and chillier-than-normal temperatures have produced a green early April in central Arizona. Perhaps the greenest I can recall, since Tom and I moved here in 2017. We hope this is a trend and precursor to a cooler, wetter summer.
As snowbirds fly (or drive) east and north to return to their predominant nests, we full-time desert dwellers are left with more space to roam and the promise of new life that will sustain us.
Even in the desert, April colors and possibilities burst forth from cacti, succulents, and containers. But most notably from the earth where newly planted trees such as our Red Push Pistache–those we’ve only just begun to know–prepare to dip the tips of their leaves in ink and write their own stories.
We are human, not robots. So, we all do it to some degree or another. We reflect on seminal moments that have passed rather than living in the present.
In my case, that means occasionally remembering the full moon, which dominated the January horizon the morning my mother died in 2013.
Or–further back in my psyche–the sweet scent of magnolia blossoms, emerging in late March on the front lawn of my suburban St. Louis childhood home. Often, mother nature tricked them with an early April frost that turned the pink petals brown.
Oddly, when we aren’t contemplating the past, many of us focus on the future. We anticipate significant events–personal and social–that approach.
We ponder pressing issues ahead, such as paying the rent or mortgage when it comes due at the end of the month, speculating on the latest batch of troublesome news on the world stage, or waiting impatiently for medical test results.
Though I am a memoir writer–and soon-to-be-published poet (stay tuned)–once-unforeseen yoga sessions (which I now practice frequently on the aqua mat of my sixties) teach me that I am better off focusing on the space in between the memories and the what ifs.
It is the breathing in and out that keeps me whole as I write this sentence on the keys of my laptop. It is the random chirping punctuating my afternoon in the palm tree outside my back door.
It is the rushing water of life, which currently swooshes through the normally dry Salt River gulch in Tempe, thanks to frequent rains in the Valley of the Sun and melting snow from Arizona’s high country.
At this moment in time, I need to remind myself that it is all of these things–happening now–that make life rewarding and meaningful on an otherwise gauzy Wednesday in March.
Warmer, brighter, and dryer than my midwestern memories, the arrival of April in the Sonoran Desert means we are a step closer to the oven.
I’ve come to welcome the regularity of the sun and heat. They define who we are: slimmer survivors, comfortable in shorts and sandals minus the cloud cover and weighty coats of our past lives.
No matter the month, if you’re willing to dig beneath the palms that frame the burgeoning Phoenix skyline, you’ll find the Japanese Friendship Garden (named RoHoEn) coexisting with concrete in an urban setting.
Planted at 1125 N. 3rd Avenue (just west of Central Avenue and south of I-10 on the way to L.A.), this hidden Phoenix gem is an unexpected eastern oasis deposited amidst the flurry of western civilization.
Protected by the shade of a high-rise apartment building, colorful koi dance beneath the surface of a shallow lake, a canopy of pines, sculpted shrubs, gentle waterfalls, and peaceful pagodas.
Of course, many come to the Valley of the Sun to relax by the pool. But if you prefer a different kind of escape, the garden is an ideal place to stroll in the shade, pause on a weekday, feed the fish, and nourish your soul.
Note: Located in the heart of Phoenix, the 3.5-acre Japanese Friendship Garden is a joint project of the City of Phoenix and its Sister City, Himeji, Japan. I captured these photos during an afternoon visit with Tom on Wednesday, March 30, 2022.
This week marks five years since I completed and published my first book, From Fertile Ground. In celebration of the anniversary of my entry into this literary life, you can download a free Kindle copy of my book on Amazon from March 24 through 28. What follows is the story of what brought me to this moment. If you are an aspiring writer, I hope reading this will provide a little added encouragement.
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If you look and listen closely—and breathe deeply—you will find spring stirring in the Sonoran Desert. Sweet and fragrant orange blossoms dance through the air. Lizards and ground squirrels reemerge to scamper and soak up the sun. A hummingbird darts and twitters in a Palo Verde tree. I imagine a lone loon, descending from a blue sky, is practicing for his pilot license. He receives clearance from nearby Sky Harbor Airport traffic control and lands with a graceful whoosh that ripples in the Crosscut Canal. A monarch butterfly flits and rests on a bud near the fence of the Desert Botanical Garden, pausing long enough for me to creep in for a closeup of nature’s transformation.
This central Arizona winter-to-spring progression is a warmer, dryer, more gradual shift—a far cry from the flurry, upheaval, and calm of a midwestern lion-to-lamb experience I had been accustomed to for my first sixty years. Nonetheless, it is a March metamorphosis.
Five years ago, like a clumsy butterfly, I emerged from my own cocoon. At age fifty-eight, I launched my first book From Fertile Ground. I remember the anticipation and anxiety of March 24, 2016—the day my book emerged—as I moved from wannabe writer to published author.
I felt exhilaration. It was as if I were boarding a rollercoaster, gripping the bar tightly, grinning ear to ear, throwing my arms in the air, and shouting “Look over here” as my book entered the literary universe. Maybe I sound immodest, but it was and is such a thrill to have discovered this better-late-than-never renaissance.
Previously, as a busy single dad and on-the-go communication professional, the idea of writing on my own terms seemed like a faraway neverland of creative euphoria. But slowly, as I drifted from the gravitational force of my previous orbit, I felt the magnetic pull of an artistic life.
This literary life sprung from a personal void, molded from the fog of my grief after my mother died in January 2013. At that point, I was lost with plenty of tears, but without the language of emotion that normally came easily for me.
Fortunately, I was not alone on my journey. Thanks to the encouragement and support of my husband and a skilled therapist, I forged ahead, jotted notes in my diary, took a few nature photography classes, and slowly stepped away from a thirty-four-year advertising, PR, and consulting career. It had sustained my bank account and carried me through leans years of single fatherhood, but ultimately drained my energy and creativity.
Early on, after my corporate “retirement” there were moments of doubt and uncertainty to contend with. Even so, the more I wrote in my journal, the more I felt my voice begin to emerge. Within a few months, my writing and reading led me out of the darkness into the light.
A litany of wisdom-filled letters my mother sent me—along with a boxful of more than fifty years of diaries my grandfather left behind—spurred my creative impulses. I sequestered myself and perused them all. They spoke to me and my love of family, heritage, and history.
One day in 2014, as I turned the yellowing pages of my grandfather’s rural life—his spartan existence—an idea surfaced in my brain. It told me to weave a tale of three writers telling their stories across the generations, leaving behind a trail of their own words. In that moment, I found a new passion. From Fertile Ground was born. So was my life as an author. I prepared to emerge from my cocoon.
A year of daily soul-searching, writing and editing passed. In late 2015, I finished my manuscript. With the help of a friend, I found an editor and graphic designer—Anna and Sam—who came highly recommended. They both lived and worked in Nashville, Tennessee.
Instinctively, I liked hiring professionals with connections to the South, because much of my story shared a border with Tennessee to the east—in the rolling red earth of rural North Carolina. That is where my mother was born, where my grandparents owned a farm, and where my sister and I frolicked and spent parts of our summers in the 1960s.
Anna provided me with her recommended edits in January 2016. Following that, I collaborated with Sam. With my input, he created the cover for my book, designed the interior pages, formatted the text, and loaded it into the Amazon self-publishing software.
By late March 2016, I held the first copy of my book in hand. Friends and acquaintances began to send notes telling me they enjoyed reading my book and were moved by it. It was a joyous period in my life, far from the tears and fog that had preceded it just a few years before.
I take long walks in the desert and collect photos to stir my imagination. I marvel at the beauty and continuity of nature that surrounds me. I give thanks for the gift of life in a warm and rugged place.
Mark Johnson Stories 