Remarks, Deep Dish Presentation, Institute for LGBT Studies 16 February 2017 University of Arizona Let's observe a moment of silence for Frederick Douglass, and all those who sacrificed their careers and lives so that we might be here today. Let’s gather them together in this room. A...
Writer and writing maven Cynthia Newberry Martin maintains a blog in which writers chronicle our daily lives. She asked me to write the July entry, with a prompt from Annie Dillard: "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." But when...
OK, here’s a chance to get more people to read about Larry Rose, and fold in another great San Francisco tip. Recently psychologist Harriet Lerner, author of The Dance of Anger and, most recently, Marriage Rules: A Manual for the Married and the Coupled Up,...
Discussant remarks, First Friday presentations, Department of English, University of Arizona 12/2/11 Introduction: Dr. Tilly Warnock, professor emerita, University of Arizona Speakers: Dr. Ron Grant, director, University of Arizona Medical Humanities Program Dr. Rishi Goyal, Ph.D. Professor Fenton Johnson, discussant Recent years have witnessed the rise of scientists writing as Renaissance...
Here's a link to my latest op-ed, this in the Los Angeles Times of 5 June 2011. I have preserved the original title. In the editing -- possibly a telling comment in itself? -- "love" was dropped. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-johnson-aids-20110605,0,4195576.story ...
Some years back I came to a point where I had lived long enough and known enough summers and loss that I became a better looker -- I began to pay more attention. I’m a teacher and I’d like to think such matters can be...
Three days hence I leave my childhood home, having spent June and July caretaking my mother. I will miss much and many about this place, but what comes first to mind is the loud, cheerful, omnipresent song of the Carolina wren bobbledy-bobbledy-bobbledy-bob (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Carolina_Wren/sounds). I grew up...
Regarding Flatulence in Gnats When I arrived from my cross-country drive, my mother -- always proud of her hearing -- was nearly deaf. But I read the symptoms not as progressive deafness but as wax buildup in the ears. Her hearing had been fine until a...
All my fifty-something friends give me a thumbs-up, but I notice they’re not following suit: I’ve bailed on my glittering city life and even my life as a scholar in the desert heat and am instead camped out for the summer at my mother’s...