Dry Heat, Damp Heart, and a few Sunshine Daydreams

Most folks dismiss it as frivolous small talk, but I love to talk about the weather. 

To be honest, I get a shiver in my bones just *thinking* about it (the 80s kids know.)

What’s happening outside our window is such an inclusive yet endlessly varied topic: We never look at the same sky twice, be it blindingly blue or crackling with lightning. Anyone can offer an opinion on it, regardless of class, age or education. To sound like an expert, all you need is a radar app, though when it comes to major atmospheric activity I defer to brilliant and stylish WSAV Chief Meteorologist Kris Allred. 

In these times, the weather—along with the overdue emancipation of Britney Spears—might be the only opportunity for civil discourse we have left. And if you think talking about the weather isn’t dramatic, you have clearly not stood in line at the Red and White when there’s a tropical cyclone swirling nearby. 

Even when a season gets stuck on repeat, the speculation can be satisfying. Think it’ll rain again this afternoon? invites a discussion that spans generations. Every time a passing stranger asks Hot enough for ya? I treat it with the same deep consideration I gave to naming my children. Are those clouds that look like a surfing hippopotamus wearing a cape cumulus or nimbus? begs the answer, Those are not clouds, you are just high.

Obviously it was very exciting for me to be in Arizona last week as solstice temperatures soared from the merely remarkable to become the subject that superseded all others, including #FreeBritney, withholding communion wafers, and definitive admission that UFOs exist. 

What does 117 degrees feel like, you ask? Well, desert dwellers always point out that it’s a “dry” heat, meaning that the lack of humidity evaporates any layer of protection between the air and your skin, transforming you instantly into a reptile wearing sunglasses. The scurry from shelter to car is a race against barbecued internal organs. Outside is Satan’s pizza kitchen where the special is melted face and your server sets your brain on fire for dessert. 

It is a wholly different heat than the dank torpidity of our southern swamplands, which is more like nestling into Cujo’s open mouth. 

Every time I told someone where I lived, they’d squeal, Oh, which do you prefer, dry high temps or the “cooler” humidity? I’d start thinking about how much I wasn’t missing the wet slap of a June Savannah morning, then touch the flat frizz of what was left of my hair and shrug. Truth be told, our planet is hot all over right now, and asking what flavor of fire we like best basically comes down to which side of the Titanic we’d prefer to rearrange the deck chairs. 

The weather might be what we talk about to avoid difficult issues, but there’s no getting around the ravages of climate change. Small talk turns into real talk real quick when the entire West is under drought and wildfire watch. I hate to sound macabre, but isn’t it my job to lay out the facts? (Lyrical references moving to the early 90s with a shoutout to Digable Planets.) 

Of course, here I am guilty of using the weather to dodge the whole hard reason I was in Arizona in the first place. My dear dad passed away from a convergence of complications exactly a year ago, and COVID prevented a proper funeral and gathering. My mother mourned mostly alone, quarantined away from my brother, his lovely wife and my cute nephews who live nearby. 

Like so many of you this year, our family became more keenly aware of life’s tenuous fragility than we thought possible. My brother’s job as an executive trauma surgeon at Arizona’s largest network of hospitals already brings a parade of horrors by its very nature; the stress of the pandemic and losing Dad have been brunts that no one should have to bear. 

Adding to the somber tone of our trip was the terrifying tragedy of the collapsed building in the Miami suburb of Surfside. Many of the residents are part of the vibrant Puerto Rican Jewish community that sends their youth to Camp Judaea in North Carolina, and my children have many personal connections to the families standing vigil around rubble. As of this writing, their friend Deborah Berezdivin and her boyfriend Ilan Naibryf are still among the missing. 

We were able to find brief respite from the news and heat as we drove up past the saguaros to the high desert haven of Prescott, a funky former pioneer town with interesting diagonal crosswalks that make mere walking seem less pedestrian. (Can you imagine what chaos this would cause in Savannah? People can barely cross a square without stepping into traffic as it is—how many woo-woo girls would go womp womp on the pavement daily?)

Walk this way in Prescott

A most thrilling element of this field trip was experiencing Arizona’s recent passage of legalized recreational cannabis, and us sugar magnolias were able to have all the high times we liked by abiding a trip to the SWC Prescott dispensary. (You knew I was gonna get a Grateful Dead allusion in there somewhere.) What a delightful freedom to be greeted in a clean, well-lighted place with knowledgeable, non-judgmental recommendations as the damn adults we are, including our 21 year-old son (the teenager waited in the car.) 

While cannabusiness is bound to favor corporate structure, our state’s phlegmatic attitude towards legal weed—in spite of almost 70% approval among Georgians—still seems more about economic optimization for an elite few. While the Georgia Assembly technically passed medical marijuana legislation in 2019, the Georgia Access to Medical Marijuana Commission is still dicking around with how to give low-THC oil production contracts to well-connected cronies. However, Savannah’s own Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas just might have issued the definitive word on federal legalization, so stay tuned. 

On the liquorish side of things—I still identify as a Southern lady, after all—it was ahhh-mazing to pick up a few bottles of the delicious Savannah-born spirit The 1970, which recently snagged distribution in several states across the country. Arizona folks, go find your sexy bottle at your neighborhood Total Wine & More. Two shots over ice with a splash of bubbly water makes an easy refresher poolside, promise.

The 1970, always modern

Another highland highlight was a visit with University of Georgia alums Dr. Mark Dailey and Dr. Eleanor Tison, both professors of Environmental Studies at the small-but-mighty Prescott College. The couple found themselves and their family transplanted to Arizona two years ago after their former school in Vermont closed, and like wildflowers in the scrub brush, they’ve adapted marvelously. 

In the Garden of Good and Sustainable

Eleanor, a Savannah native and mother of five with an encyclopedic knowledge of plants, has created an incredible, edible desert oasis as part of the school’s Sustainable Foodways course, where students engineer and implement agricultural strategies to mitigate a thirsty, hungry world. Among the treasures in her seed vault are heirloom red peas from Sapelo Island, where she conducted a field study in the 90s.

From the vault: Sapelo red field peas

Mark, who met my Mark in Athens back when both of them could barely grow beards, teaches Anthropology and Resilient Communities and just published Grateful Haiku, a lovely little volume of poems dedicated to the Dead. To know these smart, empathetic people are discovering and passing on how the wonders of nature can help humanity is a balm to the soul, even as we all blister in the sun (come on, you know THAT one.) 

After checking out of the awesomely retro Motor Lodge and a shopping excursion to Cowgirl Country Antiques, we took a gorgeous hike among the sweet chaparral air and alligator junipers of Thumb Butte, which certain members of the family refused to pronounce correctly. (For the umpteenth time, Mark Lebos, it does not rhyme with “my left nut.”) 

Then it was time to descend back to the Valley of Sun, where my mom Marcia Fine had orchestrated a wonderful celebration of life for Dr. Skip Feinstein—husband, father, granddad, friend, physician and true Renaissance man who could sew a suture, cook chicken parmigiana, meditate on Midrash, and thumb a stand-up bass with equal aplomb. Friends who knew him for decades paid their respects, and wow, am I blessed to have influential elders to emulate like Susan and Barry Brooks and Bobette and Bob Cialadini. 

After the Mourner’s Kaddish and before the lox ran out, it somehow seemed fitting to dance the hora and belt out “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” with the three-piece band, even though we forgot half the lyrics. (Who has a custom Continental AND an El Dorado, anyway?) In any case, it diffused some of the emotional steam built up in our hearts as a new summer dawns.

Wherever you are, Dad, here’s hoping the sun is shining easy and the coffee never comes in a clear cup. 

May the families still waiting for closure find solace in their grief.

May the rest of us hold our loved ones close and give the folks just passing through our lives the best we have. 

And let’s not ever shy away from talking about the weather. Even when we’re just gazing at clouds or marveling at the moon, every conversation has the capacity to count. 

We are all one family ~ JLL