Did not think we would ever get here.  The Moody Blues had been eligible for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for a quarter century before they got the call.  Better late than never, I suppose.  I wasn’t going to visit this place until The Moodies found their way into the place.  Miracles never cease.

My dear wife, Carrie, and I spent about four hours in the the rock hall this afternoon.  It went by so quickly.

I will offer a few of the highlights and know there were many more.

Of course I had to wear a Moodies shirt…one I got nearly a year ago when I saw them in play Days of Future Passed live.

For Tim Mullins, I had Carrie pose in front of The Rolling Stones.

When I saw the guitar John Lennon was playing on the roof with the rest of The Beatles in their last public performance, I was really amazed.  I knew what it was before I had to look twice.

Handwritten lyrics of John Lennon’s 1980 hit Starting Over…how ironic are those words?   He was killed that same year.

H

The Moody Blues display case.  A section of all of this year’s inductees were there to take in and enjoy.

Had a great time reliving old television/music memories.  I always enjoyed American Bandstand.  I remember watching for my favorite artists perform.  I was glued to AB when The Bay City Rollers were on.

The Midnight Special was our MTV before MTV.  We tuned in to see what the artists looked like as well as what they sounded like.  Bonnie Tyler’s It’s a Heartache, The Little River Band’s Reminiscing, and Steve Miller Band’s Fly Like an Eagle still stir me up.  Thank you, Wolfman Jack.

Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert came on after The Midnight Special and it was a little edgier and straightforward with its music and presentation.  It was a concert feel in the living room.  Problem was, it was so late I had to keep the volume down so it would not wake my parents up.  Such a sacrifice for a ten year-old.

A-ha’s Take on Me was a ground breaking video in the mid-80s.  To see some of the original drawings for this masterpiece was pretty cool.

At Dick Clark’s podium, I give The Moody Blues a 100!

Carrie caught me admiring The Moodies’ display.

The guitar that Justin Hayward used to record the early Moody Blues songs with.  Justin is such a gracious guy.  It belonged originally to Lonnie Donegan,  Lonnie signed Justin to an awful publishing deal that made Donegan’s family very comfortable I am sure thanks to Justin’s brilliance and eagerness and thoughtless youth.  In 2005 Donegan’s  widow contacted Justin and offered to SELL him the guitar for 3000 pounds!  Justin had already filled the Donegan coffers many times over.  What does Justin Hayward do?  Well, he bought the guitar back and now it sits in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a post script to the class he and the other Moodies have presented over the years.

Finally, it was good to see an old friend, Larry Lujack given mention.  One of my WLS DJ heroes, Lujack deserves his mention in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

What I have presented here only constitutes a thimble of what is to be seen, heard, realized, remembered, and learned.  I was totally impressed with the place.

Like The Moody Blues, Carrie and I finally made it to The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I am very glad we did.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

What is worse than sport halls of fame?

Answer:  The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Or as I like to put it…the Cleveland Museum of Musical Criticism as told by Journalistic Neurotics claiming to understand Rock and Roll.

There should at least be this criteria for being inducted into a the Rock and Roll Hall: Most of us have heard of something you sang or played on!

I don’t have a personal beef with The 5 Royales…or The Paul Butterfield Blues Band…or Lou Reed (so I have heard of him)…or…believe me I could go on.  I do wonder how they can be in a hall of fame.

Answer:  Music Critics.  They are worse than sportswriters.  They know it all.  They try to be creative because they don’t play an instrument themselves.  You can throw a laptop across the room and it won’t make a good sound.  You can blow on a pen and piece of paper and no one will care.  So…they care little about what most of us like and use their own agenda to try to sway us to their liking.  In the meantime…they waste their time. I gloss over music reviews in my newspaper.

You who know me probably guessed it.  The Moody Blues are not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I hope they never get their.  They deserve better.

Reasons The Moody Blues have not been inducted into the AMERICAN hall?

Could be:

None of The Moody Blues ever wore an earring.  Playing sell out tours in 2014 isn’t cool. Selling 70 million records just doesn’t cut it.  No members dead of drug-overdose.  Lead singer married to same lady since 1969.  Too many all over the world know the song Nights in White Satin word for word.

Who knows?  And really, who cares?  The Moodies just keep on rocking like the “Singers in a Rock and Roll Band”  they are.  Where is there a better hall than that?  Maybe in the kitchen.

I WROTE THOSE WORDS IN 2015.  I never dreamed the Moody Blues would ever be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  They made it this past April.  Made what, I don’t know.  I will find out in two days.  I have been to the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.  That is the only Hall of Fame I have been to.  I won’t visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame as long Ken Anderson is not there.

But I do plan on visiting the Rock Hall of Fame as Carrie and I will be passing through Cleveland in a couple of days.  It is tragic that it took The Moody Blues this long to find their way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  But, for better or worse, they got there.

So…I approve.

I read recently that Justin Hayward will probably hand his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame trophy to a family member…who could blame him.

Speaking the rights in a cool Amherst, Mass not looking forward to 106 degree heat index values that await in Southern Indiana in a few days.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

Written on a cool evening in Amherst, NH.

Not long ago I spoke on the phone with my friend and former college professor from days gone by, Dr. Millard Dunn.  Our speaks were special.  Not just because he is helping me work through a piece of writing that is quite ambitious and daunting, our speaks were special because today I took a leisurely and meaningful stroll around Walden Pond today and thought about Millard as I made my way.

I have written here on occasion about Dr. Dunn before.  His influence on my studies and my life are immeasurable.  I can’t thank him enough.

In the fall semester of 1993 I took an American Literature class with Dr. Dunn.  It was marvelous.  He studied Henry David Thoreau and I got wrapped up in it.  So much so that twenty five years later I am visiting Walden Pond and calling Dr. Dunn on the same day.  That is a special sequence of events that does not come along very often for a teacher and a student.

The replica cabin and a statue devoted to Henry David Thoreau.

It was a picture postcard type of day today at Walden Pond.

The mile and a half trail around the pond was a thing of beauty.  I walked along the water and along a path above the water.  

I brought along Dr. Dunn’s book of poetry Places We Could Never Find Alone.

At the site of Thoreau’s cabin, I took this photo.

A copy of Walden at Walden Pond is rather surreal.

It was a memorable time today.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

As I type on this Saturday morning, it is 61 degrees and a cool wind is blowing down from the North.  My dear wife, Carrie, has a sweatshirt on.  I am chilly in my shorts and t shirt.

We are in Hancock, Mass. within a place commonly known as The Berkshires.  This is the fifth consecutive summer we have visited this place.  When we like a place, we stick with it.  But there is always something new to be found here.  There are museums and points of interest within an hour drive of here that we keep saying we will make to “someday”.  Personally, I like the weather here.  It is cool and I don’t have as much trouble with my pipes.  I breathe better here.

Earlier in the week we took my sister to a concert at The Tanglewood Shed in Lenox to see Alison Krauss.  The Summer home of the Boston Symphony, Tanglewood is a special place.  Lynn flew up on Sunday to Albany.  She stayed three nights and we had great time.  I know she enjoyed it.

At the show, Lynn found someone in the place she knew from junior high school days.  Amazing.  Facebook came in handy this night.

A couple days ago Carrie and I went to New York City.  Talk about a place with endless stuff to see.  We did not make it to Times Square or Central Park.  We did make it to the 9/11 Memorial and had a guided tour.  We made it to Ellis Island and rode by the Statue of Liberty on the way.  We walked over the Brooklyn Bridge.

We woke up at 4:30 here in Hancock.  We drove to Poughkeepsie, NY and caught a Metro North Train to Grand Central Station at 7:30.  We got to New York at 9:15 for the day.  At 8:30 PM we took the train back to Poughkeepsie and checked into a hotel for the night at 10:30.  It was a long and fulfilling day.  The two other times we have done this, we drove back to Hancock and dodged deer all the way and got back here in the wee hours of the morning.  No more.  Don’t forget, we hit a deer coming back from a concert in Saratoga Spings a few years ago.  Anyway…we had a nice visit to NYC.

Grand Central Terminal is a very loud and busy place.  But the high ceiling makes it almost reverent.

When I was in the 11th grade I wore the same dark blue adidas t shirt every Monday of the school year.  It was my Monday shirt.  Carrie and I have made this trip to NYC three times in the last five years and I have worn the same shirt to NYC each time.  It is my NYC shirt.

The 9/11 Memorial was our first destination of the day in the city.

Words can’t do much here.  I remember teaching the day it happened.  I walked into the room of a colleague and he was watching TV and told me what had happened to the North Tower and we were both dazed.  Watching the TV, we saw the South tower hit by the second plane.

On the place where the towers stood, you can’t imagine how quiet a place in the largest city in America can get.  This is a large area and it is treated with the civility and the dignity and reverence it deserves.  So with that, we know there is still hope in the face of trial in this country.

The front and the back of Ladder 3.  So many folks were save by police and fire rescue workers who gave their lives for others.  It is an amazing story of heroism on a day no manual or class can prepare you for.

We left 9/11 to find…

I could not help but capture this photo and think about some of the difficulties some folks much less fortunate than I  are going through these days.

We stayed on the boat and got off at the next stop like so many did before in late 1800s up until around 1924.  We saw Lady Liberty and we saw a place that represented hope for so many…

Countless immigrants were inspected as they climbed these stairs to be processed in.  Officials looked for folks breathing hard as they climbed steps, limping as they climbed steps, disorientation as they climbed the steps, and it was not an easy process for those coming over to a place they dreamed of and, most of them, found the home they were looking for.

Talk about one step up and two steps back…look at this.

One could look around this place for days.

After leaving Ellis Island, it was back to Manhattan.  We walked up Broadway and took a right.  That led us to something I have always wanted to do…walk over the Brooklyn Bridge.

It was great.  The view of the skyline from the top of the bridge can’t be captured with a photo I can put here.  It is unreal.  One of those experiences that outdoes the expectation.  Carrie was right, she called it a walk with 2000 of our closest friends.  The diversity…the languages…the dress…the walking patterns…the bikes in their lane…the people…all having a good time and all enjoying a day in the sun on the first day of Summer in New York City 2018.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

I don’t know what else to do.  Instead of writing a great deal, I am going to post a few photos.  Many of them, actually.  It is what my mother would want me to do.

Yesterday we picked up my sister, Lynn, at the Albany, NY airport.  She is here with us for a few days and that is wonderful.  I type these words from Hancock, Massachusetts.  There is a ski resort across the road and the Jiminy Peak slopes are a lush green and very empty.

Over the last few days my dear wife, Carrie, and I have seen some beautiful sights.  Some were natural wonders.  Others were man made natural wonders.  I suppose now is when I share a few of those.

Geneva on the Lake, Ohio.

The fish sandwich at Eddie’s Grill was amazing.  The place has not changed much in since the mid-50s.

We had our rematch.  Here is Carrie on the 18th hole last year.  I bested her by a few strokes.  She wanted a rematch.

Here she is at 16 this year.  What a match it was on the oldest putt putt course in America at Geneva on the Lake, Ohio.

At the 18th we both needed this put to force a playoff.  The balls went in to rabbit holes and we were tied.  I walked over to the counter and asked for two balls to play the 18th again for a playoff.  No one was behind us so we went back.  Carrie made the par 2.  I hit a hole in one.

We stayed at a neat spot with a great view of Lake Erie.

We ate dinner at a table under that tree and watched the sunset.  It was very nice.

I was walking outside of Bart Bigham’s English classroom this past semester and heard him as he waxed poetic on well…poetry and verse.  He made the point of folks flocking to Niagara Falls to see what?  Water that is not unlike what we have running from taps all over the school building.  But put in this mammoth context, water can move folks to tears.  Words…which we use daily to communicate…in the right place at the right time can move folks to tears.  Behind me are two books of poetry I brought with me to soak in while on this sojourn.  They are important to me.  Mr. Bigham knows of that he speaks.

Oh Canada behind us.  Found out they would not deliver a pizza 1.2 miles from Canada to our hotel.  Really I don’t blame them…especially these days.

We left Niagara Falls and went to a new destination for us, Port Henry, New York.  It is an old Iron Ore town along Lake Champlain.  The few TV stations come in from Burlington, Vermont up the road and across the lake.  It is a peaceful and friendly place.  The Iron Ore business ceased in 1971.  It reminded me of another little town I know that once thrived just a little bit more.

We had breakfast in this diner and it came HIGHLY recommended by folks from there and visiting again.  It did not disappoint.

We ate two meals here and spent two nights in a room upstairs on the corner of this building.  Tim, our host, was gracious, insightful, and just plain fun to talk to.  I think he was delighted that we were not afraid to chew the fat a bit ourselves.  He had a good day when he decided to open this place up.  The area needed this shot in the arm.  Friendly folks were on the porch from 11-7.  This photo was taken after the place closed…but…we had to porch to ourselves until we decided to retire for the evening.

The next day was a bucket list day for me.

It started with a 5:10 AM sunrise over Lake Champlain on St. Patrick’s Catholic Church’s back yard. This is where we found this…Vermont is on the other side of the lake.

I have never held a hockey stick.  I didn’t watch but a fraction of this year’s Stanley Cup to see who won the NHL Championship.  Still, there is a time and place in sports history that means more to this old football player than any other time.  Lake Placid 1980.  The USA Hockey team defeated the Soviet Union 4-3 in the what is called the greatest sporting event of all time. The Miracle on Ice it is called.  Don’t repeat that to the players of the team though.  They will tell you it was hard work and not a miracle.  But, what else can you call it?  If you have to settle for Miracle on Ice, I’d say you have indeed done something special.  A nod goes to Al Michaels, of course.

So Carl made it to Lake Placid.  He had a great time.  So did Carrie and I.

Around the corner from the sign Carl was on, you could find the ski jumping venue.  These photos do nothing of their imposition on the landscape.  They are amazing.  120 meters is the highest.  It has a cell tower on it.  They still use this for competition.

We walked around town and saw some other sights in Lake Placid.  The village you can imagine was just like you would.  Streets lined with food, shops, lodging, and nice Mirror Lake behind the main street.

And you can find the occasional bobsled to pose with.

So a trip to the Olympic Museum was in order.

Herb Brooks’ pregame speech before the game.  I was fortunate enough to speak to Coach Brooks.  I called him when I was taking a Sports History class and I was writing a paper about the 1980 USA Hockey team.  Deflecting the glory from himself, he told me to talk to the players.  They won it, he said.

This game was played at 5 PM and was not shown live television.  The network did show a replay of it at 8 PM.  That was when we heard Al Michaels call, “Do You Believe in Miracles? Yes!”

A wall away from where the game was played, I and others, watched it again like we were there for the first time.  In some ways, we were.

After the visit to the museum it was upstairs.  I was nervous, but I was ready.

So was Carrie…

Then…

Not much has changed.  The red seats are original. There are a few rows of bleachers around the top and are original.  The scoreboard is the only major change this arena has had since it was built for the 1980 Winter Games.

Carrie and I took a tour of the place and Scott, our tour guide, was magnificent.  He knows some of the players from the team.  When asked, toward the end of our tour, if the movie MIRACLE about the team was factual, he said players have given him a 95% on the finished product.  That was a relief.  Some films don’t translate like they should.  I know.

Whomever put this tour together had some good sense.  In the upper deck, in Section 56 by the way, sat a couple 32 inch TVs.  Carrie and I and one other couple were the only ones being walked around to see this stuff.  In Section 56 we watched the last two minutes of 1980 USA victory over the Soviets.

Having guys on the ice while we watched did not hurt things.

It was amazing.

Carrie went down and took a picture of the bench where the USA team sat while I just sat in a  red seat and took it all in.

It was a moment.

When we got off of cloud 9 and back to Port Henry we went back in time from 1980 to 1759 when the British took control of a Crown Point, a fort along Lake Champlain that was built around 1735 by the French.

We walked in this thing!

And so it goes.

Thankful by the moment and trying to speak the rights…

Danny Johnson

When you gonna write another speaktherights post?  That was the question I got today.  I thought, well, at least someone is reading.

It happens like this every year.  The end of the school comes around and I am so wrapped up in the end of the year activities that I don’t make time to write.  Thank God I was born in March. Those of you reading regularly know what that means.

I will be finished with the 2017-2018 school year, at least in an official capacity, this week.  It has been a good school year.  I thank all of my colleagues for doing an exemplary job in helping the student body of North Harrison High School to be better students and better people.  That is only accomplished if you have a building full of good teachers, administrators, and staff.  I think we have that.  I am fortunate to be among them on a day in and day out basis.

I look at dates and pay attention to historical factoids.  A few days ago I saw an “On This Day in Moody Blues History” timeline.  It was June 7th.  They had listed that the Moodies played a concert at Riverbend in Cincinnati on June 7, 1992.  I turned my head sideways when I saw that.  That is wrong, I thought.  That was on June 10th.  I checked my ticket stub.  It was June 10th.  A week later I saw them at Deer Creek.

Today would have been Vince Lombardi’s 105th birthday.  Vince Lombardi was born on June 11, 1913.  I still believe Vince Lombardi is the most influential figure in the history of modern sport.  Why?  Have you ever heard of The Vince Lombardi Trophy?  That is the trophy that goes to the annual winner of the Super Bowl.  It is named after a coach that won his Super Bowls before the merger of the NFL and the AFL.  There are 32 teams in the NFL and they are all working, sweating, begging, borrowing, and stealing for a Lombardi Trophy.

On this day in 1979, John Wayne died.  He was 72 years old when he died.  How can that be?  72?  The Duke?  Is that all?  Cancer does not discriminate.

My dear wife, Carrie, and I are heading out of town Wednesday for a few days of rest and relaxation.  I will certainly find time to write then.  I have to.  My Mom is depending on it.  And our friend Carl is ready to go too.

Carrie has demanded a rematch on this putt-putt course, the oldest putt-putt course in the United States in Geneva on the Lake, Ohio.  Lake Erie, that is. (I think I can beat her again.)

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

I was sitting at my wife’s grandparent’s kitchen table on October 31st in the year 1996 watching the local news.   On this day, I got the news.  Bill Mallory had been relieved of his duties as head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers Football Team.  I likened it to the day the football music died….again.

A day before my 11th birthday on March 17, 1979, my Dad came home, walked into our living room at 204 South Jackson Street in Brownstown and sat on the couch. He told me he had been relieved of his coaching duties at Brownstown Central High School where he had been the head football coach for nine years after three years of being an assistant.  The football music died.  Fortunately, the band struck up again and we were at North Harrison High School the next season.

Those were tough days for me.  I didn’t want to leave Brownstown when I was a kid, but in retrospect I think it was a good thing.  Have you met my wife?  When Coach Mallory was no longer the coach of the Hoosiers I knew we were in for a long cold winter.

Saturday at Indiana University’s Memorial Stadium Carrie and I attended a Celebration of Life in honor of Coach Bill Mallory.  He died on May 25, 2018.  The music didn’t die this time…but there was a sad tune playing for sure.  Sad, but optimistic.  Pride was in the air.  It was a product of doing things the right way.  It was a product of doing things The Mallory Way.  This way produced Mallory Men from Miami of Ohio, Colorado, Northern Illinois, and Indiana University.  They were all accounted for Saturday on a hot day in Memorial Stadium.

I shook Coach Mallory’s hand when I was in high school.  We were visiting practice and one of his graduate assistants, Gil Speer, introduced me and my Dad to him.  My Dad was Gil’s coach in high school 1974-1977.  He said some complimentary things to my Dad with regard to Gil.  Gil is still coaching.  In addition to working at Zionsville High School leading a very successful business program, Gil coaches defensive backs at Franklin College.

At a young age I knew Indiana had stuck in their thumb and pulled out a plumb when they hired Coach Bill Mallory.  I saw a few practices.  He saw everything on the field.  He was one of those.  The ball carrier was taking it up the gut and he saw that and how the receiver wide to the opposite side did not sell the play and got reminded of it even though the play was for big yards.  Success was an every play, all time thing for Coach Mallory.

So here we were in Memorial Stadium nearly twenty-two years since Coach Mallory led his team out of the tunnel.  The last game he coached at Memorial Stadium was November 16, 1996 against Ohio State.  I was not there.  My dear wife, and new bride of eight months, and I were in Oxford watching the Ole Miss Rebels host the LSU Tigers with Aunt Barbara.  The Rebs kicked off early.  They got handled by the boys from the Red Stick.  As we hurdled down I-55 back to Jackson after the game I, for fun, tuned into 970 WAVG the Louisville radio station that covered the Hoosiers at the time.  Miraculously, the game came in.  WAVG is not a powerful station. We listened to IU and Ohio State on our drive back to Jackson.  IU lost 27-17.

Twenty-two years later.  Don Fischer, the Voice of the Hoosiers, said it best.  In the 36 football seasons before Coach Mallory got to Bloomington in 1984, the Hoosiers had five winning seasons.   In the seasons since Coach Mallory was the head coach in 1996, Indiana has had one winning season.

In his 13 years as head coach, Coach Mallory had seven winning regular seasons.  The 1986, his third team, finished 6-6 after a losing to Florida State in the All-America Bowl.  I watched that one playing cards at Mick Rutherford’s parents house.

Anthony Thompson, the greatest Hoosier of them all, spoke and gave a prayer.

IU players and Indiana State University players were in attendance.  Curt Mallory, Coach’s youngest son in the head coach at ISU.

There have been many changes to Memorial Stadium since Coach Mallory led his teams here.

Neither end zone was filled in when Coach Mallory was leading the team.  Had he not led when he did, they wouldn’t be completing this work.

On the aisle between section 111 and 11 I sat with my Mom and Dad for many a wonderful Indiana University Football games.  I cherish those times.  The rides up to the game.  The fellowship.  The good crowds.  Keith Jackson and Bob Griese were in The House for the Ohio State game in 1988.  That was the greatest game of them all.  Indiana beat Ohio State 41-7.  That is not a typo.  The Hoosiers have not bested the Buckeyes since.  But they will.

I agree with Don Fischer.  Coach Tom Allen, the current Indiana University coach, will lead the Hoosiers to better days.  As I sat and watched the 2017 Rose Bowl, I wrote Coach Allen a letter of encouragement and belief.  I hope he got it.

One of Coach Allen’s assistant coaches, Mark Hagen, a Mallory Man and IU linebacker 1987-1991, was the last speaker we listened to Saturday.  He spoke of IU beating Ohio State in 1987 and how OSU coach Earl Bruce called it “The darkest day in OSU football history.”  Coach Mallory took that as slap in the face.  Wait til they get to our house next year was the sentiment.  Hagen told the story like it happened yesterday.  For many of us, it still feels that way.  IU 41-7 over Ohio State in 1988.  I know this is a restatement.  It is that special.

So special I brought my ticket stub from that game to Coach Mallory’s Celebration of Life.

I handed this ticket stub to good hands Saturday.  It is a moment I will cherish and celebrate in honor of all of the Mallory Men.

Speaking the Hoosier Football Rights…

Danny Johnson