In a week I will not be sitting here writing this.  I just don’t figure I will be up to it.  No, I won’t be weary or sad or too happy or…whatever.  Just in case I am not feeling the juice on March 18th, I am feeling it now.

I was born on March 18th in 1968.  I never thought 1968 looked that far away.  I still don’t.  It’s not “that” far way…just kinda far away.

What a great 47 years it has been.  No…no…no…don’t start thinking it has all been biscuits and gravy.  It has not.  I suppose I think about the book title that was attributed to Lewis Grizzard.  He died in 1994.  That same year a compilation of his work was released called “It Wasn’t Always Easy, But I Sure Had Fun”.  Maybe Lewis wanted that title.  Maybe he knew what he was talking about.

I can relate.  I have long had a mantra that I don’t even know where I found…I think I made it up.  I could ask my buddy Gus.  He might know.  Still, I think I made it up. It goes like this: “We are not here to have a bad time.”

I attribute the following line solely to Lewis Grizzard.  He would say about someone who found the worst in life: “He’d complain about the rope at his own hanging.”  I use this line on occasion when I have had enough of someone’s sour attitude.

I have had a great life.  I don’t expect that to change.

The key?  Faith in a Higher Power.  I am thankful for my faith in God.  I am thankful for my faith in my family.  I am thankful for my faith in my fellow man.

I feel sorry for bad folks.  I feel sorry for misguided souls that feel they have to cover their faces because their acts are so cowardly.  It happened with the KKK and it is happening now with ISIS…damn those pesky acronyms.  That is where you will find some folks hiding themselves behind a greater entity than they are.

If only they could all get together in a music arena and hear Paul McCartney sing “Hey Jude” and join together with the na-na-na-nanana-nas.  I am convinced peace could be found, if only for a few minutes.

What a fortunate man I have been.  I have been so many places and seen so many things.  It is mind-boggling.

Just like my work I do, I only get overwhelmed when I stop to think how much I am responsible for…so do I think when I think about all the things I have been able to see and do in 47 years.

I had a babysitter kill over on me when I was five.  The last words she said were the ones she uttered as she called out the phone number of her nephew’s gas station less than a mile from our house.  She passed out after I called the number.  She never regained consciousness.  She was declared DOA as they were transporting her to the nearest hospital.  I have always been able to remember phone numbers since that day.  I don’t program numbers into my phone.  I know them.

I have been blessed with wonderful parents.  Many kids I work with these days will never know the love and stability of a home that is filled with discipline, expectations, love, understanding, compassion, and doing the best they can.  My parents offered that to me.  They gave it freely.  Given that I turned out “pretty good”, is a testament to their patience.  I have never been a conventional sort.  Much too independent for my own good at times.  That is polite talk for saying I thought I knew more than others in the room at times when I did not know much at all.  I still have that problem at times, I suppose.

I have seen and done so many things.  I have been a teacher.  I have been a counselor.  I have been a friend.  I have recorded my own music with folks I had no business to be in a studio with.  I have been a radio sports broadcaster.  I have been a columnist.  I have written a novel.  I worked at large department store and got an education there.  I have a degree from a Big Ten School and a degree from an ACC School.  Hard to believe U of L can say that.  Seems kinda like putting perfume on a hog.  Just kidding U of L.  You have helped me immensely.

I have seen The Moody Blues sing 49 times since 1986.  I saw Don McLean sing “American Pie” on a high school football field.  I saw Pink Floyd.  I saw Merle Haggard.  I saw Jerry Clower.  I have seen Paul McCartney four times.  I saw Garth Brooks.  This list is too long.  Thank God Carrie and I found Train in concert on a whim in Virginia Beach a couple years ago.  We have tickets to see them again this summer.

Carrie, my dear wife, has had that kind of influence on me.  I would have been satisfied with seeing The Moody Blues until I could no more and that would have been that.  Carrie likes the group Train.  I do too…thanks to her.  Yes, it was me that got us to that first Train concert.  I did it because I knew she liked them.  We both enjoy them now.  She is the best friend I could ask for.

Carrie and I are blessed to have two young men that we are most proud of.  Jarrett and Cody are both service-oriented chaps with good hearts and kind demeanor.  They obviously take after their mother.

To think about mentioning all my friends would be risky business.  I have been too fortunate to think I can mention them all.  But…I will give honorable mention to Dan Goins, John Johnson, Mick Rutherford, Jerry Brown, Kelly Samons, Brad McCammon, Jim Stewart, and Corner King Lincoln…the last two I mention posthumously.

I did a post about this guy and his family early this year.

I met these guys in 1979.  I am so glad I did.  They are still my friends.

I have a little league championship trophy from 1979.  I still hold the record for the longest field goal at my high school.  The sad thing there is I don’t plan on ever attending another football game at my old high school.  It’s a long story.

I have been blessed with the opportunity on several occasions to take my sweet Carrie to our favorite spot on earth….a twenty-six mile barrier island in North Carolina.

I took my Dad to Notre Dame Stadium in 2013.

This past July, when we returned from a long vacation, my dear Carrie, suggested I start writing this blog.  Well…this is post number 133 and I don’t feel like I have gotten started good.

Yes, I know 47 is probably considered “middle-age”.  I laugh at that notion.  In some ways I don’t think I have gotten started good yet…whatever that means.  Just like my work, I don’t think about all the places I have been and all the things I have done.  The important thing is what is left to do!  That is what makes me say: Press Onward!

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

I don’t have what would be called a big “temper”.  Just ask my dear wife, Carrie.  Ask most of my friends.  I don’t raise my voice.  I don’t throw things.  I don’t say things I will regret later.  I am blessed with an even keeled personality that has been criticized at times.  Said one person close to me when asked why nothing seems to bother me: “He doesn’t care about anything!”  Not so.  Those of you reading these posts know better than that.

I screwed up.

Yesterday I was watching the end of a University of Kentucky basketball game.  Not a good choice of television viewing.  After the game John Calipari, the UK coach said something to the sideline reporter that I took EXTREME exception to.  It was terrible.  I am not going to revisit word for word what he said.  It was inexcusable.  It was arrogant.  It was mean.  It was pathetic.  It was made by John Calipari.  Need I say more?

Know this.  I am looking forward to the NCAA Tournament we call March Madness.  It will be then that I watch college basketball closely.  I have yet to watch any basketball game from tip-off to final buzzer this season.  I do, however, enjoy the NCAA Tourney.  It is known I can watch college football from noon to midnight.  I give my eyes a rest from February to the end of August.

Back to yesterday.  Upon hearing the guy they call “Coach Cal” make an ass of himself after the game to sideline reporter, I took to social media to deliver my utter disgust of his deplorable behavior that should not be accepted by a university trying to make educational progress.  This is where I screwed up.  Mind you… I did not say anything I would not say in Sunday School Class as I took to social media.  The responses heaped upon my comments…most in my favor…were not nice.  Bad words were used.  Aspersions were cast that insulted religions from other lands.  Gads..I thought.  I was just commenting on stupid remarks made by a coach and I have sparked a Holy War.  I went on record to say I was wrong to enter such a forum with my thoughts.   They were twisted by some folks out there that I doubt have entertained many original thoughts of their own in a long time.

I regret it.  That is what I get for entering a comment of a basketball game.

My motivation comes from past experience.  My Dad was a football coach.  He would have never talked to a media person the way John Calipari did and my Dad loathed speaking to the media.  I used to broadcast high school football and basketball games on the radio and I would have been upset with a coach that talked to me that way and I would not have used as much professional restraint as the reporter talking to “Calipari” did.  

Still I am guilty of caring less about the basketball broadcasting I did.  I remember and have spoken privately of the night I called a basketball game with my friend Gus Stephenson on high school radio.  Gus did the play by play and he was GREAT at it.  I just did the color commentary and I was not so good at it.  One night the high school team we were covering was playing a big game at a bigger school in a neighboring county.  It was a Saturday in January.  During our broadcast, I had a hand held TV and I was watching the Rams play the Eagles in a playoff game as we were calling the high school basketball game.  We went to commercial and the guy back at the control board did not “take us out”…we were still on the radio and I yelled to Gus “Touchdown Rams.”  I heard about it the next day at church.

One even better… We had a new coach at the high school we were covering and being that Gus did most of the talking as the play by play guy, I did the post game interviews with the coach.  This coach we had was an egotistical cuss.  We were in commercial…a three minute spot…and I had plenty of time to think of what I was going to ask this guy.  The problem for me was he was a basketball coach.  I heard a voice in my hear at the controls some thirty miles away that we would be out of commercial in twenty seconds.  The coach next to me had his headset on and was ready to talk to me.  I looked at him and a silent scream hit my mind.  What is this guy’s name?  I don’t have a clue!  I nonchalantly slid a game program toward me…and I read his name just as we were coming back from commercial and I was introducing him.  It was painful. What can I say?  I didn’t like the guy.

I will never take to social media to complain about a college basketball coach.  Not worth my time…and not worth the mindless replies I got both in support and against me.

Looking forward to the tournament.  I may actually watch a game from tip to final buzzer as I look forward to football season.

Now that is speaking the rights!

Danny Johnson

Cleaning snow off the driveway…again.  Had a first go at it last night.

The skies opened and dumped a great deal of snow on the Ohio River Valley.  That is what we refer to this region that is a harbinger of the great unknown we know as interesting weather and allergy problems most areas read about and are thankful they do not have to contend with.  Weather is a picky thing everywhere I suppose.

We got at least ten inches of snow yesterday afternoon into this morning when the snow finally gave out.  We will be talking about this “big March snow” for a very long time.

Give the bird a seed, I say.

We had very little of what resembled a harsh winter around here through the month of January.  I figure if we are going to have bad weather it, some of it is bound to get to us before the end of the NFL playoffs at least.  I remember joking to my dear wife, Carrie, at the end of January that it looked like the bad winter so many prescribed was not going to show itself.  Wrong.  February was one of the coldest on record around here.  We have seen snow ion the ground now most of two weeks running if not longer.  I am through with the weather business.

I’m not the only one through with the weather business.  Seems the weather people on TV are through with it too.  Seems they don’t want to make a forecast.  They want to show me “models”.  Where does the “European Model” come from?  This is America, isn’t it?  What in the name of Chuck Taylor is going on here.  No…not the tennis shoe Chuck Taylor.  I refer to a former television meteorologist in the Louisville market whom never tried to scare anyone into buying bread and milk.  Chuck Taylor is gone now.  His memory isn’t.  He didn’t wave his arms and make speeches while he gave the weather.  He told you how cold it was going to be.  He told you how much snow he thought would fall.  He never mentioned a “model” forecast.  We trusted HIS forecast.  Had he waved his arms or raised his voice, that would have caused more people to fall down than any patch of ice he ever “spoke” of.  If Chuck said it was going to be cold, you grabbed your coat…you didn’t wonder what the “.com Model” said.

There is a song I have been listening to over and over again as I am writing this post.  The first time I heard it, I couldn’t help but to cry.  I couldn’t fathom.  A day and a half later, I am listening to it over and over and over again and I am oh so appreciating it.  Many of you have already heard it.  Look, I told you I don’t watch that much television when it is not football season.  This particular song made some noise at the Grammy Awards and the Academy Awards of late.  The song is some of the last original work Glen Campbell put together.  The song is called “I’m Not Gonna Miss You”.

Glen Campbell is in the late stages of a nasty disease called Alzheimer’s Disease.  He won’t play anymore concerts.

I never saw Glen Campbell in person.  Not that I didn’t or don’t appreciate him.  Glen Campbell is one of those iconic entertainment figures that seem almost ubiquitous to us.  He appeared on television.  He appeared in movies.  He appeared on stage.  He appeared on record.  He became like a kitchen table.  Always there.  Not nearly appreciated enough.  When’s the last time you looked at a dining table and thought about how glad you were to have something to prop up your eats?

I posted here…probably months ago…about the struggles Carrie and I had while taking care of her grandparents.  They both had dementia.  When one had to leave home for good, the other was not long behind.  When they were no longer in the house they shared for decades, it was over.  Memories were gone.  In a matter of a few months, Carrie’s grandpa died.  His wife was in a nursing home…and she “did not miss him”.  She couldn’t.  She did not go to his funeral.  She couldn’t.  She died a year and a couple months later.

So Glen Campbell knew his memory was going to go.  He did what true artists do when they have a chance.  He tried to make sense of it in a song that will live longer than he will.  My hat is off to him.  Is it a sad song?  Maybe the saddest.  Is it a good song?  No, it is a great song.  This is the answer to the question that gets knocked around by music historians amazed at the longevity of careers like that of Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson and yes, The Moody Blues.  We went from “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” to “The Long and Winding Road” to “I’m Not Gonna Miss You”.  And to think, we thought we knew the day the music died.

Trying to speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

So we turned another page on the calendar this morning.  My mind was revving more than it usually does when I put the last 28 days upside down and out of sight.  March is a concise month.  When you say the word January…and then say the word February…you notice how long those multi-syllable words are.  Then you get to the no-nonsense of MARCH.  It is the first of three months of the calendar year that present itself off the spoken tongue with one syllable.  May and June are the others.  March.  The connotation of the word lends itself to March…as in March Forth!  Go!  Do something!  Warmer weather is coming and the blankets that cover us up in the four syllable months of January and February are gone…as in G-A-W-N…gone.  Time to move forward.  Time to March.

On the 18th day of March I will claim 47 years on this orb.  The older I get the more confusing years become.  Some are easier to recall than others.  Some years are less painful than others.  Some years can be recalled with no hint of regret.  Either memory fails of “it was a very good year…”.  Regardless, we are not here to have a bad time.  That my friends, is a mantra to live by.

Got an email this morning.  Our church service was called off.  This I found out not long before I was going to warm the car up.  Email was a good thing this morning.  My dear wife, Carrie, just reported a few minutes ago that there is a small sheet of ice on our concrete walk next to the house.  To call it a sidewalk would be very misleading, as there is not a device with a red, yellow, and green light within 10 miles of our driveway.

On a speaktherights.com post of recent, I spoke of the one room church that is Hancock Chapel and I wrote about the outhouses that are still in fine form not far from the church’s door.  This is the church where Carrie and I were married.

I got chewed a bit this week.  Why haven’t you posted more stuff on your website?  This is the question I heard along with a few other informal comments about my lack of recent material.  I wish it was that easy.

There is a thing called Common Core in the education world.  In sum, it is a national school of thought about what to teach when and how to test what and when…most states in this country adopted it.  You can look it up.  Indiana did not adopt the Common Core and had to jump through some federal red tape hoops to opt out of it.  Well…Indiana has decided to change its testing strategy after tests have been printed.  Some parts of the test will not be used.  How much money has been wasted I don’t want to know.  It would make me sick to know how much we could be helping kids instead of wasting taxpayer dollars.  There is political jockeying going on in Indianapolis as adults act like silly children and do things that would get most of them sent to the principal’s office for not being able to cooperate.   It is so embarrassing…our state is assuredly being laughed at by the feds…there are no eggs left to crack in Marion County, as they are all over the face of the Department of Education and the Statehouse.  Common Stupidity replaced Common Core in Indiana.  The lady the people elected to lead the education charge in this state is not allowed to do her job to the best of her ability.  The culprit?  Politics.  What else.  Down at the courthouse  there is paper with my name on it that says I am a Republican.  These days the only time I bring that fact up is when I feel the need to apologize for an institution I no longer have faith in…but hold out hope that one day I will again.  History will tell us things have to get bad before they get better.  My only question is:  Isn’t this bad enough?

Justin Hayward was on PBS last night in the Louisville market.  His live solo show is being shown all over the country as he is lending a hand to PBS as the pledge season for public television is in full swing.  

PBS did The Moody Blues a great service when they showed the Red Rocks orchestra show in 1993 during pledge time.  It gave the Moodies a shot in the arm of their career.

Tim and Michelle Petty were guests of ours this past Friday night.  As always, it was delightful to see them.  Great friends and good vittles…don’t get much better than that.  We also got around to exchanging our Christmas presents.

Each 4th of July  Tim and Michelle host a celebration on  Petty RIdge, equipped with a fireworks event that knows no rival.  There is also a 4th of July Queen Contest.  I am proud to say that my mother wins every year.

Here is my triumphant mother waving to her adoring crowd.  Queen Elizabeth don’t hold nothing to this celebration.  God Bless America!

Speaking of birthdays, my mother had one last week.  She is the youngest of ten girls.  Mom turned 73.  Seven of her older sisters are still alive and well.  They are an amazing bunch.

Waiting on younger…not youngest… brother to get to the picture.

He made it.  This was taken during a recent family reunion.  2012…I think.

The safest place in America on a Fall Football Saturday.

Memorial Stadium…Indiana University.  When you call the ticket office to ask what time kickoff is, they might ask you what time you can be there.

SEA TURTLES are wonderful creatures.

A few years ago Carrie and I were walking down the beach in North Carolina when we came along a set of tracks coming in to shore from the ocean and a set of tracks heading back to the ocean.  A sea turtle had laid its eggs on the beach and headed back to the water.

As for your and yours…I hope you too March Forth!

And while you’re at it…speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

I spent an extensive amount of time in three large shopping areas outside of Indianapolis yesterday.

These days one takes one’s chances on what type of behavior will surface when in a public place with all ages abound.

We have taken a few steps back in America, when it comes to the general comportment of the populous.  I don’t enjoy hearing someone use profanity in public, especially around children.  Those who partake in such behavior are general losers in my book.  Football games are subject to such base behavior.  This has been going on for some time though.  I remember watching IU play Ohio State in Bloomington one rainy cold Saturday in the mid-1970s.  Of course the Hoosiers were getting pummeled by the Buckeyes, as it is the natural order of things.  The last time the Hoosiers beat Ohio State, Nancy Reagan was calling psychic hotlines from the White House.  I digress.  During the game some forty years ago, there was a guy sitting close to me.  He was smoking Kools in the rain.  He probably graduated from IU’s school of business.  He also had a potty mouth.  The first time I watched Forrest Gump in 1994, I thought about the guy at the IU-Ohio State game when Forrest started describing the guy at the war rally on the Mall in Washington…the one who used the F-word a great deal.

These days folks cuss too much at ball games where kids are listening.  Stop it already.

Look, I am no puritan.  If I am playing cards or playing golf with my buddies…with no youngsters around, mind you, we are probably going to say a few words we won’t be sharing with the Sunday School Class.  That is as far as that will go.  Some things are special and sacred…like cussing with your oldest buddies.

Before I stop here, know that I was totally impressed by the diverse…young and old…folks I was in the company of this past weekend.  Never once did I hear something in the background that offended me or was not suitable for children.  Does this mean it went on all day in the mall like this?  I doubt it.  But, maybe it did.

Thanks to the nice folks I ran into this weekend.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Sitting in a library…like I am doing now…does something to me.

I feel smaller in a library than I did when my dear wife, Carrie, and I were standing at  a place called the Devil’s Golf Course in the Mojave Desert inside Death Valley National Park, California.  The vastness of the physical wide open space one finds in the Grand Canyon or looking into a star-filled sky on a lonely country road or listening to the sound of absolutely nothing but your heartbeat in a solitude farm like Devil’s Golf Course is no comparison to me as the vastness that I experience as I am in the company of shelves and shelves and shelves of books.  Home to ideas that came to fruition and somehow managed a way to find the light of day through publication…the library.

What started with a light bulb of a moment over the head, or a heartache that manifested itself into a tome that will be followed and studied, or a two line poem by Ezra Pound that still gets a shine of a spotlight in college classrooms, or a humorous story that entertains children as it teaches a lesson, or a compendium that will lead a student in the direction he or she is looking for, or a compilation of comic strips to share for laughs, or a biography to learn about or from…stories…good and bad…are on these shelves.  Lives are on these shelves.

Perhaps I should not be so appreciative.  Maybe I should be more desperate.  Well…I am not.  I speak of my appreciation for those who have made it to the book shelves as one who has not.  Did I write a book?  Yes, a novel.  It is near 75,000 words.  Do I wish it would find an audience?  Yes, I do.  Am I satisfied that it has not?   Maybe.  Otherwise I would be raging hard against the editorial machine that holds so many back.

I know this: I am proud of my work.  I am proud of the fact I completed a large volume of work I had a joy penning.  It has helped me immensely as an English teacher.  I have not knocked myself out trying to get it published.  I am VERY careful with this.  This book will either get the treatment I believe it deserves or it will not find its way to bookshelves plural. I am fine with that.

I have never looked at a bookshelf in a library or a bookstore thinking I deserved to be there. I have never been jealous of a title on the shelf.  How can I be?  I am just very fortunate I was given a piece of material with which to work and produce something I am very proud of.  It is already important to me.  I have gotten more out of the story I wrote than I ever put into it.  Call me Minnie Pearl.  I’m just proud to be here.

Over the years I have had a few folks ask me about the novel I wrote.  I finished it a few years ago.  Friends are surprised to find I am not frustrated with its solitude.  This is not to say that I don’t think it could entertain a good audience.  I suppose there is a time for everything.

In the top left drawer of my desk in my home office, a business card sits and is jostled around now and again, I suppose, given a couple of its corners are wearing a bit.  The card is from the…

BERKSHIRE ANTHENAEUM                                                                                                    Pittsfield’s Public Library

This is the public library of Pittsfield, Massachusetts.  “ANTHENAEUM” is a fancy sort of word for library.

Carrie and I visited this place last summer.  Inside the Berkshire Anthenaeum is the Herman Melville Room.  This room has the best collection of Herman Melville’s personal affects you will find, I think.  Melville was a prolific writer. His Moby Dick clocks in at well over 200,000 words.  He wrote other classics including Billy Budd.  The whale story, however, is probably why he has a room named after him inside a New England library with a fancy name.  Nearby Mount Greylock, and its whale shape, proved inspirational for Melville in writing his most famous work.

This is me trying to look intelligent outside the Berkshire Anthenaeum.  It  doesn’t work out very well for me.

I always admired another New Englander, George Plimpton, for looking so blamed intelligent.  Even before he opened his mouth to pour out his intelligence, he just looked like the smartest guy in the room.  The night I was in the room with Plimpton, I wrote about it on this sight some time ago, he was the smartest guy in the room.  Maybe it was a tie between him and Millard Dunn.  That or Millard had him beat.. slightly.

Speaking the Literary Rights.

Danny Johnson

There is a winter storm warning for my environ.  We are supposed to see near a foot of snow where I live.  Where do I live?  I live in near the northwest corner of Harrison County, Indiana.  Harrison County borders the Ohio River to the South.  Across the Ohio River is Kentucky.  Translation:  I live in extreme Southern Indiana.

Know this…I don’t have to go to work tomorrow…thanks to our Presidents, especially the biggies like George Washington and Abe Lincoln.  Tomorrow is President’s Day.  Most schools…like mine…are off.  The snow won’t be a factor for us tomorrow.

We are due a winter storm.  The biggest snow we have had around here this season was on November 17th.  It is February.  Compared to our friends in the Northeast, we have have had no winter.

Bring it on, I say.

Whenever I think about snow and storms, I think about the past.  I think about storms from the past.  I remember the Blizzard of 1978.  We missed near a month of school and I know we did not make much of it up.  I remember a February when we didn’t see the grass.  I remember 22 below zero.

I also remember my mother, who was raised in Mississippi, did not let us go out to play when I was kid if it was below 20 degrees.  They are laughing about that in New Hampshire.

Hope you have plenty of bread and milk.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

A great American I work with and hold court with now and again surprised me with a nice gift.  The gift, an ordinary object seen day in and day out, is a reminder of my youth.

We were having speaks one day about this and that.  The subject of said object came up and we had a good chuckle about it as we were speaking of things from an era that won’t return…only in memories and the occasional surprise gift.

I am not going to divulge the contents of said gift here today.  That will be for another day.  The day after I get around to showing it to some of my cronies, whom I don’t want to ruin the surprise for here, I will post about it again in complete earnest….instead of being obscure and less than forthcoming.  That doesn’t suit one used to speaking the rights. That is why I need to halt this action.

Regardless, I am thankful.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

speaktherights.com has been back and forth of late with a guy named Gordy Marshall.  His is a gentleman worth knowing about.

I reached out to him and asked that he be the subject of the first interview on speaktherights.com.

I hope he acquiesces.

Gordy is a musician.  I have seen him play drums and percussion…and the flute.  He is a machine of a performer.  He tells great stories of his own that can be found if you look for them.  His “Postcards” are interesting reading in that medium and interesting listening via podcasts that are entertaining and insightful.

In his “Postcards” book, he took us around America and told us of places and sights he sees as he is running, as he is in transit, and as he is behind a drum kit doing most of the heavy beat lifting for The Moody Blues…my favorite band.

Here is Gordy Marshall playing drums behind John Lodge at The Lawn at White River State Park in Indy in 2010.

Gordy has been playing with The Moodies since 1991.  I first saw him north of Cincinnati at Kings Island’s Timberwolf Amphitheater in ’91.  I suppose it is still there.  His drumming ability and his robotesque performance during John Lodge’s 1972 standard “Isn’t Life Strange” is worth pushing through the turstile to see any Moody Blues show.

So…we are waiting Gordy…to hear from you.  I have an enticing line of questions for you.  I hope you enjoy them too.

Speaking the Rights.

Danny Johnson

My dear wife, Carrie, and I attended church this morning at Hancock Chapel.  I sang what we used to call in the old church services…and I know some still do call it… a “special”.  I know some more contemporary services have left “specials” to be extinct.  It matters not.  The message is what counts…whether it comes from a three piece suit or a guy walking around in sandals sporting a beard and a robe.  I don’t think I have ever seen any pictures of Jesus in a cardigan.

I sang a song today that I wrote a few years ago.  This was the first time I had a chance to sing it at Hancock Chapel.

Know this…Hancock Chapel is old school.  There is one building…there is one room.  There are privies for men and women no farther than ten yards from the front porch of the church.  A privy is an outhouse for you not familiar with the word privy.  Those of you with no knowledge of an outhouse…well…that is an outdoor toilet.  The church has been there for a long time.

The song I sang was a bit of charged tune…charged as in “take charge” and do the right thing.  The song is called “Lord Lead Us On.”

My dear Carrie and I were led to get married.  It was the right thing to do.  We loved each other.  We still do.  We wanted to make a life for ourselves and our sons Jarrett and Cody.  I think we have done that.  They are both fine, charming young men.  Carrie and I are still here.  I love her now more than ever.  The thing is…I had no idea what I was doing nineteen years ago when I looked at Carrie and said “I do.”  The truth?  My life with her has been better than I ever imagined.  She is my best friend.  We were married 19 years ago this Tuesday.  Our wedding was at Hancock Chapel.

Am I fortunate?  Yes.  I know I am.

Did we get turned around in New York City?  Yes…about seven times.

We found Times Square.

We found that North Carolina Shore.

We found the front stretch at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

We have found more football games than we deserve.

Most importantly…I found her…Thank God!

Now that is Speaking the Rights.

Danny Johnson