10 days in, 40 days to go and I will be 50 years old.

I decided to do something a little different tonight.  I went into the speaktherights.com photo vault and decided to comment on some of my favorite pictures in no particular order, other than I wish I had time to show more.

This basketball goal is on a tree in front of the house of one of my mother’s older sisters.  The tree and the goal are outside of Forest, Mississippi on a road that hasn’t changed much in the over forty years of it that I can remember.

I will never forget the shiver up the spine I received when I looked at this on my Directv screen in 2016.  Too cool.  Thank you ladies.

Bob, Tim, and Davis lead blocking for me into Neyland Stadium in Knoxville to watch the third Saturday in October.  That means BAMA and UT.

It means…

and a little…

That old boy was melting my earwax!

A great picture of Jarrett and Cody one day on Blue River fishing…and catching fish, I might add.  Best photo I ever took with crappy old phone.

Carrie and me at Kingsport, TN to see a Train concert.  We sat on a high school football field watching it.  Thank you Eastman Corp. for sponsoring such an event that cost 20 bucks to attend.

Taking a photo of Carrie in front of the fictional Hill Street Station building in Chicago from the 80s cop show Hill Street Blues.  I was a nervous wreck.  “Lets be careful out there…”

While in Chicago, at the behest of dear old (he’s 50 already)  friend, Kelly Samons, we went for a Pizano’s pie and it was a good call.

Imagine that.  Me and my Dad at the Santa Monica Pier.

Don’t know how many of these I have in me.  But this was a good day.

So was this.  Taking a photo on a Friday from the Red Rocks stage near Denver.  The next night it looked like this…

The Moody Blues, of course.

Me and my Granny looking at and reminiscing over her spoon collection.  This photo was taken not long before she left us.  I still miss her.  The spoons are on a wall not far from where I am typing these words.

Never tire of these.

Working on a song with Rod Wurtele and Dr. Millard Dunn was a dream come true.  An English professor, a Wulfe Brother, and me.  I am a blessed man for sure.

There was never a better old hound.  I told him so to the end.

The renaissance of North Harrison Football has been a dream come true.  I got back just in time.

Before I left Medora, I got to Kiss the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  Made that trip three times with 4th grade class.  Thanks to Mr. Disque and the kids for asking me to join them.  It was great.

I’ll never claim photography skills.  All I can say was the light was right.  My friend Jerry Brown and his son Clay.

Adventures?  Yes, I have had a few.  But I can’t tell you how good it has been the past week to talk to kids heading off for visits at schools like Southern Illinois and East Tennessee State.  The looks on their faces when I point out landmarks or have tangible knowledge about Carbondale, Illinois or Johnson City, Tennessee is priceless.  They are glad I get it and I am glad I can help.  Getting around a bit never hurt.

I think this photo was in the second post I put here.  Bob and Davis took me to Fenway and there on the big board was Fisk’s iconic homer against the Reds in the ’75 World Series.  Then they showed Fisk at the game that night.  I could write about that night the rest of this one.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

I watched the first half of the Super Bowl over at my parents’ house. Mom was there.  Dad is still in rehab with his hip.  He is to come home tomorrow.

It was a great first half.

If Cris Collinsworth watched as much football as I do, he would have known that trick play where Nick Foles, the quarterback of the Eagles, played possum and drifted into the end zone to catch the TD pass on 4th down, was a play that was run in a MAC game between Bowling Green and Toledo…I think.  It may have been another team.  But they ran that same play.

But then again, Cris has been busy informing us all of his football acumen all game long and there is only so much time and breath in one man.

As is the custom, my dear wife, Carrie, and I drove home during the halftime show.  I didn’t want to watch Justin Timberlake.  If it was Justin Hayward I would have listened.  I think the last Super Bowl halftime performance I watched was Paul McCartney a number of years ago.

Right now as I watch there is a great debate as to whether the Eagles receiver was in or out of the back of the end zone with a TD pass.  The ruling stands.  Touchdown.  I bet my brother, Darrell, the Eagles fan, thought it would come back.

It has been a great Super Bowl.

Go Eagles Go!

I getting back to the game and tomorrow we can keep…

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

I am bummed out.  My Dad, I talked to him today, is at a rehab facility following his 2nd hip replacement surgery.  The plan was he was to be picked up today and brought home.  The reality is that he came face to face with a stomach bug yesterday and the stomach bug won.

Bottom line…Dad won’t be home until Monday and for the first time in recent memory, save one Super Bowl between Dallas and Buffalo, I won’t be with him at his house to watch the Super Bowl.  That king eats it.  I did talk to Dad today.  He said he is feeling better.  He is gaining ground.  Thanks be to God.  His hips don’t hurt anymore.  I am so glad for him.

The show must go on.  Super Bowl LII features the New England Patriots, a.k.a the Evil Empire,  against the Philadelphia Eagles.  The Eagles are my brother Darrell’s favorite team.  Go Eagles!  To help the Eagles cause, I picked the Patriots 40-17 in a radio contest.  I hope it backfires as usual.  But then again I would not turn down a TV and a recliners and Reds tickets and an outdoor fire pit and…wait a minute…no…I won’t sell out!  I hope my pick is pathetic and the Eagles win by two scores or two points.

When I think of my favorite Super Bowls…I think about Super Bowl XIII…Steelers 35 Cowboys 31 in the last of the 1970s in January of ’79.  Terry Bradshaw v. Roger Staubach for a second time in three years.  That was great stuff.

Of course I wince when I think about my 8th grade year in 1982 with Super Bowl XVI.  The Cincinnati Bengals came out and laid a first half egg against the SF 49ers and some third year quarterback named Joe Montana.  He threw for 157 yards and was the MVP.  My hero, Ken Anderson, threw for 300 and set a then SB completion percentage record and still lost.  That was tough, I can tell you.

Watching Eli Manning lead the Giants to two Super Bowl victories over the New England Patriots should get him in the Hall of Fame one day, especially if the Pats win this one.

Peyton leading the Colts over the Bears in the rain in Miami was special.

Then Peyton did it again for the Broncos in Super Bowl 50 against the Carolina Panthers.  The NFL  has not been the same since Peyton rode off in the sunset after this game.

Have fun tomorrow.  I will be watching the game at my parents’ house with my mother and my siblings and my dear wife, Carrie.  Go Eagles!

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

As my dear wife, Carrie, trotted upstairs as I declared I was going to work on post #7 of this series she said, “Write something funny.”

My brain went into overload.  So many good times and funny things came to mind.  I am fortunate and blessed that I have that.  But when I sit here and try to conjure up the words to bring these moments together it seems rather difficult.

When I first thought about Day 7 in this series I naturally thought about 7…as in 7 points…a touchdown and an extra point.  When I was in the 4th grade I won a competition among all 4th graders at Brownstown Central Elementary School and it was called “Shoot to the Moon”…maybe because we had, in 1977,  just seen out first pictures of something called a “Space Shuttle” piggybacked on top of a Boeing 747 in Weekly Reader.  That is a true story.  Anyway, I won the contest.  It was a combination of time and accuracy.  50 simple multiplication problems on a single page…who can get them done first with accuracy?  It was Mrs. Lahrman’s 4th grade math class.  I can only tell you that I attribute my multiplication dexterity back in the day, as I was never a great math student, to being able to put together football scores.  2pt conversion.  3 pt field goal.  6 pt touchdown.  7 pts touchdown and extra point.  8 pts touchdown and 2 pt. conversion.  Down by ten?  Need a field goal and TD and extra point to tie.  6 touchdowns and 6 extra points later?  42 points of course.  It was a football scoreboard that has allowed me to this day put that mental math in place.  But that’s not funny.

Yesterday I was talking to my sister, Lynn, about some of the shenanigans I use to pull when I worked at the now CLOSED Sears store in Clarksville.  Store 2160.  I was employee number 119644.  I had a time card and punched in and punched out when I started working there in 1987.  I had just turned nineteen.  A few years later the time cards were replaced with “swipe” cards…electronics and the modern way had found us.  I can tell you I am glad I caught the tail end of the old time card days and the “CLUNK” sound the clock made when one clocked in and out.

Thirty years ago I worked on the dock at Sears at the Greentree Mall.  It was hard work.  A trailer would come in and my boss Ed Caldemeier would open the trailer and almost get hit by garage door opener falling down.  Ed could cuss in complete sentences and was one of the finest men I have ever known.  He respected the work we did on that dock.  Because of that, we worked our butts off for him.

One day, when I knew that the ONLY manager on duty was a friend of mine, I pulled a joke on one of my co-workers.  His name was Guy.  He was much older than I was.  He had worked at the old Sears store on 8th and Broadway in Louisville and many of those folks transferred to the Clarksville store when it opened.  I can remember many of those folks and I loved hearing them tell their old 8th and Broadway stories.  I know where their store was located and every time I drive by there I can hear their voices.

The day I pulled the joke I was only interested in Guy’s voice.  I knew the only manager there was a friend of mine.  I knew I could pull this off and not get too much heat.

I was on the dock and we had a phone on the wall next to the swinging doors that led to where we would unload trucks.  I have never been afraid of a phone.  When it was time to make a page out on the sales floor to get a manager’s attention, I was voted to be the big mouth to do it.

One day  I picked that phone up and dialed the STORE WIDE page.  Sales floor, stock room, break room, bath room, everyone listening as I punched in the store page number…and looked at Guy.  “Guy, it’s for you!” I yelled, knowing whatever he was going to say would be heard by half of Clarksville.

“Hello?”  Guy heard nothing.

Again, “Hello?”  Guy heard nothing.

He pulled the receiver away and looked at it and yelled, “Well who is this?”

The whole store busted out laughing.  I let Guy in on the joke and he told me it was a good one…that I had him.  Thank God he was a good sport.  I haven’t seen Guy in twenty five years or better.  He was a good man.

All of this reminded me of another funny…and it will have to wait.

Cos I got 43 more of days of this assignment to…

Speak the Rights.

Danny Johnson

Forever intrigued with the Flowering of New England literature of the mid-1800s and that great chasm of misunderstanding and stance between the transcendentalist  and anti-transcendentalist, I think a visit to those literary stomping grounds gave me the impetus to begin this writing endeavor known as speaktherights.com.

I have written here before about the influence Dr. Millard Dunn, my favorite English professor, was on my writing life and my music life.  I thought of Millard when I visited Walden Pond in 2011 and Herman Melville’s home, Arrowhead, in Pittsfield, Mass last year.  I studied the work of Melville and Henry David Thoreau in earnest when I was in Dr. Dunn classes. Many of those days and actual class meetings are still so clear in my mind.  It is special.

My dear wife, Carrie, and I first went to New England in 2011.  We went there to see friends, Bob and Michelle in New Hampshire, over our fall break.  Bob and his son, Davis, and I went to see the UNH Wildcats play the Rhode Island Rams at a UNH home game.  It was great.

The next morning there were 18 inches of snow on the ground.  A good old fashioned Nor’easter  came through.  It was something.

In 2014, Carrie and I went to The Berkshires in western Mass.  We loved the place.  We have been back every year since and plan to return for a fifth year in a row in late June.  Not far from Hancock, Mass, where we stay, is Pittsfield where Herman Melville wrote Moby DIck and lived for a number of years.

Here I am doing my best George Plimpton imitation outside the Pittsfield Athenaeum…a fancy name for a library.

Melville’s house.

The barn where Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne chewed the fat.  I was in awe.

Not to short Thoreau, of course, this is Walden pond which is also on the header of speaktherights.com right now.

When Carrie and I came home in 2014 from our Northeast visit, I had writing ants in my pants.  In July of that year I began speaktherights.com.  This is the 400th entry on this site. It is hard for me to believe.  In the fall of 2014 I wrote extensively about my Granny’s illness and eventual passing.  It was cathartic for me.  It is nice to have to look back on, as well as so many other days and times and hopes, wishes and dreams.

So here is the first post…

Oh, and Happy 50th Birthday to my dear friend Kelly “Samonhead” Samons.

I am on my way to join you as I…speak the rights along the way!

Danny Johnson

A few minutes ago my dear wife, Carrie, and I pulled in the driveway.  It was a quick drive from Seymour.  Our friend Steve Hanger was with us.  When Steve and I get together time flies faster than our stories.

Tonight at the Lloyd E. Scott Gymnasium in Seymour, the Lady Cats of North Harrison High School were defeated by the Bedford North Lawrence Lady Stars 47-39.

God Bless the fans from North Harrison.  They showed up in GREAT numbers given a 6 o’clock tip-off in Seymour some 60 miles from Ramsey.  I was so proud of all our folks.  I was especially proud of the Lady Cats.

The Lady Cats fought hard to the very end.

Much has been made of the Lady Cats being moved up in class from 3A to 4A just because they made appearances in the last two 3A State Final games but did not win either one.  I have made noise about it.

Look, I just speak the rights.  No need to stop now.  The three officials doing tonight’s game wanted to be more of the story than the ten girls on the floor.  They seemed like they were not there for the right reasons.  I have NEVER called out refs before.  These guys were beyond terrible.  They were showy and demonstrative when they relayed calls to the scorer’s table.  One guy out there looked like he was auditioning for the part.  It was sad.  It was sad because I know the NH team worked so hard to get there.

This is not to say that a few more free throws in the hole for North and a few less in the hole for BNL would not have made a difference.  Sure it would have.  But I had a great sense that country mouse was not welcomed in city mouse’s gym…on many levels.  And that is a shame.

The IHSAA got it wrong again when they moved NHHS to 4A in girls basketball.  I say again referencing to a football snafu after a storm ten years ago that cancelled a football game that never got played.  But that is ancient history.

What won’t be ancient history is the run the NHHS Lady Cats have been on the last three years.  The ball will keep bouncing and the Lady Cats will keep rolling.

I am proud of all of them.

Speaking the Rights…

Danny Johnson

The Lloyd E. Scott Gymnasium in Seymour, Indiana is where my dear wife, Carrie, and I will be tomorrow night.  For me it will be like going back to the future as I write this series.

First, this gym is the third largest high school gym in America.  8,110 is the official capacity the last time I checked.  I don’t think it has changed.

Tomorrow night the Lady Cats of North Harrison make their ascent into 4A Sectional territory thanks to some asinine rules made up by someone stuck cultivating a vineyard of sour grapes.  Okay, I’m done with that.  I won’t bring it up again.

The home of the Seymour Owls is where I went to the old single class sectional when I lived ten miles from Seymour in Brownstown.  I think the last Seymour Sectional I went to was in 1978 and I was ten.  No, I take that back, when I was a senior in high school I went up with Marc Gayheart, a buddy of mine, and we watched  friends from Brownstown Central play Bedford North Lawrence in March of 1986.  That was fun too.  It was good to be back.  But not nearly as good as it will be tomorrow night.  There is a pattern here…the Lady Cats are playing Bedford North Lawrence. It should be a good one.

The old timer in me comes out now.  When I went up to purchase my sectional tickets for this year, I was handed this:

Your old Uncle Dan can remember having a glossy sheet of perforated tickets each with a different date and the section and seat number you were assigned to during the Seymour Sectional.  It was as large as the gym was.  Aside from the Jackson County Fair, the Seymour Sectional, filled with local teams in the age of single class basketball, was the social event of the year.  It really was something.

But guess what?  The high school full of kids at North Harrison don’t want to hear that and I doubt if anyone else wants to either.  They are all making their own memories. That is what is most important.  And I am with them!  Go Big Blue!  You can do it.  I just know that I have a point of reference and a memory lane that is very very unique.  I have been blessed again and again.

The Lady Cats, in the last three years, have won 76 games and lost only 8.  Two of those defeats were in state championship games.  They know what they are doing.   It’s called hard work and dedication and coaching and trusting each other and finding the open lane.  I know I have a reputation of being a football guy.  Though I don’t get there often enough these days, I still love a hot gym on a cold Hoosier night.  This is going to be fun.

So I raise a glass to the senior Lady Cats:  Shelby, Cali, Emma, Taylor, Hallie, and Jessicka.  Go make a few more good memories…win or…close win.

Speaking the rights…

I was going to cheat and write another one tonight…but I am going to wait and write one when I get home from Seymour tomorrow night.

Danny Johnson

My brother-in-law, Stevarino, asked a question.

“You’re not gonna write one of those things a day for 50 days in a row are you?”

He then made a statement.

“You can’t think of that much “stuff” to write about.

I told him I certainly plan on writing 50 of them and that I can think of that much “stuff” to write about.

I taught English for a very long time.  One of the things I enjoyed the most about doing so was helping kids become better writers.  I tried to help them make the “writing process” work for them.  I never liked that term “writing process”.  It’s a process alright.  As soon as you bring that phrase into a classroom of teenagers that don’t want to to write and tell them it is a “process” you will start to loose many of them just due the connotation they have of that very term.  “Writing process” indeed.

I just like to write.  It is not a difficult endeavor for me.  I count myself fortunate in that regard.  There have been some speakthrights.com lapses now and again.  And it was nice to get an email or text and have someone check up on me because they hadn’t “heard” from me in a while via this writing vehicle I put a key in July of 2014.  So thanks to those reading with any consistency.  I am going to do it anyway.

There is always something to write about.  I could go on for many paragraphs right now about how delighted I am that my Dad is feeling so much better.  I like to write about traveling and sports and music, oh how I do enjoy my music.

And I have to throw a picture in every now and again for good measure.  Me, I like pictures of the beach that Carrie and I frequent as often as we can.  There is something there that pulls us to that spot on this planet of ours.  I mean, I have been many places and maybe some are brighter and shinier.  Some may have much better restaurants.  Other places have views that are much more spectacular.

Carrie loves taking pictures of the sunrise too.

I suppose this place in North Carolina we go back to is like a music group I want to listen to play over and over again.  As I type this I am listening to a live Moody Blues recording from 1997.  I have not heard it before.  I am inspired as I type.  I am reminded of so many things and so many people as I listen and appreciate the way this music makes me feel and has for so long.  It is the music of my youth and it ain’t going anywhere!  It is what I do.

Just like readers are drawn to particular authors and characters and settings and genres of verse, our lives are like that too.  That is what I always told my students.  There are folks you know that you gravitate to just because it feels right.  We don’t create friendships based on differences…but we can still recognize and sometimes celebrate our differences and get to know each other even better. Characters we enjoy in stories are often characters who remind us of who we are or who we want to be more like.  Our friends are folks that remind us of us.  We love art we can relate to.

Some music buddies.

Some dear old friends…but I am the youngest.  Put these three in a room together and there is something good that happens.  It is a great mystery that I cherish I can tell you.

Put these four in Memorial Stadium for an IU Football game and the football IQ inside the place improves greatly.

Put these four on a golf course and you’ll be able to laugh at something.

Put these two together on that North Carolina shore.

Looks like a nice setting.

Speaking the “writes”…

Danny Johnson

Not what I had in mind.  The day has flown by and I am doing my duty here at nearly 9 PM.  I am tired.   But I am very thankful.

I am sitting here listening to a CD of Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits.  As a kid I bought the 2 LP set.  That was 1978.  If you can pinpoint an anomaly in my existence, it is that I knew Barry Manilow’s catalog inside and out when I was ten years old.  I was drawn to his voice and I was drawn to an emotion that I could relate to at a very young age.  It was all about being in tune with music, I suppose.  I have always been there.  The difference is it took a tragedy and a case of depression before I picked up a guitar and found a world I knew existed but had not explored.  That was twenty years ago.  Time flies.

I don’t tire of listening to Barry Manilow, even to this day.  Albeit I do listen to him when no one is around.  A guilty pleasure I suppose.  Typing these words is as close as I have ever come to say, “Hey you gotta hear this Barry Manilow tune!”

I don’t mind.  I am not ashamed.  It has worked out so far.  And I when I hear some of these songs I am reminded of spinning them on a mono record player on 204 South Jackson Street in Brownstown as the ten year old kid.  When I hear the opening strains of “Weekend in New England” I am a kid again.  When my dear wife, Carrie, and I went to see the “long rocky beaches” in Rye, New Hampshire and up into Maine in 2011, I knew I had found a piece of my youth I had been looking for.  The lobster roll in Rye was great, by the way.

What prompted me to put in Barry Manilow?  He was sitting on the desk.  Nothing more than that.  I had a Gregg Allman CD playing and I was not feeling it.  Where else are going to find that?  Gregg Allman out and Barry Manilow in?  You won’t.

That has been my musical life.  I have been in a room by myself most of my life when it comes to music.  The Moody Blues?  My pals weren’t about them.  Thankfully my dear wife, Carrie, developed an appreciation for The Moodies beyond me dragging her to the next concert.  She KNOWS how exceptional The Moody Blues are.  We have seen The Moody Blues 29 times together and have seen three Justin Hayward solo shows.  That is hearing “Nights in White Satin” 32 times.  Doesn’t get any better.

No.  I never saw Barry Manilow.  My Mom and Dad did in December of 1987.  I got them tickets to see Manilow at the Louisville Gardens that year.  They dropped off my little brother, Darrell, at the apartment I was living at in Clarksville near the Green Tree Mall at the time.  Darrell, he was 4 then, and I made pizzas.  It was great fun.  The best part was when Mom and Dad showed up after the show to pick Darrell up.  They had such a great time.  They both had silly good looks on their faces.  That is priceless.

So too is priceless is the look my Dad had on his face today.  After church today, Carrie and I went by the rehab facility where Dad is following his 2nd hip surgery.  Dad looks great!  He spoke of getting back on the golf course again.  The pain that had riddled his face for a long time is now gone.  Thanks be to God.  I could not be happier.  I know my Mom is delighted too.  So is the rest of the family.  Dad has an optimism that he has not realized in a long time.  He needs it.  He deserves it.  He is one of the good guys.

And so it goes.  We will press onward, no matter what kind of music we listen to.  Right now, Barry Manilow is putting a smile on my face.  He has done that for a long time.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

Carrie, Me, Nancy and Kelly Samons last October.  Kelly turns 50 on February 2nd.

I will be fifty years old in 50 days.  Though the date of this post will be January 28th, know that it is January 27th in the evening and in 50 days I will be fifty.  Ironically enough, on the day I begin this assignment, my sister, Lynn, has a birthday TODAY.  She is two years older than I am.  Want to remember her age?  Here’s a trick…same age as the Super Bowl.  Super Bowl LII is  on the way.

Dink, light bulb over the head.  That is what happened today as I thought of making this a possibility.  And here we are.  With the first installment of 50 years in 50 days.

We don’t have enough time tonight.  That is why I am beginning here.  We have fifty days.

Know that I am one of the most fortunate and blessed individuals you will ever meet.  I wish I knew why.  I thank God for my life and the lives of others whom have made exceptional impact on who I am and what I believe and why.

When I stop on rare occasion to look at the catalog of photos I have shared here over the last four years, I am wide-eyed at all of the places I have been and people I have known and things that I have done.  It is mind-boggling.  And then, it is really not.

Press onward.  That has been a mantra in the lexicon.

We are not here to have a bad time.  That is another in the belief system.

There is always a better tomorrow out there.  I believe that too.

But I have, on occasion over the decades, gotten very frustrated with myself.  I’m not put off by others the way I am sometimes put off by me.  I wish I could explain it.  I can’t explain because I don’t even understand it myself.  I have never been averse to money…but I have never chased it either.  The simple questions long before I had very gainful employment were do my loved ones have their needs met and do I have enough geat to make the next Moody Blues concert?  I’ve got news for you, if ticket prices were then what they are today, I would have missed a few of those early Moodies shows for sure.

I can make jokes about this.  But, I just know it is never enough.  That is my “Perfect Flaw” as Tim Krekel sang.  There is always another photo to take that is better.  There is always an idea that will help kids that is better.  There is always a song I can write that means more.  There is always a better post I can write here that means something to someone other than the one sitting here yammering.  It has to get better, I tell myself.  There are times I wish I could enjoy things more.

That comes around now and again when someone says something to me about a song that  they heard from me and they tell me why it was important or that they want to sing it. Or…something like that.  Truth be told, I probably don’t listen as well as I should to some of the nice things folks do say.  I have already moved on and that may be wrong.

In 2006 I wrote a piece about the 1980 Olympic Hockey team winning the gold over the vaunted Russians.  Their team picture is on display in my office.  That is the greatest sports team the world has ever known.  The piece I wrote ran in The Corydon Democrat, a great local weekly.  A few days after it ran, Chris Martin, a guy a couple years younger than me I went to high school with, called me to tell me he enjoyed it.  I was glad someone got it.  Chris and I work in the same building now.  We have never relived this conversation. There is no need.   I appreciate Chris.  Folks, I walk by his classroom and I want to walk in and take a seat in the back row just to soak in the Social Studies I have been missing and the current events speaks that are alive and well in his classroom.  But…I am too busy to do that.  At least I was last week.  You never know.

What I do know is that I am blessed to be married to my dear wife, Carrie, and that she is my best friend.  I don’t know how she does it.  I am glad she does.

I have been asked if turning fifty is problematic to me.  My feet and back argue with me, but aside from that, I don’t know what turning fifty means…other than it is a good way to spend some time…

Speaking the Rights!

Danny Johnson