I root for the New York Giants.  They are my favorite National Football League team.  I suppose they will continue to be my favorite team as long as Eli Manning is playing quarterback for them.

When it comes to my interest in pro football, I have maintained the same philosophy for over forty years.  The player comes first and the team comes second.

When I was a kid growing up I was a fan of the Cincinnati Bengals.  Ken Anderson was their quarterback and he played with the team for sixteen years.  I was a Ken Anderson fan therefore I was a fan of the Bengals.  When Anderson retired, I retired.  In fact, my NFL allegiance was in nowheresville until 1998 when the Indianapolis Colts drafted Peyton Manning.  I liked Peyton.  That made me a Colts fan.

I still watch the Colts and I hope they win…most of the time.  Just depends on who they are playing.  If Peyton Manning, now a Denver Bronco, was playing against Indy…GO BRONCOS.

I hung with Peyton and the Colts as my favorites until 2004 came along.  That is when the New York Giants got Eli Manning in a draft day trade with the San Diego Chargers.    Eli played at Ole Miss.  Both of my parents were born in Mississippi.  I have relatives that “finished” at Ole Miss.  “Finished” is Southernese for graduated.  I like that term…finished.

Thanks in large part to the great relationship I have with my Aunt Barbara, I am an Ole Miss college football fan.  While I know I declared my fandom of the Marshall Thundering Herd in another post, Ole Miss is mighty close behind them.

During football season, Aunt Barbara and I are on the phone.  She lives outside Jackson, Mississippi and we love to talk football.  Over the years I have made a few trips with her to Oxford to watch the Rebels in person and she has made it up here a couple of times to take in Indiana games at Bloomington.  We also watched a couple games together in Jackson when the Rebs were playing a game or two in the big city in off-campus home games.

With college football, it is all about the team.  The players come and go very quickly in the college game.  You can’t have a favorite player too long.  By the time you like him and think it’s going to work out, he is off campus.  His four years are up.

Once upon a time I was enamored with the team in Bloomington.  I so enjoyed watching the Indiana Hoosiers when Bill Mallory was their head coach.  He was fired on Halloween day in 1996 after 13 years as coach.  IU Football has been haunted by this move ever since.  Though I have been back to watch several games, it has not been the same.  They can lose a game and all I will do is shrug my shoulders.  I didn’t do so well when Anthony Thompson got caught from behind on a kick off return as time was winding down against Purdue in 1989.  The poor IU kicker had a chance to win it for the Hoosiers.  He missed a 26 yard field goal wide to the left as time was about to expire.  He was a freshman.  Purdue 15  IU 13.  That was a tough loss.

Right now my Giants are losing a pre-season game by a 20-0 score.  It is the pre-season.  Who cares.

My ten all-time favorite Pro Football Players:

Ken Anderson-Bengals

Eli Manning-Giants

Peyton Manning-Colts and Broncos

Isaac Curtis- Bengals

Brett Favre- Packers and Vikings (the Jet year doesn’t count)

Walter Payton-Bears

Fran Tarkenton- Vikings (Giant years I don’t remember)

Jack Lambert- Steelers

Dan Ross- Bengals

Mark Moseley- Redskins

Football season…a good time to speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

Malcolm Lincoln and I were watching the Marshall Herd play at Louisville in 2011.

My Dad coached football for a long long time.

Dear Lord, thank you for allowing me to be a son that enjoyed what his Dad did for a living and did not try to rebel against the game.

I love football.  Yes…I know that does not make sense to many people who know me professionally and don’t have a clue as to how much I enjoy the game of football.

Many folks know I love music.  I so enjoy writing my own songs and making them work and even recording some of my songs.

Many folks know I enjoy writing.  I don’t shy away from it in any way, shape, or form.  I truly am enamored with the idea of finding out how the English language can work for me.  That is what I teach my students.

I tell my students…and they are not going to find this in any T-square driven textbook…that language is situation specific.  If we learn how to use the English language to our best ability in the moment we are in…we are winners.

I gave this example today to a student that I needed to correct because said student had said some things said student should not have said.

I told said student:  Look… when my I get together with my buddies to play cards, I am probably not going to talk like I would talk at a job interview.  I am going to be relaxed.  I am going to joke.  I know the difference.  You (said student) need to learn the difference.  You can’t say the words you said today in front of Mrs. So-and-so.

Like The Byrds sang in reference to Ecclesiastes: There is a time for every season under heaven.

Language is situation specific.  THAT IS WHAT KIDS NEED TO HEAR!  They can figure it out, if we just explain that to them.

I digress.

Getting back to football.

As I said, most of my colleagues over the years don’t know of my love affair with the game of football.  The most important reason why is the school I work at and put my heart into does not have a football team.  I mentioned this in an earlier post.   We are a small school.  We couldn’t field a football team if we wanted to.  I accept this and really don’t care.  These are the students I want to work with.  I work in the town I want to work for.  End of story.

Do I miss football?  Yes.  I last coached the game twenty years ago this fall and I still remember it so very fondly.

But since then I have done SO many other wonderful things.

As I said, I recorded music…lyrics and music that I made up myself.  I got to record with masterful musicians I felt I had no business being in the same studio with.

I wrote a human interest column for a fledgling and now defunct weekly newspaper in the county I live in.  This was 7…8 years ago.

I wrote a novel I am proud of.  It is 74,000 words long. One day I hope it is published.

I was fortunate enough to broadcast high school football games on the radio with my friend Gus Stephenson for a number of years.  That in itself is another great post on speaktherights.com that will come soon.

At the risk of sounding ostentatious as I use the pronoun “I” much more than I…ouch…feel comfortable with, there is a moral to this story.

Oh yeah, before I forget…I sang the National Anthem in the arena where the Indiana Pacers play.  It was in the summer before a high school basketball game.  I can tell folks I have heard two people sing in Conseco…now Banker’s Life Field-house in Indianapolis…me and Paul McCartney.

I, in part, give credit for all my diverse shenanigans into life’s world of opportunity to a chance meeting and a brief exchange I had with one of the world’s all time greatest characters.

Maude McMahan was the librarian of the Brownstown Public Library when I was a kid growing up in Brownstown, Indiana.  Maude was also my next-door neighbor.  She was a wonderful and informative influence.  I so wish my dear wife, Carrie, could have met Maude.  They would have hit it off grandly.

Miss Maude gave me free reign of the public library.  I had a card, of course.  I also had an insatiable appetite for reading books about football.  One of the books I found and read and grew to love at the ripe old age of 10…was “Paper Lion” by George Plimpton.

George Plimpton is larger than this column I write today.  Look him up!

Plimpton was a journalist and an editor by trade.  He was a participatory  journalist.

He played with The Boston Pops.  He skated with The Boston Bruins. He tried to play on the PGA tour.  He did so so many things out of the norm and wrote about his exploits of each adventure.  One of those included playing and training with the Detroit Lions in the 1963 pre-season.  He was also a classmate at Havard and close friend of Bobby Kennedy.

In 1966, Plimpton published “Paper Lion” about his time playing football with the Lions.

I read it around 1978.  Alan Alda starred in a movie by the same name in 1968.

As embarrassed as I am to say I do not remember the year, given I remember most things, George Plimpton came to the campus of Indiana University Southeast in the early 1990s to give a speech.  I was a student there at the time. Plimpton came at the behest of one of the faculty members who was an old friend of his.

I too had a friend on the faculty, Dr. Millard Dunn.  He was my teacher, mentor, and friend.  I still consider him all three.

Anyway, after George Plimpton gave his speech I suddenly found my self in a group of four making chit-chat as the evening was winding down.  The four of us were myself, Dr. Dunn, the colleague of Dr. Dunn whom had invited George Plimpton, and George Plimpton himself.  The four of us just chatted politely.

At the exact same moment, Dr. Dunn and his English teaching colleague were motioned away by different corners of the room.  That left George Plimpton looking at me and me being dumbfounded that I was standing alone next to the guy that wrote “Paper Lion” that I had read when I was ten years old.

I will give you our account in a similar way that I told about my exchange with Carrie’s grandpa in my my CARS entry.

Plimpton to me ( as we where both pulling up the ground):  Well, I think the evening went quite well.

Me to George Plimpton:  Yes it did.  We really appreciate you coming and sharing with us tonight.

Plimpton: You have a nice, cozy little campus here.

Me:  Mr. Plimpton…all the things you have done…it is just amazing.  What inspired you?

Plimpton:  My dear boy…you can think about it all day long.  You can be inspired.  You can have the greatest of intentions.  But until you do something about it….what have you done?

Me:  You do indeed have a point.  Thank you so much for sharing.

About this time Plimpton’s buddy showed back up. Before he was whisked away, George Plimpton looked at me and dropped his head and raised it back up without taking his eyes off me.

As I look back the message was straight-forward:  GO DO IT!

That is what I have tried to do.  That is why I am here pecking away at a keyboard.

When I have been inspired, I have acted.  The adventure is endless.

Thank you, George Plimpton.  You helped.

So here I am…speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

P.S. George Plimpton died in September of 2003. He was 76.  He is still important to me.

Good friends are no guarantee.  You are either going to make them or you are not.

I can look back on friends I had thirty years ago that I have lost touch with…totally.  Not by choice.  It just happens that way.  I am a little saddened by it when I stop and be still and think about them.  But that really doesn’t last all that long.  If it did, I would make a mission out of it.  I don’t do that.  Life just treats us this way.

I have kept up with friends that I have known much longer than thirty years…it is almost comical to think in those terms.  When we get together it is as if time has stood still…unless we are talking about our kids.  Our children are proof that time has not stood still.  Time has flown.

Jerry Brown was in my wedding.  I was in his wedding.  His wedding was in 1992.  My wedding was in 1996.  The last day we spent together in school was in May of 1979.  I moved that summer.  He did not.  Like I said, we have indeed kept up with each other.  To this day when we get together we just take up wherever we left off.  John Lodge of The Moody Blues refers to that relationship as not friendship…but as being “mates”.  I like that.  I also like John’s songs “I’m Just a Singer (in a Rock and Roll Band), It May be a Fire, and Love is on the Run”…among others.  I think I just took some liberty with some quotation marks.

When I knew I would no longer be hanging out with Jerry Brown in the 6th grade…given that I had moved…I was very apprehensive the first day at my new school.  Firstly, I was in a building that was, to me, antiquated.  I had never seen a structure quite like it.  It had no air conditioning.  My old school did.  It had funny windows and long blinds the teachers would occasionally pull down.  To quote Dorthy, “I was not in Kansas anymore”.  The more I looked around and the more I perspired…the more I wished I was at my old school.  And that was just in the first 15 minutes of the first day before the rest of the students I did not know showed up.

I think it was Susan Christie that told Mick Rutherford and Kelly Samons that a new guy was sitting in Mrs. Lambert’s 6th grade classroom by himself as others that had filtered in had gravitated toward their friends and left the new kid hanging in the wind.

Mick and Kelly came and sat down next to me.  They peppered me with questions.  I answered them.  In an amount of twenty minutes, I stopped thinking about what my friend Jerry was doing at my old school.  I moved on…quickly.

I’m so glad Mick and Kelly and I caught the last of 1970s together in a 6th grade classroom that quickly became home to me.

The three of us, Mick, Kelly, and myself have stayed dear friends all of these years.  You can tell how miserable we are around each other in the following picture taken at Kelly’s daughter’s wedding this past early June.

Mick, Kelly, and me.  Or as Mrs. Walton named us in the 6th grade: Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

Louie was fortunate Huey and Dewey came over to speak with him that first day of 6th grade.

He hasn’t forgotten it.

Nor will he forget to…speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

I don’t know much about cars.

I put gas in one.  I put oil in the same one.  I make sure the tires are properly inflated.  You’d think the guy who drives 108 miles a day round trip to work and back would know something about cars.  I wish I were him.

I drive a 1999 Dodge Stratus.  The thing is in great condition, considering it has nearly 225,000 miles upon it.

This car is special to me and I do not want to give it up.

In 1999 on a Wednesday afternoon in mid-October, I was checking in on my dear wife Carrie’s grandparents.  It just so happened that on that day her grandfather, Rubert, had purchased a new 1999 Dodge Stratus and he drove it home that day and it was sitting in the driveway with all of 34 miles on the odometer.

As I walked in the back door that led the kitchen of the house of  Rubert and his wife, Mildred, I met Rubert and he gave me a pleasant greeting as he always did.  It went something like this:  ” How’s it going, Old Buddy?”  “Glad you came by…preshadit.”

I sat at the kitchen table and Rubert asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee.  Mildred asked me if I wanted a sandwich…this was the common drill.

I settled on a glass of tea.

Rubert then asked me if I was still planning to take our oldest son, Jarrett, with me down to visit Aunt Barbara near Jackson, Mississippi.  The three of us, Aunt Barbara, Jarrett, and myself were to be heading from her house on Saturday up to Oxford to watch the Ole Miss Rebels take on the Georgia Bulldogs at Vaught-Hemmingway Stadium on the campus of Ole Miss.  It was a great game, by the way. The only problem was that Georgia won by a score of 20-17.  Quincy Carter was playing quarterback for Georgia.  Also, I remember watching Ole Miss running back Joe Gunn run 85 yards for a touchdown.  It was a very exciting game.

Anyway, Rubert told me to take his new Dodge Stratus to Mississippi that weekend.  The car had only 34 miles on it!

I told him no.  I was not going to take his new car.

He told me otherwise.  I think our exchange went something like this:

Me:  Rubert, I am not going to take your new car.

Rubert;  Yeah you are.

Me: No…I am not.

Rubert: Why not?

Me: Cos the car is brand new…I don’t want to hurt it.

Rubert: You’re not going to hurt it.  Just take it and test it out.

Me: Rubert, I am not going to take it and test it out.  It is your car, you need to test it out.

Rubert ( getting a little testy):  You take the damn thing…blow it out…tell me how she runs!

I had no choice.

Me:  Okay…I will drive it down there.

And so I did.  And I am still driving that car all these years on.

By the way…I enjoyed driving that car too much that trip to Mississippi.  I got a speeding ticket just inside the Illinois line and I will swear in court I was doing 69 and not the 71 the officer told me I was doing.  I played nice.  I was in another state.

In truth…as I mentioned on another post…Rubert had to be put in a nursing home in early 2007.  I started driving that car when he was no longer able to.  He died in April 2007.

I still think of him often as I drive to and fro to work every day.  I hope the car holds out for a good while.  I have been taking good care of it.

Just yesterday I was outside of the school I work at and I was walking with a 7th grade student as I was heading to my car.  When I told the student I was going to my car he quizzed me on which car was mine.  He guessed it was a nice new modern SUV.  I told him mine was the puny Dodge Stratus.  He told me I can do better than that.

I thought of Rubert Hawkins…and I thought…no, I don’t think I can.

That is just plain flat outright….speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

” I’m looking forward to your next post,” a friend said recently.  Then they asked me why I missed a day once or twice.

Good question.  Answer:  There are only twenty-four hours in the day and I think we should both be glad that I was blessed with the ability to sit here and hammer away at this keyboard and spout off and carry on like I think I know something…or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Another good question:  “How can you think of something to write about all the time?”

Answer:  It goes back to time.  If we had forty-eight hours in the day, I would be delighted to drone on even more than I do!  I tell kids at school that only boring people get bored.  My wheels are turning in constant motion until I decide it is time to retire for the evening.  I am thankful for this.

Why?  Good question.  Answer:  I love to sit here and share my thoughts, ideas, and the occasional opinion.  I just speak the rights.  I try to steer clear of any in-your-face agenda…you  can find that anywhere else if you stay still long enough.  Sooner or later you will find something objectionable…that is if you object to anything.

I saw a picture on an internet post that my dear wife, Carrie, likes to look at for entertainment purposes.  It is named after a food condiment or something…The Dill or whatever it is?

What I found funny was a message that had been spray painted on something and it said, “Spread Anarchy!”  Then someone came along behind them and wrote underneath it: “Don’t tell me what to do!”  I thought that was funny.  There can be humor in nearly every form of stupidity as long as it finds its place.

My place for a few moments every night during the work week and usually in the mornings on weekends is right here.  This is where you will find me, sitting on my screened-in back porch speaking the rights.  Of an evening, I am usually sipping on diet ginger ale as I type away.  On Saturday mornings I will be out here vowing to write four entries as I drink too much coffee and hope it doesn’t get so hot out here that I have to move indoors.  And no….I have not  written four of these at one sitting, though I have no doubt that I could.

I was amazed this past weekend at the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville.  Huge crowds…or should I say galleries.  They call crowds at PGA events “galleries”.  How can you call a crowd like that a gallery?  Guys were swilling beer at this thing, not drinking tea with their pinkies hiked in the air!  Gallery  indeed.

Louisville is fairly close to my home.  We live in Southern Indiana about forty minutes from Louisville if you really get on it in a car and don’t get pulled over for speeding.  Carrie and I both earned graduate degrees from the University of Louisville.  When we graduated no one asked me if I would have any family to be part of the “gallery” that was to watch us graduate.  There was no need for that, regardless of what they called the crowd.  Neither of us made the trip over there for commencement.

Speaking of golf.  I have a golf tournament of my own to play in this fall.  I will meet up with three of my best cronies as we gather together to make a foursome for The Corner King Classic.  This will be the fifteenth year we have played together in the Corner King Classic and I promise I will give you both the history of the tournament and the results that follow.  Do wish us the best of luck.

So there.  I did it.  A friend of mine told me he did not believe I could write a post that mentioned sports without going on about football.

Don’t worry.  There will be plenty of time for that later.  I assure you.  This weekend is “PIGSKIN PREDICTION WEEKEND” on speaktherights.com…be sure to tune in.

I will leave you with a couple scenes from the official speaktherights.com screened-in back porch.

This is what I look like as I am trying to speak the rights.

Success.

Danny Johnson

I wish I had a picture here to show you.  Perhaps I will get the few…or maybe just two that I can think of that may actually still exist and find a way to digitize them for sharing.  They are pictures of my bicycle.  I’m on said bike in one of those photos.  I know that photo survived.

When I was a kid, I had a purple bicycle.  My parents bought me this bike.  They bought it at an old Sears catalog store in a town close by to the one we lived in.

From birth up until I was eleven years and a few months old, I lived in a town called Brownstown, Indiana.  The place is nothing special which is good.  Had it found a way to be some kind of special tourist trap, I probably would not have been allowed to ride my bike all over town.  But ride I did…every chance I got.

We lived on the far east end of town on a street called Jackson Street.  It was just a few blocks down the hill from the courthouse, as Brownstown is the county seat of Jackson County.  When I was riding my bike,  the town had all of one stoplight in it.  Nowadays it has two.

Even after I moved to some out-post called Ramsey in Harrison County, now and again I was startled by what I thought was the sound of the bell atop the courthouse clock bonging to indicate the hour of the night it was on.  I suppose I was dreaming.  Last Sunday I was at a picnic just barely down the street from my old homestead and indeed the clock bell’s sound was pleasant and welcome.  That sound has not changed in over forty years.

The courthouse lawn has a tank on it from the Korean War.  My buddies and I played on it. Oh the things such a stout piece of metal can do for one’s imagination is astounding.

As I said, I rode my bike and I rode it everywhere in town.

My bike started with a banana seat.  I think I was 6 when I got it.  I rode it until I was 11.  One day…years after I put what we called a “ten speed style seat” on it…I was peddling away and the handle bars just up and cracked and broke off.  I was heartbroken.  I suppose it was good timing.  We moved a couple months later and I did not have take it with me.  I started riding my Dad’s old bike.  It was a blue 5-speed.

I rode my old bike to the  Brownstown pool.  We had a pool in town.  It too is still there.  It is situated on Bridge Street about a mile from our old house.    Also on Bridge Street is the park.  I played little league baseball there.  I rode my bike to baseball practice.  It was a great feeling to slide one’s baseball glove over a handle bar until it hits bottom and just kind of dangles there as you peddle your heart out heading to a diamond.  In 1979 I was on an unbeaten team…The Royals.  It was back when we still played ball in blue jeans and t-shirts and the only players that got trophies were the members of the teams that won the season’s championship.  There were no handing out of trophies just because someone was afraid a kid might get his precious feelings hurt.

That last sentence is why soccer in the United States will never be a major professional sport.  I cherish my 1979 trophy.  I earned it.  Our boys, Jarrett and Cody,  played soccer and were patted on the head at the end of the season and handed a trophy annually and neither one of these boys could tell you where a one of those trophies are.  They didn’t earn them and they both understand the value of hard work….thankfully.

I digress.  But I did speak the rights while doing it.

Just down Bridge Street…another block downhill from the park…lived my great-grandmother, Ivy Nowling.  I rode my bike to her house.  I was ten and she was seventy-six and every day at 1 PM during the summer I knew I could count on watching “Days of Our Lives” with her.  She enjoyed it and kept me updated if I missed out on a day or two or three in succession.  She had a habit of pronouncing the names of the characters her own little way.  The bad guy was named “Stefano”.  Grandma called him “Stefana”.

I have strong memories and I have strong legs.  Thanks in great part to a purple bicycle I miss right now…as I speak the rights.

I’ll find a picture.

Danny Johnson

For all Volunteer Fire Department members:

This past Wednesday morning on Interstate 65 Southbound around mile marker 87 in Kentucky,a tragedy occurred.  A man was killed while he was trying to help.  That does not make a great deal of sense.  It never has and it never will.

There was a van on fire along the Interstate in hours of the morning when the rest of us are sound asleep and not paying as much as an ounce of care to the sound of a scanner that alerts some folks…but not you and me in most cases… to action because someone out there needs help.    That is what volunteer fire fighters do.  They listen for a distress signal.  When they hear it, they fly into action.

Jonathan French, age 25, of Glendale, Kentucky was one of those guys.  He was a volunteer fire fighter.  On Wednesday morning he heard a call on a scanner or got a call from a buddy or found out however he did and he went into action.  He and is 43 year-old mother, a volunteer fire fighter herself, went to the aid of the distressed van on Interstate 65.  While they were on the scene trying to do the right thing, a semi truck added to the accident when it struck Jonathan and his mother.  Lisa French will recover…physically, that is.  Her son Jonathan was killed.

Even though Carrie and I have two sons, Jarrett and Cody, who are trained volunteer fire fighters, I never gave their mortality as fire fighters a second thought before this week.  Jarrett is 26 and Cody is 24. They seem too vital to…well.  Jonathan French was 25.

Volunteer fire fighters.  The rest of us just don’t get it.  We don’t understand the commitment these guys and gals undertake to go into action when there is a call of distress.  These folks take their wants, needs, and concerns and make them that of the person or persons and property that may be in jeopardy.  They don’t get paid to know and understand the ins and outs of various pieces of equipment that would make most of us look very silly if we were the ones in the position of trying to make any of it work.

I just had a conversation recently…it may have been with in another part of the country…with someone and we were talking about  house fires and how a sum of money needed to be paid to the fire department and if you did not pay…your place would just burn.  I know I heard that somewhere recently.  Maybe it was back in days gone by.  Regardless, our men and women whom have made the commitment to come to the aid and rescue of another needing their service deserve our respect and our admiration.

Around here in Southern Indiana and around the Louisville area, what the media refers to as “Kentuckiana”, volunteer fire fighters on both sides of the Ohio River tirelessly collect money at 4-way stops and other intersection on behalf of the WHAS Crusade for Children, a charitable entity that has helped scores of kids in many ways, shapes, and forms.

Cody and his fellow volunteers traveled around and went door to door asking for donations for this most worthy cause.  Carrie and I were quite proud of him.

Cody collecting for The WHAS Crusade for Children

Do me a favor.  If you see a fire truck, get out of the way.  Give them room to work.  Stay out of the way.  If you need to know, it will make the paper or the news.  Otherwise, go about you business and if you feel the need…speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

Wow.  It has been a day or two past a month that I have been setting up show on this screen now and again.  In fact, this will be my 30th entry so far.  That just doesn’t seem possible.

I put a counter on my dashboard…something I can look at every now and then to see how many people are so dang bored they actually tune into read what it is I have to say.

Well…let me say this:  I jest when I say you are bored.  You’re not.  You just want to know what is going on with speaking the rights.  If I could read this, I probably would too.  I hate to sound ostentatious.  I just miss my friend, I suppose.

I never met Lewis Grizzard.  I do know I have read every book he ever published.  He tried to make people think and laugh and get riled up all in one sitting, at times.

Here’s the thing…one of my high school teachers is a wonderful lady I have kept up with and still visit with her and her husband on occasion.  She, like Mrs. Miller (I wrote about her earlier), were very instrumental in helping me believe that some day I could do something like this.  No…blogs did not exist thirty years ago.  Words and how to put them together, however, was in full flower for me.  I just liked to write.

Mrs. Lincoln reinforced the belief that Mrs. Miller held.  They both enjoyed reading what this 16 year-old had to write about and how he wrote it.  I am forever in their debt.

When I graduated from college, Mrs. Lincoln gave me a series of books to take heed in as I was preparing for my career as an educator.  Many of these books were historical and anecdotal.  She placed a post-it note on the first page of each book giving me the rationale behind their intent.  The book she gave me by Lewis Grizzard has a post-it note that says : “Just to Enjoy!”.

Lewis was a columnist for an Atlanta newspaper and was syndicated all over the country.  Given my southern roots, I did take a liking to Lewis’ work.  He died twenty years ago this past March at the age of 47…one year older than I am today.

While I was in high school, Mrs. Lincoln said my writing style reminded her of Lewis Grizzard.  This meant nothing to me.  I did recall the name.  I knew I had seen his column in The (Jackson, MS) Clarion-Ledger and The Shreveport Times when I visited family in those places.  I didn’t read them.  I just knew who he was.

When Mrs. Lincoln gave me that book of Lewis Grizzard columns, I read it and fell in love with his word choice, his tone, and his pace…not to mention a great deal of his subject matter.

Have I ever tried to emulate Lewis Grizzard?  Honestly…no, I have not.  If you are going to “speak the rights” you better do it on your own terms.  That is exactly what I have done.  Have I been influenced by Lewis Grizzard?  You better know I have.  The points of reference we accumulate always have a degree of influence.  The greatest influence in all this was/is Mrs. Lincoln.  She helped me gain confidence in my written voice…and she introduced me to someone who would become much like an old friend I never met.  That is pretty cool.  Thank you, Paula Lincoln.  You are a Great American, just like Weyman C. Wannamaker, Jr.

To whomever is reading these pages, let me say thanks.  I do know you are out there…even though I do not know who you are everyday.

So far I have had folks look in on speaktherights.com from the USA, England, The Netherlands, and Canada.  I thank you.

So…where do we go from here?  Down the same old road, I suppose.  As long as folks are coming along for the ride, what is the need to reinvent the bloggical wheel?

Maybe Jack and Jill in New Hampshire will hang out by the pool and listen to The Mill (the greatest radio station of all time, by the way) before the summer is out.   Maybe they will just go fetch a pail of water. I do know Jack’s mother is faithful to read speaktherights.com.

A month of speaktherights.com?  Are you kidding me?

Wow. What can I say?  Of course…speak the rights!

My Granny will be 89 on Sunday.  She speaks the rights!

This Pizanos Pizza in Chicago and me…we spoke the rights.

The first car to win the Indianapolis 500…I call it the I-5…speaks the rights.

Me and my buddies Samonhead and Pete…we spoke the rights as Peyton and the Broncos beat the Bengals in 2012.

In 2011 Carrie and I saw The Moody Blues speak the rights at Red Rocks outside of Denver.

Luther always barked the rights.

Danny Johnson saying…thanks again.

School is in full swing.  Wow.  Fast and furious and great fun.  The kids love to learn.  They love to be with their friends.  They love lunch and recess…and I love them.

I work in a k-12 building and I was fortunate enough…as a maleperson…to show our male kindergartners the proper etiquette of using the restroom at the end of the hall.  I have never seen so many kids excited about flushing a toilet.  Good for them!  This is a good sign.

I will leave you with one picture.  I love it.  I was on a lonely highway when I took this photo with my camera on my antiquated phone.  It still looks pretty good.

And here is a picture of my sweetheart at Times Square this summer.

Keep an eye on this space.

We have some good things coming this weekend as we… Speak the Rights.

Danny Johnson

As welcome as the end of a school year can be… given all the counting down of the last few days from scores of folks kids run into…nothing is quite as optimistic and exciting as the first days of the new school year.  A new beginning is on the horizon.  Hope is in full force.

For argument’s sake, and seeming how a countdown to the end of school starts earlier and earlier for some reason, I can understand the sensibility in having a “balanced calendar” where schools are open “year-round”.  This would eliminate some of the early shutdown some schools get out of students ready for the year to be over by the time mid-April comes even though there is still a month and a half left of school.  Motivation is a key component in learning;  if the motivation is just to hang in until there are a couple months off then the thread of learning is being broken, cut off, or even lost.

The traditional “school’s out for the summer” was originally in play because the majority of the students back in the day were needed to help with agricultural endeavors.  I was talking to my Mother about this recently.  She told me in her native Mississippi, she graduated from high school in 1960, schools would close for two weeks in September so the kids…black and white…could be available to pick the cotton crop.

I digress.

I sat down here to tell you that this is a great time of the year.  Schools starting anew is a great time of the year.  Why, do you ask?  I’ll tell why.  Students love to learn.  They really do.  Kids are curious.  Kids are naturally inquisitive.  Kids are motivated to learn.  The greatest shame of it all is that kids don’t get to vote…if they did, things would not be so screwed up in the education world.

Mr. Jim Stewart, I called him “Chief”, was my boss once upon a time.  Though our time together was much too brief for my liking, he imparted a great deal of wisdom that I carry in and out of classrooms and conference rooms and staff meetings and wherever the day may take me inside a school building.

Chief told me this:  Education is the most resilient thing going.  No matter how much adults and politicians try to screw up the process, kids still naturally want to learn.

We have not been kind to our children.  High stakes testing at early levels are damaging young psyches by the score.  Kids are being labeled a success or a failure based on what happened for a measly handful of hours that are supposed to represent 180 days of learning.  What a joke.

This in no way shape or form mirrors real life.  The testing culture is not about helping students learn…it is about politics and that is shameful.

What is great, however, is how a first grader will come charging up the sidewalk on the first day of school looking forward to seeing his friends, looking forward to lunch, looking forward to recess, but more importantly…looking forward to quickly raising up his hand as he bounces up and down in his chair because HE WANTS TO SHARE WHAT HE THINKS IS THE CORRECT ANSWER WITH HIS TEACHER.  That is when a kid is the most excited in a school building and it went on before testmania got here and it will keep going on until we find our educational way back home some day.  I just hope I live to see that day.

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Learning about the Indy 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, thanks Mr. Disque.

A cotton patch in honor of my Mother.

Speak the rights.

Danny Johnson