April Fool’s Day…April 1st.

I used to get a classroom of gullible 9th graders going about a story that involves a lady not paying for her food at a fast food restaurant and how I turn the tables on said lady and then…at the grand crescendo…let the youngsters in on the fact that is indeed just an April Fool’s hoax.

Not that it needs mention with this silly day, once I hijacked the 50,000 watt airwaves of WHAS 840…heard in 39 states..I think…the night the great Joe Elliott was hosting “Joke Night” on 84 WHAS.  I told the longest joke in “joke night” history.  I am not going to tell it here.  But know..that Joe Elliott interrupted me about two thirds of the way through my spectacular joke to tell me that his show only lasted three hours.  I was most proud!

I have told that joke on occasion since, but it never meant quite as much as it did when I was clogging up hundreds of other callers trying to get through to Joe that night.

April Fool’s.  It is a silly event, I suppose.  But what is wrong with that?  Have you heard the headlines coming out of my native state of Indiana lately?  We could use a good joke or two…the ones in Indianapolis notwithstanding.

A good joke.  What makes a good joke?  Content?  Timing?  I fall in this sub-category.  I think timing is everything.

Who got more from less than anyone in show business history.  The answer…easy…Bob Newhart.  How many guys need just to show up on the set and employ a purposeful pause before he says three subtle words that can make a guy spew ginger ale across the room? Just one: Bob Newhart.

My lovely wife, Carrie, and I watched the show Newhart starring Bob Newhart last week.  We were in North Carolina and we were at a place that has something called Antennae TV.  It was on the local cable station.  I would give anything to get Antennae TV at my house!  I have DirecTV.  Translation: my money goes directly from my bank account into that of DIRECTV and I assure you they are much happier than I am.  HBO?  A joke.  Most of the channels on DIRECTV?  More jokes.  April Fool’s!  That is what I am for paying for this crappy service.  Okay…soo I got on a tangent here.  I do not apologize.

While we were in North Carolina we watched Newhart and it cracked us up.  I looked the series up on the interwebbers.  The show ran from 1982 to 1990.  I would have never guessed it ran that long.  I remember watching it as a youngster and enjoying it.  Cerebral humor has always enticed me.  That would be a miracle.  But I am a true believer in miracles.

Speaking of which…on April Fool’s Day in 1983, I found out my mother was pregnant with the last of her third children, my brother, Darrell Lee Johnson.  I remember it like it was yesterday.  As was the custom, we attended Good Friday Church services when I was growing up.  Good Friday in 1983 just happened to fall on April Fool’s Day…April 1st.

No one at church believed my mother when she told them she was pregnant.  They were waiting for the big proclamation:  APRIL FOOL’S!  Not so.

On November 14th of 1983 Darrell Lee Johnson found his way into the world at Floyd Memorial Hospital in New Albany, Indiana.  I had and still have a brother!

To put this into context, know I was born in 1968.  I have a sister, Lynn Benson.  She was born in 1966.  Fifteen years and change after I was born, I had a little brother.  I can’t begin to tell you how thankful I am to be able to report this to you.

Will I forget April Fool’s Day?  How could I?  It is a day to celebrate…for me.  The rest of you?  Just don’t try to be too gullible.  But then again, who cares?  It is only one day.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

I felt a warm breeze flow today.  It hit me in the face.  I enjoyed it.  Perhaps this is a portent of better days to come.

Saturday Carrie, my dear wife, and I ran across snow…albeit a smattering…on the ground in the mountains of both Virginia and West Virginia.  At one stop, a SHEETZ station, Carrie got out of the car, looked at the snow on the ground and purposefully rolled her eyes.  She was there for three minutes and she had enough.  So did I.  We went from reasonably warm, including a  77 degree day on Thursday, to wind-chills that I hate to think what they registered.  It was COLD.

Today’s breeze was warm.  Thankfully.

Spring is an optimistic time.  New life.  New flowers.  New chances.  New reasons to feel better.  New.  In some contexts that word seems very meaningful…new.  I’ve never had a brand new car.  I have had new shoes.  In fact, I got two pair of new shoes last week.  I plan on wearing one of them tomorrow.  I have tried a few new restaurants.  One of those was this past weekend.  It was a eatery in Huntington, WV.  Fat Patty’s is name of the place.  I had a great burger.  So did Carrie.  We have driven past the place countless times before and after Herd Football games.  Why did we stop in there?  Our regular old haunt closed.  It was a pizza place,  The place was always busy too.  I don’t know what happened to it.  Just one of those things.

Spring.  A new golf season.  I actually hope to get my clubs out of mothballs this Friday.  I might not.  I hope to.  My swing is sad.  I don’t care.

Enjoy this Spring.  Spring into whatever you need to.  And while you are at it…

speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

Into the sky in this picture once flew the rockets of Operation Bumblebee.  Early rocketry in the 1940s dominated this piece of beach I look out on today.  The thought was there was a need to protect the coast at the time.  Some things never change.  To enhance the protection of the coast, rockets were tested that were to eventually act as long range missiles.  Where I sit typing this was government property and very secretive was the activity here.  A great deal was learned from this time of testing the ramjet propulsion that needed a little boost to get where it needed to go.  Sound familiar?

Dotted along this coast are still what we call “Towers” that served as observatories in measuring and studying the nuances of the rockets that did well and…well…the ones that did not do so well.  One of them, Tower 5, was converted in to a house that now serves as rental property.  Carrie, my dear wife, and I stayed there in the summer of 2011.  It was very cool.

What is not cool is that I had to get to the place they did this work to find out about it.  Sure, it was a secret at the time.  This secret has been too well kept for too long.  Thankfully there is museum at the south of the island in the little strip called Topsail Beach.  Missiles and More houses a plethora of history and artifacts about this special place in time.  There is, as the name suggests, more there too.  Too much for me to mention because someone would be left out and you don’t want to make the WASPs of the day mad now.  That isn’t White Anglo Saxon Protestant either.

You can look it up.

While you look that up, I will continue to look up to the open skies around here now and again.

I might see something like this…a CH 43.  It is very large.

Today alone I have seen Osprey, Hueys, CH 43s, C-130s, and something else I was not sure of.

Less than thirty miles to the north of us is Camp Lejeune.  This is a LARGE Marine Corps Base.  This is where our air show originates.  Know that Carrie and I have a soft heart for these aviators.  Our son, Jarrett, served on a Blackhawk in the Army himself.  Helicopters are our friends.

All this talk of rockets and aircraft reminds me of the guy I am reading the biography of this week.

The authorized biography of Neil Armstrong.

What a guy.

Not that this is indicative of Neil, but I must say I am so glad we had no twitter or facebook accounts when we were sending guys to into space in the early going.  Some nutball out there would have surely put together a campaign or two based on half-truths or no-truth that would have probably derailed one of these guys from making the history they made for all of us.

Never mind me.  I am going to go look at the open skies and dream about a better place.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Carl and Booker taking it easy today

Email is a good thing.  We get informed with email.    We give and receive messages via email.  We share pictures with email.  We use email while we work.  I suppose sometimes we even hide our faces behind email.  Hey, it can’t be all good.

Every now and then, however, we might receive an email that transcends this futuristic day and age where one can use a Netflix account to whittle away through entire seasons of “Fraiser” in short order.  Why and how the transcendence?  Because this email came from a voice I learned from long before email became a fixture in our lives.  We have had many conversations in person and on the phone in the last twenty-four years.  I can count on two hands…barely…how many emails we have exchanged.  This fact does not disappoint me.  I am old-fashioned that way.

I reached out via email to Millard Dunn earlier this month.  An old college chum and I had been reliving a space in time that was both funny and educational.  This story was conveyed in a post I entered in September.  Dr. Millard Dunn was the teacher in the room that day.

I did not receive a reply, as we call it, to my email with any sort of swiftness.  In fact, I figured Millard had not gotten his message.  I figured his email address had changed and I would sooner or later have to call his home phone number.  I still have it memorized.  I suppose he is still using it.  Some of us have allowed land lines to go east with the geese and exclusively use cell phones instead of what we used to call BELL-phones.

A few days ago I looked at my email.  I had indeed received a “reply” from Millard. His email had changed.  He said he felt he was fortunate to find my message.  It was so good to read his words and to “hear” his voice.  One of the most distinct voices I have ever heard, I would be content listening to Millard read the rules of soccer to me….and I have no time for the game whatsoever.  I covered my thoughts on his teaching and his caring spirit in my September post.

So I listened in to the voice as I read along.  Delighted at Millard’s timing that rolls along like a river that turns corners that are swift but easily maneuvered.  Again, he is a good read.

He had kind things to say about my Henry David Thoreau project.  That he still remembers it is an honor.  If you read about it, you probably have no doubt he still remembers it…given his ending reaction to the play I put on.  I also believe he truly does enjoy that memory.  That makes me prouder still.  I was able to give a little…as I took a great deal.

As I type these words I am less than thirty miles from where Millard Dunn went to high school.  He went to high school in Wilmington, North Carolina.  He went to Duke University after that.  They taught him well.  I doubt they taught him as well as he taught me.

GAINING GROUND…

Word has gotten back to Indiana, perhaps by email, that I fell victim to some bad vittles after we got here in North Carolina.  I am just glad I was the only one.  My dear wife, Carrie, is getting over the flu.  Our son Jarrett and his sweet Hilary, from New Mexico, are here too and they don’t deserve to get that sick.  I did.  Lewis Grizzard once called one his illnesses a case of “you gotta feel better to die sick”.  In 56 hours I ate two cans of soup.  Both coming in the late late stages of that time.  I never dreamed I would go on vacation and lose ten pounds.

I am gaining ground….and…

speaking the rights near a beach getting some dredging work done to help some beach farther north, hence the giant black hose.

Danny Johnson

I received many well wishes and cards and a few presents that all reminded me I am another year older.  Thanks to all of the gracious sentiments in my direction today, March 18th.

I am a blessed man.

I have a great family.  I have great friends. I have my health.  I have a CD collection that makes me a bit shameful, given most of them have not been so much as spun in a very long time.  My book shelves are filled with poems and short stories and anthologies and inspiration and biographies and compendiums and novels and college football programs.

So here is to another year!

May the next year be filled with new challenges and new opportunities.

Thanks again.  May God bless you all.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

It was a warm day outside my door this sunny Sunday.   I cleaned the screened-in back porch today.  My dear wife, Carrie, was at a play with some of her friends and I decided to roll up my sleeves and get the porch back to being presentable again.  It was fraught with leaves that managed to get in somehow.  Along with a considerable amount of topsoil that came in with some snow that was sifted through by a strong west wind.

I like this porch.  I featured it on a few other posts on the site last year.

We have a sign that steals from the slogan that…perhaps is copyrighted… and goes “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”.  Our sign says “What happens on the Porch stays on the Porch”.  It doesn’t really.  A great deal of my speakingtherights has come from this very chair at this very table.  It is a good spot to think.

I was asked recently if I was ever going to get my interview with Gordy Marshall, a drumming virtuoso, who plays with The Moody Blues…and has since 1991.  Gordy and I have been back and forth.  I am waiting on him to make the next move.  He must be a busy man.  If you have ever seen him play the drums, you would not forget it.  If you ever read some of his prose, you would not forget it.  He is very talented.

A couple nights ago we hosted some friends for dinner and good old fashioned fellowship.  There were stories told and laughter abound.  The food was not a grand ordeal.  I picked up pizza on the way home from work.

In the house were our friends from New Hampshire, Bob and Michelle and their young’uns, Davis, Sabra, and Siera.  Bob’s grandmother passed away last week at the age of 102.  She was laid to rest on her 103rd birthday.  Wow.

Also in the house were Tim and Michelle.  They live just down the road a piece in the neighboring county.  That is a bit shameful, given that we don’t get together as often as we should.  How many of us can relate to that?

Note:  When I say they live in the neighboring county I am talking about ten miles or more in that county.  I can see that same county across the river from where I am sitting on my back porch right now.  Just in case you were wondering.

Finally there will be basketball on television I am very interested in.  I don’t watch college basketball much.  I might sit in on a  bit of a game until I become unaccountable with it and find something else to do.  I have yet to watch a basketball game from tip off to final buzzer this season.  And since Dr, J, Julius Erving, no longer plays in the NBA, I don’t watch that either.  I do…however…have a positive affection for that thing they call March Madness.  It is a bit of Madness.  There are teams that make this tourney that have no more business being there than an Indiana Hoosier Football team that is 6-6…if they ever get there…has going to a bowl game.  I still enjoy it and I watch it with vigor.  I have said it before, I watch enough football for all of us and I give my eyes a break in the wintertime and most of the spring.

Who is going to beat the Kentucky Wildcats?  I doubt anyone does.  I will be filling in one bracket of the teams and the games and pick my winner.  I have to pick UK, I suppose.  They are that good.  I’m not a fan of them, mind you.  But I do have a father-in-law and a sister-in-law and another dear friend that root for their Cats.  I hope they are happy.  I think they will be.

Of course there are folks north of the Ohio River in Indiana that don’t want UK to go undefeated because the last team to do that was an Indiana Hoosier team coached by Bob Knight in the mid-70s.  Forget that argument.  IU and Bob Knight are no longer friends.  I say 40 years later that it is time to move on.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

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