Just finished up dinner.  If you can call a salad with grilled chicken on it dinner.  It was by choice.  I should not complain.  Shame on me.

I am sitting on the back porch with my dear wife, Carrie, right now.  It is a cool evening by Southern Indiana summer standards.  We’ll take it.

If anyone ever needed a salad for dinner, I am the subject.  Carrie and I just got back from a nice vacation to the Northeast.  I managed to eat too much.  This too was by choice.  I have a weakness when it comes to lobster rolls, ice cream, hamburgers, onion rings, more ice cream, and just about anything else that does not fall into the category of most of what I eat at home on a regular basis.  I hereby qualify:  I am a fortunate man to have any of what I get to eat.  I realize that.  I also realize that if we went on another vacation this summer I would be in serious danger of walking across the kitchen floor to grab a piece of healthy fruit…I would probably have to sit down and rest halfway across the kitchen floor.

Instead, I walked today.  And I walked and I walked and I walked some more. In fact I walked 8 miles in short order.  I did my walking around the campus of North Harrison Schools.  It was peaceful there today.  There were very few folks around at all.  This is strange because, like so many schools with many activities year-round, North Harrison resembles an ant hill most of the time.  What is going on is a moratorium on athletic activity this week as handed down in an edict from the Indiana High School Athletic Association.  Give them all a week off, for goodness sake, says the IHSAA.  So there I was walking around an empty campus.  It was actually kind of nice.  I did run into a couple of young chaps I will get to know much better as the school year progresses.  I will be their assigned school counselor.  I told the pair I am very much looking forward to working with them.

Much of the morning today was a few telephone calls and a subsequent visit per the phone calls to the local body shop to get an estimate on some damage that was done to our vehicle some nine or ten days ago.  It was about 1 o’clock in the morning on June 20th in the middle of NOWHERE in upstate New York.  That night Carrie and I drove from the place we were staying in western Massachusetts up to Saratoga Springs, New York to see a “Train” (that is the name of the group) concert.  The show was great by the way.  A guy named Matthew Nathanson played first and then The Fray came on after him and before Train.  All told we hear about 40 songs.  The whole thing was quite impressive.

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center…or “SPAC” as they like to say it on the radio.  That annoyingly rhymes with smack, by the way…as in I’d like to smack the guy who keeps saying SPAC in that annoying Yankeefied accent.

To sway from the point for just a moment.  I call out the Yankee accent only because on SEVERAL occasions during our trip Carrie and I were both complimented on our Southern accents.  Mine hails from being born to Mississippi-born parents.  Carrie has a kind, smooth voice that has hung around me too long and therefore accentuates a few vowels with some extra vigor now and again.  Here’s the thing:  in all my travels and I have been to every state East of the Mississippi river, save Rhode Island, and at least eight states West of the big river…I have yet to hear a compliment someone with a Northern accent.

Anyway after the concert, on the way back to the place we were staying, I struck one of New York’s finest specimen of white tail deer.  How we did so little damage to the car I will never know.  This deer did the honorable thing and ducked about the time we made major grill to head contact.  It still felt as if we made some serious contact and I was certain the grill of our Ford Edge was in twelve pieces.  Somehow it maintained its shape in one reasonable piece with the exception of one corner being tweaked and, as I found out today, one of the headlights was cracked. Still, it was a miracle.  The deer did not, however, avoid making solid contact with all four of the vehicles tires.  For a moment there it was like we had gone off road four-wheeling as we bounced up and down as we cleared the animal.  I was stunned by the events.  My dear Carrie was speechless.  Neither of us could believe what just happened.

Now…I did not want to stop the car.  I just wanted to keep on going. Something told me the right thing to do was to inspect the damage to know what I was up against.  But where in the heck do I pullover?  A driveway in front of someone’s house?  No way!  Remember, this is New York and a couple bad guys are still on the loose and I for one did not want to get shot at.  We came upon a driveway that was long.  No house in sight.  I pulled in, got out of the car, stayed low, and inspected the damage.  At that point I knew if I could get the car back on the road without creating an incident that would be talked about for hours on CNN, we would be okay.  We were.  That is why I can sit here today and share this with you as I…

Speak the Rights.

Danny Johnson

Nearly a year ago, in my second or third post in the history of speaktherights.com, I wrote about the thrill I had when my friend Bob took me to see the Boston Red Sox play in the museum that is Fenway Park.

Thanks to Bob and Michelle, I made it back to Fenway again this past Wednesday.  The Red Sox beat the Baltimoe Orioles by a score of 5 to 1.  They were led by the bat of “Big Papi” David Ortiz.  He hit a line drive homer to center field.  The ball traveled well over 400 feet.  When he hit it, we didn’t think the ball had a chance at the fence.  The ball had other thoughts.

Notice, for those of you who remember, the iconic Citgo sign is still in view in left-center field.

Thank you, Bob, for chauffeuring.  I rarely get that pleasure.  And I am glad he was driving.  Boston was built to ride horses in…not drive cars.  Bob is a trooper behind the wheel.

I plan on being on the back porch tomorrow afternoon.  Then I will be able to…

Speak the Rights a little more.

Danny Johnson

A short while ago I finished walking a circuit in the Amherst Village…11 times.  It was a great deal of fun and it was good exercise.  We are talking about Amherst, New Hampshire.

I started here:

That is the back of our vehicle.  This is where I started.

As I walked I, as is the custom, listened to my ipod.  Two ear buds strategically implanted into the ear canals to offer optimal listening of the tunes I have on a miniature juke box I can hold in my hand.  However, this time, I listened to 96.5 The Mill, a great radio station out of Manchester, for the first few laps I made on my course.

Step 2

The air on this New England day is crisp and warm.  Ask the natives around here and they will tell you anything over 80 degrees is hot.  Mind you, these are the same folks that looked at snow on their yards for the better part of five straight months this past winter.  For that, I will give them a break.

Step 3

When I walk I listen to my music.  I also think.  Today I thought about how excited I am to start a new job when I get back home.  I will make a new office space my own at North Harrison High School next Monday when someone hands me the key to a place I will call my own after some decorating at the discretion of my dear wife, Carrie.  Given my new office is about half the size of my old one, and with even less wall space…there are more windows…  it will be interesting to see how our decorative appointing of the space will go.

Step 4

One the other side of this store I take a right hand turn and come back the direction I just came from on the other side of a wooded and lawn space between the two directions.

Step 5

Then back down again.

Step 6

As I walked I thought about how I never thought I would ever get back to North Harrison again.  We have had a few rough spots.  A post I wrote here last September made mention of a few of those times.  In deference,  I took that post off of speaktherights.com.  It no longer applies or needs to be there.  I am thankful for the opportunity to work close to home and help out the community I live in.

Step 7

A school building that was built in 1818.

Step 8

Getting very close to a church that I am sure could tell some stories.

Step 9

This church, still serving its parishioners, was built in 1774.  Note the time.  I heard the clock strike 2.

Step 10

The Church

Step 11

Step 12

Around the corner is the Town Hall.  It was built in 1825.  Folks went in and out of it with every pass I made by it.

The folks in this village are in interesting lot.  Some of them are as kind and easy going as can be.  Most, though, don’t come off that way.  I guess they need to get to know you first.  That is hard for a stranger they don’t seem to want to give the time of day to in a New England minute.  Maybe that is what five months of snow will do to you.

Step 13

The Town Hall

Step 14

The wooded path directly in front of the Town Hall.

Step 15

Around the corner one last time.

Back to our silver car…the last one on the right.

I indulge in a few guilty pleasures on my ipod when it comes to the songs I have on there that I first listened to as a teenager in the 1980s.  Though unplanned, as an ipod shuffle lives up to its task, all the old mental images I have carried for thirty years just seemed to fade away as I listened to the song “Life in Northern Town”.  Before me was the mental-track I will see for the next thirty years when I hear this song.

Speaking the Northern Rights.

Danny Johnson

My dear wife, Carrie, and I are in rainy Amherst, NH as I sit and type these words.  We are at the house of our friends Bob and Michelle.  This is a nice, peaceful place to visit.

My intent today is to share with you some images we have captured as we have been taking in some sight-seeing along the way.  We have been blessed to have been able to look at some cool sights. Some of the sights were not so much cool as they were emotional.  I will share these in chronological order the best I can.

Flags displayed in Pittsfield, Mass.  This was a lovely display in the center of town.

In Bennington, VT, we went to a great, friendly Ice Cream place.

My Friendly ice cream cone.

This was taken at the Norman Rockwell Museum.  I know I mentioned this stop in a previous post.  The man was an American treasure.  He preserved his work and where he worked for the rest of us to visit and reflect upon.

This photo does nothing for this painting.  I had to include it anyway.

We took a train from Poughkeepsie, New York into New York City for the day last week. The train ride was cool.  I sat in a window seat that followed the Hudson River all the way into town.

My dear Carrie looking around at Grand Central Station.

This was the first time I had ever seen a guy painting a traffic light.

Atop the Empire State Building.  This iconic relic is a great place to look at the city.  There is a reason it is made over the way it is.

Our grand tour guide, Mike, telling us the story about the tree that survived the 9/11 attack. The tree is in the middle background.

One of the Reflecting Pools at the World Trade  Center.  This is a place for reflection.  I remember where I was when the television news I was watching showed footage of the first tower’s damage and then seeing the second tower being hit by the second air craft.  Unreal.  Or so I thought.  It became very real on the day we visited this place.

I don’t know this lady’s name or her story.  I am sure someone does.  She stood at this spot a very long time as her finger tips traced and gently swiped across the name of someone lost to the attacks of that dreadful day.  With all the hustle and bustle going on around her, it was almost surreal to see her locked into her own little place with the name she obviously misses more than any word I can type hear can try to represent.  I wanted to give her a hug.  I wish I had.

A few yards from where the woman in green was standing, these gentleman were playing.

On the boat to visit the Statue of Liberty.  This photo is a favorite of mine.

I liked this one too.  In fact, I took so many pictures of this lady that I laughed and remembered how many pictures my Dad took of the Golden Gate Bridge when he and mom visited San Fran many years ago.  This was my Golden Gate Bridge.

A Monument at the site of the Battle of Bennington (VT).

Inside the Monument some 177 feet 7 inches.

Carrie and a friendly soldier at the base of the monument.

We took a little trip up to Saratoga Springs to see a “Train” concert.  They were great as always.

Mt. Greylock is the highest point in Massachusetts.  The shape of this mountain looks a bit like a whale.  This mountain influenced a guy named Herman Melville to write a story about a whale.  A little tale called “Moby Dick”.

Carrie and me at the summit of Mt. Greylock.

A marker at the top of the mountain.

Though I did not use one of them, these outhouses atop Mt. Greylock look to be the finest in the land!

A trip to Boston.  Carrie took this from where we at a late lunch.

The Old North Church.

The Steeple of the Old North Church.  One if by land two if by “C”…as in the Charles River.

Paul Revere and his ride.

Paul Revere’s final resting place.

I am heading into Paul Revere’s old house.

Outside the Old North Church.  Having had a son serve in Iraq and Afghanistan and make it back home up right, this was a most sobering of monuments for Carrie and me.

At the end of the day, we ate at this place…

I had a lobster roll that was fabulous.

Speaking the looking around rights.

Danny Johnson

COMPUTER ISSUES LEFT ME UNABLE TO POST THIS YESTERDAY

Editorial Note.  I planned this post to be themed around the trip Carrie, my dear wife, and I took to New York City yesterday.  I was going to tell you stories about the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center Site and the Reflecting Pools left behind.  I will get to that, I promise.  Some of it is very funny, very informative, and very moving.  Today, however, I am moved to tell the following story:

Four days ago I sat poolside here at the place we are staying in “The Berkshires”.  It’s a very nice place…but it is not as trendy as it sounds.  Perhaps it was much trendier a century ago.  Well, I know it was.  It is still a very nice spot to vacation, though we have only had weather warm enough to be poolside that one day.

In the irony of ironies department, as I sat poolside four days ago, I read a book by a lady named Ruby Bridges.  Ruby is a strong and brave lady you have probably never heard of, even though you should have.  Recorded history and what is deemed by “deemers” often leaves out folks you should have heard about and spends too much time on some folks better off forgotten.

In the book I read as I was sitting poolside, Through My Eyes was the title, Ruby Bridges tells the story of how she was a first grade student going to an all white elementary school in New Orleans in 1960.  The city of New Orleans was going through federal court ordered integration of their public schools.

The picture I have placed at the beginning of this post is a painting by the late great Norman Rockwell.  You know, the guy who is famous for all of his Saturday Evening Post covers.  Well, he painted a story about Ruby Bridges.  He was compelled, as were many good citizens, to put forth the effort to help the cause of racial equality.  Many not so good citizens, more of them in number to be noted on the scene, were not so gracious.  They did not want a first grader going to their children’s school.  Imagine that. They were scared of a first grader.  That pretty much sums up their sensibility.  I know…I know…this little girl was a symbol of a greater fear these people had going on.  It is always the pioneer who suffers the most.

Ruby Bridges spent most of that first grade year quarantined in a room in that school by herself being taught by a lady from Boston.  In New Orleans in 1960 in one classroom there was a black student and her teacher was from Massachusetts.  The odds were certainly against them.

I was so inspired when I read the short story of the first hand account of the times and days Ruby faced, endured, and eventually made triumphant.

With just a few pages left of my reading, Carrie, my dear wife, found in her “phone research” that the Norman Rockwell Museum was about a half an hour’s drive from where we were sitting.  We went the next day.

The Norman  Rockwell painting that depicts the harsh reality first grader Ruby Bridges faced as she was daily escorted to school by federal marshals is titled The Problem We All Live With.  The photo I put in this post is one I took of the painting that is prominent in the museum.

As I studied the painting, I breathed a semi-sigh of relief as I reflected on my own life, I am 47 years old, and how I would like to believe folks…particularly black and white…have made progress getting along.  I’ve seen it.  I have heard it.  Or, should I say, I have heard less of it.  The progress I feel I have witnessed made me proud.

That pride…at least a great deal of it…took a serious blow today.

When on vacation, I admit it, right or wrong, I just don’t keep up with many of the things I normally keep up with.  I don’t watch sports.  I don’t watch much television.  I just try to disconnect a bit and unwind.  My phone is still not “smart”.  I do read newpapers incessantly, however.  This morning I read The Boston Herald, The New York Post, The Daily News, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Albany Union, and The Berkshire Eagle.  I start early and make my way through them until mid-morning.  None of these editions had any of the news of what Carrie told me as we were eating a late lunch at our favorite local eatery around 2PM this afternoon.

Carrie said something to me about a “shooting”.  She was stunned that Mr. Newspaper Man did not know.  She figured I was just not saying anything to keep her own feelings at bay, as I know this tragedy tears her to shreds.  Well, she continued to tell me about the South Carolina church shooting that has left nine dead and others wounded in some manner or another all over the world.

Norman Rockwell sure knew how to name a painting, didn’t he?

I am sad beyond the words I type here.

Why do some people have to be so stupid?  I suppose that is an age-old question that probably won’t stop making the rounds any time soon.

As a child I grew up in a small Southern Indiana town that did not have a single black person living in it.  Most of rural Southern Indiana is like this still.  There just aren’t many black folks around.  Most of the prejudices I have witnessed were passed on from generation to generation and based on two things…stupidity and fear.

I was fortunate as a child growing up in this environ.  I knew better.

My parents are from Mississippi.  My mother can tell you stories about how her family did not have anything against the black people they knew.  In fact, my white mother picked cotton right along side kids her age that happened to be black.  They,  black kids and white kids…picked the cotton side by side because the money had to be made and the cotton had to be picked.  There were no protests going on.  There were no federal marshals seeing to it that these cotton pickers were getting it right.  The work had to be done and they were doing it.  Refreshing news from 1952.

When I was a kid we had a grand family reunion every Thanksgiving day in Scott County, Mississippi.  My mother had sixteen brothers and sisters.  It was a grand time.

The day following the reunion, my parents and my sister and I would visit folks an hour drive away in the Mississippi capitol city of Jackson.  The last stop on this day of visiting was my favorite.  The last stop was at the house of one Edna Bell.  Edna was the housekeeper of my great-great grandparents in the 1940s-50s-and part of the 60s.  Edna was like family to us.  Edna Bell was black.  Edna lived in an all black neighborhood.  I loved the woman dearly.

This is a picture of my Dad, who spent a great deal of time with Edna as a small child, and me holding my baby brother as we are sitting next to Edna.  This picture was taken in 1984.  It was the last time we saw Edna before she passed away.  I miss her.

I often tell students I work with that in my lifetime I have been cussed, hit, kicked, made fun of, pushed around, falsely accused, brokenhearted, and just plain hurt by other people I have known…and every one of those people that either attempted or succeded to hurt me were white people.

There is a problem we all live with.  I suppose it is not going away.  Human nature will always get in the way of God’s plan.

Trying deperately to speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

A few posts ago I showed this photo.

I found it in a computer lab two years ago last June as I was leaving for a summer break of my own.  I was compelled to record the image.  I have no idea who wrote this.  It looked sad and significant at the same time.  When I took this picture I did not know I would be leaving my job this summer at this school to take another position at a different school.  I wrote about all this recently.  And as predicted, I wrote the following on this same white board two years later.

My last day working for the Medora Community School Corp. in Medora, Indiana was June 12, 2015.  When I turned my key in, Carrie, my dear wife, and I walked out the door and drove to Akron, Ohio.  This was our stop as we traveled on the next day to Hancock, Massachusetts.

On our way Saturday, we drove the length of the New York Thruway from Western New York, we went by Buffalo and Syracuse, all the way to Albany.  This was a toll road.  I was impressed with this road.   When you get on it, the first mileage sign says Albany 342 and New York 490.  You better pack a lunch.  We got off at Albany and took a highway to our destination from there…some thirty-five minutes later.

The New York Thruway should be applauded…excuse me a moment while I clap my hands.  There, I clapped my hands for a few seconds.  Those of you who follow speaktherights.com know I CAN’T STAND IT when people are looking at their phone as they drive down the road.  On the New York Thruway, I found this sign and others like it on multiple occasions:

The good folks in New York State  are encouraging people to pull off the road when they need to send a text message.   God Bless Them!

Yesterday Carrie and I went to Pittsfield, Mass.  We have been there before.  The local library, they call it the Berkshire Athenaeum, houses a Herman Melville room that is unreal.

There was a wonderful display of American flags in the middle of town.  I took some pictures of them.

I also took a picture of Carrie and myself.  Still have the Medora shirt on.

Not for long.

When I get home I will be wearing BLUE.  On Thursday last, I was named one of the school counselors at North Harrison High School.  I am so looking forward to working closer to home while having the ability to help students in my own back yard.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

This morning on my way to work I wanted to honk at someone something fierce.  I really want to use words here I was not brought up to use…so I won’t use them.  Let me say MAD does not begin to hit the level of frustration I had as I was driving to work.

For over fifteen years I have been driving no less than 108 miles back and forth to where I work.  All of that is going to cease after this Friday.  While there are many aspects of my job I will miss, driving two hours and change a day will not be one of them.

As I drive, I keep my head on a swivel.  Watch out for the deer.  Watch out for more deer.  Watch out for idiots looking at their phone while they are supposed to be driving.   That is what happened this morning.  A dumb driver, forget the fact that she was a female…at least I think (one can never be quite sure these days), crossed the center line doing highway speed in excess of 50 miles per hour. This car was heading toward me and my car.  Suddenly the lady, I use that term very liberally here, jerked her car back in the proper space that was her lane and as I passed her, she had her phone sitting vertical above her steering wheel and she was paying a heck of a great deal more attention to it than she was the road we were driving on.

Here is my dilemma.  Do I honk at her and scare her to death?  Not a bad idea.  Still, I don’t want her to run off the road and hurt herself.  But, I wonder, would I be doing her a service by honking at her, getting her stupid attention, and thus giving her something to think about.  That is if she can think that much.  I have my doubts.  I sure don’t want her hurting someone else.  Namely me!  What can I say, I’m greedy that way.

 I watched the Louisville Cardinals play a college baseball game on television last night.   It was the first time this year I have watched a college game through more than, say, three innings in succession.   This was an important game.  The team that won was to go on to the College World Series in Omaha.  The Cardinals, playing at home, got beat.  I am glad they did.  Their starting pitcher was acting more like a drunk flamingo than a cardinal.  He was showing off on the mound and showing up the bench of the Cal-State Fullerton Titans.  Sure he was doing a good job, at least for most of the time he was pitching.  But his rude behavior and incessant trash talking and making a fool of himself wore so thin that even the game’s ESPN announcers had enough and talked about if you had a 15 yard penalty in baseball they would be throwing the flag on the pitcher.

This behavior is fairly consistent with University of Louisville players in high profile sports.  I suppose I am talking about football, basketball, and now baseball.  The behavior exhibited is great as long as you are winning.  When you lose, you look like a fool.  I think they look like fools full time.  But, that is just me.  If I could throw a baseball 95 miles per hour I might act like a fool too.  In fact, I probably would.  I hope not.  If I did it would not last long.  My mom would call me up and rip me a new one.  Enough said.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

A couple days ago I dismantled my office.  I gutted the thing.  Any trace of my existence is gone from the walls.  Believe me…  I had MANY traces of existence on the walls of my office at Medora Community Schools.  I had a poster of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr framed.  I had Paul McCartney on the wall.  The Moody Blues were there too, of course.  There was a small picture of the church Carrie, my dear wife, and I were married in.  There was a small picture of my grandfather and myself fishing together at the town pond when I was a small child.  There was a likeness of the painting “NIghthawks” that I have drooled over on these very pages.  There was a poster of the Wright Brothers first flight at Kitty Hawk.  The guy that took the picture was using a camera for the first time…at least that is the story I heard.  Henry David Thoreau was represented.  As was a bunch from Scott County, Mississippi. This is a photo of my maternal grandparents and their seventeen children.  The last time they were all together…I think.  The year was 1959.

The best pictures I had on the wall, however, were these:

The Medora High School graduating class of 2013 was an exceptional bunch.  They were getting college acceptance letters left and right even in the early fall of their senior years.  They would bring them to me and wave them around.  It was like “dink” light bulb over the head.  I told them to bring their acceptance letters in and we would get their pictures made with them and hang them up.  For the last three years, that is what we have done.  I am proud of these students.

Some more lasting images from my time at Medora.

Christmas 2012.  My English class and I delivered homemade chocolate chip cookies to every elementary school student and we wished them a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

That same class. They were an exceptional group. I say it again.  One day they were complaining about the plight of their senior trip and how they did not want to go to Chicago…but South instead. Picking up on their dismay, I told them this was a prime time to put their aggression to good use.  We started talking about song writing and rhymes schemes and I had my guitar with me that day.  We wrote a song and took it to Al Fresco’s Place Recording in Louisville and, with the help of Rod Wurtele and Jeff Carpenter, we cut a record.

My golfing buddy and good friend Darrell Persinger holding up his Dad’s letter sweater soon after his Dad passed away.  Sorry your eyes are closed, Darrell.

One of the last bus rides I took with my dear friend Mike Hunsucker at the wheel.  Mike died last May.  He had cancer.  I miss him so.  Notice his wife Bonnie in the rear-view mirror.

Here is Bonnie holding up Turkey Lurkey.  He hatched at the school.  Bonnie, I will miss you.  You are a dear friend.

Jim Stewart.  He was the best school man I ever knew.  He hired me in this very office in 1998.  He died a few years ago too.  He worked at thirteen different schools.  He refused to compromise his beliefs and it did not always work out.  He’d say “I’d come home and tell Shirley to call the moving van again.”  He worked at Medora for twelve years and said it was the best job he ever had.

I will miss this Irishman saying “Top of the Morning to You!”  and occasionally singing to me a few bars of “Danny Boy”.

How could you not miss Mr. Disque!  He introduced me to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway via a field trip and was gracious enough to let me chaperon that field trip two more times.  Three visits in four years to the place they run the I-5!  Mr. Disque…you are my hero!

My friend Brad McCammon.  We are no longer co-workers.  Come to think about it, we never were.  We were friends that worked together.  We shared good times and bad times.   We celebrated victories and stayed strong when tragedy struck our school.  Like Dorthy said to the Scarecrow….”I think I’m going to miss you most of all.”

Speaking the “saying goodbye” Rights.

Danny Johnson