Gads…I looked up and saw that I have been away from these pages for near a week.

I have two theories.

One…I am working on another literary pursuit that has taken time and effort away from this spot.  Been spending a great deal of brain time on this other project.  I have been wanting to write something here.  I was, in fact, taken aback when I saw how long it was since I made a post.  I wish I could put something new on this space every day.  Does that mean I put a few lines together for good form every day without trying to really “say” anything.  I don’t know how that will work out for me.  I don’t like to waste time.  I don’t like to waste words.  Both of those things are worth something.  I am not sure how I will solve this.  I need to put my efforts in the project I am working on just to get it out of my system and be able to move on.

Two…my last post about Peyton Manning just needs to hang out there for a while.  I don’t want the sun to set on Peyton.  Word is that he told the coach of the New England Patriots that this might be his “last rodeo”.  I knew that.  All you have to do is look at Peyton.  He looks small.

He reminds me of my elementary principal.  My elementary school principal, Harry Spurgeon, retire when I was a fourth grader.  He paddled me and friend of mine for chewing gum in music class.  I believe now that Harry just wanted to paddle someone before he retired.  He was such an imposing figure.  Broad shoulders.  A square jaw.  He was larger than life to us 4th graders.  He was even imposing when I was still in high school attending a different school district.  I was in high school and saw him at a basketball game and felt compelled to say something to him.  All he wanted to do was talk about how much he liked my Dad.

The last time I saw Harry I was in my mid-thirties.  It was at a high school football game at Clarksville.  Harry, from Brownstown, was there to root on the Braves.  I saw him near the concession stand.  He approached me.  He asked how I was doing.  I only thought I knew who he was.  I looked at one of my old Brownstown friends, Harv Brown, and asked….”Was that….?”  Harv looked at me and said yes, it was Harry Spurgeon.  I was dumbfounded.  The man we all feared when we were ten was now a little old man with a smile on his face.  I cherish that memory.

Now I am hoping I will cherish the memory of Peyton Manning going out a Super Bowl winner.  It is all too much to believe.  Peyton looks so slight.  He looks small.  When he is out on the field he still looks larger than life while he looks small.  Who else has ever pulled that off?

The oldest starting quarterback in a Super Bowl will be P. Manning.  I think this will be the last game we will see Peyton Manning play.  That in itself will make this Super Bowl a melancholy time.

Gosh I hope he wins.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Thirty-four years ago today I looked at a television set with more attention than I ever did before or since.  It was Super Bowl XVI.  The teams were the San Francisco 49ers and the Cincinnati Bengals.  This Super Bowl lived up to its name.  Okay, so the game was not as close as the 26-21 final score indicated.  The Niners led 20-0 at halftime, thanks to a Bengal squad that turned into a first half turnover factory.  It was awful.

Why was this Super Bowl so special?  First of all, my childhood football hero was playingin the game.  Ken Anderson was the quarterback of the Cincinnati Bengals from the time I was three years old until I was a senior in high school.  In fact, I saw his last start in Riverfront Stadium against the Seahawks.  He got hurt.  The Seahawks won.  Boomer Esiason was named the starting quarterback and he would be that the next season, Ken Anderson’s last in 1986.  Kenny held for extra points and field goals.  That was my last vision of old #14 on a football field.  One knee down catching and holding a ball he was born to throw.  Thinking about him taking a flea-flicker from Pete Johnson and throwing it sixty yards to Isaac Curtis making the catch high over his left shoulder in stride ten yards from a goal line and five yards in front of the guy defending him.  That is what I like to remember.

Why was Super Bowl XVI so special?  That 1981 season they had great records.  The Niners finished the season with 13 wins and 3 defeats.  The Bengals won 12 games and lost 4.  The season before, both teams finished the 1980 season with 6-10 records.  Never has such a Cinderella Story been played out…before or since.  I doubt if I see it again.

Ken Anderson was my childhood hero.  When we went out to play football; my friends and I did that often.  There were no video games.  I was always Ken Anderson.  I had his five step drop down pat.  I threw the ball around a great deal as a youngster.  The ability to sling it a bit is fortunately still with me.  Though my shoulder does get a little weak all too soon and I have to call it quits.

I have had other heroes.

Justin Hayward is my musical hero.  I am fortunate enough to have seen him sing many times.  This March I have a couple Moody Blues concerts circled on the calendar.  Justin is a good guy.  His songs mean a great deal to me.  I will never stop listening to the positive message I get from the sounds he has made with his pen, with his voice, and with his guitar.

John Abbott is a hero of sorts.  He is the guy that married Carrie and me twenty years ago come this February.  Rev. John Abbott is a legendary United Methodist pastor.  He has great stories.  He preaches and teaches with conviction and honesty and he is not out to win a popularity contest.  He is here to help.  He sure did that for us.

Jim Brown is my hometown hero.  My Dad was his football coach all four years of high school.  I never looked up to any high school player more than I did Jim.  He worked hard.  He was a good guy.  I still think about the impression he made on me as I was a youngster.  Our paths cross about a half a dozen times each year.  It is always a joy to see him.

Jim Stewart is my hero in the field of education.  He taught and coached and was an administrator at no less than thirteen schools up and down and across the state of Indiana.  He taught me more than any piece of paper I have represents.  Why was he at thirteen schools?  He was, on occasion, asked to leave.  Why?  He would not conform to what he did not believe in.  He was the king principal of principle.  He was my boss.  He was my mentor.  He was my friend.  I miss him so much.

Millard Dunn is a hero to me of the utilization of the English language.  I wrote a tribute to Millard not long ago on this very site last October.  He too is one of the good guys.

Peyton Manning is in this pantheon of company.  He is the only one left in the National Football League I can call a hero. He is playing a very important game today.  While his performance is being dissected as I type by talking heads on football pre-game blow off hot air shows that began before sunrise this morning, I am just looking forward to kickoff.  I don’t care that his team is playing the New England Patriots.  All I want is to see Peyton under center or in the shot gun or drinking gator drink for that matter.  I want to see him in that uniform.  I want to see his brow curled up as he looks to his team’s next strategic move. I want to see him in football cleats.  I am feared that he won’t be able to spend  time in his natural habitat much longer.

Though I may have missed one, I have figured up I have been fortunate enough to see Peyton Manning play 12 times as a pro.  Eleven of those were when he played for the Indianapolis Colts.  There is a big stadium in that town.  I saw it yesterday.  Lucas Oil is the name on the side of the thing.  If you shut your left eye and squint with the right one, you can watch the letters magically rearrange to say Manning Stadium.  I never saw Peyton play in that new place.  The charm of the cracker box Hoosier Dome is how I want to remember my time watching Peyton.  Those 11 games I saw him play in that now deflated dome?  The Colts won 10 of them.  The one they lost was a blessing.  My son Jarrett is a Dan Marino fan.  Dan brought the Dolphins back in the fourth quarter in what turned out to be the last great 4th quarter comeback in his storied career. He retired after that season.  That was worth looking at and sharing.

In 2012 I saw Peyton play over at Cincinnati with a couple of my childhood pals whose friendship has remained steadfast to this day.

Peyton is the last football hero I will have.  I don’t love the pro game like used to.  When little brother Eli Manning (my FAVORITE player) retires I will be in a spot.  I suppose I can join my Mom and root for Teddy Bridgewater.

Regardless, Peyton is the one and only.  I have said it before and I will say it again.  HE MADE FOOTBALL IN INDIANA.  We have him to thank for giving this game its legs in a place that is in love with basketball and always will be.  That is fine too.  You can’t have it all.  There aren’t two favorites.  I love chocolate ice cream.  I won’t eat strawberry ice cream.

You better believe I have enjoyed watching Peyton Manning play football with the passion and effort that he puts into every play.  That is what I will miss.  His devotion to the play and his looking for the next play.  He has never felt compelled to act as though he is running for public office after he made a good play.  He was too concerned about making the next play better.  I hope the guys on the field on his team play like that today.  They can beat the Patriots.  I believe that.  I just hope they do.  I want to the sun to hang up there just a little longer for #18.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

While I was exercising today I watched a movie.  MIRACLE is the story of the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey Team and how they beat the Soviet Union team during those Olympic Games.  February 22, 1980 was the date.  An old friend of mine said, the last time I saw him, he was at may parents’ house delivering wood for our fireplace with another gent we knew.

We huddled around a TV screen that was reliant upon “rabbit ears” to provide the signal of we would be watching.  I can attest the screen was far from the pristine visions we see running across TVs in 2016.  Still, it was better than anything I have seen on television in a long time.

There was a great deal of snow on the ground today.  When it was time to go down to exercise, I looked for this movie.  It felt like the right thing to do.

It makes my head spin to think this movie was released 12 years ago come February 6th.  I can tell you I never tire of watching it.

I was fascinated by this game.  I was eleven years old when this game was played.  Having lived under the same roof with a high school football coach my entire young life at the time, I understood a few things about competition.  I knew a thing or two about underdogs and what they were up against.  As much as I remember the victorious celebration of the USA team, the impression that made the most impact on me was that of the disbelief on the faces and in the posture of the Russians.  They stood there leaning on their hockey sticks not understanding what was in front of them.  They were not programmed to realize they could lose.  They just stood there.

I look forward to watching this movie again.

I shared a piece of prose I wrote with the local paper that 2004 winter.  They were kind enough to print it.  It is still on their archives and about twice a year I look it up.  I read it and I am glad it saw the light of day.

In the column I make an inference to my speaking with Herb Brooks, the coach of the 1980 Olympic team.  I really did do just that.  I was writing a paper for a Sports history class. My subject was the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey Team. Coach Brooks was coaching the Utica Devils of the AHL at the time.  I can tell you I don’t know if I was ever more nervous on the telephone.

From 2004…

This actually ran in the paper on January 24, 2004, before the MIRACLE movie came out.

My dear wife, Carrie, got me a camera recently.  It was a nice Christmas present.  I really appreciate it.  I kind of get a kick out of taking pictures.  I refuse to make inferences that I know what I am doing when I take photographs.  I don’t know much about it.  I do know you need a little light here and there.  I know how to take a picture of people and not cut their heads off.  My mother finally developed that skill.  She had been working on it since the Lyndon Johnson administration.

So, I don’t know a shutter speed from a window shutter.  I do know that I recently ate an overpriced salad and a bread stick in a building that was a drug store when I was a kid.  This was the same place where we would take our 110 Kodak camera film and turn it over to someone in the hopes that in a couple weeks we would get an envelope full of pictures that nearly represented the days we took them.

It is not 1976.  It is 2016.  I can take a picture and look at it a second after I take it.  Had someone pulled out a camera like the one I use now and took a picture and showed the view screen around to the subjects of the shot in, say, 1976, we would have been dumbfounded.  I can only dream of the looks on the faces.

So now I share with you a few images I have recently captured with my new camera.  I doubt I get any acknowledgment for these photos like I received for one of the railroad tracks lit up in a pink shade late last year.  That was a cool picture.

One last shot.  May never get better than this…

I may take a picture of the Broncos playing today.  It is supposed to be 40 degrees or better in Denver.

Denver April 2014

Speak the rights!

Danny Johnson

Of late, for whatever reason, my mind has flashed upon my immediate memory a quote that was posted in the room of a colleague I worked with at another school.  I didn’t like the quote.  I did not think or believe it was a good piece of advice for her students.  Did I tell her so?  No.  I did not.  She was fresh out of college and full of great ideas and a work ethic that I would be delighted to pass along to any other new teacher that walks into any new building with the charge of helping students learn and be productive citizens. I had no problem with the teacher.  She was great for the students.  I have no doubt she still is.

Unfortunately, every time I think about her and her classroom and how well it was maintained….including the marked productivity it amassed…I still can’t get away from that quote that was on the door in her classroom.

“The highest result of education is tolerance.”- Helen Keller.

Who in the heck am I to argue with Helen Keller?  If she were here, I would argue nonetheless.

Good quote?  Maybe.  It has, after all, made its way to posters and postings.  Had I made up that quote, folks would have laughed at it and discounted it for all the right reasons.

Tolerance did not help an American walk on the moon.  The desire to beat the Russians to the moon was not based on tolerance.  It was anti-tolerance.  We needed to be first.  We would not tolerate and accept anything else.

My wistful question of the day is where did that kind of spirit go?  I suppose it, in part, went with whatever has caused the chasm in this country like I have never seen it before.  None of us have seen it like this before.  Every time you turn around there is yet another “device” to look upon.  Gas pumps in some places even have news screens on them.  After the obligatory commercial that pays for it runs, there might be news of the day on it.  Yes, I have actually seen these.  I did not just read about them.  Pretty darn strange.

I wish I had the answer.

All of this thought brings me back to wondering if the boys and girls that brought us the moon shot had to be responsible for standardized testing that started telling them if they were good or not starting in the third grade would have made it to where they got…changing history for the better.  I can only wonder.  I can also speculate.  Like Nick Carraway, I will reserve my judgment.  I bet you can figure out what I think.

I do know that the best things I have been a part of have not been produced by tolerance.

I kicked a school record field goal because I could not tolerate missing that kick.

I took the advice of George Plimpton one day and ran with it (I really did talk to him).  I did not take the time to ask if toleration was in the mix of our speaks.

I obtained a masters degree in school counseling because I could not tolerate not doing so.  In the process, I have helped many students.

I write because I could not tolerate not doing so.  Tolerance never helped my creative process.

Do I have respect for Helen Keller?  What do you think?  Duh!  I tolerate the idea that I am sure she had other ideas and “quotes” that we surely missed out on that were much more meaningful and right than the one that is the subject of this post on speaktherights.com.

Moving on…

I hope the Broncos beat the Steelers this weekend.

I hope the Chiefs beat the Patriots.

I hope the Panthers beat the Seahawks.

I hope the Cardinals beat the Packers in the NFL playoffs.  I am feeling pretty good after picking Bama to beat Clemson in the FBS Championship.

I am also dumbfounded that Indiana University game its head football coach, Kevin Wilson, with his 20-41 record, a six year extension that includes so much “geat” that it will be hard to impossible to pay him off until 2020.  All I can say is “Wow”.  I knew the folks in Bloomington were a little touched…but this?  This being a coach who made a bowl game with a team that finished with a losing record getting a million dollar-plus raise per season.  Kind of makes 80s music seem a little more legitimate, doesn’t it?

I don’t know Kevin Wilson, the Hoosiers gridiron coach.  I  met Bill Mallory.  I met Terry Hoeppner.  They were great for Indiana Football. So was Bill Lynch.  All I can say is that I believe Kevin Wilson was lucky enough to get into a bowl game the same season the Hoosiers had a great Big Ten home schedule and a great many fans showed up to watch…many from Ohio, Michigan, and Iowa.  We’ll take their money…no matter where they are from.  Now it belongs to Coach Wilson.  Good for your family!  Not so good, I am afraid, for IU Nation…however thin or thick it may be.  I am not saying Coach Wilson is not a good person.  In fact, I hope I eat every syllable I type unfavorably about him.  I’ve just feel like I have seen this movie before and it doesn’t work out very well.

Sorry coach.  I hope you prove me wrong.  I hope to make it to the Rose Bowl one day.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

When my brother, thirteen years younger than me, was a couple years old and beginning to talk, one of his favorite early phrases was…”Cold out there.”

Well, it is cold out there this morning.  My dear wife, Carrie, just told me it is 4 degrees.  Two days ago the afternoon temperature was in the mid-50s.

I was never enamored with the old saying about Southern Indiana weather.  “Just hang around, cos it is going to change.”  Or something like that.

It certainly feeling that way this morning.  Many schools are closed around the area.  Our school district is on a two hour delay. That is a good thing.  Did I say it was cold?

I took this picture early yesterday morning.

This was taken yesterday morning after preaching.

Bengals are Bungals.  The Cincinnati Bengals would be at the team facility this morning looking for their second consecutive playoff victory in a row since the 1988 season, had a couple guys on the team not been foolish and selfish.

The late Bum Phillips said it best…”A dumb guy (on your team) will kill you every time.”

The dumb actions of two players cost the rest of the team, coaches, and city of Cincinnati the chance to advance in the playoffs.  The worst thing.  No one is shocked.  That is certainly part of the problem.  We expected bad decisions.  We knew a few of the cannons out there were loose.  I feel sorry for the guy who struggled to make the team, is making the league minimum, and may never see another NFL roster with his name on it again.  He was deprived due to the dumb actions of others.

This playoff game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cincinnati Bengals  this past Saturday night was exhibit “L” of how the NFL is stinking it up this season.

THANKFULLY the game yesterday between the Seattle Seahawks and the Minnesota Vikings was just what the NFL needed.  This was a classy game.  Two teams playing hard.  No players were acting as though they were running for public office and bringing undue attention upon themselves after a good play.  No players acting like childish Democrats and unruly Republicans going at each other after the whistle had blown.  It was just a great football game.  Too bad the Vike kicker missed a short one (27 yards) to leave the Vikings with a 10-9 defeat.  My mother was too sad.  She was sporting her Teddy Bridgewater jersey yesterday and it was the first game he had list since she started wearing it.

My speaktherights.com College Foootball prediction season comes to an end tonight.

The season predictions were respectable.  115 wins and 50 loser.

The Bowl Season has not been kind…18 winners 22 losers.

Tonight I hold true to my prediction.  The Tide will roll.  Me saying that should be enough to make Brother Tim from Alabama a nervous man.  I hope they come through for you Tim.

That is speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

I admit it.  I had enough NFL football for one season.  Maybe even enough for a part of my lifetime.

I am so sick and tired of watching the NFL being turned into a soap opera.  The NFL Network stinks.  The build up… the let down…then the blame game.

Once upon a time we tuned into Curt Gowdy because we respected him and what he had to say about a great game and that was quite enough.  Now we still have good announcers…but we also have a studio full of cue-card reading football is my ticket thanks to my other physical attributes.  I quote Don Henley from “Dirty Laundry” ….”See the bubble headed bleach blonde…”  I never thought I would ever quote Don Henley.  Things really must be bad.  I know…I know…I have the option not to watch and, in truth, I have seen less than an hour of NFL Network yammering since September got here.  I don’t watch it.

Things were really bad until yesterday.  With a Denver Bronco offense that sputtered and no one person to put the blame on in the first half…they had five turnovers in the first half.   Gary Kubiak, “Kubes”, I can still hear him as he was “miked up” in 1982 on Christmas Day playing in the Kelly Tires Blue-Gray Game.  It was the college all-star game we football junkies watched at noon Eastern time before the “Aloha Bowl” was played at 3:30 our time.  It was mid-morning in Honolulu.  Merry Christmas.

I suppose it was the first time I ever heard a player “miked-up” during a live game.  Heck, I know it was.  And I still have a crystal clear memory of listening to the quarterback from Texas A&M, not the Denver Broncos’ coach.  In the huddle, I can still hear Gary Kubiak telling his players… “Check me…check me…on two on two.”  Then he went up to the line of scrimmage. “TWO…TWO….”  It is a memory I would never trade in a million years.  I think of it every time I see Gary Kubiak on television.

So there I was Sunday, licking my wounds thinking about Ken Anderson and how I once cheered for the likes of him and Fran Tarkenton and John Elway.  Eli Manning, my favorite player,  just finished a nasty season.  What a mess that was in NY.

I sat there watching two TV screens with my brother-in-law.  The last of the 2015 season to soak in.  There he was dressed as a back up quarterback for the first time I can remember in the NFL.  Peyton Manning went into Sunday’s game as the 2nd string quarterback.

Peyton Manning came out of the game as the hero.

I don’t fault Brock Isweiler, Bronco QB who started the game.  He was in a spot.  Who in their right mind wants to be the man that follows the man.  It has only worked out on two occasions…Steve Young for Joe Montana and Aaron Rogers for Brett Favre.  Danny White was close following Roger Staubach.

I like Brock Isweiler.  He is a great quarterback.  I thought he was awesome at Arizona State.  He will be a great one and I hope Denver can find a way to hang on to him.  He looks at home in that Bronco uniform and I would bet he knows that.  P won’t be there long.  That is what we call Peyton Manning in my little corner of Indiana, we just call him “P”.  Maybe one day we will look at the TV when the Broncos are playing and wonder how “B” is doing.

Here is what I do know.  Before Peyton went into the game and completed 5 of 9 passes, I was looking forward to getting Super Bowl 50 in my rear-view mirror.  Now…with “P” in the picture, I hope things take their sweet time.

My dear wife, Carrie, and I will be married 20 years come this February.  We lived in a little house when we got married.  In August of 1998, I went out to the side of the house and manually turned our TV antennae on a pole to point toward Channel 4 to the North to pick up the Colts from our extreme Southern Indiana Harrison County home. We sat as far away as we could from the TV to make out the picture the best we could. (Thanks to Peyton, the Louisville market now sees all the Colts pre-season games and we can watch the games close or far from the TV.)   Peyton Manning threw a touchdown on his first pass that night in a game at Seattle…I think.  No matter, it was a memory, kind of like Gary Kubiak’s miked-up performance in 1982.

All I can say is…Go Broncos!  Keep Peyton upright and you can go anywhere!

I have yet to check on the “Black Monday” NFL coach firings today.  I hope Chuck Pagano did not get fired.  41 wins in four years and he went through four or five QBs this season.  I got news for you…the Colts don’t have Peyton Manning anymore.  He compensated some other shortcomings the franchise is looking at now.  And I am not talking about the QB position.  Andrew Luck is a good one.  I just doubt he told management he would kick their butt if they did not take him.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

Last year the photo I posted on January 1 was of the sun coming up over the Atlantic Ocean, as Carrie and I were planted on the dry ground of Hilton Head, South Carolina.

January 1, 2016 starts with the sun up over the high tree line to the East of our house.  I stood atop a picnic table to take this shot.

So here we are.  2016 is here.  I don’t know about you, but I still have a period of adjustment every year not just with the last digit but with all four of them.  There are times I still feel like I am in 19…something.  I know.  That is my problem.

2016.

I hope the year is good to you.  I know it will be for me.  I am optimistic.  I am happy.  I am thankful.  I thank God for the opportunity and the ability to sit here and type these words and enjoy doing it.

A good way to start things is going over to my parents’ house and watching some January 1 Bowl games.  I remember last year sitting in South Carolina on New Year’s Day.  It was odd enough being out of town during the changing of the year.  It was even stranger sitting there watching College Football…particularly The Rose Bowl…my favorite…without the smell of cabbage and black eyed peas and corn bread coming from my mother’s kitchen.

I will tell you that I still cherish that picture of the sun coming up over the ocean on the first day of a new year.  There is something special about that, no matter what the day, month, or year.

1/1/15

I have many hopes, wishes, and dreams for 2016.

Most of all, I hope and pray folks will learn to get along a little better and love one another.

Our differences are no more or less than they have ever been.  Our ability and modalities to run one another down are at an all time high.  I would be glad to see the World Wide Web crash for about two weeks.  I know it would cut into speaktherights.com time; it would be worth it.  The cost would not be too great.  The mess would be worth it.

Have a great year and on occasion, don’t forget to…

Speak the rights.

Danny Johnson