I did not walk today.  In the previous 7 days I walked 38 miles.  This morning I settled on some time lifting and 2 miles on the elliptical and two miles on the stationary bike.  Why did I walk so much?  Two reasons:  trying to maintain a better habit of health.  Though I walked a great deal on our trip to the Northeast, I also ate a whole lot more than I usually do.  Lobsters rolls that I eat are the truth and they include real bread and PLENTY of real butter.  Also there is a nice country store near where we stay that carries not only all the papers one would want to read but also a crumble cake concoction that is unreal.  Also I have been taking advantage of the cool temperatures and the low humidity that came with it.  Have mercy that was good walking weather.  Felt almost like The Berkshires in the Rolling Hills here.

Next week my dear wife, Carrie, and my sister, Lynn, and her daughter, Katie, are going to see relatives in Mississippi for a few days.  This is always a good time.  I am looking forward to it.  I think it was 2013 the last time we were down there for our family reunion in October.  That is good times.

Watching the healthcare debate in Washington has been a strong lesson to younger folks as to what NOT to do when you grow up to be a politician.  Be he or she Republican, Libertarian, Democrat, or Independent,  the office of the president of the USA is not a place to be cutting your political teeth.  That is what we are dealing with.  Clue vs. No clue.  We have a Commander in Tweet and that is about the size of it.  Look, I got a license to say this.  I am a Republican and we lost our chance when John Kasich got turned away.  No one should be shocked that any of this is not working out well.  When Mitch McConnell announced to the world that his intent was to see President Obama fail, Mitch failed the country and what comes around goes around.  Power and greed are alive and well in this country, otherwise we would have a chance to have a real leader in the White House.

If you  have insurance and you need to go to physical therapy to get yourself in better working order because you care about yourself and your loved ones, you better TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOUR OPPORTUNITY before the chance is taken away.

One of my favorite writers shared with me his support for Donald Trump and called him amoral in the same sentence.  He said it was up to those around him to shape him up.  Well, I don’t think there is time for that.

I have said it before and I will say it again.  We are back to the 1960s again.  The kids that couldn’t get along in the Summer of Love are still fighting…and a country weakens all over again.  Is there enough resolve to do the right thing?  At what point will honesty still matter?  I am not a big fan of the news outlets that pander to the left or the right.  But I do get a sense we are dealing with a little Pravdaesque treatment from an administration that really doesn’t do much administrating.  The White House is whiter than ever.  The whitewash is in full flower and the painted constituents look like photo negatives of the flower children.

Pardon me while I listen to The Moody Blues album Days of Future Passed.  Both sides know a good thing from 1967 when they hear it.  We could use some more of that today.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

Sitting here thinking about Summer.  I don’t know who thought of the four seasons.  Summer is the one that seems to get the most credit for enjoyment.  You hear folks talk about how they can’t wait until Summer gets here.  When it is ending you hear folks talking about holding on to a few more days of Summer.  At the least, trying to hold on to a few more days in the Sun.

When I was a kid Summer meant riding my bike, going to the pool, playing baseball from morning til night on some days, watching the MLB Game of the Week on NBC listening to Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek call the game on Saturday afternoons.  With the exception of Keith Jackson and Frank Broyles, this may have been the best broadcasting team ever to slap on headphones and speak up about a game they played and enjoyed for the game’s sake and sake of the listener at home.  Not outlandish, no superfluous, not anything but the way it was.  I miss that.

At the town pool where I grew up we had a 3 foot, a 4 foot, and a 5 foot.  Near the 5 foot end of the rectangular pool was a rope that separated an exclusive section that was more of  a squatty square compared to the rest of the white painted cement pond. Beyond the rope was an incline.  The dreaded 11 foot.  Above the 11 foot was a high dive and a short dive.  Diving boards.  I climbed the high dive on many occasion and did a can opener or a lazy birdy, or a straight down, or if I was really bold and the girls were watching, I would attempt a dive.  This diving attempt usually turned into the “back-breaker”…so painful on occasion that I thought about just staying down there…but with a nod to Pat Conroy, my lungs would betray me.  I had to come up for air.

Hey at least I was cool enough/or not cool enough that the town bully never took my bike and swam it to the island of the town pond that sat next to the town pool.  While The Captain and Tennille were blaring “Shop Around” out of the pool’s mono speaker, many a bike was snatched from its kickstand and rolled to the edge of the town pond and there the town bully would swim the bike about twenty yards or so to the island near the center of the pond.  He would then prop the bike back up on its kickstand for everyone  driving up and down Bridge Street to look upon, laugh at, and know that the natural order of things was still in place.

We played baseball.  Me and Johnny Johnson, no relation, though we might as well be played together often.  And there were many others.  John and I are still in contact 40 years since we played together on the Yankees.  Of course he was on the ’79 Royals team when we won every game…and got the trophy to prove it.  That was when the winner got the trophy and the rest wished they had.  I was on the side of wished they had every other year I played baseball, which was many, and I have never once had to go to therapy to get over it.

Summer.  Watermelon, The Jackson County Fair…please get there if you can it will make you a better person, and The Brownstown Speedway.  I have made mention of it before.  We lived in Brownstown when I was kid.  We lived on Jackson Street.  The last proper street in town to the East.  Beyond a large cornfield and grass parking lot to the East was the speedway.  We did not have air-conditioning when I was a kid.  Cars going around a dirt track quarter mile was my lullaby on Summer nights.  I hope my memory stays strong.

LAST SIGHTS OF THE BERKSHIRES….

My dear wife, Carrie, and I got home on Tuesday last.  Our New England repose was complete.  I will leave you with a picture or more and a few words about them.

One thing I love about The Berkshires (we were five miles from New York (state) and twenty-seven miles from Vermont if you want some reference)  is the selection of newspapers.  Newspapers are a passion of mine.  You can’t do this anywhere else I know of.  The Northeast loves their print.

Across the way from where we stay is Jiminy Peak one the largest ski slopes in Mass.

Though I won’t show you the whole trip up and down from our place to the main road at the bottom of the hill, I will tell you that these photos don’t do them justice.  My calf muscles wince just looking at these pictures.  Look, I walked 6 miles on some fairly even ground on the campus of The University of Ramsey yesterday.  A mile up and down this is much tougher.  There was a reason I walked up and down this hill like I did:

I thought of Bart Bigham.  Bart, you would be proud of your ice cream.

We stopped in Saratoga Springs, NY on the way home.  It is actually a little North of where we stayed.  We were there for good reason.  This is the Visitors Center.

Springs are about town and you are encouraged to drink your fill.

These things are pretty cool…literally!

Then it was concert time.

Natasha Bedingfield and OAR opened for Train.

Carrie and I were sitting in our seats before OAR started to play. I had not heard them before. I told Carrie I didn’t even know what an OAR looked like?  They were easy to listen to.  They sounded very good.

Train…always sounds good.

Their stage looked like a big jukebox.  The Saratoga Performing Arts Center, or SPAC to those up there, is a great outdoor venue nestled in woods like nothing I have ever seen before.  I never tire of listening to live music.

As I type these words on the back porch in Southern Indiana, the blue sky and the clear air and the unusually cool temps remind me of …if only I had some more papers to read.  Yes, I am greedy.  So instead of reading, I write in an effort to…speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

Last night I partook of a lobster roll.  I made it myself.  I have eaten lobster rolls in Rye, NH and Boston and near Salisbury Beach, Mass.   Those are the most notable ones.  Last night I decided to give it a lash on my own.  Well, my dear wife, Carrie, did raise a recipe that we followed to some degree.  Really it is about 3 things for me:  a good roll, good lobster, and plenty of butter.  I am not a fan of salt for sure.  I did appreciate a few grains on the cooked lobster meat.

There is a great store in Pittsfield, Mass not far from where we are staying.  It is like a Harris Teeter, if any are familiar with one of those.  It might be a scale of two better.  Regardless, we don’t have stores like this back home.  Market 32 by Price Chopper is the name of the store.  It was a Price Chopper that that got a face lift and offers more unique foods than the normal Price Chopper.  The seafood selection is great.  The cheese selection is obscene.  The vegetables and fruits are plenty.  There is also a deli that offers so many unique cakes and pies and desserts that they probably had to get a mop out and wipe the drool that escaped my mouth thanks to overactive taste buds.  Market 32 is the store.

The lobster is fresh.  That is a key.  The bread I used is a New England Roll.  The butter we used was from Maine.

Fresh tail and claw meat.

Such a proficient slicer the camera can’t keep up with my lightning fast motion.  Either that or a camera is not made to follow a knife moving that slow?

The butter…not the whole stick…is applied liberally to the pan toasting the bun and to the lobster pan as well.

When properly toasted and warmed…you have:

And now it is time, as Tim Mullins would say, to GET IT!

Speaking of getting it.  On a visit to Old Forge in Lanesborough, I got it again.  No, not a lobster roll.  The Wild Mushroom Ravioli that I have made mention in previous posting here.

It is exquisite.

I bet this stuff is too.  Most will not believe that I let this pass…but it was fun taking a picture of.

Two nights ago Carrie and I channeled our inner acrylic painter selves.  It is a good thing I did not think about Edward Hopper while I was doing this or I would have frozen up.  It worked out great.  Our teacher, Michelle, did a wonderful job.  The fact that you can reasonably make out what I was trying to paint is nothing short of a miracle.  My flowers?  Well they probably grow in Australia somewhere.  Carrie’s flowers…they are beautiful.  I was the only one in the class of about twenty to put a bird in their painting.  Either way, it worked out.  We had a good time and something that was a blank canvas is something we can take home and talk about for years to come.  20 bucks can rarely, if ever, offer more than that.

Pardon me know as I go eat a piece of sausage pizza and contemplate Picasso.

Speaking the artistic rights.

Danny Johnson

Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick and Billy Budd and many other classic tales.  Of course, Moby Dick is the masterpiece he is most noted for.  “Call me Ishmael.”

Today my dear wife, Carrie, and I visited a former home of Melville’s in Pittsfield, Mass.  The place is called Arrowhead.  Why Arrowhead?  When he was plowing up some of the 160 acres that went along with the property he found many Native American artifacts.  Most notably, he found arrowheads.  A house was named in 1850 and thus holds that name still today thanks in large part to the name Moby Dick.

I studied a great deal of American Literature in classes taught by my dear friend Dr. Millard Dunn.  Today I thought of Millard as I was in a place where two of the biggies of the Anti-Transcendentalist camp hung out and chewed the fat and talked writing.  I was one goose-bump and later as we ate a late lunch, I told Carrie I could hear Dr. Dunn talking about Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne as clear as a bell in my mind.

In this barn, built around 1780, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter) discussed the issues of the day.  I was amazed.

The place  is now headquarters to the gift shop and central meeting spot that begins the tour of Arrowhead.  Did I say I was in awe of the place?

We were not allowed to take pictures inside the house.

My dear Carrie and I tried to get a picture of ourselves with a place called Mt. Greylock in the background.  More about Mt. Greylock in a minute.

This was Herman Melville’s home from 1850 until 1863 when his family returned to New York City.  In this house he wrote Moby Dick and many other stories.

Melville was inspired by Mt. Greylock.  This picture of Mt. Greylock, taken from the front porch of his house is similar to the view that Melville had from his study where he did his work.  Looking at this mountain, he saw a whale in his mind.  Then, he wrote about that whale.

Of course Moby Dick has been told in cinematic form on multiple occasions.  One of the most popular renditions of this story to make the silver screen is the 1956 version starring Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab.

This whaling boat below is one of the models used in filming some of the action shots going after Moby DIck.  If you are familiar with this, you recognize from left to right:  Captain Ahab, Stub, Queequeg, Tashtego, and first mate Starbuck.  This was a marvelous piece.

This was a great stop….even for a fan of the Transcendentalist over the Anti-Transcendentalists.  I prefer the essays and poems of Emerson and Thoreau over the allegories and traditional works of antagonists and protagonists…though I give a strong nod to the multiple layers of conflict, be they internal or external, that Herman Melville brilliantly exposes in Moby Dick.  Decisions ultimately must be made.

Visiting Arrowhead was an internal conflict resolved.  And has given me yet another chance to…speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

This past weekend  my dear wife, Carrie, and I spent a couple nights close to two Great Lakes.  Lake Erie was…you could throw a rock in it…in Geneva By The Lake, Ohio.  That is the name of the place.  I found it via the internet.  In fact I found both of our lake locations via the internet.  Search engines can do some very good things.

Geneva By The Lake, Ohio is as throw back as I have ever seen in a place.  I consider myself relatively well traveled.  I have been so so fortunate to visit many places.  This was another gem of a spot that has a personality and charm so unto itself.  The people are nice.  They are friendly.  They are forward in a good way.  They were enjoying a warm day where many months of the year they are covered in snow.  No one we met was there to have a bad time.

We stopped along the way to take this one of Lake Ontario.

This is the office we checked into at GOTL.  There was a phone on the counter and the instruction was to call the number.  The proprietor lives across the street.

I have no doubt that this place was just as charming in 1936 as it is 2017.  Either way, it has been here a long time and I am thankful someone had the good sense to keep it around.

DWYER made this combo…all in one kitchen.  Stove. Oven. Cutting board.  Fridge.  Sink.  It is all here.  There was a couch sitting next to a tv.  You couldn’t sit on the couch and watch the tv, mind you.  There was enough room for me to unfold a bag chair and watch the tv for a short while.

This old relic was awesome.

The sign on this putt putt course said it was the oldest putt putt course to feature continuous play in the land.  It has not missed a season of golf in over 70 years.

When we left Lake Erie we went journey farther East.  We drove three country highways instead of taking the New York Thruway in toward Buffalo and around NE to Hilton, New York where we spent the next night, Saturday.   We enjoyed our drive as we drove through little towns, including Brocton, New York where we ate a fine late lunch.  I had a club sandwich and Carrie had a bbq chicken salad. This drive allowed us to look at the towns and wave at a few of their people.  We looked at their schools and we looked at their churches.  A trip to the Northeast will show you an appreciation for two things in these towns: flowers and the American Flag.  Their flowers are celebrated because these folks lived through the winter and I think flowers remind these folks of life.  The flag they appreciate because their heritage fought red coats to be able to fly it in the first place.

When we got to Hilton, New York we found a treasure and some very nice folks at Braddock Point Lighthouse.

A bed and breakfast at a lighthouse?  Yes, there is such a thing.  It is a functioning lighthouse recognized by the laws of the land.  It is also a B&B of remarkable quality, given its location, its history, but more importantly its owners Don and Nandy.

They spend the Summers in this great place and go back to Florida in the Winter.  From what I have heard about the snow in these parts, I do not blame them.  These were gracious hosts and I appreciate all of their efforts in making our stay a comfortable and memorable one.

When we drove up to the place we found this.

A little closer we found this:

On the other side of the lighthouse it looks like this:

It looks out on Lake Ontario.

This is a view from the top of the lighthouse.  It was a great experience to tour this and I thank Don for all of his knowledge and insight and his ability to tell a good story.

One wonderful thing about this place is that you get sunsets…and you get sunrises…

We were so blessed to have weather that allowed us to take in these sights.

We also were fortunate to meet a kind gentleman from Utica -way whom we found to have many shared interests with.  We talked travel, education, sports, and music.  It was great fun and he knew how to take pictures and where to shoot some great shots as well.

Our breakfast was served on a table and chairs that were actually a wedding Dowry from the old country.  The family needed to part with it and it found a great home. (Breakfast was great by the way.)

And I found another place to remember where I can speak the rights.

On a sad note…Carl did not make the trip.  Carrie thought I packed Carl….and I thought Carrie grabbed Carl.  Either way, Carl is back home and I hope he is not too put off.

Danny Johnson

I can hear Alice Cooper singing it now…”School’s Out for Summer!”

I suppose that is true for most around these parts.  Most Indiana schools are finished with their 2016-2017 school year, for sure.  My school year will be over too this week.  Until I come back for a few days later this month to help facilitate some testing business.  There is another test.  There is always another test.  There is always another test ordered by folks who don’t take tests.  Oh, Lord have mercy, don’t get me started.

We graduated a class of over 150 at North Harrison High School where I serve as a school counselor.  The students in this year’s class was an impressive bunch.  For the most part they were very polite all year long.  That is not always an easy thing to do.  They got that down.  I will be looking forward to seeing what they do in the future.  There is a great deal of potential there.  Optimism.  That is a quality of each graduating class.  In addition to potential, I would say this class has “promise” as well.  Good luck to them all.

I was asked today what the summer held for me moving forward.  I can report that my dear wife, Carrie, and I will be making our annual, well, 4th annual trip to the Northeast to take in the sights and sounds and newspaper reading and eating at the Olde Forge and just plaing hanging out in a place called The Berkshires in western Massachusetts.  I have learned to spell that state with no problem.  It took nearly fifty years.  There will be a lobster roll to be found and eaten.  There will be a big hill to walk down and walk back up trying to offset too many lobster rolls.  It is a good trade-off.

Carrie and I will be going to a concert at SPAC.  That would be Saratoga Performing Arts Center.  It is a nice outdoor music venue  in a BEAUTIFUL place with trees and more trees.  That would be Saratoga Springs, New York.  The place with the horse track.  Carrie and I are going to see Train there.  We saw Train there two years ago.  They always put on a good show.

In addition to relaxing and listening to Train, I plan to do some writing there also.  I hope to write more speaktherights.com posts and place a few pictures on these pages to give a few reports.  We’ll see how that turns out.  I am also going to be writing some other things, trying to organize some thoughts about a larger project.  I don’t know if it will get off the ground or not.  Some days I know it will.  Other days I want to look at it and run the other way.  That is the nature of the material I suppose.  Writing can be a great thing.  It can also be a not so great thing.  Either way, the creative process is a good thing.  Keeping the brain moving and pushing it is a good thing.

I will be so glad when it is time to put college football predictions on these pages on Thursday evenings again.  Bring on Football Season.

Later in the month there are a few more concerts to see.  On July 1st I will be going to my last Moody Blues concert.  I have my reasons.  I will share them later this month with a last Moody Blues retrospective post.  That too is the kind of writing that can be great and not so great all in one.  I understand it.  That, I know, is a good thing.  Otherwise I would be in a great deal of trouble.

I know I have mentioned Dr. Millard Dunn on these pages before.  I need to get in touch with him.  We have some unfinished business to take care of.  He told me via email the last time we transmitted that he had something he wanted me to read…something he wrote I assume.  I hope to get in touch with him soon.

I think I will get my Alice Cooper CD off the shelf, yes, I do have one, and play that song tonight.  Well, I am working tomorrow but I can get ready to cue Alice Cooper.

Speaking the Rights…

Danny Johnson