This has been the road most traveled for a change.  I took pictures of my walking route a few weeks ago.  This was taken a couple days ago as the sun was setting and darkness was creeping in.  About 61/2 tenths of a mile from home, it was a nice way to end the day.

As I type these words in the screened-in back porch, a steady rain is falling on the tin roof keeping time with the music on my little portable speaker that blurts out music via the radio signal via the internet on the 96.3 WJAA app.  Wow that is a mouthful.  My favorite radio station, Seymour’s 96.3 is coming through loud and clear.  One of Boston’s many hits from the 70s.  Keep on rocking is the message.

For some reason my mind looked to the Southeast this morning.  I was thinking about the folks in Pender and Onslow Counties.  The aircraft from Camp Lejeune  go up and down the coast of these two counties and I hope we see them again soon.

This has really been something, hasn’t it?  This virus stuff is what movies are made about and after watching we throw away our popcorn bucket and think how rotten that might be.  Well, it is rotten.  I know I am so fortunate to have some wider open spaces to roam than most probably do.  I can walk up and down my road course for an hour and a half and never see a car.  Sometimes two or three may go by.

And there, overhead, I hear a jet airplane flying the in along the West landing pattern toward the Louisville airport.  We have not heard that much lately.  The week of the Kentucky Derby it is a constant barrage of aircraft overhead here.  The small private planes come and go on that weekend like fireflies.  Now, the skies are quiet and even the vapor trails at 36,000 feet are hard to find.  Amazing how that one that just went overhead can get one’s attention.

This is a basketball goal on a tree in Mississippi.  I just saw it a little while ago and thought I would share it.  I have always thought this goal was a neat thing.  I am going to take a basketball with me the next time we visit and I am going to put one through again.  It has been decades since I did more than nod to it.

I miss Coach Doc Holliday and the Marshall University Thundering Herd during the Spring Game.  They turned the fountain back on at  10 AM this morning and very few were there to take part in this ritual of Spring.

I was asked if I had written any good songs lately with this stay-in business.  I have not.  I have been very occupied with many aspects of my new job and that has taken a great deal of concentration and brain power..

Though it is the most nondescript looking office space I have worked in over the past twenty years, I will so be glad to be working full time in this office.  As I type there is one box of my stuff in it.  Everything you see in this picture, I couldn’t tell about.  But I am certainly enjoying the folks I am working with from afar and I like purple and gold!

When this is over, I am going to grab a bag of balls and go swing my leg!

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

I would normally never ask you to do what I am about to ask you to do.

Why?

Look.  Music has been better to me than I will ever be to it.  As I type these words I am listening to a guilty pleasure… the Greatest Hits of Asia.  John Wetton’s voice is a favorite of mine.  I was elated one day when he and I went back and forth via twitter message.  John is no longer with us.  His voice will never leave me.

Near two years ago I found some new music by former Little River Band front man, Glenn Shorrock, and I was totally enamored with his new songs and his delivery.  Wow…I thought.  So much so that I sent him an email and told him of my thoughts.  In less than a day he emailed me back and, while I will allow our exchange to be private, it was inspiring.

I told Glenn I was watching so many years ago as a ten year-old as The Little River Band was playing one of my all time favorite songs, REMINISCING on The Midnight Special.  That was a late night music show I hope many of you remember.

I digress.   So today I ask that you find Glenn Shorrock’s 2019 version of the great Little River Band song COOL CHANGE.  It is wonderful.

This song will, as it is sung today, take you back and bring you back unlike much of anything I have ever heard.  It is then and today in one sweet…the word fails me.  You just need to listen.  You’ll thank me.

Now, back to why I don’t usually ask this.  Being a musician, albeit a nobody, I do have a digital sales account with a particular music distribution entity and know that my songs, delivered in multiple formats near 5000 times have accrued me about 8 dollars.  This is the reason concert tickets are what they are.  I hate to break it to you.  Album sales are a thing of the past.

And so it goes.

Give Glenn a listen.  You’ll thank me.

Speaking the Rights…

Danny Johnson

The screened-in back porch is clean again.  It is Spring.  That is what happens.  As I type these words my dear wife, Carrie, is applying a new screen to the porch’s exterior door.  Thank you, Carrie.

Writing during Covid-19 season is not an easy endeavor for me.  Oh I thought it would be.  I equated more time at home to more time to move more words around.  It has not happened that way.  I think it is a concentration thing.  Yesterday I was expected to be “on” if you will.  I spent nearly five hours during the course of three different remote meetings working and collaborating with new colleagues. We were discussing students and plans and interim activities and directives from the State Board of Education and other fun things like that.  I felt envious of what my co-workers know and frustrated with what I don’t know.  How could I?  I have yet to be in the building in an official capacity with students in it.

I appreciate the patience the folks at Paoli High School have extended to their new guidance counselor.  None of us expected to be where we are today, away from the building.  My heart hurts when I think about the seniors; the Class of 2020 will be connected like no other known in my lifetime.

I went to work on Thursday, March 12th at North Harrison High School with absolutely no clue that it would be the last day I would work in that school with students in it.  I had already made plans with Mr. Bigham to come in and have speaks with his junior English classes, as has been the custom the last few years toward the end of school.  I was to come in to share with them on the Friday before Spring Break.  We never got there.

On March 13th, North Harrison had an early release schedule for professional development and I thought that to be a good day to drop in on Paoli where I had been given the green light by their school board that Monday to begin working there after Spring Break on March 30th.  There were papers to go over and folks to be introduced to.  It was a good day.

I have been asked many times why I decided to leave North Harrison to take a job at Paoli.  Having not been in a position where I was actively looking to leave, I feel like this job found me more than I found it.  When that kind of thing happens, and let’s be honest, if you know anything about general hiring practices of schools, a guy with my experience is usually not given an opportunity like this.  Translation:  Schools, given their monetary constraints, usually hire on the cheap when they can.  It is a fact of life.  So in that regard, I am honored that Paoli looked at me and said “yes”.  I look forward to working with students and parents there.

In the space of nine days and a few meaningful phone calls  to a couple friends I knew I could confide in and ask for prayerful discernment, the dominoes just started falling in a perfect line.  I told the principal at North Harrison I had a thousand reasons to stay at North but I needed one more.  I needed to know I would not regret going to Paoli. With that said, I told him I knew it was time to go.

This was not easy.  It was, however, the right thing to do. The folks at North were very good to me.  I thank them so much for giving me five years on campus again.

Before I left North Harrison I had some students coming to me telling me they had heard that I was leaving.  Each time I was met with this query my heart sank just a bit.  One student, knowing I was leaving, asked to have his picture taken with me.  The students at North are as resilient as any I have ever seen.  They will be fine.  I will still miss them, of course.  They are all Great Americans.  They know that code, politics notwithstanding.  The scholars, the athletes, the artists, the go-to friends, the musicians, the voices in the choir, the Ag prodigies, the helpers, and the ones fortunate enough to be in the room across from the computer lab.  How many times I wanted to come in and join that fray.

And so it goes.  “That is all.”

I leave you with some photos of good times at NH.  I wish the camera had been rolling during other times too when it was not.  Thank you again, Mr. Bigham.  I am sorry I missed your juniors this year.  Perhaps you can smuggle me in down the road and we can do it again!

Thank you all.  Know that you are loved.

The Lady Cats at THE BIG DANCE part 1.  How much fun was that?

Graduation was and WILL BE a wonderful time.  Always so delighted to pass out those diplomas and send out well wishes after the ceremony.

When we were younger, Mick Rutherford and I laughed like this all the time.  It was good to be on the hill laughing again.

One of my favorite pictures.  Carrie was thinking.  Sitting on the hill with my Dad.

Tony Waynescott putting the line through some paces before facing BCHS.

The end of the finest hour for this old Cougar.  Ben Waynescott’s FG wins it.

Ben honored me on Senior Night and I am thankful and still regret not being there.

A win for the ages over Batesville.

Bringing wrestling to North was a strike.  This is a great time.

My friend Barry Hall walking on the NH field.

Lilly Hatton at the line against the Lady Braves her senior year.  The hardest working student-athlete and most deserving of any accolade that comes her way.  She has earned it. This year Lilly was the Southern Conference’s Freshman of the Year playing for Wofford College.

For North,  I hope it is always 1st and Goal.

I wore a North shirt the day I kicked at The Rose Bowl!

Finally, I am glad to leave this guy behind.  There is a new field waiting.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

The numbers are not adding up on the crawl of ESPN and other sports networks.  Rolling at the bottom of the screen you can see that this team may have dumped this player to save this many million dollars of salary cap money.

Now is not the time for news like this.

As long as we have nurses and nursing assistants and doctors trying to save people whilst they are putting their own lives on the line, these dollar figures about sports and how much guys are being paid while not playing need to join the players on the sideline.

I know. The sports networks are purging anything they can to produce something current to report.  I would rather watch the Philadelphia 76ers of the Dr. J, George McGinnis, Darryl Dawkins, Bobby Jones, Caldwell Jones, and Henry Bibby vintage play a game against the Buffalo Braves coached by Jack Ramsay with Bill Russell doing the color commentary.

My hat is off to all the medical folks in harm’s way.  There are too many of you.  My prayers are with you and your families.  It hurts.

What I am enjoying in the mornings is Robert Becker on 96.3 WJAA.  Robert does an informative and entertaining radio show in the mornings in Seymour.  I wrote about Robert some time ago in a feature on these page:  http://speaktherights.com/?p=2979

This morning Robert played as many Mellencamp requests as he could get in, while he was offering hopeful encouraging words and up to date information, either from a guest of civic nature or his own cache of positive good vibrations.  That and the man just know how to flat pick good songs to play!

Thank you, Robert.  As you offer up information and song, you are truly an unsung hero in very tough times.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson