Took to the South St. Louis Rd walking trail today.

Have mercy it is amazing what 58 degrees and snow nearly all gone will do for a person.

It was so nice out.  I did not want the walk to end.

There’s the Blue River reflecting the sun down there.

As I took this picture I was feeling guilty.  I was wishing I was in the Paoli High School Gym to see the RAMS take on the North Harrison Cougars.  I came home instead.  I wish I was ready to walk into a gym at 50 percent capacity.  I am not.  Not even close.

As I continued my walk a song came on my Amazon mix by chance.  It was Eddie Money’s tune “I Wanna Go Back”.  Every time I hear that tune I think of an old friend and his memorial service.  That song blared over all in attendance.  I smiled every time I hear it.  And I think about Ken.

I wanted to be in the gym tonight.  I would of loved to have seen Ken there.

But, I am not there yet.

I wanna go back.

When I got in from my walk this afternoon, I asked my dear wife, Carrie, “Have you heard anything?”

Our dear old friend Judy Johnson was taken off a ventilator today.  Carrie told me Judy’s husband, Donald, called her as I was walking.  Judy died this afternoon due to Covid.  Don and Judy’s son, Phillip, was in Carrie’s class for many years as she taught kids with difficulties I can’t begin to understand even though I know very well of them.

Philly Willy has Muscular Dystrophy.  He is in a wheelchair full time.  Has been for years and years.  But a quicker wit you will never find.

This hurts.  Good people.  The best.  They adopted Phillip. And now this. Makes me want to shake my fist just a little bit.  But that never helps.

If I heard it once I heard it too many times.  “When the election is over, the virus will be gone.”  I wish that were true.

I wanna go back.

Speaking the sad rights.

Danny Johnson

I have been trying to sit down and write this post for a few days now.

My success rate is not there.  I have failed at doing so.

I don’t know why kids have to get killed in car wrecks.

I don’t know why I feel helpless in being able to those in need at a time like this.  We do the best we can do…but I just have a hollow feeling all over that leaves me feeling quite useless.  Most of it can be traced to a little thing called a “mask”.

Can you believe it?  We are near on a year of wearing masks to cover our faces to stay safe.

I work in a school I was hired into after mask season began.  These kids don’t me.  They know that guy behind the mask.

Yes, of course.  There have been some very good moments within this realm at times when goodness needed to show itself and be counted on.  For those moments I am thankful.  But I am a social fellow by nature. Not always easy to get to know but certainly easy to get along with.  That I feel that students still don’t know me renders a frustration that I can’t comprehend.

I chuckle when I hear about schools planning on opening, given schools in my area of Indiana have been open for some time.

I don’t chuckle when I hear of states wanting to make Covid vaccines a priority for their teachers when I know the leadership of my home state is obviously not wanting to be bothered by such a thing, as they are looking at school funding issues that don’t resemble the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic.  All of that is quite mind-boggling too.  That is another layer of hollow that makes me sad.

I have said it for years.  Kids don’t vote.  Education is a political football that is not usually kind to kids.  Don’t get me started on The Class of 2000 and the great twenty year Graduation Qualifying Exam experiment and what that has done.

Test Scores 1  Civility 0

Now some colleges are test optional (SAT and ACT).

We are just ahead of the study that will eventually come out and most will say “no kidding.”  It has been a hard lesson.

Sadness.

I conveyed to a brother of Veronica Battista that when she entered the room it was a better place.  I enjoyed sitting next to her on the stage at NHHS during Senior Award Night.  She was a comfort there.  I respected her a great deal.  The school board will miss her leadership.  The whole school will. Her family will miss a treasure. I will miss a friend.  58 years old, Veronica was.  That looks younger all the time.

Sadness.

Family and friends in the south dealing with power outages, water supply-less issues, cold temps they are not used to.  Thank God the temps are going up.

Happiness?

Well, we press onward.  I got to deliver vittles to my folks and see them for a little few minutes at a time.  Yes, I wear a mask there also and I do not stay around long.  Glad the phone works.

Took a few snowy pictures.

St. Louis Rd toward Frenchtown.

St. Louis Rd toward Milltown.

The Blue River down there.

This interesting visitor came to listen to The Moody Blues.

Really.  He could not have gotten any closer.  He stumbled around the yard for a while.  Eventually he stood with his swings spread out.  He walked into the woods.  That was that.

And a snowy Griswoldmobile.

Take care of each other.

And speak the rights if you need to.

Danny Johnson

On February 10th, my dear wife, Carrie, and I will mark the day of our 25th Wedding Anniversary.

A one room church at Hancock Chapel.  That room was full of a great deal of love, family, friendship, and good will all around.  It was 60 degrees that day!

In 25 years Carrie and I have made great friendships, said goodbye to many family members and friends, watched the boys go into harm’s way be it a war zone or a burning building, and have been from sea to shining sea.  We found another home and friends in North Carolina that are there when we can get to them.  We have lived through job changes.  We had the best dog we could ask 14 years of.  We saw more Moody Blues concerts than we deserved.  Found a way to pay for studio time and musicians that allowed my music to become a part of our lives.  Been to football games all over the country.  I still tell the story of Carrie and me tossing a football on a new yet to be finished painted turf on a Thursday in The Rose Bowl.  I told Carrie she just caught that pass where John Stallworth hauled one in over his head from Terry Bradshaw in Super Bowl XIV.  She dropped the ball.  She threw her hands up and said, “I’m done!”  I’m convinced had I kept my shut we could have thrown there another half an hour.  We have looked at The Statue of Liberty and were humbled by Ellis Island.  We enjoy our back porch too.

We didn’t expect to see a Pandemic.  We have.  I hope we see the other side of it.

We didn’t expect to be in the crowd to hear Brian Wilson sing a new song that brought us to tears.  We did and I am glad.  Tanglewood Shed.

We did not expect to see planes fly into buildings in New York.  We did.  We have paid our respects there since.

We didn’t expect to drive through the Florida Keys.  We did.  Enjoyed Sloppy Joe’s and the music of Brian Hartman in Key West.  Brian played some Moodies tunes for us

We didn’t expect to see Americans storm their own capitol.  Did you?  Lord, I hope not.

We didn’t expect to find the Harbor Town lighthouse. We did.

We didn’t expect to paint anything smaller than a room.  We did.

We never thought we’d make it to Times Square.  We did.

We never imagined this picture with Granny would mean so much.  It does.

I never imagined we would be standing in front of Hill Street Blues station.  We were.  I’m still nervous looking at this. Yes. It was VERY cold in Chicago that day.

I never thought we would see The Herd every year for eleven years.  We did.  Just not this year and that was sad.

What can I say?  I certainly expected us to get this picture with The Moody Blues one day.

The Best Day.

Another great day.  There have been many.  We press onward.  Has it always been easy?  No.  But we have always had each other to pull us through.  I must say that ECU Pirate shirt looks very natural on me.  Just sayin.

I thank God for bringing us together.

Happy Anniversary to my sweet indeed!

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

I will preface this with a guilty admission.  Earlier this afternoon I was walking through the kitchen thinking about Tom Brady playing in the Super Bowl yet again, and I blurted out to my dear wife, Carrie, “Patriots 37 Chiefs 27!”

She did not have to say a word.  I caught it after I said it.  Living in Indiana and rooting for Peyton Manning and knowing how many times Tom Brady screwed that up, it only seems natural.  At least we had an off year to marinate before Peyton joined the Broncos.  When he did it was okay.  He just graduated to a more formidable horse.  Colt to Bronco.

So there.  How can I pick against Tom Brady?

First and foremost, I hope it is a competitive game.  Flashbacks of the 49ers plastering the Chargers and the 49ers whipping the Broncos in games gone by are so so disappointing.  Super Bowl XI in Pasadena with the Raiders putting a beat down on Fran Tarkenton’s Vikings in his last Super Bowl was brutal too.  I think Dave Humm, Ken Stabler’s back-up, may have found some time at QB that game.  I am certain he was holding for PATs and field goals.  Amazing what an eight year-old can retain all these years on.

I think I enjoy the Super Bowl now as much as I ever did.  Regardless of what happens, again, I just want us to have a good game.

Of course I will always be thankful that Peyton Manning put on a Colts helmet in 1998.  He led the Indianapolis Colts to a Super Bowl win.  But more than that, Peyton Manning single-handedly made football a much more popular sport in the Hoosier State.

The two Super Bowl Championships the Eli Manning-led New York Giants put together against the evil empire of the New England Patriots will always be a great memory.  I kid you not.  In the second half of one of those games when the Giants needed a game winning drive, I thought Asante Samuel was going to pick off a sideline route that Eli threw.  I was sitting on the ottoman in front of the TV.  I held my breath and when it went through his hands I dropped my head between my knees and when I rose up suddenly I got light headed and wondered if I was going to faint.  I didn’t.  The Giants won and Tom Brady and the Patriots went home unhappy and that was great.

If I live to be 110, the Super Bowl will forever be imprinted on my mind with disappointment.  When you are thirteen and you have watched a guy play quarterback all your life and you got his autograph a few times and you loved his team, as bad as they usually were, and they finally get to the Super Bowl it is like time stood still.  And it has.

Super Bowl XVI between the San Francisco 49ers and the Cincinnati Bengals was a Super Cinderella Bowl like we had seen before and I doubt I ever see again.  Both teams were 6-10 in 1980.  Then in 1981, the Niners were 13-3 and the Bengals were 12-4.  They met in the regular season.  The Niners beat the Bengals in Riverfront in what was their worst game of the season.  They met in a Super Bowl played in a cold weather climate for the first time, as the game was played in the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan.  It is gone now.  The last time I saw it driving through there to a Moody Blues concert, they were using the parking lots as drive-in theatres.

But what a season 1981 was.

The Bengals lost.  Going down 20-0 at halftime will do that.  26-21 was the final.  The losing team outgained the offense of the winning team the first time ever in a Super Bowl. Ken Anderson set a new SB completion percentage record. He was 25 of 34 for 300 yards.  The Bengals turned the ball over too many times and ran Pete Johnson one too many times to the right on the goal line when Ken Anderson should have run a bootleg that was working during the season.  Someone on that line was giving something away.  Fred Dean made that last stop look way too easy.

I always thought Kenny was thinking they should have run the bootleg too when I looked at this picture.

It is 2021 not 1982.

What Tom Brady has accomplished for so long is amazing.  Patrick Mahomes is a player too.  And we need a Super Bowl now more than ever.

No team has ever hosted a Super Bowl until Tom Brady decided the part ways with New England and play with the team in host city this year, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  The Rams played the Steelers in Super Bowl XIV in the Rose Bowl and I believe that is the closest we ever came before now.

Tampa Bay 37  Kansas City 27  that is the pick here.

Have a great time tomorrow.

And don’t be afraid to speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

We had one last week.

We had one yesterday.

Snow fell on Southern Indiana and it did not disappoint many.

We needed a reminder of something we have seen before.  So many things we are dealing with now these days are seemingly things we are trying desperately to deal with.  Fill in the blank…and you will come up with something.

I remember snow days.  In January of 1978 I remember a snow month!  If you were there, you know of what I speak the rights of.  Doubt I will see another month like that ever again.

These were some of the sights around our environ last week.

The Griswoldmobile snow covered.

The birds around the feeder were quite pleased that we kept them well stocked.

The Sycamore behind the house.

Believe it or not, this was most significant snowfall we have seen in a while.  I enjoyed it.  I have yet to find someone I have spoken to about who did not enjoy it.

In earnest, I think it is just nice for us to see something different.  We have been so bogged down in our senses of self-imposed normalcy.  This was a nice repose from that.

Have a good week.  Yes, we will have Super Bowl speaks later in the week!

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson