May 2022.  Wow what a month it has been.  I just finished my first year of classroom teaching since the 2001-2002 school year.  Yes, that would be twenty years.  Thanks to all the students and their parents for being patient with this old educator.  Yes, I did get emails from self-proclaimed “helicopter moms”.  I would have never called them that.  I am delighted they communicated with me and I hope I made them feel comfortable doing so.  It was a good time.

North Harrison has some wonderful students.  We are blessed, also, for having a school staff we can all be proud of.  I mean this.  There is not a single person in the high school I see and want to turn around and walk in the other direction.  I AM SERIOUS!  Believe me.  This is a man who has worked for six different schools and was called back to work at two of them.  The first time Medora called me back I stayed 13 years.  Last summer North called me back and I hope and pray this will be my last stop.

The last week of school I asked students to complete the assignment above.  This was the best FINAL EXAM I ever gave.  They were all on their honor.  I did not ask to see them.  But, three of them came my way.  I did read them.  And I was honored to do so.  They were addressed to me.

The Kentucky Derby has a soft spot with me.  My dear wife, Carrie, and I watched the 2014 Derby at the home of Mike and Bonnie Hunsucker in Medora, Indiana.  Mike was losing a battle with cancer.  This was the last time we laughed heartily together.  The Derby means more now.  I don’t care about the horses much.  I loved Mike.  I love Bonnie.

I added this photo on the Quote of the Day, a practice I make so each day.  My students know that Millard Dunn is my English teaching mentor.  An English professor, Millard and Henry David Thoreau are why I am where I am today (in additon to scores of others).  The photo of Millard was taken at Jeff Carpenter’s studio as we were rueing over song lyrics in November 2016.  This was a day dreams are made of.  Rod Wurtele (The Wulfe Brothers) was there too.

I took this picture of sweet Kimber when son Cody was visiting from Nashville recently.  I have a soft spot for this puppy.

Speaking of puppies…

My North Harrison colleague, Josh Swarens, was walking this precious hound down the hallway recently and I just had to take a photo.

This was my final goodbye photo after the North Harrison Drama Club presented the last performance of THE GREAT GATSBY.  These kids did a GREAT job.

Old Sport, indeed!  What a GREAT bunch of young people.

This month we lost our Aunt Thula.  She was a wonderful woman.  Her home was like a sweet sanctuary for me.  I feel blessed that I was able to share this place with my wife, Carrie, and our boys, Jarrett and Cody.  That porch behind us is a cathedral in my heart.

I get emails from all over asking me to come to their games.  Places I have ordered tickets, college football,  ask me to come back.  I have been to The Rose Bowl twice to see UCLA host USC and it is still the most magical college football setting I have ever been blessed to be a part of.  So says the man who got to kick a couple field goals in an empty Rose Bowl.   I DID NOT MISS.

So, why am I so disgusted when I open my Indiana University ticket account and see a photo supposedly promoting IU Football and the photo looks like one taken when the Hooisers are getting their rears handed to them by Ohio State?  Pitiful!  In spite of what lives in the promotions department in Bloomington, I still root for the Hoosiers.  But, they still need to get their heads out of their rearends.

I told you!  They looked daunted to me.

Though it was painful, I did break the seal on this 3LP set.  It was better than I imagined.  I am glad I broke the seal.  I was dumbfounded how the this sounded BETTER than the CDs that came out before the vinyl did.  Excellent.

Finally, I stood against the fence at North Harrison High School’s baseball field and realized, at 380 feet away there was a reason why I have seen a ball fly out there.  Danny Schmidt is no longer the coach and I propose we move this fence in.  He may have not wanted to lose a game by a homer, but we are also removing a chance by winning one too.

The Merry Month of May Indeed!

Speaking the Rights…

Danny Johnson

Mississippi Revisited

This was originally posted in 2017.  I need to add an addendum here.  Look, I have been a blessed man.  I know that.  Today, I wish I could have been in Mississippi to say goodbye to my Aunt Authula Crout.  I’m not sad.  She was 95.  She lived a life most of us would dream of living.  Simple.  True.  Loving.  Tough.  Honest.  Classy.  Funny.  My Aunt Authula was all of those things and more than I will know.  Aunt Thula’s funeral was held today. I wish I could have been there to hug the necks of Janet, Bobbi Sue, Joyce, and Doyle (Fred Biletnikoff)…an inside joke.  I love them all so.  I have been in Indiana my entire life.  My sojourns to Mississippi are too sweet to mention.

This was the last time I saw Aunt Thula in December of 2019.  I hope I make it back to that most important front porch of my life.  I want to sit there and write for a while.

From 2017…

A few days ago my dear wife, Carrie, my sister, Lynn, and my niece, Katie, visited family members in Mississippi. It was the first time we had been there since 2013 and that is shameful. As much running around as Carrie and I do, we need not wait four more years to get back. I say it again, it is shameful.

We had a great time. It was a wonderful visit. It always works out that way even when Carrie and I are walking at 8 in the morning to get a little exercise and the bright sun there is already strong enough to take the hide off of you. How do they practice football in this, I asked. I know…they are used to it. I am not. But that is not to say that I do not like it. The air there is much more kind to my pipes that the crud we are relagated to breathe in and out in Southern Indiana. Like the Berkshires, I’ll take the Mississippi air to take in and out any day, sun or no sun.

We saw Uncle Stanley and Aunt Reat. They are in a nursing home in Morton, Mississippi. Neither one of them can get around too well. Uncle Stanley can make out what you have to say to him if you can keep your voice long enough to do it. You have to speak up a great deal. Though he can’t hear and can’t see very well, he still has his wit about him. He was the only one on the visit to bring up the political spectrum in this country. Pleasantly, we agreed on the dim horizon from “left” to “right”.

Aunt Reat is an inspiration. She told us she never thought she would ever be in the spot she is in…in a nursing home. She was then quick to bring out the fact that many others there have it much worse than she does and that she is thankful and still has a great deal to live for. She is tough. It was hard to say goodbye to them. She’ll be 90 her next birthday.

We also had a visit with Aunt Barbara. This is another self-procliamed “tough old sister”. That is what she said in 1989 when it started to rain at an Ole Miss-Arkansas football game she and I were attending. I asked if she wanted to find cover. She set me straight.

Aunt Barbara’s husband, my Uncle Durwood Hines, was the first of the 17 brothers and sisters born to W.E. and Levi Jane Hines to leave us. He died of a brain tumor in April of 1988…April 18th to be exact. I know where I was when I got the call from my mother that day.
We still talk football, Aunt Barbara and I do. She still works fulltime. She will be 82 in less than a month. We also enjoy taking in a meal together. We ate catfish on Tuesday night at a place called The Cock of the Walk along the Ross Barnett Resevoir not far from Jackson. It was a feast. The best fresh water fish in the world.

Our last stop was at Uncle Carlton and Aunt Wanda’s house. Carlton Hines is the youngest of the 17 Hines children. He is 70 these days. He does not look it. I have all his white hair. He and I have a shared interest in music and football and we held forth on both subjects with earnest vigor sitting on his back deck while the ladies shared stories inside. It was an old-fashioned meeting of sorts. Carrie did come out to join us eventually. Our time there went by so quickly it is sad.

If there is one constant in geography and personage, it is a country road, maybe Old Hillsboro Rd, I really am not quite completely certain and I don’t have to be because I know the way. It is the same road that my parents drove on to the same house we visited in the 1970s,80s, 90s, 2000s, 10s. Five decades rolling up to the same house.

My Aunt Authula moved into this house in 1952. He her husband, Everett Crout, planted Sycamores in 1953. They are prominent on the property today along with an array of other tall and wide trees including Oak, Magnolia, Pine, and others I don’t know quite as well. My leaf collection was puny in the 9th grade Biology.

I do know I shot some ball on this hoop as a child.

Only in Mississippi could I get artsy with a basketball goal.

The back of the house.

Aunt Authula will be 91 this month. Like the house she still lives in, though Uncle Evertt passed many years ago, the place is still like it was in so many ways when I was young. There is a peaceful sensibility about the front porch where my Grandaddy Hines dipped snuff and took note of the weather. It is the Ryman Auditorium of front porches to me. I considered it a hallowed spot.

So does Carl. Carl, you are in the midst of greatness. I hope you appreciate it.
And so it goes. Mississippi is as sweet as ever. A much better place than given credit for or understood. But I suppose you have to know a thing or two to appreciate it, like anything else. Thank God I know what I know. Hope I can hang on to it, even if only in my mind.
Speaking the Mississippi rights…
Danny Johnson

There is nothing wrong with aiming high and dreaming of achievement.  There is an old adage about belief and achievement. Hopefully my students have caught on to a little of this.   My hope is to leave students with knowledge and creativity for utilizing the English language.  Communication is the key.  Relating opens the door.

I am blessed beyond measure to be able to go on wonderful nature walks with no need to do anything with my automobile besides waving goodbye to it in the driveway as I walk on.

Yesterday I went on a 5 mile hike and after play practice today I walked a couple miles.  There is a hill across the road behind my dear wife, Carrie’s, cousin’s house.  I made it up to the top of that hill for the first time yesterday.  Know that I have lived across the road from this hill for more than twenty years.  I have hiked in every other direction many times over and over.  I had heard about the field at the top of the hill.  I must say I have never seen anything like it.  The path up the hill is steep and winding.  Not quite the long and winding road.  A quarter of a mile up and a much increased heart rate later, one can find something special.

Finally, wishing I had a bottle of water later.  It was all worth it and very much worth the wait.  Yes, I had heard it was a lovely spot.  And I went back again today.

Through the woods, up the hill, and then…

Pictures don’t give this space its due.  This is a thimble of the expansive piece of flat land on top of this hill.  The last time I felt so moved by the landscape in front of me was a walk around Walden Pond.  Henry David Thoreau knew what he was doing.

Down from the hill across the road, I took to the lane behind the house and took a few great pictures.  I won’t lie.  The flat land was a friend.

I always say that when the light is right you have a good chance with any camera.

Just about where I turned around and headed for home.

The play is next weekend!  How about these posters designed by Clay Brown of Celery Signs!  Very nice.

This is only post #7 of 2022.  Enjoyed it.

Love one another.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson