Seven Hundred Posts Enough - speaktherights.com

This is speaktherights.com post number 693.

Before we see 2023 we will see post 700. That will be enough. More than half a million words have flowed from these fingertips onto multiple keyboards and devices over these years that have gone by quickly.

Thank you, Bob. It was worth it. Fenway is one of those.

This writing experiment started in July 2014. Every word has been written with a purpose. It has been a labor of love. Writing has long been on my to do list. I suppose I just enjoy doing it. The brain appreciates it I think. I was a high school football player with a notebook of poetry. Don’t regret an ounce. I found my songs.

This past summer, early June in the Northeast, I finished an ambitious piece of narrative nonfiction that clocks in at more than 190,000 words. Finding a publisher has not been a great priority of mine. That will come one day. My time has been invested elsewhere, including these speaktherights.com pages.

No, I am not looking to become a full time writer. I don’t want that. At this point in time I still feel the need to help students better understand the English language and how to use it to make their lives better. That is what being an English teacher is about for me. How we use language skills to our advantage goes a long way in deciding who we are and what we will become. I learned that from Dr. Millard Dunn.

What is most important with this language endeavor these days is knowing I can still see the light go on above the heads of students I teach, whether they want to admit it or not. Admission of this sort is an age-old dilemma. Yes, it was a faithful dynamic when you and I were in school too. Too cool for school existed in the 1900s and it is alive and well today. We keep pressing onward.

Photographs and Memories. My apologies to Jim Croce.

These days I am enjoying taking pictures more than writing about them. Perhaps that will be my next excursion (HDT). Like a piece of writing, it is always about the next one. I rarely go back and read anything I have written. When the last piece of punctuation is placed, it is time to move on. The only speaktherights.com piece of writing I have made a habit of going back to look at is one that I did not publish publicly. Many of these words have been very personal. The one I have not put forth fits that mold. That ghost of a post did find its way inside the pages of the healthy piece I finished in June. Maybe we can read that one some day.

Over the years I have enjoyed writing about music. Recording music. Attending concerts. Listening to old vinyl. Sharing music is a blast. The Moody Blues were still at it when we started this adventure. It has been more than five years since I last saw them. The members of The Moody Blues that are left are done as Moody Blues. Their music lives on brightly.

And then there were two.

Concert reports included Neil Diamond, Garth Brooks, John Mellencamp, The Who, Tran, Brian Wilson, ELO, Roger Waters, George Strait, Boz Scaggs, The Byrds, The Goo Goo Dolls, Justin Hayward, The Pretenders, Bob Seger, and many more. Glad I made it to so many concerts ahead of the change in the music business that I can only try to explain to kids today. They are intrigued when I tell them a Barry Manilow double album in 1977 cost $ 14.00. That would be about 68 bucks today. For less than ten bucks a month via a streaming service today, I can listen to that album and a million more and I am not impressed. The investment of the heart listening to a whole album was a powerful thing that is lost.

Writing about high school football has been a joy. Finding my way back to North Harrison has been a highlight. Watching high school football players make progress and seeing them realize what they did not think was possible three weeks earlier is still a life lesson and a charge unlike most I know. Watching young people become better people is timeless. The photographs I have shared along the way have meant a great deal too. I know many folks have enjoyed them.

Travels? They have been recorded here. I am a fortunate man to have a dear wife, Carrie, whom I have talked into taking road trips, plan rides, and looking at both coasts. God bless her. We found a second home in North Carolina twenty years ago and have relaxed with folks up and down the Easter Seaboard.