This morning on my way to work I wanted to honk at someone something fierce.  I really want to use words here I was not brought up to use…so I won’t use them.  Let me say MAD does not begin to hit the level of frustration I had as I was driving to work.

For over fifteen years I have been driving no less than 108 miles back and forth to where I work.  All of that is going to cease after this Friday.  While there are many aspects of my job I will miss, driving two hours and change a day will not be one of them.

As I drive, I keep my head on a swivel.  Watch out for the deer.  Watch out for more deer.  Watch out for idiots looking at their phone while they are supposed to be driving.   That is what happened this morning.  A dumb driver, forget the fact that she was a female…at least I think (one can never be quite sure these days), crossed the center line doing highway speed in excess of 50 miles per hour. This car was heading toward me and my car.  Suddenly the lady, I use that term very liberally here, jerked her car back in the proper space that was her lane and as I passed her, she had her phone sitting vertical above her steering wheel and she was paying a heck of a great deal more attention to it than she was the road we were driving on.

Here is my dilemma.  Do I honk at her and scare her to death?  Not a bad idea.  Still, I don’t want her to run off the road and hurt herself.  But, I wonder, would I be doing her a service by honking at her, getting her stupid attention, and thus giving her something to think about.  That is if she can think that much.  I have my doubts.  I sure don’t want her hurting someone else.  Namely me!  What can I say, I’m greedy that way.

 I watched the Louisville Cardinals play a college baseball game on television last night.   It was the first time this year I have watched a college game through more than, say, three innings in succession.   This was an important game.  The team that won was to go on to the College World Series in Omaha.  The Cardinals, playing at home, got beat.  I am glad they did.  Their starting pitcher was acting more like a drunk flamingo than a cardinal.  He was showing off on the mound and showing up the bench of the Cal-State Fullerton Titans.  Sure he was doing a good job, at least for most of the time he was pitching.  But his rude behavior and incessant trash talking and making a fool of himself wore so thin that even the game’s ESPN announcers had enough and talked about if you had a 15 yard penalty in baseball they would be throwing the flag on the pitcher.

This behavior is fairly consistent with University of Louisville players in high profile sports.  I suppose I am talking about football, basketball, and now baseball.  The behavior exhibited is great as long as you are winning.  When you lose, you look like a fool.  I think they look like fools full time.  But, that is just me.  If I could throw a baseball 95 miles per hour I might act like a fool too.  In fact, I probably would.  I hope not.  If I did it would not last long.  My mom would call me up and rip me a new one.  Enough said.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

A couple days ago I dismantled my office.  I gutted the thing.  Any trace of my existence is gone from the walls.  Believe me…  I had MANY traces of existence on the walls of my office at Medora Community Schools.  I had a poster of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr framed.  I had Paul McCartney on the wall.  The Moody Blues were there too, of course.  There was a small picture of the church Carrie, my dear wife, and I were married in.  There was a small picture of my grandfather and myself fishing together at the town pond when I was a small child.  There was a likeness of the painting “NIghthawks” that I have drooled over on these very pages.  There was a poster of the Wright Brothers first flight at Kitty Hawk.  The guy that took the picture was using a camera for the first time…at least that is the story I heard.  Henry David Thoreau was represented.  As was a bunch from Scott County, Mississippi. This is a photo of my maternal grandparents and their seventeen children.  The last time they were all together…I think.  The year was 1959.

The best pictures I had on the wall, however, were these:

The Medora High School graduating class of 2013 was an exceptional bunch.  They were getting college acceptance letters left and right even in the early fall of their senior years.  They would bring them to me and wave them around.  It was like “dink” light bulb over the head.  I told them to bring their acceptance letters in and we would get their pictures made with them and hang them up.  For the last three years, that is what we have done.  I am proud of these students.

Some more lasting images from my time at Medora.

Christmas 2012.  My English class and I delivered homemade chocolate chip cookies to every elementary school student and we wished them a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

That same class. They were an exceptional group. I say it again.  One day they were complaining about the plight of their senior trip and how they did not want to go to Chicago…but South instead. Picking up on their dismay, I told them this was a prime time to put their aggression to good use.  We started talking about song writing and rhymes schemes and I had my guitar with me that day.  We wrote a song and took it to Al Fresco’s Place Recording in Louisville and, with the help of Rod Wurtele and Jeff Carpenter, we cut a record.

My golfing buddy and good friend Darrell Persinger holding up his Dad’s letter sweater soon after his Dad passed away.  Sorry your eyes are closed, Darrell.

One of the last bus rides I took with my dear friend Mike Hunsucker at the wheel.  Mike died last May.  He had cancer.  I miss him so.  Notice his wife Bonnie in the rear-view mirror.

Here is Bonnie holding up Turkey Lurkey.  He hatched at the school.  Bonnie, I will miss you.  You are a dear friend.

Jim Stewart.  He was the best school man I ever knew.  He hired me in this very office in 1998.  He died a few years ago too.  He worked at thirteen different schools.  He refused to compromise his beliefs and it did not always work out.  He’d say “I’d come home and tell Shirley to call the moving van again.”  He worked at Medora for twelve years and said it was the best job he ever had.

I will miss this Irishman saying “Top of the Morning to You!”  and occasionally singing to me a few bars of “Danny Boy”.

How could you not miss Mr. Disque!  He introduced me to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway via a field trip and was gracious enough to let me chaperon that field trip two more times.  Three visits in four years to the place they run the I-5!  Mr. Disque…you are my hero!

My friend Brad McCammon.  We are no longer co-workers.  Come to think about it, we never were.  We were friends that worked together.  We shared good times and bad times.   We celebrated victories and stayed strong when tragedy struck our school.  Like Dorthy said to the Scarecrow….”I think I’m going to miss you most of all.”

Speaking the “saying goodbye” Rights.

Danny Johnson

I took this picture on June 12, 2013 in the downstairs computer lab of the school where I work.  It was probably my last day  of contractual work for the 2012-2013 school year.  I remember doing a pass into all the rooms that day to make sure there was nothing I missed or need not miss.  When I walked into the lower level computer lab, I found this declaration on the white board.  I have no idea who wrote this.  This evening as I type this post,  I know what the youngster, I presume it was a youngster, meant and felt as he or she presented each letter that would turn into a word and another word and another…until the message’s end punctuation was placed.

Last night I attended the high school graduation ceremony at this very school.  The 2015 Class of Medora High School walked into a gymnasium full of family and well-wishers at 7:30 PM.   Approximately 50 minutes later, this class walked out as graduates of the school.  It was a marvelous ceremony.

For the past many years, no more than 15, I have been in charge of starting a video presentation for the good folks attending graduation to enjoy.  Translation:  I push a button on a computer and hope and pray it works with the connected projector to present the memorable images that are suddenly larger than life on a the North wall of the the gym above the pushed-in bleachers that when pulled can seat 600.   The bulb in the projector has never failed.  I can walk away with a perfect record at graduation time.

I am walking away.  No, I will be driving away.  In all likelihood last night’s graduation will be the last for me as an employee of Medora Community Schools.  I was offered a position at another school and I accepted.  The school I anticipate working for next year is in my backyard compared to the 54 miles I drive one way to Medora no less than 207 days a year.  I will be driving 92 miles less each day.

I have two more weeks to work at Medora.  I have so many loose ends to tie up and so much info I need to pass on to my superiors there.  I know it will go too fast.

I am often asked how I drive that far to work and back 207 days a year.  I, the askee,  tell the asker the kids are worth it.  That is for certain.  And I will miss these youngsters I have been working with.  You see, the Medora school is a k-12 building.  All grades.  All together.  It is a small school that has had big results.

Last night, before graduation, I had the pleasure of singing two songs during a baccalaureate service.  I wrote both of the songs and I play the guitar as I sing.  One song was called “You’re Gonna Find Your Way”.  The other was one I have been singing going on six years.  That song goes as follows:

SENIOR SONG

The last bell has sounded

Call it a day

Time to clean out that locker

As you wonder how time fades away

First it was coloring books

Then came the ABCs

Learning how to write in cursive

And where the capital letters need to be

Showing off that paper

That’s hanging on the refrigerator door

Wondering what tomorrow will bring

Today it brought the door

So walk out with your head up

Walk with purpose and pride

As photographs will capture

This special moment in time

Don’t forget where you came from

Don’t forget this day

It’ll serve as a reminder

Of all you’ve accomplished along the way

And how time…how time….fades away

As much as I am looking forward to my next adventure, I will wind out my last two weeks at Medora and before I leave I am going to the computer lab (which is next to the door I enter and exit everyday).  I am going to write a special message on the white board.  One I have seen before.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Good morning.  I am out on the back porch this nearly chilly Sunday before Memorial Day 2015.  In about an hour Carrie and I will be heading to Hancock Chapel for Sunday Service.  A few minutes ago I was thinking about some memories I have been knocking around and I want to share a few of them with you this Memorial Day Weekend.

Carrie, my dear wife, and I recently watched the British Commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of the end on World War II.  There was a ceremony like none I have ever seen.  Winston Churchill’s great-grandson gave a speech.  There was a sense of reverence that transferred across the Atlantic and through my television that was palpable.  I suppose this is what we don’t know and they do.  Their homes, their churches, their schools, their lives were dismembered by the savageries of war like we can’t comprehend.  My grandparents and my aunts and uncles from that time tell about the war.  Well, they told about the war.  They are gone now too.  But the thing is I have a great many relatives living in many parts of the United States.  There is not a half-acre that I can point to and say at this spot my family lost their home to German bombing.  Memorial to the British.

My Granny was faithful like no other to put flowers on the grave sites of her loved ones during Memorial Day weekend.  Granny is not here to do that anymore.  Though I wish I could get in a car and drive to Shreveport, Louisiana this afternoon and be back before dark, I can’t do that.  So here I sit typing these flowers for her and remembering her like no one else I have ever known.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery is a place I have visited and I will likely never forget.  There is a reason why military members in this country are not celebrated the way they need to be…the way they should be.  That reason is simple.  Simple, however, does not always equate to easy.  Military folks are not celebrated the way they need to be because they do a job not many of us would want to do.  It is as simple as that.  They do a job that most of us will never be equipped to do and that is a tough thing to admit.  Easy as it is to “depend” on the military when we need them, it is just as difficult to say I am not good enough to do what they do.  And that is a shame.  These folks are our NATIONAL HEROES and we do not acknowledge them as such like we should.

The Indianapolis 500 is today.  Today’s edition will be the 99th running of this classic car race.  They still call it the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing”.  I believe it still is.  When I was a kid we listened to the race on the radio.  Imagine that.  This was the mid-1970s I am talking about.  I don’t know if it was because we lived less than 70 miles from the Speedway or this is the way everyone got to see the race, but we listened to it on the radio as it was happening live…then we watched a tape delay of the ABC television broadcast later that night.  All I can say is I hope Marco Andretti wins the race today.  It has been 1969 since Mario, Marco’s grandfather, won for the Andretti family name.

If you are firing up the grill this weekend, I wish you the best.  Don’t burn the hot dogs.  Try a grilled onion or a grilled tomato.  Tell someone you love them.  Pick up the phone and call an old friend you just want to say hello…perhaps someone you need to say hello to them again.  Don’t be afraid to give pause and remember someone you can’t call anymore.  Don’t forget to laugh.  Don’t forget to stop and look around for a few minutes to take in what is around you.  Feel free to ask how you can make things better.  Listen for the answer.  Then go do it.

May God Bless You this Memorial Day Weekend.

And while you are at it, don’t forget to…speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

Looking for something unrelated brought me to the picture above.

I wrote a post about this work Nighthawks by Edward Hopper many many posts ago.  It is still the most important painting I have ever seen.  This photograph was taken a few years ago as my dear wife, Carrie, and I were visiting the Art Institute of Chicago.  I could find something new to look at there for at least a month.  We enjoy the place.

I am so excited that my sister and her daughter are going to be paying this museum a visit next month.  They are going to Chicago to see Bette Midler sing at the United Center. That is the place the Chicago Bulls play NBA basketball.  Not a small barn by any means.

I will be charged with posting in the smallish degree here.  But..the thing is, I just want to go back to the top of the page and examine the characters in the cafe over and over and over again.  I’m kind of proud just to be in a photo next to the thing.  This is a piece of art that has been very good to me over the years.  Some things, like the love of a good friend, are timeless.

Pardon, I am going to look a little more.

Speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

I got a message today.  The message told me it would be the right thing if I congratulated a gent I know on his 20 year anniversary with the company he works for.

Twenty years…I pondered.  How can that be?  Did he start when he was 12?  No…never mind.  I did the math.  He is my age.  We are not thirty anymore, though it seems that way on occasion.  On occasion, it seems like we are twelve.  Just ask my dear wife, Carrie.

So I congratulate him.  That is a feat by any means.  To stay consecutively employed by one entity for twenty years, you must be doing something right.  Keep up the good work, my friend.

Tonight is the last of the Late Show with David Letterman.  I can’t believe it.  When I was in high school he was doing the show after Johnny Carson on NBC.  I like Letterman.  He is a real guy.  I remember seeing The Moody Blues on his show in the summer 1988.  Well…Justin Hayward and John Lodge played “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere”  with Paul Shafer and Letterman’s house band.  It was great.  I watched it live on a black and white TV in an apartment I living in at the time.

Last summer my dear wife, Carrie, and I were in the Ed Sullivan Theater for a taping of Dave’s show.  That was cool.  The coolest part?  The inside of the building.  I am not sure how cold it was, but I am quite confident you could hang meat in the place for a while and it would be fine.

I am going to try to hang in there tonight and watch the last show.  I am sure I will be asleep by then, but I can dream….about…

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Okay.  I am stubborn at times.  No, no, it is true.  I can get quite set in my ways, whether you can comprehend that or not.

My cell phone is one I like.  I don’t need to change it.  It is old and antiquated by cell phone status.  I can take nice pictures with my phone if the light is right.  More importantly, I can keep a call easily…more antennae power…than many phones that purport to be “smarter”. If you ask me, Smart Phones don’t seem too smart if they can’t hold a call.

This evening, however, I entered a realm that put a stigma on me.  The but…”he doesn’t have a smart phone”… was tested today.

I am away from home for a few days.  I am attending a conference.  I am staying in a nice hotel that I don’t have to pay for.  I suppose I should not complain.  But…that is not the problem.  The problem is that my dear wife, Carrie, could not make the trip.  Obligations with her own job did not allow her to take the time to follow me up here.  I miss her…terribly.  We don’t like to be apart.  I did not want to tell her goodbye this afternoon before I drove up.

When it was time for dinner tonight, I ordered take out from a place we have eaten at before up here in Indy.  Carrie and I have eaten at this place a few times.  I figured I would get a salad and a sandwich and bring it across the road to my room and eat while I watch “Fraiser” on Netflicks.

When my food receipt was being paid for, the young lady ringing up my order showed me that I had a $10 coupon coming to me in the next two days if I complete an online survey.   What do I need to present, I asked?  She asked if I could bring in a printed confirmation of the survey.  I told her I had no way to print one.  She asked if I had a cell phone I could show them to prove I did the survey.  I told her my phone was too dumb to do that.  She consulted with her manager.

Know this, I did not ask the manager to be summoned.  The young lady taking care of my order took that initiative.

The manager came over to me.  He asked if I had a smart phone.  I told him my phone was dumb…and I had no plans to bring my unwieldy laptop across the road to show him a confirmation of a survey that I would take.

Truth:  I didn’t care.  I don’t care.

Still, I felt like I was in the midst of the great communication chasm that takes to many of us.  I hear folks talk about computer/phone/music apparatus…is apparati the plural form?  Stuff that I have no idea what they are talking about.  And I don’t care.  I just don’t care.  After all, no one can keep up with all of it.  I’m not going to try. I am going to keep calling my Mom on my way home from work.  I am going to take a picture with my phone when I can.  I will use my phone’s calculator feature when I need to do any serious multiplying.

Was I a victim today because I didn’t have a smart enough phone?  I don’t think so.  I was better off.  I would have only got another bar-b-q sandwich again with my discount when one a week is more than enough.  My dumb phone helped me out.  So there.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

I hope to one day soon bring the following song into Al Fresco’s Place Recording Studio in Louisville for a proper recording session.  This is a song I wrote in honor of a particular graduating high school class.  I sang it for them at a baccalaureate service before graduation.  I had not played it for a few years and only recently revisited it.  When I dusted it off, I found an even greater appreciation for the song than the day I wrote it.  Time and experience can do that.  Be they good times or bad times, we learn from our experiences.  How we use that knowledge helps to define us.  I say go make some progress as you find your way.

You’re Gonna Find Your Way 

There’s a new horizon

Out there just before the dawn

When the mist and the haze has lifted

You’ll find a path to carry on

Some days filled with laughter

And some days filled with tears

This day is here to remember

Year after year after year…

CHORUS

It’s a big tough world out there

There are gonna be some hard days

There will also be times when you find

You find all of the rights words to say….

Like I know…yes I know…

You’re gonna find your way

This day will always be here

For you to take a look back

You’ll shake your head and laugh at what

You shared and what you had

And you know you will press onward

You might even speak the rights

Take a long long look around you

Cos you know you’re going to fight the good fight.

REPEAT CHORUS

I just like that song.  I enjoy reading it.  I enjoy playing it much more.

I wrote another graduation song many years ago.  I have played it at graduation time for a number of years.  I will share that one with you in the last week of May when graduation season is in full swing around these parts.  I hope you don’t mind if I indulge again.

In the meantime…

Speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

My Uncle Roger was a bit surprised when I emailed him to indicate I had found another one of his literary gems in my archives.  Archives is a nice word for piles of papers.  Well, at least they are sub-divided in folders I just can’t seem to label correctly.

This one is a poem he wrote for his wife, Nancy.

I asked if I could reprint it.  He gave me his blessing.  So, let us not waste time.

You Said You Liked Dandelions

     By Roger Hines

I urged Paris

You only wanted Macon

I yearned for suburbia

You said you liked front porches

I apologized for losing the five hundred dollars

You said you always loved to sew and still do

I wanted to treat you to fine dining

You said you loved a fresh cup of coffee

I said what restaurant

You said on the deck

I said one day Hawaii

You said I wonder if Driving Miss Daisy is any good

I said I want the kids to do well

You said I’m so proud of those kids

I said this is worrying me to death

You said it’s been awhile since we prayed together

I raised my voice when the boys hadn’t studied

You firmly repeated our expectations

I cursed the tulips that wouldn’t come up

You said you liked dandelions

Now that is Uncle Roger speaking the poetic rights!

Danny Johnson

I want to wish a Happy Mother’s Day to all the great mother’s out there.  The number of faithful and wonderful mothers I could list here would probably keep me busy until next Mother’s Day.

I will give a shout out to some of those whom I have already wished a Happy Mother’s Day in person.

My Mom.  Happy Mother’s Day to you.  I thank you for all you have done.  You went above the call of duty many times.  I am grateful and blessed.

My Mother-in Law.  Thank you for being a kind soul.  Thank you most of all for giving us your daughter.

My sister.  You are a wonderful parent to your children.  Keep up the good work.

My wife.  You are simply the best.

WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS…

With an apologetic nod to Shel Silverstein, I found where the sidewalk ends last weekend.  It is on Charlestown Road in New Albany North of the Meijer store.

The sidewalk keeps going in the other direction.

Just down from this spot, if you keep walking in the direction of the sidewalk, is a eating establishment I have become quite fond of.  Though I refrained from entering the doors of the place, or going through the drive-thru,  I took this picture.  Do they even have a drive-up?  I don’t know.  I guess not.  You do go in and make your own.

Can’t help it.  I have a weakness for the place.  Guess I can help it.  I did not go in last week.  Hope they never build on of these in the county I live in.  If they did it would be like Norm Peterson making his way into Cheers.  Everyone would know my name.

I have always had a fascination of looking into the sun beneath a tree.  I know exactly what I was thinking when I looked up to the sun when I took this picture.  One day I will share it with you.  I mentioned this moment in a post I wrote last week around this time.  It was a significant place in time for me.  I found an answer.  I was given an answer.

The Moody Blues had to move their concert tonight from the snowy and picturesque venue that is Red Rocks Amphitheater outside Denver into the old relic of an indoor arena…the Denver Coliseum.  My research tells me the last time The Moody Blues played at the Denver Coliseum was December 11, 1970.  Talk about back to the future.

I made mention lately of John Lodge’s new solo effort.

I listened to it a few times this past week going up and down the road to work and back.  It only clocks in at about a half an hour with just eight songs.  I have enjoyed it.  The songs are very diverse.  He sings from the heart.  He is a true rock and roller.  Speaking of which, when I think of how John is going to be 70 later this year, I think about the old television promo that ran on the Louisville market promoting WRKA radio.  They mentioned The Moody Blues and their slogan over thirty years ago was “A Station for those between Rock (and Rolling) and Rocking (as in the rocking chair).  They were trying to appeal to a mature audience.  We had no way of believing a group could still be plugging into amps and cranking up the volume 50 years after they started.  I suppose the attitude was driven by the fact that if the Beatles only had a “live” life of less than ten years, no one else could survive that long either. It had never happened before.  That is one of the things I never forget when I see The Moodies today.  The are truly music history.  They opened for The Beatles.

John Lodge’s 1977 album  Natural Avenue.

I like this record too.  I have come to the point where I do skip a couple because I have had my fill of them.  My greatest criticism of this is that I have always thought the cover of this thing was dreadful.  The pic of him is bad.  The worn out “YES”- like Roger Dean sleeve work does not work for me.  I was delighted when John re-released this with an extra song not included on the original CD about twenty years ago..

This was much better.

Speaking of better… if any of you are under the weather right now, I feel your pain.  Medical pros call it sinusitis and bronchitis.  I call it I can’t breathe!  Thank God for medication and the fact that I can procure some when I am in need.

That is speaking the rights!

Danny Johnson