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

It was 1988 I think.  The Rockford, Illinois quartet that brought us The Dream Police and Live in Budokan was at it again with their album “Lap of Luxury” that spawned the hit song “The Flame”.  Have they had a hit since?  If they have I don’t know of it.

Yesterday I was thinking about the band Cheap Trick and their aforementioned 1988 album.  Given the circumstance the world is dealing with, I have the luxury, if you will, to be in wide open spaces.  Yesterday I walked 6.79 miles on a county road and saw three cars.  The UPS planes heading east to Louisville outnumbered the cars three to one.

I decided to give my legs a break today before one of them breaks on me.  That would be tragic.  Over the last four days my walks have averaged 5.28 miles. These walks are nonstop, save a break of a glass of water or the need to rid oneself of some water.

I have a 1.7 mile lap.  It is my Lap of Luxury I have found.  I leave the driveway and head toward Milltown and turn around .85 miles down the road.  I walk this way because I can faintly keep a cell phone signal in this direction.  If I head east up the hill, forget about it.

Don’t tell my friend Robert Becker from Seymour’s 96.3 WJAA what I am about to disclose.  During these walks I have been listening to iheart radio’s Classic American Top 40.  Casey Kasem counts ’em down from the 1970s and 1980s.  This has been a nice diversion to the not so normal way of life we are experiencing.  This takes me away from the gamut of emotion that wants to creep in.  Sadness, worry, fear, disgust, anger, and fill in the blank.

These walks are a real good time and all four food groups of leg muscles are given a challenge at some point or another with hills and curves and I don’t know what all.

So my lap goes like this:

Head west young man!  Horace Greeley said that.  What else was gonna say?  He was three miles from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.  This is a very overrated quote, don’t you think?

Down the hill we go.

The Blue River is across the field to the left and it looks very calm right now.  My dear wife, Carrie, and I took some large landscaping rocks from a dry creek bed behind the house today.  That story doesn’t have much to do with my walking route but I thought I would bring it up anyhow.

We start to climb a little again and the left side gets a little steep ahead.  Here is where you keep a careful eye out for cars and try to listen for the sound of whining tires from 4-wheelers or the rumble of a car or truck engine.  There is a curve at the top of the hill and it is probably the most ticklish spot on the walk.

This is a wide shot.  A couple curves and up toward the highest point of the walk.

See that car on the horizon.  It was our mail carrier.  He stopped.  We kept our distance as we chatted for a few minutes.  I am a social sort to a degree.  I like to talk.  I also like to listen.  It was good to hear a voice on this route besides that of Casey Kasem.  When he drove off I was reminded of how the voices of others I have heard the last two weeks are few and far between.  Then I rallied and got back to American Top 40.  It was long distance dedication time.

Keep going. At the top of the hill in the distance I start to head down for a little while and then my .85 mile marker is found and I turn around and head back from here:

That is the one way trip of my Lap of Luxury.  I am thankful I have it.  I know most do not.

Lord have mercy I will be glad when the last of these laps is a distant memory.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

Back from the longest hiatus in speaktherights.com history…

Wow, to quote Justin Hayward, we are living in “Strange Times”.

A couple October’s ago my dear wife, Carrie, and I went to a concert at The Brown Theatre in Louisville.  It was one of those.  When I heard Roger McGuinn’s Rickenbacker play the opening strains of “Turn, Turn, Turn” I sat a little deeper in my chair.  Is this real, I asked myself?  It was.  In front of me and Carrie from our balcony seats in the quaint Brown Theatre were original Byrds members McGuinn and Chris Hillman joined with Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives.  They played the 1968 album Sweethearts of the Rodeo in its entirety, as well as other notable Byrds hits.  The Bob Dylan tune “My Back Pages” is a favorite.  “Mr. Tambourine Man”, Hey Mr. Spaceman”, and “So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star” were highlights also.  Personally, I like the Sweethearts of the Rodeo album.  Not a critical success, I can listen to it any day.  Critics don’t make music.  Some of us do.

I practiced a little social distancing the last two days.

Yesterday I went for a 5.08 mile walk.  The coast was clear.  The legs were sore!  So later I went downstairs for 2 miles on the elliptical.  Woke up this morning feeling better than I expected.

Today that walk was 5.64 miles.  I did not have the will to go downstairs to further my exercising endeavors.  I will probably feel it in the morning.

In this time of hiatus I am looking forward to getting back to work.  On Thursday, March 12, it was announced at the North Harrison Community School Board Meeting that I had resigned my position as Guidance Counselor effective March 30th.  At the time I thought Carrie and I might be in North Carolina for Spring Break this week.  So much for that.

I appreciate the opportunity to work nearly five full school years at NH.  The folks there were good to me.  I am thankful.  I will certainly miss the students.  They make the building come to life!

A new opportunity found me, as I was not actively looking to leave North.

I used to kick a football over this goalpost and aim for the scoreboard.  When the ball hit it there was a “PANG” sound that echoed for a while.

And so it goes.  I am back once again where I used to swing my leg for fun.

And just like that I am a Paoli Ram. I will be a guidance counselor at the Paoli Jr-Sr High School.  It feels good I can tell you.  Even in these uncertain, if not downright weird, times we are in the midst of, I am looking forward to the challenge and the opportunity to help the students of Paoli Jr-Sr High School.  I appreciate the kind words and gestures I have already received from a place I have visited in an official capacity a total of two times in the physical sense. I will be delighted when the day comes that we are back in full swing like a school full of eager students needs to be.  I don’t like schools feeling like museums.  We’ll get there eventually and we will celebrate when we do.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

Where do I start?  There is too much symmetry for me to get.  The Chicago Bears made the playoffs in 1977 for the first time in my lifetime.  Walter Payton saw to that.

I texted back and forth with an old friend, Barry Hall, tonight.  He filled in the missing pieces for me.

A while back I swore off facebook.  Things were way too negative for me.  It was not helping me.  That is when it is over for me.  Lead. Follow. Or get out of the way.  I got facebook out of the way.

Funny though, today as I ate my lunch I grabbed my phone.  I was looking at instant messages from days gone by.  A few of them struck me as oh so pleasant memories.  One of those was from an old friend I found again thanks, ironically enough, to facebook.  I was reliving a message I had gotten from out of the blue from a guy called Terry Grider.

When I looked at facebook today for the first time in a long time, I found that Terry Grider passed away a few days ago.  It hit me hard.

Terry Grider played football for my Dad at Brownstown Central a long time ago.

In 1977, Terry Grider was my first football coach.  I was in the 4th grade.  Coach Grider’s team The Bears were 1-2.  We beat the heavily favored Cardinals is the season finale 30-26.  It was my first taste of we can do this after all.  I remember a tackle I made.  I didn’t make as many as I should have.

I look at this team and think about so many memories.

Chuck played quarterback.  I played tight end on offense.  In practice, after Coach Grider told Chuck over and over again to throw it to me, he did and I caught it.  In our next game Chuck threw it to me again and I caught it.

I have made over about this time in my life time and time again.  Why wouldn’t I?

It was the place in time when, on practice days, 9 and 10 year-old boys road a bus from the elementary school to the middle school completely unsupervised and changed into our football gear in a locker room there with no one else around and then we would walk a couple blocks in our football practice gear to the town park where our coaches were waiting for us.  AND WE THOUGHT NOTHING OF IT.  OUR PARENTS THOUGHT NOTHING OF IT.  Yes.  It was a simpler time.

In high school my Dad was my head coach.  We did the best we could with that situation and I am glad it worked out that way.  But know I was glad to have Coach Terry Grider there for me when I was in the 4th grade.  I knew him.  He knew me.  He, like my Dad, was tough on me.  I am glad of that.

I wish I could have told Terry all these things.  Life is like that though.  The best of intentions that don’t come to fruition still live on in our hearts and our souls and make us better for the next day and the next time someone may need us.

There was a great deal of unspoken feeling between Terry and me.  Our instant message exchanges are testament to that.  We had our time.  I am so thankful for that.

To Coach Grider!  Amen.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

Someone is paying attention, I found out.  They asked if I would comment further on some of the pictures I have put on speaktherights.com over the years.

Here’s the thing.  I keep moving.  I don’t stop and look around a great deal.  I wish I did that just a little more.  I was much better at that skill when I was 17 than at almost 52.  Responsibility to blame?  I don’t think so.  Things change.  Photographs don’t change.  That is part of their appeal I think.  When I stop and look at the catalog of photos on this page I look around and wonder how it happened.

No great order here.  But I will acquiesce and throw some meaningful photos on here.

At the top of the list is this photo of my dear wife, Carrie, and my Uncle Stanley Chambers.  Stanley is gone now.  I miss him.  He and I could relate like few I know.  I got Stanley.  And he got me.  This was taken in Forest, Mississippi during a Hines Family Reunion.  My mother’s family was from W.E. and Levi Jane Hines.  Seventeen young’uns for those of you keeping score at home.  Stanley was married to Aunt Reat, my mom’s sister.

Me pensively looking over The Moody Blues display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  I did not think either of us would ever get there.

My Mom and Dad at a Moody Blues concert at The Louisville Palace in March of 2016.

Behind us was the fictional Hill Street Station from Hill Street Blues.  We walked through a COLD Chicago day to get to this place.  Still my favorite TV show of all time.

I don’t think I have a better football story than the one I can tell about taking my Dad to The Rose Bowl to see the UCLA play USC.  When we walked into that stadium it was the most surreal experience I had since placing the last punctuation mark on a 74000 word story I finished writing in 2007.

The first picture I ever posted on speaktherights.com.  Who could blame me?  I didn’t know what I was getting into to.  But did I ever have a great start!!!!

I miss this guy.  Luther was our pup for fourteen years.  He gave it up in 2010.  I still miss him so.  This photo was taken about a week before he died.  He looks tired.  He did not look so tired when he planted him near the walnut tree in the back yard.  I mean that.

I kicked, Samonhead held, and Pete snapped it…in this order.  I love these guys.

Me and Carrie at a Train concert in Kingsport, TN.  Were we really that young?

The closest I ever got to a hole in one.

The last time Jarrett and Cody and I went fishing together.  Proud of these boys!

My Dad and I saw the last Notre Dame game played on grass on ND Stadium.  The coldest I have ever been at a game.  It snowed.  Dad had the time of his life.  I thought I was going to die until I ate a whole pizza at the hotel afterward.

I started speaktherights.com in July of 2014.  Four months later we lost my Granny.  I chronicled her illness and it was a cathartic thing for me.  She was amazing.

There is only one place to KISS THE BRICKS…Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

With my Uncle Roger at a family reunion.  He too taught English.  We are both still learning, I suppose.

Carrie and me atop the Empire State Building.

At the reflecting pools where the Twin Towers fell.  I don’t know that I have ever looked at a photo more.  She was there for someone I am sure.

My key to Indianapolis Motor Speedway on more than one occasion, Mr. Adam Disque and the 4th grade Medora Elem. class.

The NHHS girls on the podium at Banker’s Life in 2016.

Making music with Jeff Carpenter has been one of  the thrills of my life.

John Elway thanking me for sending him football cards of his Dad when Jack Elway coached in the World League.  It was the right thing to do.

Barry Hall and my Dad a week before they tore down Blevins Memorial Stadium as we knew it.

Humbled to be in this barn where Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville chewed the fat in Pittsfield, Mass.

The last Moody Blues concert we attended at The Ryman Auditorium.  No better place to end it.

Honored that Ben Waynescott presented me his road jersey for Senior Night.

Robert Becker, curator of Rock and Roll on 96.3 WJAA in Seymour, Indiana.  The best in the business.

Where The Miracle on Ice took place In Lake Placid 1980.  I need to go back and make sure I was really there.

Walking across The Brooklyn Bridge.

Carrie and me hanging with our friend Julie Ragins before a music gig she was playing and singing in at Kent, Ohio.  I am still hoping to write a duet good enough to talk her into singing with me.

Dining with Cody and Jarrett and Sarah in Florida.

No Pier Pressure under the Santa Monica Pier.

Carrie and me in an empty Rose Bowl where I was 2 for 2 kicking just beyond extra point territory in Brooks.  Look at the new field.  I was not about to put on my kicking shoe, though I had it with me.

Working through a musical part with Dan Trisko.

Brother Tim Petty finally got me to Alabama to see Ole Miss play Bama.

The last Justin Hayward gig we saw last October at The City Winery in Nashville.  Julie Ragins is to his left playing and singing as lovely as ever.

Watching the Hoosiers play with Adam Disque.  Love it!

Carrie and Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks.  No better way to wrap this up.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

The year is 2020.  For a few reasons I suppose, I just don’t feel quite as young as I used to.  I’m not complaining.  I’m just speaking the rights.

Yesterday, for a few fleeting moments I felt like a kid again.

As I sat on the couch and watched a recorded earlier in the day Eli Manning retirement speech, I felt a warm metal rail under my chin for just a minute.  Under my rear was another rail I was sitting on.  I was ten years old and it was 1977.  Behind me were the metal bleachers of the Wilmington College Football Stadium.  In front of me on the field was # 14 Ken Anderson and my eyes were affixed to every single move this quarterback made as the Cincinnati Bengals were deep into summer camp.  Anderson’s straight over the top delivery.  His foot work that was text book.  Throwing a deep out to Isaac Curtis and how Ike caught up to it when you never thought he could.  Waiting to get my autographs after practice.

As my chin was now resting on top of my folded arms, an older gentleman inside the rail  meandered over to me with his arms crossed looking ever so attentively at the quarterback play also.  He spoke up.

“You really like that Ken Anderson, don’t you?”  I responded, “He is the best ever, sir.”  The man walked side to side for a moment and said, “I really like him too.”

When I caught up with my Dad, who was in the stands, he asked what Paul Brown and I were talking about.  “Ken Anderson.  What else?”

And so that was how it was for me growing up as the son of a football coach.  Though I could throw a ball over sixty yards once upon a time and make a few good throws around the field in pick-up games, I was center and kicker material.  I was not quarterback material. As a senior in high school I saw Ken Anderson start the season opener against the Seattle Seahawks in 1985.  He got hurt.  So did I.  The last time I remember seeing him play on television, he was holding for points and field goals his last season in 1986 on a Monday night against the Steelers.  I was in a TV lounge at a residence hall across the rail road tracks from the Thomas Assembly Center at Louisiana Tech begging for another Bengal score so I could see him run out there just one more time.

On June 3rd of 1987 we opened up sports pages and found this.  What do I do now, I wondered?

My football rules go like this…Root for the home high school.  Root for your favorite college teams.  Root for your favorite pro player.  I have never been a die-hard pro football fan beyond rooting for my favorite player.  Ken Anderson did that to me.  When he was done, so was I.

Living in Southern Indiana, I was not even impressed when, as a high school sophomore, the Mayflowers delivered the Colts to Indianapolis.  That all changed in 1998.  Peyton Manning was now a Colt and I made it a point to get to see him play at least one game a year in the old Hoosier Dome.  I have yet to see the Colts play in the house that Peyton built.

A year later in 1999, while in Oxford rooting on the Ole Miss Rebels against the Georgia Bulldogs with Quincy Carter at quarterback in a game the Rebs lost 20-17, my Aunt Barbara and I were watching the team make the walk to the stadium in their suits and ties.  Eli was a scrawny little fart.  200 lbs was his weight listed in the program, only if his pockets were filled with biscuits.  But there he was.  Having been a Rebel fan, given my Southern lineage, I knew this was a big deal.  I knew that Archie caught some stupid grief when Peyton went to Tennessee instead of Ole Miss where Arch was and still is a legend.

I was fortunate enough to see Eli play at least one game in each of the seasons he played at Ole Miss.  I found my favorite player again.  Then he joined the New York Giants and I was able to see him play a couple NFL games in person also.  Now there is no reason to think about the NFL Sunday Ticket again.

Both Ken Anderson and Eli Manning played sixteen seasons with the same team. Both were quiet leaders.  They are both Hall of Fame guys in my heart and that is where they will stay.  In football, as in music (The Moody Blues), I have known how to pick’em.

As I raised up off of the couch to walk away after Eli Manning’s announcement, I realized I will never sit on that rail again.  But is sure was fun while it lasted.

Speaking the football retirement rights…

Danny Johnson

Listening to a remastered version of The Moody Blues’ 1986 The Other Side of Life.  That was the one that is credited to bringing the last great wave of fans to the band.  I can tell you that not many from that generation showed up in great numbers in the last years of the band’s touring life.  Not to say they won’t tour again, but, they won’t tour again.  And that is okay.  In July of 2017 I walked out of The Ryman holding Carrie’s hand having just heard the band play Days of Future Passed in its entirety.  I’m done! That is what I told myself when I walked out and that is what I meant.  A solo show to be had by Justin or John is always a possibility I suppose.

We had to put Holiday Pete away.  But every year he finds his way to be affixed to a kitchen cabinet.  This picture was taken long before I knew Mick Rutherford or had stepped foot onto the North Harrison campus.  But, I did.  And it has been a good thing.  I only wish I had been his classmate when he was sporting this getup.  I would have probably hit him in head with that broom instead of the silver metal lunch box I clocked him with one day in Mrs. Lambert’s room in the back of the room by the coat pegs.  He forgave me.

After Christmas my dear wife, Carrie, and my sister, Lynn, and I went to Mississippi for a few days to look around and visit kin.  It was a marvelous time.  The last time I was on the Ole Miss campus for a football game was Eli Manning’s senior year.  I have made it to Nashville and Lexington, and even Winston-Salem to watch the Rebs play since.  The campus at Oxford has grown up a bit.  Somebody added water and money and the place really grew.

The stadium has grown.  Carrie and I were there in 1996 for a record crowd of 44,000-plus. Both end-zones have since been filled and the last record crowd was in 2016 against Alabama with over 66,000 in the house.

You know, I would give anything if this guy would sign with the Indianapolis Colts for a year or two.  That would be fun.

The square in Oxford was a beautiful sight.  The place has a true charm that doesn’t work you over. This charm takes you in.  That is a compliment I don’t dole out lightly.

It was a good time.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

With a nod to Billy Joel, I am not Saying Goodbye to Hollywood, though I was unimpressed with the place when I saw it.  I am Saying Goodbye to Facebook.

This is post number 548 of speaktherights.com.  On these pages, that began in July of 2014, I have type nearly a half a million words.  I have enjoyed them all even when I wasn’t enjoying them.  My long-time readers know what I mean.

I made a conscience effort this past fall to cut back on speaktherights.com.  It has not worked out very well.  In the interim I have paid more attention to facebook than I have speaktherights.com.  It has not worked out very well. I say it again.

I was not made for facebook.  I realize most of the folks I know on facebook would never fathom having a blog that produced a half a million words.  I don’t expect them to.  It is not what they do.  It is, however, what I do.  And what I need to get back to on a more regular basis.

Facebook is a vehicle that I don’t travel well on.  I love words.  I dissect them.  I breathe them.  I look at them upside down.  Know that I will never ask anyone to understand any of this.  It is my bane and my glory.  I smile when I think about writing.

I thank Mr. Bart Bigham for allowing me to come into his 11th grade classroom each Spring to expound on writing in one shape or another whilst tying it to a guidance lesson for life.  Even if he reads this, he will never know how important this is for me.

When I taught English I imparted on my classroom that I believe firmly in what is right and wrong and what is good and bad.  Fair, I told them, is either a degree of something or a place where you can get a really good corn dog along Indiana Highway 250 outside of Brownstown around the last week of July.

Facebook, to me, is good to a degree.  My problem is I get hung up on words…words my friends have not thought about or examined that I turn my head sideways at have brought me here.  I see way too much “Re-post and make a rational decision (or no decision at all) later”.

Guess whose problem this is?  Mine.  I will OWN IT.  There is novel idea these days.

So there it is.  I am not unfriending anyone!!!  I am suspending my facebook account tomorrow evening.  This is the right thing to do. Perhaps I will be back.

I will still have my twitter account.  I encourage you to stop in to speaktherights.com to see what is new or browse some of the old material.  I have been blessed beyond measure in this writing endeavor.   Hopefully I will pick it back it up a bit.  I told my dear wife, Carrie, I would like to put a few quick hitters on more often instead of 700-1000 word columns.  For better or worse I am driven by the 700 word column.  If I don’t get there I feel like a weenie.  I must get over that!

Thank you.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson