I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • No Kings Please, Give Me Country Music Queens

    No Kings Please, Give Me Country Music Queens


    Gracie – Purple Dahlia Studios (Etsy)

    My final post for this Women’s History Month is a reprint of portions of a piece I posted in November, 2016, saluting the Queens of Country Music I will always love, thank you very much, Dolly. So many conversations recently about the Man Who Would Be King in the USA – my thanks to those who organized and marched against him yesterday from sea to shining sea. Let me close the month on a more positive “note” to celebrate Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Anne Murray, and the power of storytelling in song.

    When I was a little tomboy growing up in Grimes County, Texas, which was one of the poorest counties in the rural southeastern Piney Woods side of the state, my dad’s brother, my Uncle Ray who lived in the big city of Houston, was a huge country music fan…and when I say huge, I do mean huge. He was like the most faithful Saturday night radio Grand Ole Opry  and Louisiana Hayride kind of country music fan.

    The rest of my family was luke-warm to what are now considered the country music classics because they were all gospel music folks, snow white Southern Baptist church music kind of folks: quartets, singing conventions on Sunday afternoons with dinner on the grounds, Baptist Hymnal songs played on the organ and piano on Sunday mornings for the congregational singing.

    Out of that place I began to sing solos in the little country church we attended before I could read the words to the songs. My mother taught them to me by repeating the words over and over until I could remember them. Then she would have me stand on a little folding chair on the floor just below the minister’s pulpit on Sunday morning to sing the “special music” for the service while she accompanied me on the piano.

    I could look out on a congregation of maybe 50 people that included my two grandmothers, my dad, my grandfather, and at least two of my uncles…sometimes one more if my Uncle Ray came from Houston for Sunday lunch at my grandmother’s house. They all beamed back at me with love and great appreciation for my singing talents.

    So much so that my Uncle Ray paid me the highest compliment he could give one Sunday after church when I had graduated to standing without the chair and actually was able to read the words to the music on my own. I must have been eight years old at the time.

    Sheila Rae, he said, you sing as good as Patsy Cline. You should be on the radio on the Opry or the Louisiana Hayride.

    002

    This suggestion made quite the impression on my prepubescent self – remember this was in the 1950s before American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, The Voice and reality TV – and that comment sparked my interest in country music that has lasted for the past 60 (now 70) years. Could I sing as well as Patsy Cline? Clearly not, but I could fall in love with her music.

    In times of trouble and deep distress, therefore, I am more apt to listen to the Country Classics. I think they’re good for what ails you.

    Album Cover

    Dolly Parton remains the last one standing of my favorites, but thank goodness for YouTube and the memories of Patsy Cline and Anne Murray. I saw Anne Murray in Vancouver, British Columbia, in concert in 1969 when I lived in Seattle, Washington. I had a huge crush on an older married woman at the time, and she invited me to go to the concert with her…and her husband. Anne Murray sang the right words to ease my naive heartbreak that evening and again in 1983 with A Little Good News that I believe is appropriate for the No Kings Days protests in 2026. The names need to be changed, but the problems remain oddly familiar 43 years later.

    007

    “A Little Good News”

    I rolled out this morning…kids had the morning news show on
    Bryant Gumbel was talking about the fighting in Lebanon
    Some senator was squawking about the bad economy
    It’s gonna get worse you see we need a change in policy

    There’s a local paper rolled up in a rubber band
    One more sad story’s one more than I can stand
    Just once, how I’d like to see the headline say
    Not much to print today can’t find nothing bad to say

    Because…

    Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town
    Nobody OD’d, nobody burned a single building down
    Nobody fired a shot in anger…nobody had to die in vain
    We sure could use a little good news today

    I’ll come home this evening…I’ll bet that the news will be the same
    Somebody takes a hostage…somebody steals a plane
    How I wanna hear the anchor man talk about a county fair
    And how we cleaned up the air…how everybody learned to care

    Whoa, tell me…

    Nobody was assassinated in the whole Third World today
    And in the streets of Ireland all the children had to do was play
    And everybody loves everybody in the good old USA
    We sure could use a little good news today

    Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town
    Nobody OD’d, nobody burned a single building down
    Nobody fired a shot in anger…nobody had to die in vain
    We sure could use a little good news today.

    ***********************

    Until we meet again, I leave you with this Irish blessing: may all of your troubles be less and your blessings be more and may nothing but happiness come through your door.

    Thank you for sharing Women’s History Month with me. If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

     

  • The Top Dog: Lessons from 22 Canine Companions

    The Top Dog: Lessons from 22 Canine Companions


    Is Charly the Top Dog?

    Hm. I wouldn’t tell Carl that he wasn’t the Top Dog…

    …or Spike, either…after all, Spike had been around the longest

    and had to guard the house from those pesky cats

    Sometimes, though, it IS about the last Dog Standing. If I had a medal, I would give you one, Charly. Would you settle for a major treat? How about a good memory?

    Love you,

    Your best friend

    **********************

    One thing I’ve learned from the 22 dogs I’ve had in the past 80 years: I was capable of both good and bad in those years, but my dogs forgave the bad and adored the good. I have been a lucky person.

  • March Madness Memories: SEC Women’s Basketball 2026

    March Madness Memories: SEC Women’s Basketball 2026


    (l to r) Brian, me, Garner

    Thanks to our gay boys basketball buddies for taking care of me this past weekend in Greenville, South Carolina, during the 2026 Southeastern Conference Women’s Basketball Tournament while Nana had her hands full helping to take care of …

    our six-year-old granddaughter Ella and four-year-old Molly

    Ella took a movie break while daddy Drew drove us to the motel. Molly wondered why Nana was sleeping with a smile on her face? Everyone wearing appropriate Gamecock apparel!

    We lost the Tournament Final to Texas (of all the luck) but won the regular season – still all smiles for another fun time to kick off March Madness in the SEC!

  • Celebrating Harriet Powers: Quilt Maker and Storyteller

    Celebrating Harriet Powers: Quilt Maker and Storyteller


    the Harriet Powers United States Postal Stamp

    issued in February, 2026

    Storytelling takes many forms, and no one told a story of biblical proportions better than quilt makers. Of quilt makers, Harriet Powers was recognized as a pioneer in the art. Born in Clarke County, Georgia, as a slave in 1937, emancipated after the Civil War, Powers married and was the mother of at least nine children. She died on January 01, 2010, in Clarke County, Georgia.

    Harriet Powers, American Quilt Maker

  • The Story of Joan Eardley: Art, Love, and Legacy

    The Story of Joan Eardley: Art, Love, and Legacy


    Josie Holford’s blog, Rattlebag and Rhubarb, another of my favorites, introduced me six months ago to the work of Joan Eardley, a lesbian artist who died at the age of 42 from cancer that began as breast cancer but spread to her brain. (josieholford.com/joan-eardley/) I encourage you to visit her blog for additional insights.

    Joan Eardley

    Joan was born in 1921 on a dairy farm in Sussex, England, to Anglo-Scottish parents. Her father committed suicide in 1929, but Joan and a younger sister, Pat, weren’t told about the cause of his death until they were grown women. The two young sisters and their mother lived in London with their grandmother and great-aunt who took care of them. When the bombings began in England in WWII, the women returned to their roots in Scotland to live in Glasgow.

    National Galleries of Scotland (www.nationalgalleries.org)

    early works of Eardley followed the Samson family, a family of twelve children growing up on the back streets of Glasgow

    “In January, 1940, Eardley enrolled at the Glasgow School of Art as a day student where she studied under Hugh Adam Crawford and was influenced by the Scottish Colourists…[9] She met the painter Margot Sandeman, who became a close and lifelong friend.[9][14] Sandeman and Eardley would often paint together and also shared family holidays and camping trips.[15] In 1941, they acquired a horse and caravan and travelled around Loch Lomond to paint and sketch. For many years, they also visited Corrie on the Isle of Arran, using an outhouse, the Tabernacle, as a studio.” (Wikipedia)

    In 1957 Eardley was recovering from the mumps, and a friend took her to Catterline, a tiny village located on the North Sea in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. In an audio recording Eardley spoke of Catterline: “When I’m painting in the North East, I hardly ever move out of the village (Catterline), I hardly ever move from one spot. I do feel the more you know something, the more you can get out of it. That is the North East. It’s just vast (indistinct word possibly “waves”), vast seas, vast areas of cliff. Well you’ve just got to paint it.”[36][37] (Wikipedia)

    Joan Eardley – Catterline Seascape

    As for her personal life, Eardley’s name was associated with other women artists at various times during her life – women she met while studying art at the Glasgow School of Art. Margot Sandeman (1922 – 2009). Lilian (Lil) Neilson (1938-1998). Dorothy Steel (1927-2002).

    But the love of Eardley’s life was the violinist/photographer Audrey Walker who was ten years older than Joan, married, living in Glasgow but was with Eardley in the Catterline years from 1952 until her death in 1963.

    In 2013, fifty years after the artist’s death, love letters she wrote to Walker in Glasgow from Catterline were published. Walker died in 1996.

    Source: Love Letters from Catterline – Joan and Audrey

    The Scottish Gallery

    Passages from letters from Joan Eardley to Audrey Walker:

    I just feel I love you so much – and there just ain’t words – to say it – not words that mean what I feel inside of me – and there’s nothing else that I really want to say – nothing at all…

    Joan Eardley

    Passages from Audrey Walker’s tribute to Joan Eardley:

    To me she was quite simply the winter sea to which and for which I would give my life.

    Audrey Walker

    *********************

    Special thanks to Josie Holford for leading me down the rabbit hole of Joan Eardley’s life and especially her art. I’ve been saving this journey for a special time. Women’s History Month is that moment.