I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • Gloria Steinem: the Ultimate Influencer (1934 – 2026)

    Gloria Steinem: the Ultimate Influencer (1934 – 2026)


    In an emotional tribute, Oprah Winfrey praised the writer’s (Steinem’s) “courage and persistence”.

    “She leaves us with more freedom than she inherited and with the responsibility to keep widening that freedom for the women and girls who come next,” the media mogul mused. “What a life. What a legacy. What a difference she made.” — Cover Media, September 04, 2026

    When I was a child my heroes were cowboys like Roy Rogers and The Lone Ranger.  I loved the good guys back in the days when they were easy to identify.  They were the brave men who stood tall against  villains with black mustaches curling oddly around snarling lips – those were the best. I wanted to be one of them. You could have your Superman with his Big S on his chest but seriously, who would go flying around in an outfit as tight as his? Come on, man. That wasn’t believable.

    Cowboys, on the other hand, rode beautiful horses, wore boots with their jeans or buckskin pants, and had great wide-brimmed hats with no worries about kryptonite. Their pretty girlfriends knew who they were and were prepared to wait for them while they fought their battles in the dusty streets and sage-covered hills.  They always won because they could outdraw or outsmart their enemies. It was a perfect world for a little girl watching westerns with her daddy on Saturday mornings in the 1950s in rural southeast Texas.

    When that little girl grew up and lived to be eighty years old, her heroes had to change because her world had revealed itself to be imperfect. I’ve had new heroes who don’t ride horses or wear six-shooters on a regular basis.  Not surprisingly for an old dyke, most of my heroes are sheroes. I could list hundreds, but I’ll name ten in no order.  Susan B. Anthony.   Gertrude Stein.   Barbara Jordan.   Gloria Steinem.  Dolly Parton.  Ann Richards.   Molly Ivins.   Edie Windsor.   Meryl Streep.  Michelle Obama. These are the activists whose courage stands out to me. The villains may not have mustaches any more but these women met them at some point in their lives and stood up to them through their words and actions. 

    Gloria Steinem grew up in the 1940s and 50s during the time when women’s roles were being redefined by world wars, shifting geographical boundaries, higher educational opportunities. As she matured she entered the world of work through journalism at the New York Times. Her commitment to social justice, equal rights for women, and determination to make a difference wherever injustices reigned supreme led her to become one of the early leaders in the second-wave feminist movement of the late 1960s and 70s. 

    Steinem wrote nine books in her life, and I have great admiration for anyone who has the tenacity to send their stories to the great unknown. I think she was brave to fill empty pages with her words. A word warrior. In 1983, she had published Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions – her first published collection of essays. Topics included sexual harassment, genital mutilation, and the words that spoke louder to me personally was the essay on unequal pay for equal work. I totally got that one.

    Her book tour brought Steinem in 1983 to the University of South Carolina’s System in Conway, South Carolina, known as USC  Coastal Carolina. I’m not sure what led me to make the two-hours drive by myself from Columbia to hear her speak, but I did. I was thirty-seven years old at the time, remained mostly closeted, frustrated by my perceptions of the failures of the second wave of the Women’s Movement, already weary of teaching accounting at a technical college in Columbia, and wondering what I could do to make the sweeping social changes I felt were so desperately needed.

    Gloria Steinem’s speech answered me in an unexpected way. Before she closed, she challenged everyone in the audience to close their eyes and think of one thing we could do when we went home in our everyday lives that might be thought of by people as an outrageous act, one small act of rebellion in our daily lives. That was the heart of her message to her listeners that day in Conway, South Carolina, in 1983.  As usual, I had focused on the big picture and forgotten about the little moments I looked past. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

    If you live long enough, you’ll figure out the world isn’t perfect and you’ll definitely meet some nasty villains, but remember you aren’t alone in the battles. Gloria Steinem, Dolly Parton, and a whole host of sheroes have gone before you. May the spirits of those women ride with you, give you comfort, courage, and encouragement in the showdown moments of your life.. 

  • Dolly Made Me Do It

    Dolly Made Me Do It


    This week I was forced to say goodbye to Dolly Parton, who has been one of the inspirational women in my life. Dolly has simply been there – singing to the world the values she learned in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee – for as long as I have music memories.

    We were both born in 1946, Dolly in January and me in April; we began to be known as the beginners of the cohort called the Baby Boomers who have been rightly saddled with the blame for many of our planet’s woes, trials, and tribulations of epic biblical proportions. Although she grew up “dirt poor,” in her words, she never let challenges or ridicule or insecurities from her background define her. She became an international treasure for her indomitable spirit and determination to bring people along with her.

    I have been touched this week by her spirit of perseverance through adversity one more time, and I feel guilty for my relatively good health coupled with my glaring lack of resolve to keep on keeping on this year. Over the years several of her songs have been the cornerstone of many of my personal favorite blogs in this space including one I wrote in December, 2012, about a Hard Candy Christmas following the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Dolly made me reconsider my retirement this week and, sadly, my consternation over our country’s love affair with guns and violence continues to be a theme that resonates in headlines every day.

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

    Gosh, the hard candy Christmas has gone viral.   I thought we could keep it local with just a few hits along the holiday trail stories but nope, Newtown, Connecticut changed the name of that tune.   We Americans have a tragedy of unspeakable grief that will quickly reverberate in cyberspace around the world to a populace who will ask themselves, What is wrong with those people in America?

    I think it’s a fair question and one that we must ask ourselves.   What is wrong with us?   How do we enable and encourage this rage and senseless violence against our own?   Why do we have a Columbine in our not-too-distant history and how will these same historians record the massacres in Aurora, Colorado, and at Virginia Tech?  What can possibly be written about the Sandy Hook Elementary School horror of losing twelve little girls and eight little boys and six adults who were their educators in a few minutes on a regular Friday morning at their public school.  Much will be written through the coming years, but what we do in response to these shocking events will define our culture and our country.

    To the politicians in Washington I say, You need to become statesmen and stateswomen.  You need to set aside your vitriolic verbal attacks on each other.  You are the adults in our family, and we have placed our trust in you by electing you to represent us and when what we see on our Ipads and Iphones and other high-tech gadgets as well as on our regular old television programs is bitterness and bickering and bashing each other verbally, you’re setting a bad example for your children.  You make them believe that rage is not only acceptable but necessary.   Take a deep breath.  Step back for a moment.  Look at yourselves and see what images you project for your people.   Could you please just play nice.

    To the parents who have brought children into our world and have great expectations for their futures and who now are bipolar between anger and anguish, I say I’m so sorry.    No one deserves this.   No one is being punished for removing God from Sandy Hook Elementary School.  God isn’t in this equation or else we would have to blame Him for allowing the assailant to have weapons, wouldn’t we?  Not so fast, my friend, or as my daddy and Ann Richards used to say, That old dog won’t hunt.  But what can we do?  Should we as parents insist on police protection for our children in all public schools regardless of age?   Would police protectors be able to thwart the enraged and armed assailants?  These are the questions we ask ourselves.

    Which brings me to the central dilemma of the complex  challenge of early identification and intervention for our Angry Ones and that is, of course, beyond Thunder Dome to me.  Our children are now raised in a culture of violence.  They play games with it, they sing songs about it, their heroes are violent athletes, their movie stars make action movies with so much “action” their hearing is impaired when they leave a theater, their country sends soldiers to places they have to learn to pronounce and spell like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria…Viet Nam…Korea..and these soldiers kill other people in the name of peacekeeping. 

      Our children are surrounded by violence.   They may go to sleep with the sound of gunfire in their neighborhood and on their street corners.  They may wake the next morning to find a friend, cousin, uncle, grandmother, father, sister, or brother has died during a battle over what?   Drugs?   Gangs?  Money?   Territory?  Aha.  There we have it.  There is no escaping the violence so why on earth would we be surprised that these children who are accustomed to violence, who have access to weapons, would shoot us when we make them mad or when we are, well, just being ourselves and they don’t like us that way?

    This is the season of hope, joy and celebration for some; the Prince of Peace and Santa Claus are the bearers of Good News and Great Gifts for many of us. But it is also a season of sadness for those who have lost family during 2012 and who will be reminded that their holiday season is different this year. The season won’t be the same – ever.  Some people will struggle to find the money to give their children what they want under the tree.   Friction and tension will make family gatherings more problematic than peaceful.  In our sense of hurry and anxiety over putting food on the table we might miss the opportunity to say: I love you today, I love you every day and you will always be special to me.

    I remember a hard candy Christmas with the disappointment of not getting what I wanted from Santa Claus but rather getting a sack of penny candy of bright different colors that tasted alternately sweet and sour but couldn’t be chewed at first because it was so hard.  Gradually though, if you waited long enough, you could bite the smaller piece in two and swallow them both.  Success.  Astonishingly delicious.

    I expected a hard candy Christmas personally this year for a number of reasons, but I wasn’t prepared for a national one.  Regardless, here it is and my hope is that America will never be the same – ever.  That our national consciousness is raised to include in our vocabulary the words kindness and reconciliation and forgiveness and a genuine passion for a better world.   We’ve waited long enough.  We have tasted both the sweet and the sour and, as Dolly Parton sings through the lyrics of Carol Hall, we won’t let our sorrows bring us down.

    I’ll be fine and dandy
    Lord, it’s like a hard candy Christmas
    I’m barely gettin’ through tomorrow
    But still I won’t let
    Sorrow bring me way down

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

    Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library was started in 1995 through her Dollywood Foundation and books numbering in the millions are delivered annually throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom (Wikipedia). I applied to the program for our younger granddaughter Molly who was three years old at the time and would love to share the covers of the 9 books she’s received thus far. Here’s a sample!

    Thank you, Dolly, for the example you set in living a life that was real. Your courage and sacrifices taught us how to be better. I believe in angels – I have believed in you. Rest in peace.

  • A Fond Farewell to My Blogging Journey

    A Fond Farewell to My Blogging Journey


    Special greetings to all my followers who became friends in cyberspace over the past fifteen years.

    Today I am saying a fond farewell to all of you with good memories of our mutual posts which shared who we are, and possibly even who we wished we could be. The first time I discovered I could hit a Publish button on WordPress and send my thoughts to a cyberspace universe I felt a sense of magical power. I had bypassed the perils and rejections of traditional publishing to carry my voice  to a group of people who would be thrilled (well, maybe not exactly thrilled, but more than mildly interested)  to hear what I had to say.

    I began this experiment with cyberspace in August, 2011.Today this post is my 1,160th. with more than 215,000 views over the years and a grand total of 925 subscribers. Some will think those numbers ridiculously paltry in the years of social media, but for a little girl who grew up in Grimes County, Texas, in the 1950s, they are unbelievable. I am thankful for every follower, for each view, and the encouragement you gave me when I wanted to give up.

    I found myself unable to quit blogging, regardless of the number of likes and views I had for each post. Perhaps I never achieved the recognition for my writing I originally thought possible, but as the funny guy Jonathan Winters once said, “I couldn’t wait for success, so I went ahead without it.”

    The good news is I have not been diagnosed with any life changing illness. But this year I find is more difficult for me with my waning eyesight and reduced ability to focus. I set a goal of excellence in my writing – didn’t always get there, but I tried to do my best. Storytelling for what I envision to be an audience of truth lovers isn’t as easy as it sounds, and in today’s world even more challenging.

    I have a couple of new ideas for projects which have been on the back burner for a while now. Time is fleeting, turning 80 was a wakeup call to get busy, to step out of what has been a wonderful comfort zone in my third act – what if the final curtain call is closer than I realize, and I didn’t leave everything on the playing field.

    When the final curtain does fall, if there is an afterlife I will be pleasantly surprised; but I will be sorely disappointed if I am unable to reunite with Wee Sassy, The Red Man, Smokey Lonesome Ollie, Paw Licker Annie, Tennis Ball Obsessed Chelsea, Big Dog Spike, and Little Guy Carl. I will be waiting for Pretty – for whom I have waited all my life. I will leave her in good hands – those of our beloved son Drew, his amazing wife Caroline and those little hands of our most cherished granddaughters, Ella and Molly, who have been our shared happiness.  Charly and the mysterious carport cats will demand her attention every day and shower her with adoration.

    My wish for all of you is that you keep your faith in each other, speak your truth, and keep writing. Thank you for being my friend.

    Annie Lamott said in her book Bird by Bird: “But I always tell my students that sometimes when my writer friends are working, they feel better and more alive than they do any other time. And sometimes when they are writing well, they feel that they are living up to something. It is as if the right words are already inside them, and they just want to help them get out. Writing this way is a little like milking a cow; the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it.”

    Onward.

  • Ten years and counting – what lessons have we learned from the Dallas, Texas, police ambush

    Ten years and counting – what lessons have we learned from the Dallas, Texas, police ambush


    Dallas marks 10 years since the July 7, 2016, ambush that killed five law enforcement officers during a downtown protest, one of the deadliest attacks on police in modern U.S. history. The shooting left four Dallas police officers and one DART officer dead, injured several others and forever changed policing in the city. The following piece I published ten years ago seems, sadly, appropriate for Everytown, USA, today.

    Big “D”, little “a”, double “L”  – a – s. Dallas, Dallas, Dallas, another notch in your gun belt this week; more snipers take a shot at our ability to wage peaceful parades and protests  while the face of violence lights up within your city limits. Shades of 1963 when you were the harbinger of our national nightmares to come.

    I am outraged at the environment of fear and desperation that leads men to believe that shooting each other with guns or blowing each other up with bombs is the only solution to our problems within our borders and across the pond. Prejudices over skin color and religious practices cross oceans, span continents and land at our doorsteps. And since we have the right to bear arms, we also have the right to shoot them – at each other.

    Policemen who are sworn to protect us become caught up in a kind of madness that makes them so suspicious and fearful of  people of color that even routine traffic violations can turn into scenes of degradation and death.  Lives are changed forever – death is permanent – there is no taking back the gunfire that kills an innocent man or woman: no do-overs. And it’s not just that one life taken. The ripple effect in the lives of families and friends is also endless.

    Take Back the Night? Hardly bold enough. Give Back the Light, I say. Give back the light of acceptance of citizens regardless of race or who they love or where they worship, but without apathy toward those who struggle with less. Acceptance without apathy – do we have leaders capable of recognizing the reality of the feelings of Powerlessness that drive men to fire gunshots against the Powerful…I wonder. And can the Powerful be changed to look beyond the obvious to the pain below the surface…I wonder.

    Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God, Jesus said in his sermon on the mount. I am looking for the peacemakers, I am waiting for the peacemakers, I am hoping that they find their way to Dallas, Texas, tonight.

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

    Ten years later, I continue to wait for the peacemakers. I am one small voice in the wilderness of cyberspace, but I refuse to wave a white flag of surrender while I wait with hope for international peace.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Reminiscing Wimbledon: A Golden Era of Tennis

    Reminiscing Wimbledon: A Golden Era of Tennis


    What’s that sound I hear – that tick, tock, tick, “tocking” away? Must be time passing through this year…winter turned to spring, and now summer brings heat, thunderstorms, and always at our casa wherever we lay our heads, the thrilling sounds of Wimbledon, the third major tennis event of the season. Manic Monday is no more, Federer and Nadal have retired in recent years; Red, Annie, and Spike have been called to higher ground, but return with me to a Golden Era of tennis and enjoy this blast from the past. The year was 2017, and we had moved that spring from our Casa de Canterbury to our Casita de Cardinal where we remain nine years later.

    Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive…it’s a train, it’s a plane, it’s Super Manic Monday at Wimbledon tomorrow and my head will be spinning like one of those old antique tops that we recently sold at our spectacular yard sale for Casa de Canterbury this weekend.

    Roger Federer in 2012 following his win

    Daddy WON Wimbledon again! Thank you, thank you

    (one of Roger’s twin daughters at the match in 2012)

    I lost at Wimbledon again – why me, o Lord, why me?

    (Andy Murray was the runner-up in 2012)

    The Red Man in the bleacher seats at

    Casa de Canterbury during Wimbledon in 2012

    (The Red Man was a serious Tennis Addict)

    Paw Licker Annie entertained herself in 2012…

    (she much preferred licking her paw to tennis)

    Spike’s first Wimbledon experience – 

    he didn’t quite catch the thrill in 2012

    Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic in

    2014 Wimbledon Final

    Daddy lost Wimbledon…oh, no

    Rafael Nadal leaving Wimbledon in 2014

    (win or lose, Nadal likes to stay fresh)

    Nadal, Federer, Djokovic and Murray a/k/a the Big Four will be flailing away at yellow tennis balls again tomorrow at the All England Club at Wimbledon in the round of 16 players still standing in both the men’s and women’s draws after the first week of tournament play. The ESPN commentators have dubbed this day Manic Monday because it is the final time both the men and women will be playing on the same day on the grass courts of the 2017 tournament.

    With the yard sale in her rear-view mirror, Pretty will be up with me to catch the Magic Marathon that is the beginning of the second week of one of the 4 Major tennis tournaments of 2017. Roger Federer  won the Australian Open earlier this year, and Rafa Nadal won his record-setting 10th. French Open title a few weeks ago.  His 10th. French Open. Truly awesome.

    These guys are “oldies but goodies” as my friend Robin Lee says whenever she sees me.

    That’s how I feel about the men and women who continue to loom large in international competition even as they pass the 30-year-old hurdle that used to be the sign of the end of times for tennis players. Good for them. They crash their own glass ceilings every time they step on Centre Court. And we haven’t even mentioned the legendary Venus Williams who is playing in her 20th Wimbledon at the ripe young age of 37. You go, girl.

    Spike has grown fonder of tennis in the past 5 years and will watch Wimbledon with Pretty and Charly and me in our new bleacher seats at Casita de Cardinal this week. We have to hope The Red Man and Paw Licker Annie will have the best seats in their home away from home, too. Red will pull for Roger with Pretty, and Annie, well, she will keep her preferences to herself.

    Spike and I both love Nadal whether he has a shirt on or not. Vamos!!

    Enjoy a fantastic week of tennis if you are a fan and have access to sports channels on your TV.

    Thanks for staying tuned.

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

    The second week of Wimbledon 2026 is off and running with upsets galore in both the men’s and women’s draws – who will raise the trophies at The Championships? Possibly a new name will be written down in glory. Regardless, the competition will be epic.