Good Stuff or Babbling?

Posted bySheila Morris 10 Comments on Good Stuff or Babbling?

“Yeah, I read your blog every time,” the younger woman sitting next to me said.  “Sometimes it’s good stuff and I print a copy of it and save it.  Other times, it’s just babbling.”

I burst into laughter when she said that, but she wasn’t finished.  “What’s with all this country music?  Don’t you ever listen to anything other than country?  You need to branch out.”

At this I protested, but she had another comment.  “I can tell with the first sentence if it’s a good day or if you’re out there rambling around in outer space.”

Carmen is a beta follower for this blog, but of course I have no way of tracking whether she reads the entries or doesn’t so I was really pleased to hear that she does.  Carmen is the granddaughter of one of the four most important women in my life, Willie Flora, and I’ve known her since she was a little girl in elementary school.  I had her email address and invited her to follow along with me when I sent the original invitations.  She accepted and now here we were almost two years later chatting and eating brisket in a booth at Dozier’s Barbecue in Fulshear, Texas in the middle of a Saturday afternoon.

She is a Reader.  A Follower.  And she had no reluctance to call it like she sees it.  I’d love to take credit for some of that bravado but I’m afraid she learned at the tables of two masters, her mother and her grandmother.  I’ve had a few lessons at those tables myself.

Good stuff or babbling?   A new bar is raised.  To print or not to print?  That’s the question.

Published by Sheila Morris

Sheila Morris is a personal historian, essayist with humorist tendencies, lesbian activist, truth seeker and speaker in the tradition of other female Texas storytellers including her paternal grandmother. In December, 2017, the University of South Carolina Press published her collection of first-person accounts of a few of the people primarily responsible for the development of LGBTQ+ organizations in South Carolina. Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home will resonate with everyone interested in LGBTQ+ history in the South during the tumultuous times from the AIDS pandemic to marriage equality. She has published five nonfiction books including two memoirs, an essay compilation and two collections of her favorite blogs from I'll Call It Like I See It. Her first book, Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing received a Golden Crown Literary Society Award. Her writings have been included in various anthologies including Out Loud: the best of Rainbow Radio, Saints and Sinners New Fiction from the 2017 Festival, Mothers and Other Creatures; Cowboys, Cops, Killers, and Ghosts (Texas Folklore Society LXIX). She is a displaced Texan living in South Carolina with her wife Teresa Williams and their dogs Spike, Charly and Carl. She is also Naynay to her two granddaughters Ella and Molly James who light up her life for real. Born in rural Grimes County, Texas in 1946 her Texas roots still run wide and deep.

10 replies on “Good Stuff or Babbling?”

  1. Hi Heather, would love to see you when we head that direction! I’m so glad Anne has moved back and is close to all of her family – I think that’s awesome. I hope her things arrived without too many problems. Would love to see your dad, too. Thanks for hanging in there with us – you’ve been one of our first readers, too, and I appreciate it!

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  2. Sheial – I hate that you were that close and I missed you! I work in Brookshire. Next time you are down this way let me know. I would love to take you on a tour and have lunch! Maybe Grandma Anne could join us. Maybe I could even twist Daddy’s arm!

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  4. Thank you so much for encouraging me in my country music musings, and I will tell you I miss my Country Legends 97.1 on your FM dial in Houston! When I came upstairs to my little transistor radio in my office a few minutes ago, I was trying to figure out how I could do better than the jazzy modern country music station I listen to when I’m in South Carolina. Woe is me. Where is Garth Brooks when I need him? 🙂

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  5. Yep the bar’s been raised! Now you know you’ll be held accountable for all your writing. Sounds like she’ll keep you on your toes, Sheila. Oh, and if you didn’t reference country music now and again I’d worry about you…I really would 😀

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