I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

For any who want more, complete list of all posts by month since 2011
  • Happy Birthday!

    Happy Birthday!


    Drew, Abe, Caroline, me and Perry Como?

    Day one of Vacation in Gettysburg, Pa

    Back in the days of yesteryear – before granddaughter Ella – before even the wedding – Pretty and I got to know Caroline Jeffords on an eight-day vacation Pretty, Drew, Caroline and I took in August, 2012, as we traveled throughout the states north and east of South Carolina

    Pretty and Pretty, Too

    The trip was one of the best times of my life, and we learned much about the adult Drew and his girlfriend…not the least important of which was Caroline knew her restaurant apps, made sure we made good choices for every meal… while Drew’s favorite chocolate milkshakes ever were made at the Hershey complex in Pennsylvania.

    Part of the reason for that trip nine years ago was that both Drew and Caroline had August birthdays we celebrated on the road.

    Today is Caroline’s birthday, and it’s nine years since that awesome trip. The years have flown by with many special family times we’ve shared at holidays, birthdays, ordinary days. 

    She is now a wonderful wife, caring daughter, loving mother to her own daughter Ella who will be two years old on October 1st, and successful in her career. The young woman we got to know during that special vacation has matured, changed, thrived.

    Happy Birthday, Caroline, from the Nannas who love you. We wish you every happiness in the coming year.

    P.S. We are doubly blessed for Caroline’s twin sister Chloe who we also celebrate today. Aunt Coco, as Ella has named her, is a gem.

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

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • When I Was One and Twenty (with apologies to A.E. Housman)

    When I Was One and Twenty (with apologies to A.E. Housman)


    Five years ago in the summer of 2017 I posted my apologetic version of British poet A.E. Housman’s classic poem “When I was One and Twenty” published in 1896 in a collection called A Shropshire Lad. Housman, who was born in 1859 and died in 1936, had partially funded the publication of A Shropshire Lad following a publisher’s rejection. In today’s jargon, we call that self-publishing. The book has been in continuous print since then so somewhere in London a poetry publisher in the last decade of the nineteenth century cursed himself on a Roman British tablet…or on something equally appropriate.

    Good news. I have updated my poem from five years ago, but before I wax poetic, I felt it might be helpful to share the original. The following was copied without permission from The Poetry Foundation.

    When I Was One-and-Twenty

    When I was one-and-twenty
           I heard a wise man say,
    “Give crowns and pounds and guineas
           But not your heart away;
    Give pearls away and rubies
           But keep your fancy free.”
    But I was one-and-twenty,
           No use to talk to me.
    When I was one-and-twenty
           I heard him say again,
    “The heart out of the bosom
           Was never given in vain;
    ’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
           And sold for endless rue.”
    And I am two-and-twenty,
           And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.
    Interesting aside, Wikisneaks reports Housman met a young man named Moses Jackson when he was in St. John’s College at Oxford, developed a homosexual attraction for him which was not returned, and promptly failed his Finals in humiliation. I can personally identify with unrequited love in a college setting but thankfully focused on academics to graduate cum laude. But then, my poetry wasn’t brilliant.
    When I was One and Twenty

    (With apologies to A.E. Housman)

    When I was one and twenty,

    My world was make-believe.

    A play directed by others

    I felt compelled to please.

    But now I’m one and seventy,

    The play is on the shelf.

    No lines to learn, no marks to hit,

    The director is myself.

    (August, 2017)

    Here’s my revised efforts five years later

    When I Was One and Twenty (with apologies to A.E. Housman)

    When I was one and twenty,

    I waited for love to find me

    In the depths of a study hall.

    But love never came, the nights were long

    As youth slipped away in a pall.

    But now I’m six and seventy,

    The curtain takes a call.

    Love came in time, the nights are sublime

    Away, long away, from the time in the study hall.

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

    Okay. Clearly I haven’t captured “brilliant” in the intervening years.

  • 1st alert weather x 3

    1st alert weather x 3


    Since last night’s final weather alert on the 6 o’clock evening news called for heavy rain today, I made sure to watch the early morning 1st alert weather on all three local channels before beginning my walk. Carl and I completed our sunrise check of the skimmer basket at the pool and much to our joy found the basket filled with a few leaves but no frogs. Huge relief.

    The consensus of the television weather forecasters seemed to be the overcast sky would hold off dumping rain until after 8 a.m. so I sneaked out the back kitchen door at 6:45 under the watchful eye of Carl without disturbing the still sleeping Spike and Charly and, most importantly, Pretty. I knew the ever early riser Carl would guard the door until I returned.

    Full disclosure this is the twentieth week of my return to early morning walks after a sabbatical of oh, well, let’s round that off to roughly 13 years. For the forty years of my working life in the numbers world, I rose early every morning and grabbed a dog to go walking with me for half an hour in whatever neighborhood I lived in at the time. The names of the dogs changed over their lifetimes, but I am nothing if not focused on routine which, combined with my love of the outdoors, made the walks a great time to clear my head before being chained to a computer at my desk inside a stuffy office. Five days a week unless weather prohibited.

    Following my lengthy walking hiatus, I have now increased the schedule to every day – but no dog due to an unfortunate accident involving Charly earlier this year that resulted in an ambulance ride to a nearby hospital ER. Not really her fault but my concentration isn’t what it used to be – why not limit the distractions.

    Speaking of distractions, this morning had a doozy. I started out walking down the incline on the street next to our house, walking downhill always got me started on the right foot (or left, wherever the open road beckoned). Each morning I assessed the progress of the construction of three new houses in the process of being constructed where the wild heavily forested undisturbed lots had been for the past four years and for the first ten weeks of my return to the early morning walks.

    Suddenly without checking with me first, three white wooden For Sale signs had been evenly spaced in the ground of the natural area. Who would be interested in buying these out of the way lots on a sleepy street in Lexington County, I thought when I had walked past them in the spring. Within two weeks, SOLD covered all three.

    For two months the sounds of huge pine trees falling, shaking the earth as they fell, the whirring of saws cutting them into smaller pieces, the sounds of bulldozers roaring through the undergrowth knocking down everything in sight, and the amazing sight of a massive rock being picked up by a large piece of equipment I now know is an excavator. I watched one Friday afternoon as the excavator picked up the rock, raised it in the air and then dropped it with such force my dogs freaked from the aftershock in our back yard. Pick up, raise, drop. Repeat.

    The three lots are now completely razed, brightly colored dirt smoothed on their surface, and this week marked the start of a new phase as the cement blocks used in the foundation were delivered at 8 a.m. Saturday which allowed the new crew of Five Guys to work on the foundations of the first two homes.

    Against this backdrop of my worry during my walks over all the natural life whose homes had been destroyed, I passed the third lot under construction this a.m. and made the curve that indicated the first tough climb for me. The sky was overcast as the first alert weathermen promised, no rain so far, but no sunlight either.

    I was making my usual excuses for walking slowly up the incline. For example, wasn’t it better to be walking at all really?

    Nearing the top of the hill where I usually took my first break, I stopped where I stood. Just ahead of me on the right was a wild boar standing calmly in a driveway with only its square dark back side visible. OMG, I thought. This wild boar has been displaced from the forest down the street where the new homes were under construction. And out of all these houses I walked on the road between since rounding the curve, this wild boar chose an unremarkable driveway for its escape route to somewhere.

    My mind raced to the inevitable conclusion that my life was in mortal danger when a woman walked up the driveway from the house and spoke to the wild boar. Come on, Daisy, move your bloomin’ arse. Get back in this house.

    Have I mentioned my macular degeneration and or vivid imagination? I thought not. The cute Daisy who I then saw resembled a happy dog of undetermined heritage never looked in my direction.

    The weather forecasters can predict rain – but they can’t warn you for crazy.

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

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • i’m nobody, who are you?

    i’m nobody, who are you?


    I’m Nobody! Who are you?

    Are you Nobody, too?

    Then there’s a pair of us —

    don’t tell!

    They’d banish us, you know.

    How dreary to be somebody!

    How public, like a frog

    to tell your name the livelong

    day

    to an admiring bog!

    This poem introduced me to Emily Dickinson’s poetry when I was required to memorize lines in elementary school. My dad actually tipped me off to this short piece which he also helped me memorize. It definitely qualifies as poetry, he told me, and was written by one of the best American poets ever. I remember feeling buoyed by his confidence as I recited the poem in class. I also remember the teacher implementing a minimum number of words and lines for the next assignment. No worries – my dad knew enough poems to fit every poetry exercise.

    I thought about the frog poem in the early morning hours today when my faithful four-legged companion Carl and I made our daily check of the pool skimmer basket. We check the basket every night after dark thirty and do the re-check by the dawn’s early light. The pool attracts frogs of every size and shape because the water tricks them into believing it is fresh – like an oasis in the desert. Despite the frog log we have provided for the past five summer seasons of our time here, some of the frogs lose their way and opt to swim in the pool with the passion of a Katie Ledecky or Caeleb Dressel.

    During several of our recent nocturnal inspections Carl and I have been able to rescue an assortment of the amphibious creatures who have been forced into the eternal swim of the skimmer basket. I am actually able to pull the little ones by reaching down to pull them out with a small iron handle I use to lift the skimmer basket. Carl shares my excitement when he runs around to sniff the stunned frogs but wisely doesn’t disturb them before he runs off to the doggie door, always hoping for a treat following his Coast Guard efforts.

    This morning, however, we found a medium sized frog that didn’t survive the deadly chemicals we must use to keep the pool safe for humans. Two legs laid outstretched behind his little body as if to say hey what took you so long? I swam and swam – but “Nobody” did not come.

    In South Carolina the summers are hot, hot, humid and hotter. Thunderstorms often strike in the late afternoons, early evenings. The frogs seem to multiply following the rains – their deep guttural sounds from the trees fill the night with the same noises I remember listening to with the windows raised in my home in Texas. The pond behind my grandmother’s house was quite the attraction. Thankfully not so deadly as our pool. But I never went swimming in that pond for as long as we lived in front of it.

    Tonight Carl and I will make our rounds with our usual care…holding our breaths for no unhappy surprises.

    I’m nobody, who are you? How dreary to be somebody, how public like a frog to tell your name the livelong day to an admiring bog.

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

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned. I’m beginning this month with the goal of writing 20 posts during the month of August. I’ve gotten a bit lazy this summer.