I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Author: Sheila Morris

  • one woman’s bucket list is another woman’s good life


    me and my best friend Charly enjoy Pretty’s bucket list

    Pretty’ s bucket list got one wish lighter this summer with the nearly completed screened in porch in our backyard. We had a screened porch with a wonderful squeaky wooden swing in the first house we bought and lived in together. During the first nine years of our marriage we were way too busy for swinging though.

    Fast forward ten years, another four houses, and now too tired for swinging we are one door short of another screened in porch. Pretty is ecstatic to have her pool and porch waiting for her whenever she takes tiny amounts of time away from managing her antique empire to enjoy them.

    I, on the other hand, have only the Evil PT sessions to interrupt my porch sitting and playing in the cool pool this summer. Poor me.

    I thought about making a bucket list of my own but then decided why bother when Pretty’s list is working fine for me.

    Charly advises when the heat gets to be too much,  head for the porch

    Stay tuned and stay cool.

     

  • Daddy and his dogs


    Lordy, Lordy – my daddy loved his dogs.

    Daddy with his bird dog in his lap, his open Bible on the table, 

    and his hunting gun leaning in the background

    The first and last memories of my daddy always include his love for his dogs, his family, his church and public education; and I’m pretty sure I have those in the right order. He was an outdoorsman, a quail hunter during season so the dogs we had were supposedly purebred pointers, but they never succeeded in the field because they couldn’t get used to the sound of guns since they spent their lives indoors sitting in his lap.

    Daddy and his dog Dab watching a Longhorn football game on TV 

    Daddy holding Seth while Dab relaxes in his own chair

    This is how I remember my daddy – impeccably dressed in coordinated shirt, tie, jacket and slacks on his way to work or to church, but never too busy to say goodbye to one of his dogs.

    My daddy, Dr. Glenn L. Morris, died way too young at the age of 51 on June 30, 1976. I remember him on every Father’s Day and all the days in between – still.

    Cancer was the culprit for the loss of my father, and yesterday cancer claimed a friend of ours, Consuelo Heath, who also waged a long brave battle against this disease. Pretty and I send our sympathy and love to her wife Lynda Parker. Rest in peace, Consuelo.

    Stay tuned.

  • road trippin’


    To say my mom and I had a complicated connection is an understatement. What I am grateful for, however, is that neither of us ever gave up on the other; and occasionally we set aside our differences, however briefly, to share a common interest. Like, for example, the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. I found these pictures she had saved from a rare combo family experience fifteen years ago that triggered a flood of emotions as I went back in my memories to a time when Pretty and I made one of many visits to Texas to see my mother (this one after we had been together four years),  a time when none of us knew my mom was three years away from living in a Memory Care Unit in Houston, a time when we all agreed visiting the Bush Library together would be fun.

    small note: Mom never would drop the “h” in Pretty’s name

    I had a higher than usual anxiety level planning the trip of nearly a hundred miles from Mom’s home in Richmond, Texas to the Bush Library in College Station. After all, my mother, my wife and I would be in the rental car I had picked up at the airport in Houston – close quarters for the day trip. I needed everything to go off without a hitch, but a hitch was waiting for me. The rental car had a flat tire just 40 miles up the road.

    Pretty and Mom all smiles when we discovered the flat

    Smiles turned to frowns while we waited for roadside assistance,

    but eventually we were back on the road to College Station

    Pretty and I love a presidential library – even one located in Aggieland

    Mom quickly lost interest in the library

    so we spent time wandering the grounds outside

    my mother and me in black and white – as we often were

    lunch break, anyone?

    Although neither Pretty nor I would ever say the George Bush Presidential Library made our library favorites list, the road trip was a memory maker, as my mother would say.

    The future belongs to those who refuse to put aside the past; you can quote me on that.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Vive la France! D-Day, the donald, and the drop shot


    The French have it all this week: 75th. Anniversary of the Allied invasion in WWII that began on the beaches in Normandy on June 06, 1944 (commonly referred to as D-Day); an American president on the continent who truly can’t stop himself from revealing his ignorance of, oh well, just about every nasty thing he finds to tweet about on an hourly basis; and the final week of the 2019 Roland-Garros tennis tournament, the second Grand Slam event of the year which finds familiar names in the men’s semi-finals and fresh faces in the women’s semis.

    I am swept along by the stirring images of the American cemetery in Normandy, the stories of the amazing four women ages 92 – 99 known as the Rosies who were not only the Riveters but also the draftswomen and/or anything else needed, these four women representing all the women who worked building the planes, ships and bombs necessary for our soldiers waging a war in Europe, Africa and the Pacific. These women are in France for the D-Day Anniversary remembrance and will bring their memorie as well as their flowers for one of the crosses in the cemetery which belongs to a brother by his sister who has never had the opportunity to visit his grave. Tom Brokaw will also be on this site as he pays tribute one more time to the fallen soldiers of WWII who inspired his book in which he named them our Greatest Generation.

    One of the women who wins the French Open this year will be a first time winner of a Grand Slam. The names of the four remaining women in the draw will be familiar only to those who follow women’s tennis regularly: Ash Barty of Australia, Johanna Konta of Great Britain, Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic and seventen-year-old Amanda Anisimova of the USA. These remarkable women managed to eliminate more familiar  tennis names like the Williams Sisters, defending champion Simona Halep, #1 player in the world Naomi Osaka, Madison Keys, Sloane Stevens, and 108 additional competitors who fought their hardest on the clay courts but lost to better players on a given day.

    The men at Roland-Garros are also down to the final four, but their names are not only familiar but famous. Roger Federer of Switzerland meets his long-time rival Spanish clay court warrior Rafael Nadal in a much anticipated semi-final match. Federer has won 20 Grand Slam tournaments to Nadal’s 17. The Serbian Novak Djokovic has 15 Grand Slam titles but came into the French as the winner of the previous three major tournaments so a win for him would put him in a category all his own. Austrian Dominic Thiem will play Djokovic in the other semi-final on the men’s side. The French got the final four men in the correct order, but who could have predicted the women’s semi-finalists? I can’t wait.

    Last  and definitely least, an American president trolls the international twitter space with irrelevant nonsense and makes his trip for D-Day a public relations nightmare for his staff and everyone he encounters on the other side of the Pond. I felt sorry for the Queen during his toast at the state banquet. She looked like she was wondering if her dogs would be more entertaining than this presidential impersonator from the Colonies. Poor Queen Elizabeth. And can anyone really believe the British royalty told the president to bring his whole commoner family for dinner?

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home (Happy Pride!)


    In June, 2017 I shared my excitement about the upcoming publication of Southern Perspectives – the cover was all I had back then – but I could see the finish line of a very long journey. Two years later I am still excited about this collection of intimate personal stories that reminds all of us to never give up on our potential to change the world for good.  Onward.

    Coming this December – a Must Read!

    Read the intimate personal essays of 21 native or adopted South Carolinians who contributed significantly to the organizing of the queer community in our state from the AIDS crisis in 1984 to marriage equality in 2014.

    http://www.sc.edu/uscpress/books/2017/7813.html.

    Jim Blanton, Candace Chellew-Hodge, Matt Chisling, Michael Haigler, Harriet Hancock, Deborah Hawkins, Dick Hubbard, Linda Ketner, Ed Madden and Bert Easter, Alvin McEwen, Sheila Morris, Pat Patterson, Jim and Warren Redman-Gress, Nekki Shutt, Tony Snell, Carole Stoneking (deceased), Tom Summers, Matt Tischler and Teresa Williams answer the questions surrounding the reasons for their activism in a conservative state in the South during a tumultuous time in American politics when many people assumed the only activists in the queer community lived in San Francisco or New York City. These folks chose to remain committed to home instead of fleeing South Carolina. Why?

    Although the book isn’t scheduled for release by the USC Press until December, I couldn’t let the Pride month of June (or the Obergefell Supreme Court decision two-year anniversary this week) go by without sharing my excitement over this book which has been in the making for the past 4 years. Harriet Hancock was my original creative impulse for undertaking the project and has been with me every step of the way toward the ultimate goal of collecting and sharing these stories.

    I am grateful to all contributors for their unwavering willingness to participate, to Harlan Greene for a wonderful foreword and to the USC Press for their commitment to “home” authors.

    Happy Pride!

    Stay tuned.

    Please contact me at smortex@aol.com if you are interested in obtaining a signed copy of Southern Perspectives.