I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Author: Sheila Morris

  • Mexican food means family to Ella

    Mexican food means family to Ella


    Queso dip smeared by three year old Ella over the table top in our booth as she tried to helpfully clean the double digit droplets of white cheese on the space in front of her, bright red contents of one small salsa bowl completely dumped on the table by 14 month old Molly when she reached for water on the table from her booster seat pulled next to us – these were two of our more spectacular messes during one meal at our favorite Mexican restaurant this week. Eating out any meal with our granddaughters and their parents is always an adventure, but regular visits to Mexican restaurants bring their own special perils that require oversized tipping to our wait staff when we leave.

    Pretty, Drew and I took too long to finish our food to suit Ella this week, and she slipped out of the booth under the table to speed everyone along by standing next to Molly’s booster chair, feeding mushy refried beans on a fork to Molly who was overjoyed at the attention from her Big Sis as well as the attention from smiling waitresses that squeezed past the girls in the narrow aisle between booths. I was so focused on the precarious food delivery via fork from Ella to Molly I didn’t notice the middle-aged couple sipping margaritas minding their own business in the booth across the aisle from us until I heard Ella’s quiet attempt to be polite.

    “We’re a family,” she spoke to the surprised couple that turned toward her little girl voice. “This is my Naynay, that’s my Nana, he’s my daddy, and this is my baby sister Molly. My name is Ella.” She pointed to each of us as she introduced us with the names she knew, finishing by identifying herself. Drew and Pretty were talking about the Final Four, the restaurant was slammed, noisy, so I was the only member of Ella’s family that heard her announcement. I gave Ella a little hug, smiled at the couple who were the intended audience of her unsolicited conversation. The woman smiled briefly but then returned to her margarita.

    Molly wasn’t happy with this interruption in her food supply chain so she grabbed Ella’s hair and pulled it as hard as she could which prompted shrieks from Ella and quick action from Drew who lifted Molly from the booster while freeing Ella’s hair at the same time. Daddy to the rescue. Nana slid from the booth to help take the commotion outside.

    Dinner was over. Naynay asked for the check.

    Ella (l.) and Molly have queso in their DNA

    I tried to describe the incident to Pretty on the way home in the grannymobile that night – the joy I felt when I heard Ella’s understanding of what family meant to her, the confidence our little granddaughter had to share her family with others even though their response had been less than encouraging. It was a memory maker for me.

    Pretty agreed, smiled and asked how much I had tipped the waitress.

  • women hang in there, no matter what

    women hang in there, no matter what


    We survive war and conquest; we survive colonization, acculturations,
    assimilation; we survive beating, rape, starvations, mutilation, sterilization,
    abandonment, neglect, death of our children, our loved ones, destruction of
    our land, our homes, our past, and our future. We survive, and we do more
    than just survive. We bond, we care, we fight, we teach, we nurse, we bear,
    we feed, we earn, we laugh, we love, we hang in there, no matter what.

    —— Paula Gunn Allen,

    The sacred hoop: recovering the feminine in American Indian traditions

    “A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground.”

    traditional Cheyenne saying

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    March is Women’s History Month. Celebrate the women in your life this month and every month.

    Photo by Vincent Tan on Pexels.com
  • you old storyteller, you

    you old storyteller, you


    Ann Richards. Barbara Jordan. Stacey Abrams. Molly Ivins. Betha Day Morris. Ann, Barbara, Stacey, Molly and Betha shared a common gift, storytelling, honed from their various Texas influences. I call them the OGs of storytellers I would be happy to sit and listen to for hours on this rainy South Carolina day. Thanks to the magic of YouTube, I can still hear former Texas Governor Ann Richards, former US Representative Barbara Jordan, journalist and author Molly Ivins, political guru Stacey Abrams – the women we can celebrate during women’s history month for amazing achievements in their respective arenas.

    Betha Day Morris wasn’t captured on YouTube videos, or sadly, any videos of her storytelling, but while the more famous others inspired me as an adult, my paternal grandmother was my greatest personal Star Storyteller. I paid homage to her in the preface of my first book Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing.

    My roots are showing today – no, not those roots – my Texas roots which I never really outgrew. On my first visit to Texas from my new home in Seattle in 1968 where I had been for a grand total of three months out of my wise twenty-two years of life spent growing up in Texas, my daddy and I were quail hunting in a field in Fort Bend County when I began pontificating about the majesty, the grandeur of the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest. I had surveyed the lowcountry field of the southeastern coastal area as we followed Daddy’s hunting dogs Dab and Seth, making a remark something to the effect that the fields we were walking had to be some of the flattest lands God ever created. Nothing to see for miles except tall tan grass, why would anyone stay in Texas if they had the chance to move, even the quail might leave if they could. I went on and on. Dab and Seth ran with abandon but without purpose.

    My daddy who was a documented fourth generation son of the Republic of Texas stopped, turned to look back at his daughter he adored and said, “Sheila Rae, you can take the girl out of Texas, but you’ll never take Texas out of the girl.” He was, of course, right.

    I haven’t attempted to rival my grandmother’s stories, but I do have cousins who tell me I remind them of her. I consider that the highest compliment of my work. Stories and humor were the cornerstones of Betha’s life, and they became the bridges in mine.

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    Slava Ukraini. For the women.

  • USA TODAY 2023 Women of the Year South Carolina Honoree: Dawn Staley

    USA TODAY 2023 Women of the Year South Carolina Honoree: Dawn Staley


    Quannah Chasinghorse. Roberta “Bobbi” Cordano. Goldie Hawn. Maura Healey. Nicole Mann. Monica Munoz Martinez. Michelle Obama. Sandra Day O’Connor. Sheryl Lee Ralph. Grace Young. USA Women’s Soccer Team. Women of the 118th. Congress. Who are these women, and what do they share?

    These women have been named as national honorees in USA TODAY’s Women of the Year project that honors local and national heroines “who make a positive impact in their communities every day…across America USA TODAY readers submitted their nominations for national and state Women of the Year honorees.” (USA TODAY March 16, 2023 – updated March 20, 2023)

    In addition to the national honorees for the Women of the Year project, each state has an honoree who “lifts up people in their communities…showing up and speaking out for those who may not have a voice…” (USA TODAY March 17, 2023 – updated March 20, 2023)

    Not surprisingly Dawn Staley has been named the South Carolina honoree by USA TODAY.

    The South Carolina women’s basketball coach is a titan in sports. A three-time Olympic gold medalist as a player and one-time gold medalist as head coach of Team USA, Staley’s led the Gamecocks to two NCAA women’s basketball championships in the last six years. They’re the heavy favorite to win their third title, seeded No. 1 overall in the NCAA Tournament and boasting an undefeated regular season.

    Her reach extends far beyond the court though. She is not just the face of women’s basketball but the conscience [sic]of it, a passionate advocate for racial justice and equal pay, and a public figure who used her platform to draw daily attention to Brittney Griner’s wrongful detainment until the WNBA superstar was home. And she encourages women everywhere, athletes and otherwise, to use their voice – and speak loudly. 

    All of this is possible, Staley says, because of her mom and the lessons she instilled. Estelle Staley was a South Carolina native who moved home when her daughter, the youngest of five children, took over the Gamecocks program in 2008. 

    Staley’s rise from the projects of Philadelphia, where she honed her game, comes with great responsibility though. The 52-year-old calls herself “a dream merchant,” determined to show everyone, especially children who look like her, that starting from the bottom doesn’t mean you’ll finish there.

    For her achievements, Staley is the USA TODAY Women of the Year honoree from South Carolina. 

    —–Lindsay Schnell, USA TODAY (March 17, 2023 – updated March 20, 2023)

    —-Greenville News

    Yesterday afternoon in our little microcosm of Gamecock women’s basketball fans in the stands – shout out to Section 118 – a buzz went up and around about Coach Staley’s attire for this second game of the post season, the final game at home for the Gamecock women at Colonial Life Arena in the 2022-23 season. The biggest question away from the action, the excitement we feel every time we watch our girls play, whether or not we will make the Sweet 16 in Greenville next weekend – yes, those are important questions. But the first one we asked was what is Coach Staley wearing today?

    And the answer was a white and blue Cheyney University jersey – Cheyney is the nation’s first and only HBCU to make it to the Final Four of the NCAA tournament in women’s basketball. Coached by basketball Hall of Fame Coach Vivian Stringer in 1982, the team lost to Louisiana Tech in the championship game.

    Coach Staley responded to questions regarding her choice of attire for the win that sent her team to the Sweet Sixteen next weekend in Greenville: “For them to be led by Coach Stringer, who opened doors that now I walk through, it was truly an honor to wear this jersey and to represent them.”

    “Yolanda Laney, who wore this (jersey) … She actually started leagues for us,” Staley said. “When I was younger, we played in something called the DBL, and she was very much a part of creating that league to give younger players an opportunity to just come together and play in the summertime, so I have fond memories of that.” —-Emily Adams, Greenville News (March 19, 2023)

    Dawn said it. I believe it. That’s all, folks.

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    Congratulations to Coach Staley on this honor – we are proud of you, and what you stand for.

  • Equal Pay Day 2023

    Equal Pay Day 2023


    AAUW Equal Pay Calendar

    2023 Equal Pay Days

    • Equal Pay Day—representing all women—is March 14. Women working full-time, year-round are paid 84 cents and all earners (including part-time and seasonal) are paid 77 cents for every dollar paid to men. 
    • LGBTQIA+ Equal Pay Awareness Day is June 15. Without enough data to make calculations, this day raises awareness about the wage gap experienced by LGBTQIA+ folks. 
    • Black Women’s Equal Pay Day is July 27. Black women working full-time, year-round are paid 67 cents and all earners (including part-time and seasonal) are paid 64 cents for every dollar paid to non-Hispanic white men. 
    • Moms’ Equal Pay Day is August 15. Moms working full-time, year-round are paid 74 cents and all earners (including part-time and seasonal) are paid 62 cents for every dollar paid to dads. 
    • Latina’s Equal Pay Day is October 5. Latinas women working full-time, year-round
    • are paid 57 cents and all earners (including part-time and seasonal) are paid 54 cents for every dollar paid to non-Hispanic white men. 
    • Native Women’s Equal Pay Day is November 30. Native women working full-time, year-round are paid 57 cents and all earners (including part-time and seasonal) are paid 51 cents for every dollar paid to non-Hispanic white men. 
    • Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Women’s Equal Pay Day is TBD. Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women working full-time, year-round are paid 92 cents and all earners (including part-time and seasonal) are paid 80 cents for every dollar paid to non-Hispanic white men.

    Thanks so much to the American Association of University Women for the above images and information they provided on this significant component of Women’s History Month in 2023.

    And thanks to Brazilian illustrator Camila Pinheiro for designing the 2023 US Open Tennis Tournament poster celebrating 50 years of equal prize money for men and women, featuring one of the leaders associated with that seismic achievement in 1973: Billie Jean King. A mere twenty-eight years later the Australian Open awarded equal prize money for men and women beginning in 2001, another six years passed before Wimbledon followed suit in February, 2007; Roland-Garros quickly followed Wimbledon in March, 2007 – thirty-four years after the US Open adopted the equal prize money policy for women and men in the sport all four Majors participated in the policy that became the first Grand Slam of pay equity for all players.

    “UnEqual” pay was the powder keg that ignited my activism in the women’s movement of the 1970s. From a nontraditional career for women in the accounting profession that began in 1967 with the shocking discovery that my compensation of $650 monthly at the Houston office of Arthur Andersen & Co., one of the most prestigious international accounting firms at the time, was $250 less than a work buddy making $900 a month for the same job. Only difference according to the partner in charge of personnel at the firm when I confronted him: my friend was a guy who might have a family to support one day. The risk for me, according to Mr. Terrell, was the need for maternity leave.

    I wasn’t bold enough at the time to tell him why that was an unlikely scenario; I was, however, angry enough to leave the firm. This was my first job in the real world following graduation from the University of Texas at Austin, my first personal introduction to discrimination by men in power who had no respect for women in the workplaces they controlled, my first feelings of being lesser than despite high academic achievements and even higher work ethics. At twenty-two years of age, I was born again – this time as an activist for equal pay.

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    Slava Ukraini. For the women.