Ghost, ghost said our two year old granddaughter Ella as Pretty (a/k/a Nana) rolled her away in the grocery store cart from the Nana car in the parking lot toward the store entrance this afternoon. She was, of course, referring to the gigantic white ghost inflatable that had weaved and bobbed to her when we went to the same store two weeks ago. Such fun. Much laughter. Not scary.
Oh, Halloween is over, and the ghost won’t be there today, Pretty told her.
Ok, Ella replied with her favorite response to adult answers lately.
Fast forward to our ride in the car on the way home when she sat in her car seat facing backwards watching YouTube kids version on Nana’s cell phone which is clearly the best entertainment when you can’t see where you’re going. I had my customary place next to Ella in the back seat while Nana was our designated driver.
We rode past a house in her neighborhood that had been decorated with a huge display of Halloween inflatables for weeks but was now a plain typical yard like the other ones, and Ella looked out the window as we passed.
Looking directly at me with great sincerity she asked Naynay, where did Halloween go?
Pretty and I both laughed out loud but then had to come up with something, anything.
Without blinking an eye, I said Halloween was over – it had been replaced by Christmas. Pretty jumped in from the front seat to add we would have another holiday called Thanksgiving before Christmas. I was grateful.
Regular updates on the status of the investigations for the five murders now associated with the name Murdaugh in South Carolina make news not just in our state but around the country, perhaps even reaching the far corners of the earth. Amazing the interest in this story which has made-for- movies written all over it. Ditto the shooting of the cinematographer on an actual movie set – the film called “Rust.” Regardless of who will be held responsible the idea of a movie star like Alec Baldwin pulling the trigger adds notoriety to the tragedy.
Even my sister in Texas asked me what was going on in the Murdaugh case? Alas, I had nothing more to offer than the updates she and I both saw in the news. Alex Murdaugh, household name from the state of South Carolina.
John Monk of The State newspaper gave an interesting update on a lesser known South Carolinian in an article that appeared in the Crime section of The State on October 28th. Paul Colbath of Fort Mill. Anyone ever heard of him?
Paul was charged with “disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, entering and remaining in a restricted building, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Columbia. Colbath was arrested after a tipster contacted the FBI National Threat Operations Center to report that he ‘had been publicly bragging to friends and family’ about participating in the riots at the Capitol.”
According to Monk, Colbath appeared in court in Columbia on October 28th., and Judge Shiva Hodges released him on a $25,000 unsecured bond. In his FBI interview, Colbath denied an assault on the Capitol, saying instead he entered through an open door. The State article quoted court records indicating Colbath didn’t feel he’d done anything wrong but did feel guilty about his participation in the activities all of us witnessed with our own eyes live and in color that day.
Ten other South Carolinians have also been arrested for crimes allegedly committed by them in the Capitol on January 6th of 2021: Nicholas Languerand, Andrew Hatley, John Getsinger, Jr., Stacie Hargis-Getsinger, Elias Irizarry, Elliott Bishai, William Norwood III, George Tenney III, Derek Gunby, and James W. Lollis, Jr. From the upstate in York and Anderson Counties to The Citadel in Charleston, these folks who are our neighbors, our fellow citizens have been arrested and are currently participating in a different form of accountability that is our judicial process.
Monk’s October 28th. article continued with the following information.
“Some 150 police were injured in the riot and one alleged rioter was killed after she attempted to climb through a smashed door window leading to the House chamber. In the 10 months since Jan. 6, more than 650 people have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the Capitol, including more than 190 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in the District of Columbia. The investigation is ongoing.”
The Alex Murdaugh murder mysteries are definitely intriguing with their twists of plot – I don’t want to miss the latest scoop. The investigations into the murder on the set of Alec Baldwin’s Rust will be international news as well, but I don’t feel anything personal when I hear the latest news reports on these cases.
I did on January 6th and do ten months later, however, feel very personally the attack on our Capitol which hadn’t been breached in that way since 1812. I watched in horror, with disbelief as my fellow countrymen and women tried to interfere with the democratic process on that day with such violence. So when I hear the verdicts for the people from my state, I will definitely feel a sense of personal relief if they are proven innocent or profound grief mixed with anger if they are found guilty.
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Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.
This past weekend was SC Pride for 2021 – the annual march was Friday night, Festival on Saturday, and recovery yesterday. Although Pretty and I weren’t able to participate in the festivities, we were thrilled to feel the excitement in the downtown area as it came alive with the electricity of Pride! Our gratitude to all those who did take advantage of the weekend’s celebration of our LGBTQ+ community – nothing better than a good march to empower and inspire the marchers.
Six years ago today as I walked away from the 2015 Pride March and Festival I stopped to take this iconic image of lesbians celebrating on Sumter Street. Clearly inspired, obviously empowered. This remains one of my favorite photos to this day.
Finally, another favorite from the 2014 Pride celebration:
The girls (and guys!) who march and/or ride for equal rights truly do rock.
Happy Pride! Onward.
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Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.
My paternal grandmother I called Ma is the beaming woman second from the left in the middle row. That smile was directed at one of her grandchildren who was misbehaving for the family photo. I’m guessing it was one of my Uncle Ray’s twin boys because they never were interested in following rules, and the little boy turned around toward her certainly looked like he was entertaining his grandmother. (I am the unsmiling little girl on the bottom row. I’m sure my mother had instructed me not to smile. Typical.)
This family photo taken in the mid 1950s speaks volumes about the woman Betha Day Robinson Morris who was my grandmother. Her family meant everything to her, and she ruled all of us with a firm hand. She dearly loved her actual DNA matches, her children and especially her grandchildren. Unfortunately, the in-laws, the spouses her children chose to marry to pass along her DNA never were what she hoped they would be – for different reasons – but all three equally unacceptable.
I have a few favorite pictures of Ma in my office – and this one is at the top of my most treasured. I’m guessing she was in her early 40s here which is how she must have looked when her first two grandchildren were born in 1946. Just imagine. Women of that era had grandchildren when they were so young because they married very young. Betha Robinson was fifteen years old when she married twenty-year-old George Morris. They had both grown up in Walker County, Texas on farms that weren’t far apart. Their marriage spanned 65 years. She outlived the grandson smiling at her in the picture, another grandson who died in infancy – as well as her youngest child Glenn (my father). Later letters I found revealed she was unable to fully recover from those tragedies.
I have written about my grandmother’s influence on me and my storytelling in great detail in many of my published books – particularly Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing. Ma’s kitchen table was the stage for her hysterically funny stories; her audience was usually my grandfather and me since I lived across a dirt road and down a little hill from them. Pa and I both thought she was the funniest person on earth. We waited every Sunday to hear her roast the preacher Brother Whoever at the First Baptist Church of Richards. We were never disappointed in her assessment of the worship service, her Sunday School class members, the special music which she hoped would be her granddaughter’s singing. At a very early age I learned Ma wanted me to do well.
Ma made my school and church clothes using a Singer sewing machine that aggravated her as often as I get aggravated with my slow outdated Windows 7 operating system. She bought patterns and material in Navasota, the bigger town in Grimes County where she carried the dry cleaning back and forth to the Lindley’s larger dry cleaners twice a week – once to deliver, once to pick up. Navasota was 20 miles from Richards, the little town that Pa had chosen to establish his single chair barber shop with dry cleaning on the side to make a little extra money.
Money that Ma controlled down to the last penny. I saw the weekly ritual of Pa handing all of his cash for the week to Ma who put most of it in the bank in Anderson that was 10 miles from Richards. Ma did front Pa an allowance that was sufficient to buy me an ice cream cone or Coke for a nickel at Mr. McAfee’s drug store across the street from his barbershop whenever I walked to town for a visit – I’m not sure what else he did with his allowance.
My maternal grandmother’s birthday was just three days ago on October 20th. I hope you had a chance to read my post about her. Yesterday and today I’ve been thinking about how very different these two grandmothers were. I’m not a Zodiac sign follower, but I was interested in my discovery that Libra changed to Scorpio today. My maternal grandmother I called Dude was definitely a Libra: charming, beautiful, well balanced, peacemaker.
My Ma wasn’t a Scorpio I would describe as a “queen of the underworld”but she had a cruel streak I observed in many forms against others – never me, however. I saw the Scorpio with the magnetic personality, an aura of mystery, definitely a disturber of the peace whenever she had a chance but she made me laugh with her about her high drama.
I think Ma and Dude had a race with their packages of homemade goodies to me in my college days at UT-Austin in the 60s. Ma alternated different flavors of her fried pies that I tried to hide from my friends in the dorm. She also sent chocolate chip cookies which were my only claim to fame in those days.
I loved both my grandmothers with a love I continue to feel today. They were pillars of strength in their own ways, women who had few years of formal education but wisdom born of pain. I wish I could celebrate with them today – even for a few minutes of conversation. I broke both of their hearts when I moved to Seattle in 1968. I was on a journey searching for authenticity, and I thought I had to travel 3,000 miles to shed the imposter, to become the real me. I was never home in Texas on either of their birthdays again. Shame on me for squandering those special days and most other holidays with my family.
For the past two years I’ve had an unbelievable, unexpected glimpse into the feelings my grandmothers had for me. Wow. I hope the thirteen years I lived with them in Richards brought them the joy our granddaughter brings to us every time we see her.
Every choice we make matters – to us and to others. Time is fleeting. Choose wisely. Celebrate your legacies.
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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