I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Humor

  • A Little Good News and Sweet Dreams


    When I was a little tomboy growing up in Grimes County, Texas, which was one of the poorest counties in the rural southeastern Piney Woods side of the state, my dad’s brother, my Uncle Ray who lived in the big city of Houston, was a huge country music fan…and when I say huge, I do mean huge. He was like the most faithful Saturday night radio Grand Ole Opry  and Louisiana Hayride kind of country music fan.

    The rest of my family was luke-warm to what are now considered the country music classics because they were all gospel music folks, snow white Southern Baptist church music kind of folks: quartets, singing conventions on Sunday afternoons with dinner on the grounds, Baptist Hymnal songs played on the organ and piano on Sunday mornings for the congregational singing.

    Out of that place I began to sing solos in the little country church we attended before I could read the words to the songs. My mother taught them to me by repeating the words over and over until I could remember them. Then she would have me stand on a little folding chair on the floor just below the minister’s pulpit on Sunday morning to sing the “special music” for the service while she accompanied me on the piano.

    I could look out on a congregation of maybe 50 people that included my two grandmothers, my dad, my grandfather, and at least two of my uncles…sometimes one more if my Uncle Ray came from Houston for Sunday lunch at my grandmother’s house. They all beamed back at me with love and great appreciation for my singing talents.

    So much so that my Uncle Ray paid me the highest compliment he could give me one Sunday when I graduated to standing without the chair and actually was able to read the words to the music on my own. I must have been around eight years old at the time.

    Sheila Rae, he said, you sing as good as Patsy Cline. You should be on the radio on the Opry or the Louisiana Hayride.

    002

    Well, now this suggestion made quite the impression on my prepubescent self – remember this was in the 1950s before American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, The Voice and reality TV – and that comment sparked my interest in country music that has lasted for the past 60 years. Could I sing as well as Patsy Cline? Clearly not, but I could fall in love with her music.

    In times of trouble and deep distress, therefore, I am more apt to listen to George Jones than I am Hootie and the Blowfish or the new country sound of Darius Rucker. Yesterday I resisted MSNBC, Blue Bloods, In the Heat of the Night, a tennis tournament in Singapore, Ellen and Sharon Osborne… and found myself with the Country Classics. It was good for what ails you.

    010

    Here’s a portion of my playlist…

    That Woman I Had Wrapped Around My Finger

    Came Unwound

    (George Strait)

    A Wound Time Can’t Erase

    (Stonewall Jackson)

    Blue Moon with Heartache

    (Rosanne Cash)

    It’s a Long, Long Way to Georgia

    (Don Gibson)

    If I Miss You Again Tonight

    (Tommy Overstreet)

    Ghost Riders in the Sky

    (Johnny Cash)

    Sweet Dreams

    (Patsy Cline)

    I Met a Friend of Yours Today

    (Mel Street)

    Don’t Fight the Feelings of Love

    (Charley Pride)

    Together Again

    (EmmyLou Harris)

    008

    The Right Combination

    (Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner)

    A Little Good News

    (Anne Murray)

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    I’ll let the titles do the talking.

    Until we meet again, I leave you with this Irish blessing: may all of your troubles be less and your blessings be more and may nothing but happiness come through your door.

     

  • Hang on Spooky, Spooky, Hang on!


    004

    Happy Halloween to all our friends in cyberspace – this was a surprise pumpkin left on our front porch by two very creative Hillary and Halloween supporters, Kati and Sheila Go ( as opposed to Sheila Slo). Thanks to them for the fun – our candle will be glowing for our trick-or-treaters tonight!

    8 days to Election – what can I say except relief is on the way.

     

  • Vetting Morning


    The first thing I like to do when I wake up is vet the morning.

    What day are you? Are you sure?

    What do you remember about last night? Do you remember your dreams? What about yesterday? Aha. Got you on yesterday.

    What’s your weather like? Which leads me to my first song of the day…Days may be cloudy or sunny, you’re in or you’re out of the money…I’m gonna love you, come rain or come shine. Of course you are. That’s what you always say first thing in the morning about your weather and btw, you’re no Sarah Vaughan or Sinatra.

    What’s that? No, you can’t ask any questions or make any comments on your own.

    What? What? Did you say GOOD? Especially that one.

    Whatever you do, don’t say good to me yet. I don’t know you from Adam’s house cat. You may be good – you may not be good. So don’t get started with GOOD before I am ready to make that call.

    So far, I’m unimpressed.

     

  • Guess Who’s Coming to the Al Smith Dinner?


     

    002

    Okay. So raise your small hands (or medium or large ones) if you’ve never even heard of the Al Smith dinner until last night.

    Aha. I see those hands, as the Southern Baptist revival preachers used to say from the pulpit during the altar call or “invitation” as we called it back then when we sat on the small wooden pews with the large ceiling fans moving too slowly to stir the air in the Texas summer heat – even in a church as tiny as ours was in the 1950s. The revival preacher would be hotter than a two-dollar pistol when he was preaching about the fire and brimstone hell would bring to all sinners who refused to repent that  very night – who knew if you would make it until the next night of the week-long revival…

    “Bow your heads. Close your eyes, and pray,” he would say as he grabbed for the white handkerchief in his suit pocket to wipe the sweat dripping from his forehead to the tip of his nose. “Now with every head bowed and every eye closed, just raise your hand if you know you are a sinner bound for hell unless you get right with God tonight. That’s it. Just slip that hand on up right where you are without anyone looking. Yes, I see that hand.”

    And so did I.

    Because of course, I had to look. My head was bowed, but my eyes were not closed. I confess I wanted to know who was going to hell. I wanted to make sure all the people I loved weren’t raising their hands and I was always particularly focused on one of my uncles who was suspect.

    Last night’s Al Smith Catholic Charities dinner also ended with a prayer, but it was a benediction – not an altar call. The Al Smith fundraiser takes place every four years during the political campaign season and gives the two presidential candidates an opportunity to meet on neutral ground breaking bread together and sharing a few jokes to make fun of themselves in front of a thousand people who paid $6 million dollars to hear them. You know, jokes, as in funny hahaha or lol if you prefer.

    Unfortunately, this year’s Al Smith dinner was the night after the final presidential debate which was the conclusion of three such meetings that were all notorious for the brutal exchanges between the two candidates. Mean, mean and not a dancing machine between them. But here they were having dinner at a long table with only a Catholic Cardinal between them. I pitied Cardinal Dolan. He tried so hard to divide his conversation evenly between the two of them that his head was actually spinning and his little red cap fell off. Uh, oh. Bad sign.

    The candidates both proved they weren’t comedians but did get a few laughs – and a few boos. It’s really difficult to be booed at the Al Smith dinner, but DT didn’t get the memo about the event being just for fun and engaged in inappropriate behavior and mean-spirited attacks against Secretary Clinton that provoked loud boos. Imagine that. Rudy Giuliani didn’t get the memo to smile when he was on camera. Tsk. Tsk. Rudy, Rudy, Rudy.

    I have a really good friend named Donna who didn’t see the dinner on TV last night but woke up this morning to the clips that showed the jokes that were more insults than funny haha and she texted me that she was so disgusted with the campaign she was going to shut down her Facebook and TV altogether until the election is over…maybe forever.

    I totally get that. But here’s the thing. We are now less than three weeks away from November 8th. We are in the home stretch. This will end for almost everyone on election day so don’t throw up your hands whatever size they are now because I will be looking to see if you have stayed focused and voted.

    That’s right – even in cyberspace I will keep my eyes open to make you heed the altar call to vote.

     

    P.S. My dog Charly is unaffected by the political turmoil of this campaign season – I hope your weekend is as laid back as hers.

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  • Doubling Down on Debates, Dems, Demagogues, Divisiveness and Depression: I VOTED


    001

    The most recent polling of my personal state of mind reveals a slight shift from 52% Negative and 48% Positive to 52% Positive and 48% Negative. Jeopardy host Alex Trebek asks what are readily identifiable factors that have led to this impressive 4-point swing? The answer is the Daily Double, or the Daily Doubling Down: I voted. My depression is slightly improved without an increase in my anti-depressant medication.

    I feel like a great burden has been lifted from my scrambled brain that has been trying for the past two years to sift facts from fiction at debates in the bruising endless primaries and now bipartisan presidential debates. Is it my imagination or are the debates really longer with just two candidates onstage than they were with a gazillion candidates vying for attention. Whatever. For the most part, the candidates have been unresponsive to the moderators’ questions, and the moderators have been unresponsive to their unresponsiveness. The single most consistent feeling I have after I watch a debate is that I would have been a better moderator. I’m just saying.

    But guess what?

    What?

    I don’t even need to watch the final debate tomorrow because I already voted. Yep. One of the perks of being older than dirt is the right to vote absentee and I jumped all over that yesterday. Me and my 1.5 million early voting friends, that is.

    002

    Today’s buzz words for the campaigns according to the political talking heads are Doubling Down. Whatever a candidate advocates that will solidify her/his voter base (those voters who will vote for you regardless of any mention of sex, lies, emails or videotapes), now is the time to pull out all the stops, say whatever motivates your base the most and make sure your peeps vote. For example, comment on the “rigged system” of voting in general. This is Doubling Down – a populist candidate appealing to supporters who already feel like political outsiders – by attempting to suggest the voting process itself is fundamentally flawed. Oops – flawed unless you win, of course.

    I pity the Undecideds because they will, no doubt, be watching tomorrow night’s debates with the same “wishy- washyness” they’ve been watching all of the previous ones. They’ll still be hanging onto the sounds and images of every political TV commercial between now and November 08th. hoping and praying for that moment of inspiration, that pearl of wisdom which will finally push them into someone’s camp. But not me. I already voted. I can mute those suckers and the divisiveness they perpetrate.

    003

    No really, seriously. I voted.