I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Humor

  • Vanity Fair and the National Enquirer


    I picked up a copy of the April issue of Vanity Fair today while I was waiting in line to be checked out at the grocery store. The cover is this fabulous picture of Meryl Streep, and it hooked me because I love Meryl Streep. The title of the article suggested the possibility of new material about her early career.  It’s not unusual for me to pick up a magazine while I’m in line – the grocery stores make it so convenient – but I usually read the National Enquirer since their huge headlines are sensational and the pictures on the cover are incredibly tragic.  Sensational. Tragic. The mind races.

    I never buy a magazine because (a) they are too expensive and (b) the line is always very long when I wheel my cart in behind several people who are also waiting and I have plenty of time to read anything that piques my interest. Even if I choose the line that’s the shortest, it will invariably be the line that takes the longest amount of time. I don’t mind, though. It’s such a wonderful opportunity to catch up on current events both real and pretend. AOL and Al Jazeera notwithstanding, sometimes finding out that Princess Kate is about to have twins when even Prince William doesn’t know makes the National Enquirer fascinating.

    Of course, today was the day when my line moved as fast as a speeding bullet and I had no chance to even find the inside article on Meryl Streep in Vanity Fair – much less read it. As a result, I paid the $4.99 necessary to actually purchase the magazine and bring it home. I was in a fine mood thinking about everything I would find out about Meryl as soon as I unloaded the grocery bags from the car.

    On the way out of the store, I had a surreal conversation with an 83-year-old African American man who was ahead of me in line at the customer service area where he was buying a lottery ticket, and I was waiting to buy mine.  I believe I have a tattoo on my forehead that reads Tell Me the Most Intimate Details of Your Life in a Condensed Version because invariably people I meet in random everyday situations tell me much more information than I need to know. Today was no exception. Our conversation was brief, but I do hope that his vision of a world that Makes America Great Again is a bet with very long odds.

    The good news is that the article on Meryl Streep was everything I’d hoped for and  definitely worth $4.99 – but far less revealing than the tabloid tales with the tragic pictures. Meryl’s pictures were incredible and brought back a flood of great movie moments from her early days in tinsel town. Hooray for Hollywood.

    Tomorrow (Saturday the 9th.) is a busy day – I will have a booth at the Cayce Festival for the Arts from 9:00 to 5:00  and  would love for any readers in the Columbia area to stop by. I will be wearing my Tell Me the Most Intimate Details of Your Life tattoo on my forehead and you don’t even have to condense it. I promise.

    See you there!

     

     

     

  • The Mystery of the Vanishing Book


    I’ve been spending quite a bit of time at a variety of post offices around town for the past several weeks (thankfully!). Due to my lack of a personal assistant which I desperately need,  I do my own postage and handling for shipping my new book The Short Side of Time to purchasers throughout the country, and the best rate for shipping books is a clever one known as Media Mail which is only available at the US Post Office.

    I’ve been shipping books Media Mail with Post Offices since my first book came out in 2007 and am pleased to report that I’ve never lost one book in the past nine years out of the several hundred I’ve mailed…that is, never lost one book until this year. All perfect records are meant to be broken (just ask the Gamecock men’s basketball team today) and alas, the perfect record for shipping  my books was ruined several days ago when I sent a book to my  friends of many years Sandra and Sandi who now live in Bluffton, South Carolina. They were one of the first to reserve a copy and followed through with a check as soon as the books arrived. I mailed their copy to them on Monday, January 4th. The expected delivery date was Thursday, the 7th.

    To make a very long tedious nerve-wracking story short, their book had still not arrived at their home in Bluffton on Monday, the 11th, and the tracking number available online showed nothing beyond being received at the Forest Acres Post Office where I had taken it the week before. Nothing. Nada. No news on where it went from there – or IF it had gone anywhere  from there.

    So I determined to track the missing book’s whereabouts and stopped at the Sandy Hills Post Office in the northeast around noon on the 11th  to mail other books and ask about the missing one. Sandy Hills is not one of my “regular” locations, but I thought, hey it’s all on a computer anyway so what difference should it make where I stop? Right? What possible difference?

    A very pleasant heavyset man in his late fifties sat at a computer in a small retail section of the large Sandy Hills post office – an area that is rarely open, but that day it was. The other clerks at the front counter were very busy with several customers, and I heard the man at the retail computer ask if he could help anyone. None of the other folks in line seemed to show any interest in moving to the little retail counter so I took my packages and walked over to him. Let’s pretend his name tag read Harold.

    I smiled, wished him good afternoon, and handed him my first large envelope. He smiled back and placed the 8 x 11 bubble envelope on his scale. I’d like to send this Media Mail, I said. At this request, Harold seemed to lose a fraction of his good humor for some reason.

    “Media mail?” Harold asked.

    “Yes, media mail,” I responded.

    “What’s inside?” he asked.

    “A book,” I said.

    At this he began scrolling through his rates and told me it would be $2.72 for Media Mail as opposed to first class, priority, overnight rates, etc. which were all significantly higher. He also mentioned insurance, did someone need to sign?

    “No, thanks, just Media Mail,” I said politely.  This didn’t suit him apparently.

    “You know,” he began with a little sharper tone, “The Post Office has the right to open and inspect any items that are sent Media Mail on a random basis, and if this really doesn’t have a book inside, we can return to sender subject to a fine.”

    “Inspect away,” I said cheerfully. “I can assure you this is a book. I ought to know – I actually wrote it.” And then I gave a little laugh to make sure he knew I wasn’t trying to get smart with him.

    “Oh, you wrote it,” Harold said and his tone changed again in an attempt to become Mr. Nice Guy as he made his final calculations for the postage due. “What kind of book is it?”

    “It’s a collection of essays from a blog I write,” I said and at that bit of information, he stopped working on the packages and another slight frown crossed his face.

    “Essays? Hm…” By now he was merrily stamping Media Mail on the outside of my packages.

    “Yep, essays,” I said.

    “Have you written any other books?” Harold continued.

    “Yes,” I said.

    “What kind?” he paused and looked at me.

    “Oh, two memoirs and another collection of essays,” I answered breezily and with just a twinge of pride. As if to say, thank you for giving me the opportunity to let you know I am not just a one-book wonder.

    “Hm,” he said again with obvious distaste and a much larger frown which was puzzling to me until he had one last question. “Have you ever written anything,” and he stopped as if he were trying to think of the word, “like a novel?”

    Ding! Ding! Ding! Harold, like most people in the world, believed the only real books were fiction.

    I laughed and said no I can’t write fiction because I’m not quite imaginative enough.

    “I can see that,” Harold said.

    Hence, the title of my post today is an attempt to give all fiction lovers hope for my blogs in 2016. If I could write fiction, I would be a mystery writer.

    P.S. Sandra and Sandi received their book yesterday somehow, and I was relieved that Media Mail had once again proved reliable. Mystery solved – probably thanks to Harold.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Ready – Set – Ho! Here Come the Holidays!


    We have put away our ghosts and goblins and all things orange at our casa and  turned our attention this weekend to the reds and greens of the ghosts of Christmas Past which Teresa has carefully preserved in boxes, drawers and various nooks and crannies in the garage and bodega. I am always impressed she can recover the same decorations year after year in the midst of chaos and confusion, but then she functions at her highest level under pressure.

    The tabletop silver tree appears intact with the tiny ornaments still in place from last year – which was my brilliant idea since I am responsible for all tree trimming to include the dozen or so miniature ornaments  that are the only decorations other than the lights for the small tree. I decided last year that  taking the ornaments off at the end of one season and then hanging them again at the beginning of the next holiday was a waste of my time and energy – much like my philosophy of dusting furniture – so I left them on the tree last year and here they are safe and sound with minimal casualties. Key word: minimal.

    I made the 21st. century switch to LED lights for the little tree last year and decided to leave them on the tree in the storage box, too. Hm. Not so brilliant. They seem a bit worse for the wear and not too interested in glowing red and white, but I told T they would be fine once I got new batteries. She looked skeptical and frowned, but I reminded her of the gazillion sets of lights we replaced every Christmas when we used the other lights that weren’t guaranteed to last a lifetime. These LED lights would last forever, according to the boxes. Okay. Sounds good. Did the fine print say anything about surviving being crushed…just wondering,

    The transition from Halloween to Christmas will be in full swing for us this week with a detour Thursday for Thanksgiving which happens to be my favorite holiday of the year. Yep, my personal best. I love Thanksgiving because the focus is on my favorite f-words: family, friends, food and football with a passing nod to decorations and gifts until the day after. T and I will make our traditional trip to the Upstate to be with her late mother’s Alverson family in the fellowship hall of the First Baptist Church of Fingerville, South Carolina late Thursday afternoon as the sun sets behind the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains. There’s not a prettier drive in the state or a more beautiful time of the year.

    This Thanksgiving I am particularly grateful for my best buddy and faithful companion , Red, who has celebrated not only fifteen of these with me but has also been with me for the entire 21st century of my life – a century I never dreamed I’d live to see but one I wouldn’t trade for anything… except maybe the 1950s. Red may not be here for the next Thanksgiving, and I’m trying to figure out how I’m ever going to take a shower without his lying on the bath mat next to me waiting for me to finish. Red Man, I am thankful for you.

    For Chelsea who also will probably not be with us next Thanksgiving and Spike who probably will, I am equally grateful. For Teresa who functions at her highest level under stress, I am so very thankful. I love and adore her beyond any degree of reason, and I know I would be lost without her. I do not function well under stress unless I am prepared for it. Even then, it’s iffy.

    Finally, I am grateful for all of my friends and family in my virtual reality as well as those who surround me up close and personal in living color.  My blogging friends in other countries and other states have become another kind of family for me, and I treasure our shared experiences via words and images. I’ve grown accustomed to our posts.

    Ready – set – ho!  The holidays are upon us. Celebrate the ones you choose to celebrate in whatever fashion you choose to celebrate them in, but take time to be thankful this Thanksgiving.

    Teresa and I send our warmest wishes to all of you for a Happy Thanksgiving and wondrous holiday season. We are thankful for you.

     

  • In this Case, Fiction is Stranger than Truth


    Usually whenever I do a reading from one of my nonfiction books, someone raises a hand during the q & a to ask, “Yes, but why don’t you write fiction?” or “Have you ever thought about writing fiction?”  My response is fiction is too hard for me to write.  Nonfiction is no piece of cake for me, but at least it begins with the truth as I know it which makes it grounded in something and somehow that is important for a Taurus. I like to have a starting point – it creates less anxiety for me in writing.

    Fiction is like flailing around in emptiness and space where I am responsible for creating something out of nothing, and that makes me incredibly anxious before I even begin to sit down at the computer to write. So many hurdles for me to overcome in writing fiction.

    The first problem I have is character names. I can’t think up good names for my characters and it’s not for lack of a reservoir to draw from. I collect names like I collect sayings – I have literally folders of names that I’ve saved through the years, but when it comes to putting them in a story, I can’t find the right ones. None of the names belong  with my plot, which is my second problem. What are these nameless characters going to do? And how can I possibly keep them doing it for more than a chapter?

    The short story has been my salvation, although not a soul realized my redemption except  me. I have submitted a number of short stories for various literary contests, anthology collections, and magazines over the past ten years. One of them, Honky Tonk Cowboy, was published in the storyteller magazine in 2013  and another one, Dear Auntie O, recently appeared in a local magazine Fun after Fifty.net.  If I were a major league baseball player with this batting average, I wouldn’t be on a team roster anywhere.

    With that record, why in the world would I take on a serialized fiction project? Good question. I believe the answer is timing. As Teresa reminded me today as we were driving through town after lunch, timing is everything. And so it is.

    Channillo came along at a time when I was in the process of writing a novel or novella or a very long short story – I’m not sure which – a story I started before Brokeback Mountain was a major motion picture hit. It’s a story I take out periodically, dust it off and proclaim I can write fiction. The jury is out on that.

    However, Channillo is a venue that offers serialized literature for a very nominal monthly fee much like Netflix does for the small screen, and  I decided to give my fiction one last ride. Chapter One of my story Cowgirls at the Roundup is available now on Channillo in the Historical Romance genre. Yikes! I must be fifty shades of red.

    Click on the link in my blogroll to the right between Books I Buy and Don.

    Saddle up.

  • Learning New Tricks from Old Dogs


    From the time I was five or six years old growing up in rural southeast Texas in the 1950s, my daddy used to take me with him to hunt quail during what I remember as a relatively short season in the late fall and winter months. Quail lived in coveys in fields in the countryside around us and were excellent at hiding from their enemies in the tall grasses that would become hay when baled. You could walk and walk and walk some more until you felt like your legs were going to fall off if you had to put one foot ahead of the other again, but the quail were always one step ahead of you unless you had help locating them.

    Enter the hunter’s best friend: the German short-haired pointer a/k/a in Grimes County, Texas as the bird dog. A good bird dog could run through a field sniffing and sniffing, sometimes whining, until he caught a whiff of a covey of quail and then he would stop, raise his right front leg to a ninety-degree angle,  curl his medium-length tail over his back and point his nose exactly in the direction of the covey. He remained in this precise position until the hunter walked up beside the dog which would cause the quail to take flight with the sound of their fluttering wings making a whoosh noise as they left the ground.

    Whoosh! Bam! It was over that quick. The covey rose from the ground cover, and my daddy would shoot his twelve-gauge shotgun. Occasionally a bird would fall, and I would run to retrieve it and put it in my jacket to take home to my grandmother who would be happy to fix it for our supper. We rarely got our  legal limit, but we would usually have enough for a meal.

    The problem my daddy had was he never had a “good” bird dog.  He got the puppies from different people  in the area who always assured him their dogs were the best in the field, but invariably the pointer he got didn’t respond well to training. A common trait Daddy’s dogs had was rather than stopping to point and hold their position, they would  stop to point for a split second and then run as fast as they could to try to catch the birds by themselves. Of course, the quail would take flight when they heard the dogs and be long gone out of  shooting range by the time we caught up with the dogs. Daddy would halfheartedly fuss – and the dogs rarely improved.

    As I think back on this now, I believe our dogs had an identity issue which caused their lackluster performance in the field. Whether they did well or not in the hunting arena, they were fed regularly with  delicious scraps from our table (dog food wasn’t on Daddy’s radar screen) and petted and hugged on an equally regular basis. They came indoors for their pets and Daddy often scooped the big dogs up and held them on his lap while he talked to them about their shortcomings. My daddy was a very diminutive man – about five feet six inches tall – and those dogs weighed almost as much as he did. They looked at him with adoring eyes and absolute trust…and seemed to be saying I promise I’ll do better next time…but they wouldn’t.

    My daddy loved his bird dogs. We always had at least one dog in our family for as long as I can remember and at one time when I was in high school, we had three.  I know that for sure because I still have the original oil paintings he commissioned  at that time from an artist friend of his.

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    Daddy’s Bird Dogs: Rex, Seth and Dab (circa 1966)

    No wonder I love my dogs. I’ve never personally owned a bird dog, but I’ve been on the receiving end of the adoring eyes and plaintive expressions of more than a few dogs of my own throughout my adult life. I confess to holding them on my lap if I can scoop them up, but even if I can’t do that, I will give them lots of love and kisses whenever and wherever they will stand  or sit or lie down to be so smothered.

    Loving dogs – or any animal for that matter – is the gift that keeps on giving to us mere humans, but the gift comes with a high price tag because their lives are relatively short. Indeed,  it seems the older we are, the faster we lose them.

    Two of our three remaining dogs that have given us much more loyalty and adoration than we deserve over the past decade have now been diagnosed with cancers that will ultimately take them from us. What I have learned from them is that they both keep their pain to themselves without complaints. They are not troubled by wondering why they are in their particular situations, and I think this allows them to try to keep changes in their routines to a minimum. They like to roll the way they’ve always rolled if they possibly can.

    I am a contemplative person – I can’t help myself. I find I can spend a great deal of time trying to figure out “why” this happened or that took place. Unfortunately, discovering “why” doesn’t necessarily lead to productive change. As a matter of fact, the opposite is likely to occur. So when I find myself in a position similar to the ones my dogs are facing today, I hope I have learned my lessons from the examples they have set for me and focus less on “why” and more on “so what.”

    That’s the way I’d like to roll.

    P.S. My daddy never asked anyone to make an oil painting of me.