I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Lesbian Literary

  • Politics and Happiness


    The American author Jodi Picoult has this to say about happiness. “There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality or lower your expectations.”

    As I stand perilously close to my 70th. birthday – let’s say on the brink – I can truthfully say I’ve employed both those recipes for happiness at different stages of my past 69 years.  The younger to middle age years and “early” senior years were most often marked by trying to improve my reality… at work and in my personal and community life.  Was failure a possibility? Certainly, but if I worked hard enough, if I loved deeply enough, if I cared passionately enough – failure to improve my reality was unlikely.

    Alas, at the turn of the century I think, I began to believe failure was a possibility and that sometimes my reality was suspect. What I thought I wanted wasn’t what brought me happiness at all. In fact, it brought me just the opposite.  And I began a course of lowering my expectations in my work life that spilled over into the other areas of my reality as well.

    Of course this is to be expected as we age, isn’t it.  We have permission to grow more cantankerous, more outrageous and yes, more cynical as our hairs whiten and our skin sags. My friend Linda Ketner accuses me of “settling” when I mention she would be happier if she just lowered her expectations of people and their ability to create sweeping social changes. My partner Teresa is equally incapable of expecting less than the best from the people she works with and frequently the woman she lives with.

    I give this background to say that I have low, very low expectations about the political landscape of my country these days. When I read about the daily killings of innocent people in our streets, schools, churches and other places of worship and watch local, state and federal government officials that I help to elect do nothing to intervene and in fact even write laws to permit guns to be carried into classrooms – my expectations are lowered. When I have to think twice about going to a movie on a Sunday afternoon with the gnawing image of people being shot in a movie theater in the back of my mind, I have to lower my expectations for safety.  And I’m an old white woman. My personal fears rank low on the totem pole of universal fears for crimes of hate perpetrated on younger people of color on a regular basis.

    All of which brings me to the current state of politics in this election cycle for President of the United States in November of 2016.  I had low, very low expectations for what I anticipated would be a long, long, LONG season of debates, speeches, TV commercials interrupting my favorite shows, countless signs cluttering up any possible unobstructed open common space in an otherwise gorgeous panorama of azaleas and dogwood trees and seas of bluebonnets, obnoxious bumper stickers on the car in front of me whenever I drove to the grocery store, etc.  I had low, very low expectations for this political process that we Americans watch every four years to elect the most recognized leader in the whole planet.

    But I can tell you my expectations weren’t nearly low enough for the spectacles I have seen and heard over the past few weeks from the candidates vying for the nominations of the two major political parties in my country.  Nastiness. Name-calling. Rudeness.  Offensive TV commercials.  The candidates look like bullies on a playground when they weren’t chosen to play with others. These are the norm for campaigning these days and we have a media that not only feeds on the norm but pours chum in the sea to encourage the sharks to circle and attack each other.

    So much for lowering expectations.

    I am not happy. As a matter of fact, I am very unhappy with the violence now taking place at political rallies for one of the candidates. Unhappy – but not surprised. When a candidate chooses to emphasize his vision of an America that is isolationist and embraces the legitimacy of intolerance and bigotry  and a culture of violence as a solution for disagreements, it is no small wonder his rallies have become a scene of chaos, confusion and collateral damage. I am not only unhappy, I am horrified and ashamed.

    I want to change my reality as I hope the American people will refuse to be happy with what has become a dangerously low series of expectations. We deserve better – we should expect better. We must demand better.

     

  • Miss Hotcha


    Post cards from the edge…of WWII…

    001

    Let’s face it. Who wouldn’t have been sold on Cadillac camp stationery with a sister in each Box or Packet…plus the bonus of a Writing-Guide which is something I often long for.

    I was cleaning out the little store room of my office recently and found a plethora of cards which translates into WAY too many old postcards I’ve found in T’s collectible hide-away and claimed as my own. Time to return to sender.

    This one is my favorite.

     

  • 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.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • The Short Side of Time


    It’s really an amazing feeling to have your book published – to be able to touch and feel the paper and love a cover that a creative artist designed to capture the spirit of the book or to spark someone else’s imagination.  My latest book (# 4 in case anyone is counting!) is here, and I’d like to share the Preface with you on this New Year’s Eve as my way of saying thank you to all of my friends and followers in cyberspace.

    PREFACE

    I can actually thank Oprah for this book.  I rarely buy a book because my partner Teresa buys enough books for an army of readers.  Seriously, we could invite a battalion of readers to live with us for a year, and they could never finish the books we have on the bookshelves and book cases, table tops, floors and any other available surface in our medium-sized home that is not occupied by us or our three dogs.  Recently she and I went to the local Barnes and Noble bookstore, however, and I bought Oprah Winfrey’s book: What I know for Sure.  It is a collection of her most popular essays and is the inspiration for my collection of the best of my I’ll Call It blogs from the past three years.  “Best” is purely subjective because no one else had a vote.

    Blogging is a way of life for me, and I love my cyberspace friends from the four corners of the earth and points in between.  I love what they write if they blog, and I am happy when they become my followers and read my posts on the three blogs I maintain on a regular basis.  Blogging is publishing on the quick and cheap, and almost everyone has one these days. I say hooray and go for it.  Creativity should be shared, and I much prefer people who are more passionate about words than they are guns. 

    As I tried to organize my blogs from the last three years, I laughed at how many titles were country music classics.   One of my favorites is John Conlee’s Backside of Thirty, Short Side of Time.  I have now reached the backside of sixty-nine and what I know for sure, Oprah, is I am on the short side of time.

    I hope you’ll order a copy!

    Teresa and I wish you a Happy New Year wherever you may be – be safe – we want to see you right here again with us in 2016!!

  • 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.