I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Lesbian Literary

  • You Can’t Paint a Sunset (from The Short Side of Time)

    You Can’t Paint a Sunset (from The Short Side of Time)


    I took a late evening walk down Old Plantersville Road tonight just as the sun was setting. I rounded the curve by the trailer park and walked past the wide open pastures on both sides of the road where the view of a Texas sunset was spectacular. Tonight’s colors of pinks, blues and reds were particularly beautiful; I picked a good spot about halfway to the railroad track to behold the sight.

    As I watched the light colors quickly deepen into darker hues, I was reminded of my mom’s favorite saying about sunsets: “Well, you can’t paint a sunset.  It changes too fast.”  I couldn’t count the times I heard her repeat the sunset quote – and this was before her memory care days. I can only imagine a teacher must have made that remark in the one art class my mother took in her entire life. I wonder if her teacher would be stunned to know what an indelible impression she made on one of her students. If Mom found a phrase she liked, she clung to it.

    The next thought that came to me was we couldn’t walk off into sunsets either, and you can quote me.

    ***************

    When I lived in Texas on Worsham Street from 2010 – 2014, I loved late afternoons as the sun began to signal day’s end while it slowly sank toward the western horizon. I often took a walk on a road one street behind our home called Old Plantersville Road because the best views of sunset were from the wide open spaces of the pastures along the road. This particular walk was in July, 2013 – I can still smile at my mother’s phrase, and I can still see those sunsets that took my breath away.

  • Here’s a Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares


    In 1991 the great country troubadour Travis Tritt wrote and sang these immortal words about an ex-girlfriend who had apparently had a change of heart and wanted to reconnect with her former sweetheart.  Alas, as the songwriter penned, her man wasn’t buying it.  Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares, he suggested.  In 1991 a quarter was the cost of a local telephone call in those dinosaur-like objects we called pay telephones.   They are as extinct as the Tyrannosaurus Rex is today —  to everyone except my four-year-old friend Oscar who continues to experience their magic every day in his vivid imagination.

    One year later in a totally unrelated incident the government of the United States created Operation Sea Signal to get ready for a huge migration of refugees from Haiti and Cuba.   Two years later in 1994 Operation Sea Signal became Joint Task Force 160 which was responsible for taking care of more than 40,000 migrants who would be either sent back to their countries or paroled to the United States.  Camp X Ray was the name of the facility at the Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay where this operation was located.  In 1996 Operation Sea Signal was over, and our military left Camp X Ray.

    In December of 2001 Joint Task Force 160 was re-activated and Camp X Ray became a temporary home for people who were captured and deemed potential terrorists involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks on our soil or suspected al-Qaeda or Taliban operatives with ties to our relatively new war in Afghanistan.  If you’re still reading and trying to keep a timeline, the first detainees were sent to Camp X Ray in January, 2002.  Surprise!  The very next month Joint Task Force 170 was brought into existence as a new intelligence gathering group of our folks to wheedle secret information out of our population of detainees who had been moved from the old Camp X Ray to the new 410-bed Camp Delta in April.  By November of 2002, everybody decided it was silly to have two joint task forces when one was enough.  So….160 and 170 became Joint Task Force Guantanamo.

    Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares, I might say at this point eleven years later.  I was fifty-six years old when I first heard of the prison at Guantanamo Bay and like most liberal Americans, I dismissed it at the time as something President Bush and Vice-President Cheney had dreamed up to play a part in the Global War on Terror and I confess I’ve tried not to think about its continued existence or the people who’ve lived there all these years. Snippets of news from Guantanamo nagged at me periodically over the years, but I was forced to give it more thought  when presidential candidate Barack Obama campaigned about closing Guantanamo Bay during his 2008 run.  Hooray! I thought.  At last, I can get this little persistent sense of liberal guilt behind me.  President Obama did win that first term and was re-elected in 2012.  But today is just past the middle of the year in 2013, and I know that the prison in Guantanamo houses more horrific acts than ever before.

    To his credit President Obama has issued executive orders to close our base there.  To their shame, the Senate has refused to fund closure.  In the 2010 Omnibus Defense bill we have renamed our detainees alien unprivileged enemy belligerents.  Wow.  Look that up in your Funk & Wagnall.  The political football that is Guantanamo has been kicked around our judicial system for years, too,  with the most recent ruling coming this week from U. S. District Judge Gladys Kessler who said she didn’t have the jurisdiction to respond to the petition of Syrian detainee Jihad Dhiab to stop his forced feeding at the prison.  She tossed it back to President Obama and basically said Shame on all of us if we allow this nightmare to go on.

    I remember the movie Iron-Jawed Angels from 2004 about the determined suffragettes in America and England who used hunger strikes to draw attention to their cause.  They, too, were force-fed at the hands of guards who had little tolerance for their beliefs.  The images were painful to watch on the screen then, as the videos and pictures of the force-feeding at Guantanamo are now.  The prison population at Guantanamo is now 166 and more than a hundred are on a hunger strike to protest the length of their imprisonment without trials. Unbelievable as it seems, 86 of our current alien unprivileged enemy belligerents have been approved for release to other countries, but political interests waylay the process.

    One of my personal heroes is a fellow Texan Molly Ivins, an author and columnist who died in 2007.  She was famous for her essays regarding personal liberty and our values as a nation.  She was also famous for her dislike of the Iraq war.  In her last column, she had this to say:  “We are the people who run this country.  We are the deciders.  And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell.”

    Well Molly, this is my own particular hell-raising day.  Mr. President, get us out of this sorry mess we call Guantanamo Bay.  Senators, act like you got a little bit of sense on this issue and close it down.  Supremes, it’s on your watch, too.  In the end, it’s not about liberal vs. conservative values – it’s about human dignity, respect for each other and fair treatment.

    And Travis Tritt, you can keep your quarter.  You’ve found someone who cares.

  • Let’s Hear It For THE SUPREMES!


    Well, I never.  No, really, I never.  Today’s decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to give equal federal treatment to same-sex marriage in the twelve states and District of Columbia that recognize these marriages is a stunning pivotal day in our nation’s history of constitutional revelation.  I honestly thought this day was my dream to be realized in a future generation.

    And while I understand the significance of this ruling for our country and for the message it sends around the world to other nations about American civil liberties, today the political became personal.

    I share this day especially with the woman I love,  a woman who has been with me through the battles in our state for justice and equality for the past twenty years and a woman who raised a son during difficult times of  hurtful discrimination against them both.  We live in the states of South Carolina and Texas which are states that are unaffected by this ruling.  Yet we celebrate with our brothers and sisters who will benefit from the victory today and we will continue to work until all of us are treated fairly and have the opportunity to pursue happiness.  Teresa, I share this day with you.

    I have many personal heroes during the past twenty years of my activism in South Carolina – both sung and unsung.  I am grateful to all of them for the labor we’ve made together in the days before Will and Grace and afterwards.

    But today is Edith Windsor day for me.  I will forever remember the petite 84-year-old lesbian from New York who changed the course of history with an outrageous act and a not-so-everyday rebellion.  Thank you, Edie.

    001

  • Sounds of the City, Busy Busy


    Sounds of the city, busy busy.

    Sirens screaming, blue lights flashing.

    Loud voices arguing, children running.

    Doors opening, car locks beeping.

    Guns shooting, doors closing.

    Sounds of the city, busy busy.

    Music playing, speakers blaring.

    Birds singing, squirrels chasing.

    Mowers mowing, edgers buzzing.

    Dogs barking, neighbors talking.

    Sounds of the city, busy busy.

    People coming, people going.

    People partying, people crying.

    People working, people playing.

    People moving, people waiting.

    Sounds of the city, busy busy.

  • A Soldier Writes Home – in 1918


    The handwriting on the letters has almost faded away and the yellowed paper and envelopes are so torn and fragile I’m afraid to open them for fear they’ll disintegrate.  The dates of the letters are in March and May of 1918, which I calculate to be ninety-five years ago this month.  They are three letters written by a young Marine serving “somewhere” in France in World War I to his mother who evidently thought they were worthy of saving.  On this Sunday afternoon my partner Teresa gave them to me as we cleaned out our Bodega to get ready for a garage sale.

    “I think you’ll like these,” she said, “especially since they’re a soldier writing home and tomorrow is Memorial Day.”  Occasionally on her adventures at yard sales she finds words for me to read – words that someone saved for a reason.  No longer wanted by family, they’re sometimes stuck inside the pages of books she buys or in a little box or even in a scrapbook tossed aside as unimportant.

    I don’t think the names are necessary but I will say that the mother lived in Indiana.  I’m glad she thought her son’s words were worthy of saving.  I believe they’re worthy of being read again.

    France,

    May 12, 1918

    Dearest Mother:

    Today is “Mother’s Day” – your day – and I wish I were home to spend the day with you.  Altho I cannot send you a big box of flowers I will endeavor to send a little flower that grows near me on a green hillside.

    I hope you are well and happy today.  Of course I realize how you feel about me being over here, the two battles you have to fight, that is, keeping up a brave front and smile when I know you feel bad about me.  Mother dear, I really am safe and the best news I get from home is that you are well and enjoying life.  I would rather hear that you enjoyed a good show, say once a week, than to hear that you had denied yourself one little thing to help the Cause along.  I sort of figure that you have done your bit, so please try to have a good time and remember that I don’t fare so bad.  It isn’t nearly so bad here as you all imagine.

    We eat, sleep, read magazines, letters and roam around and see everything going on.

    We aren’t getting any furloughs at present.  I mean my outfit, but maybe it won’t be long until we can go touring again.

    I’ll have many stories to tell you when I get back, and I’ll trade stories for some good pies & cakes – and any eats at all that you cook.  We move so much that I thought I’d have to throw away some pictures, but I’ve found a way.  We always find a way.  It seems a necessary part of a Marine to get along most any old place and get along well.

    I sent a list home of some things I want – and you may add on to that list a few pounds of homemade candy, preferably fudge.  I don’t care how old fudge gets, it is always the best tasting eats we ever get from back there.  I can buy French candy & chocolate at the Y.M.C. A. huts, so you see that we really don’t suffer for those things, but nevertheless some good old homemade candy is the stuff.

    I write you once a week, when possible, as an answer to Dad, Sis & your letters so they must not feel slighted, but this is your letter, and nearly every mother who has a son in France will get one too.

    Spring is coming in very beautiful, but the rain is so frequent here.  After a big rain the sun pops out with a blue sky and green hills – then everybody is happy.

    I tried to subscribe for one of the 3rd Liberty Loan Bonds but they aren’t selling them here.  I would like to have one of each issue.

    I have no kick coming about getting mail now as it is coming pretty regularly.  I’d appreciate some of those fried chickens you spoke about but I think I’ll wait until I come home.

    Well Mother dear, next Mother’s Day we will celebrate properly and have a good time.

    Love to Dad & Sis, and you…

    Your loving son,

    Buddie

    Tomorrow I’ll gratefully remember the soldiers who served and were wounded and even gave their lives on many battlefields in every corner of the world through the years on our behalf, but I’ll also see a young Marine writing home from “somewhere” in France almost a century ago asking his mother to send homemade fudge.