I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Lesbian Literary

  • a joyful evening with Openings


    What an awesome night the panel of Committed to Home contributors and I had at the monthly meeting of Openings last night at the Jubilee! Circle Center. Rev. Candace Chellew-Hodge, who is the pastor of Jubilee! Circle, welcomed us warmly and shared part of her journey from journalist to minister after 9-11 in 2001. She and Rev. Tom Summers are both graduates of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.

    (l. to r.) Dick Hubbard, Michael Haigler,

    Rev. Candace Chellew-Hodge, Rev. Tom Summers

    the panel did well in spite of their moderator (me)

    Openings, a group co-founded by one of the contributors to Committed to Home, Michael Haigler (who remains the President of the group), is an effort to build a closer  relationship between L GBTQ people and the established faith community in Columbia. Michael has spent a lifetime of service to others beginning with three years in the Peace Corps in Africa after graduating from Clemson with a degree in architecture. His journey home to South Carolina involved several intriguing detours taken at University of California – Berkeley and San Francisco.

    The Openings group of about 40 people listened intently to the compelling personal stories shared by the panel.

    Rev. Tom Summers has been an ally of the LGBTQ community for many years, marched in every Pride March carrying the banner of Clergy for LGBTQ Rights, written op-ed pieces on behalf of our community and testified before the state legislature whenever bills relating to marginalizing the queer community are introduced in the state legislature.

    Dick Hubbard is a realtor who has been active in the gay rights movement in Columbia  since the days  before the 1993 March on Washington which, he says, empowered him to true activism when he came home to South Carolina. In the early 1980s he and his partner Freddie Mullis focused on bridging the gap inside the gay community between what he called the “bar scene” and the “dinner party” culture and had a measurable level of success. He was a reluctant contributor to Committed to Home and only agreed to the interview because he thought the book wouldn’t be published. Oh my, good surprise..

    Michael wrote today, Hanging out after the meeting, I heard nothing but rave reviews about the program and all the really interesting stories. It ties so well into our ongoing theme of “Sharing Our Stories” through our programs. Thanks to all of you for contributing so much!

    My personal thanks to Openings for this opportunity to share the homecoming stories of five of the twenty-one contributors to the anthology.

    Next week a panel discussing Committed to Home will participate in Gay Pride week at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina on Wednesday night from 6:00 – 7:30 pm. Harriet Hancock, Pat Patterson, Pretty and I are looking forward to helping the students and faculty celebrate.

    Stay tuned.

    Photos today courtesy of Pretty

  • I stand with Emma – we call BS


    We don’t get them back, y’all said Jennifer Hudson in the middle of her moving musical tribute at the March For Our Lives in Washington, DC today. Hudson sang The Times, They Are A-Changing with a DC choir backing her up and a clearly spiritual feel to the finale of an amazing gathering of hundreds of thousands of Americans who rallied with the survivors of gun violence in our schools and on our streets in the nation’s capitol and around the world.

    Led by high school senior Emma Gonzalez, a survivor of the Parkland shooting, chants of democracy in action and never again rang through the air of the nonviolent protests of our children and their families and friends who are committed to changing the gun culture that rules in the halls of Congress and the office of the President.

    The movement’s major mantra was R-E-V: Register to vote, Educate yourself, Vote!

    Be afraid, incumbents everywhere, be very afraid.

    Pretty marched in Columbia today 

    and captured this memorable image

    of South Carolina teens registering to vote

    Our children want to come home safely in our houses, our schools, our churches, our synagogues, our mosques. They want to feel safe on city streets and country back roads. They are crying out for help, adding organized action to those cries – and not leaving outcomes to the same old, same old. It’s a new day, America.

    I don’t know about you, but I’m standing with Emma and calling BS on anyone who refuses to listen to the voices of  change for a new and better America. United we stand. I hear you. I’m with you.

    Onward.

     

  • keeping on keeping on


    “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.  And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost.  The world will not have it.  It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions.  It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

                            ———-  attributed to Martha Graham

    One of the coolest rejection emails I ever received (and there were tons of them) was sent to me by Mileta Schaum. I can’t even remember what she rejected of my work, but I will never forget these words of encouragement she passed along to me from Martha Graham.

    To all of my fellow bloggers, writers, authors, poets, and all my cyberspace amigas and sports fans – I am passing this forward to you with my fervent wishes to keep your channels open.

  • Maya Angelou and Coach Dawn Staley – the power of personhood


    American poet, author, civil rights activist Maya Angelou (1928 – 2014) and Coach Dawn Staley, head basketball coach of the University of South Carolina women’s basketball team – what’s not to love and admire about these women in March or any other month?

    https://thedrabble.wordpress.com.

    http://www.espn.com/espnw/feature/22732028/for-south-carolina-coach-dawn-staley-game-life-life-game

    Stay tuned.

  • talking guns with Texas columnist Molly Ivins


    Although Molly Ivins was born in Monterrey, California in 1944, her family wasted no time in moving her as a young child to Texas where she grew up and  lived off and on for the rest of her life. I claim Molly not only as a Texan but also as one of my favorite women “essayists with humorist tendencies.” When I come back in my next life, please God, let me come back as Molly Ivins  with the voice of Maya Angelou.

    Molly Ivins was a syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate, Inc. and on March 13, 1993 published this column called Taking a Stab at our Infatuation with Guns. As I watched students across the country walking out of their schools today to protest gun violence, I thought of Molly’s words. Twenty-five (25) years later they sadly still ring true.

    Guns. Everywhere guns.

    Let me start this discussion by pointing out that I am not anti-gun. I’m pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife.

    In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We’d turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don’t ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.

    As a civil libertarian, I of course support the Second Amendment. And I believe it means exactly what it says: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Fourteen-year-old boys are not part of a well-regulated militia. Members of wacky religious cults are not part of a well-regulated militia. Permitting unregulated citizens to have guns is destroying the security of this free state.

    I am intrigued by the arguments of those who claim to follow the judicial doctrine of original intent. How do they know it was the dearest wish of Thomas Jefferson’s heart that teen-age drug dealers should cruise the cities of this nation perforating their fellow citizens with assault rifles? Channelling?

    There is more hooey spread about the Second Amendment. It says quite clearly that guns are for those who form part of a well-regulated militia, i.e., the armed forces including the National Guard. The reasons for keeping them away from everyone else get clearer by the day.

    The comparison most often used is that of the automobile, another lethal object that is regularly used to wreak great carnage. Obviously, this society is full of people who haven’t got enough common sense to use an automobile properly. But we haven’t outlawed cars yet.

    We do, however, license them and their owners, restrict their use to presumably sane and sober adults and keep track of who sells them to whom. At a minimum, we should do the same with guns.

    In truth, there is no rational argument for guns in this society. This is no longer a frontier nation in which people hunt their own food. It is a crowded, overwhelmingly urban country in which letting people have access to guns is a continuing disaster. Those who want guns – whether for target shooting, hunting or potting rattlesnakes (get a hoe) – should be subject to the same restrictions placed on gun owners in England – a nation in which liberty has survived nicely without an armed populace.

    The argument that “guns don’t kill people” is patent nonsense. Anyone who has ever worked in a cop shop knows how many family arguments end in murder because there was a gun in the house. Did the gun kill someone? No. But if there had been no gun, no one would have died. At least not without a good footrace first. Guns do kill. Unlike cars, that is all they do.

    Michael Crichton makes an interesting argument about technology in his thriller “Jurassic Park.” He points out that power without discipline is making this society into a wreckage. By the time someone who studies the martial arts becomes a master – literally able to kill with bare hands – that person has also undergone years of training and discipline. But any fool can pick up a gun and kill with it.

    “A well-regulated militia” surely implies both long training and long discipline. That is the least, the very least, that should be required of those who are permitted to have guns, because a gun is literally the power to kill. For years, I used to enjoy taunting my gun-nut friends about their psycho-sexual hang-ups – always in a spirit of good cheer, you understand. But letting the noisy minority in the National Rifle Association force us to allow this carnage to continue is just plain insane.

    I do think gun nuts have a power hang-up. I don’t know what is missing in their psyches that they need to feel they have to have the power to kill. But no sane society would allow this to continue.

    Ban the damn things. Ban them all.

    You want protection? Get a dog.

    Molly Ivins (1944 – 2007)

    photo by Carol Kassie

    Tell it, Sister Girl.