I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Life

  • SHOW ME YOUR FOURS!!! GO COCKS!!!


    Okay, my daddy always told me, She who tooteth not her own horn, the same shall not be tooteth. Here’s my horn, and I’m tooting it today…

    GAMECOCK MEN AND WOMEN

    BASKETBALL TEAMS 

    IN THE MIDDLE OF MARCH MADNESS!!

    GO COCKS!!

    Gamecock basketball fans can’t figure out where to make their Final Four reservations this week – the men are going west to Phoenix and the women to Dallas for the final weekend of March Madness in 2017. Question: How much “madness” can the University of South Carolina stand in one wild, wacky, wonderful basketball year? And the answer is Ding, Ding, Ding the Daily Double – both teams are Regional Road Warriors and Winners.

    As PJ Dozier said at the Welcome Home celebration for the men in Columbia Sunday at the Colonial Life Arena,  Gamecock Fans, Show me your Fours!

    The names Sindarius Thornwell, Notice, Silva, Dozier, A’ja Wilson, Davis, Gray, Cuevas-Moore, Harris, Cliney are household words in the homes of South Carolina fans who revere the round ball and will now take their deserved places in Gamecock basketball lore as they have led their respective teams into the record books for the school and the SEC as well.

    A’ja Wilson – 1st Team All American

    Congratulations to # 22 A’ja Wilson, the junior from Hopkins, South Carolina who was named to the All American 1st Team. The honor couldn’t be more well-deserved because Wilson has been not only the spark plug for the spirit of the team but also the checkered flag- waver to help her team stay focused to cross the finish line of every game this season whether on the bench or on the game floor. This girl has spunk, and I love spunk. You go, girl.

    Last night Pretty and I plus our dogs Spike and Charly who had been rescued from the Doggie Day (and night) Care in New Orleans stayed in Patchatoula, Louisiana off I-10 to see if our women were Final Four bound. And so they are, and so we will continue our love affair with Coach Dawn Staley and her team and turn west toward Texas to make sure we are there to support them in person this final weekend of the season.

    Whatever the scoreboard says in Dallas or in Phoenix, our young women and men are winners and for us personally have provided more than enough entertainment to lift our family from a self-absorbed political pity party we have had since November. For that, we say a huge thank you and good luck in the next games.

    P.S. I couldn’t believe we would leave New Orleans without once hearing When the Saints Go Marching In and Sunday night at the very last possible minute, a wedding party parade outside our hotel had a very loud band playing the song while everyone danced in the streets. Magical moment. Memory Maker, as Granny Selma would have surely said.

    New Orleans version of a wedding party

    Pretty documented it for us

    Say goodbye, New Orleans and Hello, Big D, little a, double l, as.

  • Saints and Sinners Festival Fun, Fun and More Fun!


    I served on a panel with other authors Rich Barnett, Martin Hyatt, Martin Pousson and moderator Jeff Mann. The topic was Home is Where the Art Is: Or is It?  So fascinating to hear everyone’s stories about the impact our beginnings have had on our writing…from Appalachian mountain man to Louisiana Bayou boys, from Voodoo practicing to Pentecostal preachers, from families and extended families who couldn’t understand us –  we escaped to places away from home like San Francisco, New York City, Rehoboth, Delaware; Columbia, South Carolina. The journeys became the impetus for our words.

    I had an opportunity to read an excerpt from my short story that is included in the Saints and Sinners Anthology for 2017. It was really fun! Pretty and my other two Peeps who made the trip from South Carolina were the best support anyone could have had…really made it much easier to read when I saw them beaming in the audience.

    Beignets anyone??

    You bet!

    Peep Posse in New Orleans

    Our good Columbia friends Nekki and Francie met us in NOLA and we have been women on a roll in the Big Easy. Francie and I watched the Gamecock men bust everyone’s brackets this afternoon from a perch at the Boomtown Casino while Pretty and Nekki took a historical tour of the city where they saw a poster for a Chris Rock concert tonight. Enough said.

    So, if you’re looking for us tonight, go to the Saenger Theater and get ready to throw down with Chris!

  • Bright Lights, Big City


     

    New Orleans downtown – amazing architecture

    Colorful flags everywhere!

    Signs of the season

    Pretty loves what? Art galleries – Shopping!

    Looking down Royal Street

    Lunch with famous blogger

    The K9 Miss Harper Lee

    (and her human mommy Suzanne)

    One of The Red Man’s favorite blogging amigas was the gorgeous golden femme fatale Miss Harper Lee. Harper Lee and Red shared romantic messages in cyberspace for many years, and Slow and Pretty were delighted to meet Miss Lee and Suzanne up close and personal for lunch on their first day in NOLA. Harper Lee was the perfect hostess and the sensation of the courtyard setting in the Amelie Restaurant. Food was delicious; cocktail, wine and ice tea refreshing, but the real treat was the company. It was a perfect introduction to our visit. Miss Harper Lee rocks and rules…forever.

    Getting down to business – 

    What SAS festival author managed to sit on a slow-leaking sprinkler head in a courtyard during the Gliterati Literati cocktail reception, didn’t realize it until she was totally drenched, and then had to have Pretty walk closely behind her as they politely excused themselves? (Think the scene in Bringing up Baby when Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn made their rather awkward one-on-one exit from a swanky restaurant.)

    Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

  • Daniel Boone? No – Daniel Pratt…


    In 1819 a twenty-year-old man from New Hampshire finished a four-year apprenticeship in architecture and heeded the words of Horace Greeley to leave his New England home and go west, young man, go west.  He ended up in Savannah, Georgia.

    Twenty years later this same man would leave his Georgia home with a wife, two slaves, enough materials to build 50 cotton gins and the knowledge necessary to run a plant that manufactured them. His name was Daniel Pratt.

    We stayed last night in the town Daniel created for the workers in his cotton gin plant: Prattville, Alabama. Pretty took us on a tour of the historic downtown area this morning. We love an historic downtown area – particularly one as beautiful as this one. Imagine what this looked like in 1839 – before the Civil War – one man’s dream.

    Daniel Pratt was one of Alabama’s first industrialists

    Daniel has his own personal historic district now

    My friend had a bird’s eye view of the falls

    …and sat on the remnants of history

    Guess who else was from Prattville besides Daniel Pratt?

    Mustang Sally Wilson Pickett, Jr.

    Had to say goodbye to the wisteria and Prattville

    On the road again – Charly perches atop Yeti cooler

    Getting closer…

    Rest area, my you-know-what

    I am so tired. Please, God, get me out of this vehicle.

    Spike’s prayers were answered…we have stopped for the night in Slidell, Louisiana, which is 30 miles from New Orleans.

    We are sneaking up on it.

  • Do You Know the Way to…Tuskegee?


    The trip between Atlanta, Georgia and Montgomery, Alabama on I-85 is one Pretty and I have made at least a gazillion times in our years of wandering back and forth between Texas and South Carolina. We have our favorite welcome centers, rest areas, cheap gas prices with freshest candy bars convenience stores, and I am always impressed when Pretty remembers the exact location of a Zoe’s restaurant in every town that has one.

    Between Auburn and Montgomery, however, there is a road sign we always pass that says Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site next exit. The conversation usually goes Hey, we need to see that, but we don’t have time. We’ll do it later.

    “Later” finally showed up yesterday on our trip to New Orleans.

    During WWII more than 10,000 African-American men and women worked at Moton Field to train military aviators, both pilots and bombers, for the war. The military at that time was still racially segregated, but patriotism was not.

    Pretty, Spike and Charly survey Moton field

    The dogs and I sent Pretty to tour the actual hangars and bring us up to date on the history, so she gets credit for the interior photos.

    Red Tails the nickname for Tuskegee fighters

    The airmen were educated in town at what was then known as the Tuskegee Institute and transported by bus every day to Moton Field which is a few miles from downtown. We followed that route from the National Historical Site to have a look at Tuskegee University today.

    Also a National Historic Site –

    started by Booker T. Washington

    Where modern architecture of today’s campus…

    …meets history around the corner at

    Booker T. Washington’s home

    The gates of learning still open wide

    to preserve the rich heritage

     of the historically black university that is Tuskegee