I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Personal

  • starting 2020 with a spectacle or two


    The Kansas City Chiefs scored three touchdowns in the last five minutes of the game to surprise the San Francisco 49ers and win the Super Bowl last night. Congratulations to the team, Coach Andy Reid, and all those Chiefs fans who have supported the team faithfully at Arrowhead Stadium through the years when many of them must have felt they were wandering in a wilderness of lost hopes and dreams. (Memo to Agent Orange: the Chiefs are not in Kansas anymore, actually they never were. It’s Kansas City, Missouri. Maybe Mike Pompeo can find it on a map for you.)

    What a spectacle. I hardly knew what to focus on during the pre-game and half time shows.  As my friend Saskia from the Netherlands says, Americans know how to make a spectacle of themselves – or something like that. The Super Bowl brings our sports frenzies to new heights every year, and this year was no exception especially with the performances of Jennifer Lopez and Shakira who gave frenzies new meaning.

    Meanwhile, as fires continued to burn in Australia, the first major tennis tournament of 2020 was coming to an end. The Australian Open has been going on for the past two weeks during which time I appeared dazed and confused due to my strange hours of trying to watch the tennis matches live on my telly.  For any of you who are mentally making an effort to convert Australian time to Eastern Daylight time here, stop immediately. It’s impossible, and you will never even know what day it is, much less whether it’s a.m. or p.m. Trust me. I’m a veteran of that battle. Still, I feel like something will be missing in my life until the clay court season starts in Europe.

    Sofia Kenin, who was born in Moscow and whose family immigrated to the US when she was four months old, surprised herself and everyone else in the tennis world by winning the women’s singles championship at the Australian Open over the weekend when she defeated Garbine Muguruza in a blistering three-set final. In the semi-finals, Kenin walloped Australian Ash Barty in straight sets – much to the dismay of thousands of Australian fans watching in Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne. Barty was the defending champion and ranked number 1 in the world by the Women’s Tennis Association while the 21-year-old Floridian Kenin was at #14. Hopefully Kenin can lessen the load the Williams sisters have carried for American tennis fans for the last 20 years. Is Kenin for real? Gosh, I hope so.

    The men’s singles championship trophy was won by Novak Djokovic when he defeated Dominic Thiem in a nail biter five-set final.  That was Novak’s eighth major title down under and not really a surprise to anyone other than Thiem’s mother whose hope springs eternal from the players’ box behind the court. Better luck next time, Dominic – your mother and I see trophies in your future. As for Djokovic, this puts his Open trophy total at 17, which is 2 behind Rafa Nadal at 19, and 3 behind Roger Federer who is at 20 and holding. Just in case anyone is counting. I’m counting because I consider myself privileged to have been a witness to what tennis peeps call the Golden Age of men’s professional tennis. At this point I take “golden age” any way I can get it.

    The Super Bowl and Australian Open weren’t the only games in town for Pretty and me this weekend. Our Gamecock Women’s Basketball team polished off a very tall and excellent University of Tennessee team at Colonial Life Arena on Super Bowl Sunday. Our team is coached by Dawn Staley who has assembled a super group of freshmen to complement several returning upperclassmen – they have quickly jelled to become something special this season with a record of 19 – 1 and are ranked number 1 in the nation according to the AP poll. Go Gamecocks! I can almost taste that New Orleans shrimp at the Final Four!

    Last, but certainly not least, another season kicks off today in Iowa. The Democratic primary in that state tonight begins the race for a president of the United States to replace the impeached one who will evidently continue to occupy the White House at the conclusion of the Senate “trial” this week. I wouldn’t want to live in Iowa today.  Those citizens carry a heavy burden to their caucuses tonight. I’ll be listening for the returns with much anxiety mixed with anticipation. That’s how I roll through a political quagmire.

    Finally, the ground hog that determines our weather forecast has predicted an early spring this year. That makes me happy for Pretty who has signed up for not one, but two, tennis teams for the spring schedule. She much prefers warm, sunny weather for her matches. My bionic knees much prefer warm, sunny weather, too for the sport of bending them to get up out of my recliner.

    Stay tuned.

    Totally unrelated photo of 4 month old granddaughter Ella

    with her NanaSlo, but I just love this picture of us so here it is

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Emmylou + Pretty = memory maker overnighter


    As we left the restaurant Friday night, the cloudy gray skies we had followed to Greensboro, North Carolina rudely let loose with a deluge of rain for which both Pretty and I were unprepared. Jennifer, our friend who had ordered the Emmylou Harris concert tickets, was clever enough to bring a small umbrella and offered to share but her umbrella was inadequate for the task of keeping Pretty and me dry while we waited for Jennifer’s partner Lisa to rescue us in their SUV.

    Unfortunately, they were parked in a city garage several blocks from our restaurant – a city garage which had closed while we all laughed our way through a delicious dinner. The arm for exiting was apparently defective, and Lisa had to figure a way out that didn’t involve her original impulse to run her vehicle through the arm. Time ticked away. Rain continued to pour like the drops had been saving up from a drought for this opportunity to soak us.

    Pretty and I eyed the umbrellas next to the door in the restaurant and momentarily discussed the ethics of stealing one of them while we waited. We decided against, but the vote was a tie and decided by Pretty.

    When the SVU finally pulled up, we all raced to get in. That is, Pretty and Jennifer raced while my two new bionic knees and I struggled to avoid falling on the drenched pavement to catch up. The time was 7:50 – the concert was at 8 but of course Jennifer had a phone leading us to the concert site at the University of North Carolina Greensboro Auditorium with an ETA of 8. Thank goodness for those cell phone aps, and thank goodness for people who actually know how to use them.

    Our party of four remained in high spirits when we parked in a space near the sign that read Emmylou Harris Parking. The rain had lessened to a drizzle, but that was a moot point by then. I was seeing tiny rivers flowing downward on the lens of my eyeglasses  – we walked toward the building with the lights on next to the parking lot only to discover that was NOT the venue for the Emmylou concert. I cursed the cell phone ap in my mind.

    We walked and walked and walked some more until we found the UNCG Auditorium. Jennifer kindly waited for me at the bottom of the steps I needed to climb to enter. They might as well have been Mount Everest to my exhausted wet knees. She assured me no one was getting in before us because she had the tickets on a phone ap. I had to trust her. We were already 15 minutes late.

    All’s well that ends well, as the saying goes. And this concert was worth the bad weather, the defective parking lot arm and the mixup in our destination. Emmylou’s 73-year-old voice had its still powerful moments, and her musical stories remain timeless. To me, she is one of the greatest troubadours of both centuries she’s performed in.  The five musicians who played with her were masters of their instruments and did their best to showcase her voice and the songs she sang. I was transported to the days before arthritis was a big deal in my life and grateful to our friends for planning to go and including us.

    Greensboro, North Carolina is a two interstate (77 and 85) three and a half hour drive from our home in West Columbia, South Carolina if you ride with most people. Pretty is not most people. She turns any trip into a treasure hunt for inventory for her antique empire which now spans three locations: Three Rivers on Meeting Street, Little Mountain Cafe and Antiques, and Towne Square Antiques in Prosperity, SC.  My wife is a mogul, and she also has a phone ap that can locate all Goodwill stores near wherever she is.

    The morning after our concert drama the sun shined brightly through the LaQuinta motel curtains. Pretty had used her Goodwill ap and found 15 (FIFTEEN) Goodwill stores near Greensboro. We left the comfort of the LaQuinta before the noon checkout time to go on the Great Goodwill Treasure Hunt. I was underwhelmed but determined to rally.

    one of 15 in the area – who knew?

    Pretty finds a treasure!

    Regardless of the drama surrounding our first overnighter in more than two years, Pretty and I managed to have truly tons of fun and laughter together, but I see my trip recovery time will be a little longer than it used to be.

    Stay tuned.

    P.S. I have one special follower, Dick Hubbard,  who rates every post of mine with 5 stars for excellent. He is usually the only person who is faithful to take the time to click that grade for me and has done this for years. I want to take a moment to thank him and wish him five stars for excellent health.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • late to bed? it’s a dog’s life, baby


    So many demands on my time these days. Of course, we have the ongoing political melodrama in the nation’s capitol where Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts is “presiding” over the impeachment trial of Donald John Trump in the US Senate. To be honest, I might as well be “presiding” if I had the appropriate robe.  That poor man can’t decide anything. Not his fault, just the way the rules are in the upper chamber. No wonder Roberts’  hands were shaking when he was sworn in by Chuck Grassley Monday. He must have seen the handwriting on the wall. The first day ended at 2:00 a.m. the next day.

    Couple the late hours of the Senate trial with the even later hours of the first tennis Grand Slam event of 2020, the Australian Open in Melbourne, and I find myself going to bed later and later every night. Down Under is a phrase I now use to describe myself and my covers when I try to wake up every morning wondering whether it is today or tomorrow. Australian time remains one of life’s great mysteries for me every year during the Open, but my body knows the jet lag in my recliner is real.

    early to bed, early to rise…makes a person healthy, wealthy and wise,

    say Ben Franklin and Pretty

    late to bed, on the other hand, can be a problem

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • it’s a simple matter of justice – remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


    1993 March on Washington for LGBT Equality

    Twenty-seven years ago this April I marched with the South Carolina delegation in the 1993 March on Washington. It was a life-changing experience not only for me but for hundreds of thousands of LGBT folks and their straight allies.

    I loved that the commemorative poster for the event featured a quote from one of the Civil Rights movement leaders I most admired: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The framed poster has been hanging in every office of mine since then.

    “Our freedom was not won a century ago, it is not won today,

    but some small part of it is in our hands,

    and we are no longer marching by ones and twos

    but in legions of thousands,

    convinced now it cannot be denied  by human force.”

    On this special holiday I say RIP, Dr. King, but keep the living stirred up for equal justice for as long we walk the earth.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

  • hear ye, hear ye – calling ALL patriots: Mayday, Mayday!


    Tears rolled down my cheeks today as I watched and heard House Manager Adam Schiff read the two Articles of Impeachment referred to the Senate by the House of Representatives for trial and removal of the president. Listening to the charges of high crimes and misdemeanors in the Senate chamber against the American president Donald John Trump, even a president I never supported, was an unexpectedly joyless experience.

    I think I finally understood what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had been reminding the nation in every press conference she’s held concerning this process. Somber, solemn, even sad, the burden of discovery of the facts that forced her to stand up for her belief in the constiution of the United States regardless of political consequences. Her belief, and the conviction of her party’s caucus in the House,  that no person is above the law in this country gave her no choice in pursuing the removal of someone who continued to threaten our national securtiy and ultimately our democracy.

    Today I felt her pain and sadness and wept with her for a country caught up in crisis.

    Pretty tells me that only people like me who have the luxury to watch either MSNBC faithfully or FOX news religiously during the past few months actually cared about the Senate trial or its outcome. Until yesterday I assured her she was wrong.

    But I had a conversation yesterday with a young woman who teaches sixth grade at a middle school here in South Carolina.  Obviously a person with a good education and a teacher for all the right reasons in this her eighth year of classrom experience. We talked about politics – the Democratic debate the night before. I asked her if she watched the debate, and she said no. She was waiting for the later ones. And then she added out of the blue, really politics are a joke in this country since Donald Trump became president. I felt she spoke for many in her generation; I had a sense of loss and frustation that perhaps our brightest younger citizens were turned off by the  divisions, heated hateful rhetoric, the images of a country at war with itself.

    Then last night Pretty was once again proven to be right about the state of political awareness in our nation when three Jeopardy contestants, three clearly smart women who wouldn’t be on Jeopardy if they weren’t, had a question with a picture of a man they were asked to identify. None of the three buzzed in to answer. The man was Adam Schiff, the person who was the face of the House impeachment process during the past three months  because he is the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee which began the investigation into the president’s misconduct as a result of a whistleblower complaint. I have to admit I was stunned at their lack of recognition of this key House spokesperson.

    Clearly I have too much time invested in the parade of outrageous acts that have defined this country in the past three years. Yes, I hope for a change in leadership, but I also hope for a change in our country’s attitudes toward ourselves in our home towns, attitudes that celebrate our differences, attitudes of finding common ground with our neighbors who share the same dreams for their families that we have for ours, attidudes that rise upward toward the men and women who represent us in Congress and elsewhere around the world.

    The outcome of the Senate trial of this president supposedly has already been determined along party lines. I just watched 99 Senators sign a book attesting to their oath for a fair trial. I would like to believe they will be true to that oath. Regardless of the outcome, this is a moment in time for us to decide who we are as a nation. I encourage every American to care enough about our country to tune in to the Senate trial as our history and future unfolds.

    Hear ye, hear ye – calling all patriots – mayday, mayday!