I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Personal

  • Boys, You Better Hide Our Car Keys – Quick!


    Our Lady Gamecocks scored 93 points in their spectacular win over Alabama in the SEC opener this past Sunday, and of course, Pretty and I were there…along with our transplanted New York friends Jenn and Donna who were happy to fill in for our regular Gay Boy Basketball Buddies that were somewhere up in the mountains of North Carolina celebrating New Year’s Day.  Well, I never. Priorities, gentlemen.

    Lunch at the Colonial Life Arena before the 2:00 p.m. tip-off was a toss-up between Kiki’s Chicken and Waffles or The Cake Lady’s chicken salad sandwich on the always over-sized croissant, but Kiki’s won out for three of us. Pretty maintained her level head and did not succumb to the aroma of the best fried chicken in town mixed with the sweet smell of maple syrup for the waffle so she was our designated photographer. Thanks, Pretty. You’re the best.

    kiki-at-the-game

    Y-u-m-m-eeeeeeeeeee!

    And so, as we threatened our Gay Boy Basketball Buddies last week at the UCLA game, off we go to the Auburn game at Auburn Thursday night.  (War Eagle Nan, we wish we could talk you into going with us and showing us the sights of your Alma mater?)

    We hope the Lady Gamecocks kick the Slow and Pretty Road Game Chicken Curse we apparently take with us whenever we decide to follow them, but GBBB, just in case, I’d be looking to hide our car keys right away if I were you and cared anything about keeping our Number 5 spot in the polls.

    ROAD TRIP!! Yee Haw! Let the good times roll…and let the Lady Gamecocks roll with them…Coach Staley, we’re counting on you to keep those girls fired up – and ready to go!

    Game on.

     

  • You Don’t Have to Break Up to Wallow


    Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life made its Netflix debut over the Thanksgiving weekend with much fanfare, hoopla and hype as the three leading actresses appeared on every talk show under the sun to promote the four-part mini-series that was supposed to be a panacea for the yearnings of a major contingent of followers who wanted more from the Gilmore women of Stars Hollow and Hartford. The original American TV comedy series ran for seven seasons from 2000 to 2007 and was apparently quite popular and still missed by many.

    Pretty and I were not Gilmore Girls watchers in those first runs; perhaps because we were younger, our relationship was newer, our social life was busier, we were watching Frasier re-runs… or something else I can’t remember. Whatever the reasons, we missed it the first time around. But since we are now seasoned Netflix subscribers and recently finished the gazillion-episode BBC series Doc Martin  and needed a new diversion, we decided to give the Gilmore Girls a whirl.

    We recently started with the first season and are now prepared to spend the rest of our lives watching Loralei and Rory get daily coffee fixes at Luke’s coffee shop because each of the early years had at least a hundred episodes per season. Luckily, we found ourselves growing fond of the characters as we usually do when the writing is good and the actors as good as the script.

    For example, in one of the first season’s episodes this week I was disappointed when teenage Rory’s first true love, Dean the grocery store bag boy, dumped her. Such a cute, sweet boy – young love blossomed, bloomed, bleeped, fizzled, done. And on their three-month anniversary, too. Sigh. What to do? Talk to Mom.

    Mom’s (Lorelei’s) advice to her teenage daughter was priceless: wallow. That’s right. Wallow. Stay in your pajamas all day while you eat pizza and ice cream…don’t put on makeup…don’t shave your legs…sit in a dark room watching old movies like Love Story, An Affair to Remember, Ishtar, Old Yeller and have a good cry. Wallow the day away.

    What’s really amazing about this advice is that I’ve been wallowing minus the crying part and old movies for years without realizing it, and my wallowing has nothing at all to do with my love life. I was born to wallow, and then I had a relapse when I had a real job that required getting out of bed, applying Clinique makeup every morning after my shower, spending a fortune on perms and color to give my straight-as-a-board graying hair curls and blondeness,  getting dressed in appropriate business attire, commuting long distances to an office where I sat in front of a computer screen looking at numbers all day while agonizing over the financial decisions my clients were wrestling with…all in all, a relapse that lasted 40 years.

    But now, I have reclaimed my roots (the silver ones, too), and I wallow almost each day. Some days I never get out of my pajamas, my toothpaste gets more use than my bath soap, I gave up shaving my legs for Lent and didn’t resurrect it for Easter, I only wear makeup for date nights, and my straight short white hair qualifies for the “man’s haircut rate” with my hair stylist.  The longest commute I have is from my upstairs office to the kitchen downstairs. Life is good.

    Writing is the perfect career for wallowing. If Pretty asks me what I’ve been doing when she comes home from surveying her antique empire and finds me still in my pajamas, I can say Oh, I’ve been writing all day – which could or could not be exactly true. Unless you count watching In the Heat of the Night as research. (Ishtar, no thanks.)

    Today is New Year’s Eve, the last day of 2016, the day when many of us will be making our resolutions for 2017. I have started my list with the same one I’ve started with for the past 40 years: I need to lose 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 pounds this year. My, how time flies.

    Hm. I never get past that first one.

    If you are making your list and checking it twice, add a day to wallow once a month. You don’t need to break up a relationship to do it – simply indulge and wallow. Indulge. Wallow. Enjoy.

    Pretty and I wish you a Happy New Year from our home at Casa de Canterbury to yours wherever you are in cyberspace around the world – stay safe, and we’ll look forward to having you hang with us in 2017!

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Merry Christmas to all…


    genes-christmas-card

    …and to all a good night!

    Thanks so much to my sweet Texas cousin Gene who sent us these well wishes…he wins Most Creative today…and shares my childhood memories forever.

  • Road to Equality – Revisiting the Obama Presidency


    President Barack Obama was the first American President I ever heard who openly supported marriage equality for LGBT citizens. My emotions were a mixture of joy and amazement the first time I heard him say the words. I felt an overwhelming sense of validation because a President of the United States declared my love for Teresa was as deserving of respect as his love for Michelle. He set me free with his words, my personal emancipation proclamation.

    He is also responsible for the appointments of two Supreme Court Justices without whom the votes on the bench could have gone differently. The road to marriage equality would have been a much longer one without the support of this American President throughout his presidency. His is a legacy of love.

    First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage?

    Ask the Supremes

    (originally published April 04, 2013)

    The dust has settled after the media frenzy surrounding the Supreme Court hearings on two cases affecting the future of same-sex marriage in the United States. Whew! The gays and gay-friendlies partied. Jon Stewart skewered DOMA and its supporters on Comedy Central. The Republicans tried desperately to find someone – ANYONE – in their party to explain their position on marriage on CNN in a way that the general citizenry wouldn’t characterize as narrow-minded at best or bigoted at worst. That search is ongoing and a generous reward is offered to the finder.

    The hearings are over and the rulings expected in June. Eight Associate Justices and the Chief Justice hold the key to opening doors of equality that have been slammed shut since the founding fathers held these truths to be Self-evident in the Declaration of Independence in 1776. “…That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

    I am amazed to realize I have seen all of these Supremes don the robes of the Court at the end of the required appointment process…

    … Justice Sonia Sotomayor … is a Yale graduate who was appointed by President Barack Obama. She is the sole Hispanic Supreme. Justice Elena Kagan is another Obama appointee …at the time of her appointment she was Dean of the Harvard Law School…

    In summation, Your Honors, I find that the fate of same-sex marriage in the United States in 2013 rests with folks who graduated either from Yale or Harvard law schools and were born in the New York/ New Jersey area on the East Coast or California on the West Coast with one stray Southerner thrown in for good measure. Well, maybe not good measure, but certainly thrown in.

    The question before us today is whether this hodgepodge of political appointees will take its place in history as the Court that restores the unalienable rights of a minority of its LGBT citizens who have been made to feel “lesser than” and treated with discrimination that often threatens their Lives and their Liberty and always endangers their pursuit of Happiness.

    I respectfully ask the Court to stand and deliver on the promises that have been the hopes and dreams of all Americans for more than two hundred years.

    I rest my case.

     Let’s Hear It for the Supremes!

    (originally published June 26, 2013)

    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.

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  • Benghazi – Revisiting the Obama Presidency


    On September 11, 2012 one of the most notorious events of the Obama presidency took place at the American Embassy in Benghazi, Libya when our ambassador was killed in a raid which was originally described by the administration as a possible retaliation for an anti-Muslim video filmed in the United States. My post was written six days later on the 17th. Interesting.

    Second Chances

    Our lecture for today, O cyberspace class, is the epistemology of the second chance. (Sometimes I just throw in a big word to see if anybody’s paying attention.) Frankly, I don’t remember  much about epistemology from my scholarly life except that I heard it used in my undergraduate philosophy classes and my graduate studies in theology.

    To refresh my memory, I looked up the definition and found the word epistemology involves knowledge and the justification of knowledge; but then the dictionary wandered off into a question of what is knowledge and how can it be justified and I immediately remembered why I dropped out of seminary. Way too much digression and iffiness and grey areas for a 23-year-old CPA who dealt in absolute numbers before answering a “call” to the ministry that was surely a wrong number.

    I gave up absolutes many years ago, however, about the same time the numbers became images on a computer screen and lacked any connection to reality. Who knew if 2 + 2 equaled 4 any more and who cared?

    So I’ve grown accustomed to vague responses and half-truths and tried to blend in with a landscape camouflaged by degrees of knowledge  that are justified with competing strident voices blasting away at each other from polarized positions of territorial absolutes. Wow. Now there’s a mouthful to chew on.

    Yep, nothing like trying to convince people you own a piece of knowledge when they don’t agree with you. You just can’t justify it to them no matter how hard you try and how loud you get. Because, see, they own a piece of knowledge, too, and it happens to be totally different from yours. And there’s the rub.

    A good example is the current turmoil over an anti-Muslim video that was Made in the USA. The American President has denounced it, the American Secretary of State has apologized for the fact that it was filmed in California where they film every possible video you could ever think up without anybody checking to see if it’s inflammatory because that would require an army of Video Checkers; and the justification of the knowledge of the situation is irrelevant to a Muslim world that owns a different enlightenment which doesn’t include the concept of second chances.

    That’s how it all goes downhill and the histrionics aren’t far behind.  I’m wondering how many Muslims are golfers?  If they were golfers, they would know about Mulligans.   Mulligans are second chances.

    If you hit a shot with your driver off the tee on the first hole and the little white golf ball vanishes mysteriously in deep woods closer to the fairway for the third hole than they are to the first hole and you know you’ll never be able to find it, you can say Mulligan and have a second chance to locate your own fairway again.

    You may hit a beautiful shot for your Mulligan or you may not, but the important thing is you have a new opportunity. The American government asked for a Mulligan from a partner who doesn’t play the game the same way it does. The game is over before it even starts.

    In our personal lives second chances are sometimes painfully obvious and at other times so subtle we may miss them.   Lesson Number One: Be open and available and alert and don’t think you won’t ever need one.  You will.

    Lesson Number Two:  When you get a second chance, try not to think of it as an opportunity to repeat mistakes. Mistakes are hard to take back so don’t blow the Mulligan.

    Lesson Number Three:  Be sure to tell your friends about your second chance. It may give them hope and inspire them to offer one or accept one. Honestly, can there be too many second chances going around?

    Lesson Number Four:  Your second chance may be your last chance. Seriously? Seriously.

    Lesson Number Five: Never be afraid to take a second chance when you have one. As Franklin Roosevelt famously said when the Hounds of the Baskervilles were closing in around him, We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

    And so, O cyberspace class, the lecture concludes with a little bit of knowledge mixed with a bunch of justification that adds up to the epistemology of the second chance as seen from the eyes of a 66-year-old who has had her own share of second chances and has, at various times in her life, blown them, needed a third or fourth, and had some of them bring incredible joy and happiness.

    Be generous to those you love and even to those whose knowledge is different from yours. Ouch. Is that really necessary?  Absolutely.