I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Personal

  • Big Money, Vanna


    Who let the money out of the bag?   Oh, you mean who let the cat out of the bag.   No, I mean who let the money out of the big ol’ US Guvmint Bag?   Ah, how much money are we talkin’ bout, Willis?   Gobs and gobs?

    Oh, yeah.   We’re talkin’ gobs and gobs and gazillions of gobs.   We’re talkin’ so much we don’t even know how many zeroes to put after it.   As a financial person in a former life, I should never read articles about money.   As a social justice activist and relative pacifist, I should rarely read articles about wars or health care.   And I should never ever EVER read an article that contains extensive information about government spending in the past fifty years.   Step away from the computer, O Person Who Reads With Forked Mind.

    For example, today I read that the Wall Street Bailout cost us $4.76 trillion dollars of which $1.54 trillion is floating around loose somewhere with no repayment in sight.   Zing went the strings of my wallet – and yours, too.  Coincidentally, or as luck would have it,  two nights ago I watched the movie Too Big to Fail and I advise against watching it unless you have a strong stomach.   The plot traces the origins of the economic disaster that began in 2008 and continues to plague our country today.   Snow White has two new Wall Street Dwarfs named Greedy and Thiefy and they run the Big Money, Vanna.

    Can I buy a vowel?   Indeed, and you can buy a couple of wars while you’re at it.   The smartest vowel to buy is an “A’ which is found in the words IrAq and AfghAnistAn.   Wow –  that’s cost you $122 billion dollars per year since 2001 and by the way we haven’t stopped spending and we didn’t count people cost, either.   Ouch…that A was expensive.

    Can I buy a Happy Vowel now because the “A” brought a frown to the unflappable Pat Sajak and the entire Audience, too.    Let’s see.  Yes, you may buy an “I” for the eIsenhower Interstate hIghway system that was built from 1956 to 1991 for  $484 billion and counting.   The Good News is  this vowel has generated $6 in revenue for every $1 in cost so that should make you happy as you drive merrily along your favorite Interstate Highway.  Yippee – this game is fun.   Big wheels keep on rollin’ and spinnin’, too.

    Okay.   One last spin of your big ol’ US Guvmint Bag Wheel…oops!      BANKRUPT.

    Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

  • Happy Birthday To The Lady


    Aung San Suu Kyi was 67 years old Tuesday, June 19th. and was sworn in earlier this year to serve in the Parliament of Burma, where she has devoted her life to human rights and democracy.   For 15 years – almost a fourth of her life – she was under house arrest for her political opposition to the military regime that imprisoned her and other members of her party in their country.  She was ultimately released in November, 2010.   She is the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and numerous other awards in recognition of her bravery but  because of her arrest was unable to deliver an acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize until this past Saturday, June 16th.   Msmagazine.com reprinted the full transcript of Suu Kyi’s speech, and her moving words of hope for world peace and inclusion and plea for kindness resonate across time and geographic boundaries.   Her understanding that the cause of human rights transcends national borders and specific dictatorships and her commitment to alleviating forms of suffering wherever they exist make her a worthy Nobel winner.

    “…our aim should be to create a world free from the displaced, the homeless and the hopeless, a world of which each and every corner is a true sanctuary where the inhabitants will have the freedom and the capacity to live in peace.  Every thought, every word, and every action that adds to the positive and the wholesome is a contribution to peace.  Each and every one of us is capable of making such a contribution.  Let us join hands to try to create a peaceful world where we can sleep in security and wake in happiness…”    ——Aung San Suu Kyi

    Happy Birthday to The Lady from Burma!

  • Happy Birthday Ms. Magazine, Title IX And The Lady


    Ms. Magazine is 40 years old this year according to a headline I saw yesterday and  I was startled to read the news because I remember very well when it began and sheepishly admit I wasn’t sure it was still in publication.   I don’t read as much as I once did, and I attribute that pathetic revelation to a love affair I have with the sight of my own words on a computer screen which is as powerful a narcotic as my nightly sleeping pill.   Happy Birthday, Ms.!   You gave narratives and images  to a feminist movement that sputtered its way under protest from lone voices crying in the wilderness to the American mainstream political landscape and I thank you for the hopes and dreams you gave me and my generation.   Gloria Steinem, bless you for the vision of the potential impact of Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.   I.O.U.

    Title IX is 40 years old Saturday, June 23rd.   I found this interesting fact when I actually looked up Ms. Magazine online tonight.   Did I remember Richard Nixon was the President who signed this bill into law?   I did not but am relieved to have one positive piece of history attributed to the man who got my vote in the 1968 election.   Title IX is to public education and related school activities for girls and women what hot fudge and nuts are to vanilla ice cream on a sundae.   Necessary and rewarding.   Sweet.   If education provides the foundation for equal opportunites in a democracy, Title IX makes sure the base doesn’t tilt due to the randomness of being born female.

    I also learned about another birthday from Ms. online tonight.   She’s called The Lady from Burma and is the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.  She’s 67 years old today, June 19th. and delivered her acceptance speech three days ago, 21 years after she won.   I’ll save her story for our next time.   Happy Birthday, Aung San Suu Kyi!

  • Coming Home From Home


    It’s surprisingly easy to drive a thousand miles from Montgomery, Texas to Columbia, South Carolina.  Two days on the road with a nine-hour break in a comfy motel bed.   The roads are good but we share them with many travelers who join us in driving from here to there to wherever.   Truck drivers pulling heavy loads remind me of the burdens I’ve carried for many years so I like to see the eighteen-wheelers as they struggle to make a hill but cruise on down the road once they reach the crest.   I feel I’ve reached the top of an incredibly high hill in my life at this moment and can finally begin to coast on the other side.   The responsibilities and pressures I’ve owned for so long are pieces falling from my truck bed into ditches along the way.   They fly out and float and vanish as they hit the ground.

  • Post Cards From The Heart – Lucia Leaves Home. The End.


    First comes love, then comes marriage.  Then comes Luke and Bessie pushing a baby carriage.   Lucia Catherine was the occupant of this particular baby carriage and she was the only child of their marriage.  Expectations for a Luke, Jr., turned happily into a Lucia somewhere between 1908 and 1916, the date of the first post card addressed to Miss Lucia Moore in our collection.

    Date Unknown

    Aunt Sadie give me this to send to your baby. This is me and Little Snookie on front. 

    from G (?)

    Date Unknown

    To Lucia Moore from Dorothy Parker

    December 21, 1922 

    I hope Old Santa will be good to you this Xmas and that you have a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year,  Allen & M.M.

    November 24, 1919

    Dear Little Lucia Catherine, I rec’d your pictures yesterday and they are as sweet and pretty as can be.  I am sure you are a fine little girl and your Mother and Papa are awfully proud you came to live with them.  My little Edna Mae is on the Mexican border with her Papa & Mother.  I’ll send her the picture and know she will think it is sweet.  Tell Mother I’ll write her a letter some day.    Miss Florence

    Among the cards kept by Bessie was a Thanksgiving post card sent from China, Texas in 1919 to her daughter Lucia.  The handwriting was tiny so all the words could fit the reverse of the holiday card, but Bessie recognized immediately the precise distinctive script of her special friend Florence.   After thirteen years of sporadic correspondence via the penny cards, Bessie would have known that writing even if the card had been unsigned.  China, Texas sounded a world away from Atlanta, Georgia.   Would she ever see her friend again?  If not, she wanted Florence to see pictures of Lucia.   Everyone said Lucia looked just like Bessie had looked when she was a little girl and Florence had told Bessie many years ago how beautiful she was.

    Miss Florence hadn’t married evidently and Bessie thought it was good she had a neice she loved.   Tell Mother I’ll write her a letter some day was a lifetime away from Florence’s  Will write you soon message to Bessie  in 1907 and Bessie understood the different destinies their lives had followed with a touch of…what?   Regret?   Relief?   Remorse?   Did she even know herself?

    The End As Of Today

    For the faithful readers who have followed the odyssey of the Moore family for almost three months now on the blog, I thank you for your patience as I took this blip on my personal radar writing screen for an experiment with historical fiction.   When my partner Teresa brought the picture post card album home from an estate sale at the end of February this year, I was fascinated with the pictures from the turn-of-the-century (twentieth, that is!) cards but had not a clue about the treasures I’d find in the words.  For me, words are worth a thousand pictures and these have not disappointed.   I wish I could share more of them with you, but I have literally hundreds of post cards and fear I have become too attached to them.

    The estate sale took place at a home in Columbia and I tagged along with Teresa when she went for a second look.   The house was a modest one in an older middle-class neighborhood not very far from our own home.  I could have walked there if I’d wanted to – which I didn’t.   While Teresa chatted away with her friend Shelley who was in charge of the estate sale, I wandered through the house to see what I could find without spending any money – which I didn’t.   I found an old Bible in a bedroom and opened it to the family section.   From your father, Luke P. Moore  read the inscription.   At the time I didn’t realize how close I would be to Mr. Moore and his family through their post cards in the next few months.

    I asked Shelley that night if she knew anything about the family who was leaving this home.   She said she didn’t know much except that it was an elderly woman in her late nineties who was moving into a nursing home because she couldn’t live alone any longer.   Not an uncommon occurrence these days, I thought, as I met Teresa in the kitchen.   She was making her final rounds and asked Shelley to hold several items for her before the sale actually started the following day.

    I remember seeing a little navy blue magnet in the shape of a sailing ship on the refrigerator that night as I left the kitchen.   I wish now I’d paid the 25 cents for it.   A tiny white flag had the name Lucia on it.   Lucia Catherine Moon, daughter of Luke and Bessie, was leaving her home and most of her possessions behind, including her mother’s treasured post card album entitled Greetings from Jamestown.    That’s okay, though.   Teresa brought it home to me.