I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Personal

  • meet Cassidy Carport Cat

    meet Cassidy Carport Cat


    Yes, I have named the cat that adopted our carport as his home. Pretty and I have searched for a loving home for this little fellow for more than a year, but it turns out he found his own home with us. Sigh. I have resisted the pleas of our family, friends, even followers in cyberspace to name him because I felt that would make him less likely to find an indoor home. This week, though, I talked with Pretty, and she agreed Cassidy is a fine name. I added Carport Cat in honor of our beloved Carport Kitty who was our first feline love.

    Carport Kitty stole our hearts and then…

    and then broke them when we lost her in October, 2022

    No more stray cats in the carport, I declared through my tears to Pretty who nodded. But the best-laid plans of mice, men and me go where? go oft astray? oh no, they go to the strays.

    *****************

    Slava Ukraini. Remember the children.

  • scenes from my hood this week

    scenes from my hood this week


    Remember Cat? He loves snooping in the car when he finds an open door – he still needs that good home with someone who will let him live inside, sit in their lap with pets and purrs aplenty. He has had all his shots, the worrisome knot removed and has been pronounced fit as a fiddle. Won’t you please give him the home he deserves?

    Someone went to the groomer this week – Carl looking good. 100% deaf, sundowner issues every afternoon, still loathes Spike, legs tremble from old age, but the little guy has spunk in spades. He could win an old dog sprinting contest, tail wagging contest in any age group. Plus, have you ever seen a cuter face?

    On a morning walk this week, I passed a tree with premature blooms that will surely freeze next week. Every year when we have warmer weeks in February, the blooming trees are deceived by the warmth, happily burst forth in colorful blossoms, and then frost bites them you know where.

    Valentine’s Day brought sweet wishes from Dawne and Darlene in the upstate – and a good laugh from our friend Rob –

    Speaking of the ex-president, the bad news kept pouring in.

    (MSNBC)

    That’s all, folks. Enjoy an extra day off tomorrow in the US for President’s Day holiday!

    ********************

    Slava Ukraini. For the children.

  • for Pretty on our twenty-third anniversary


    (1) There once was a woman named Teresa

    Who loved a good shrimp quesadilla.

    To Cancun she did roam in two thousand one,

    And when she came home still red from the sun,

    She’d found new love with her best friend named Sheila.

    (2) There once was a woman named Sheila

    Who loved a good shot of tequila.

    To Cancun she did roam in two thousand one,

    And when she came home her journey was done,

    She’d found true love with her best friend Teresa.

    (3) An anniversary of love in twenty twenty-three

    The best of the best has been you and me.

    Wherever we’ve roamed

    We’ve always come home

    Together, believing the best was yet to be.

    ********************

    Happy Anniversary, Pretty. To quote Tina Turner, you’re simply the best – better than anyone could ever have been for me. I am forever grateful that you were the little girl who said yes.

  • In Memoriam: Dianne Barrett


    RECORD THE PAST, INSPIRE THE FUTURE

    Two lesbians who believed in the power of oral history through the preservation of our stories, Dianne Barrett and her wife Marge Elfering, had a vision for a project which became the B-E Collection. In June, 2022 I participated in the first of three interviews with her for that project. I learned yesterday of Dianne’s passing on December 17, 2023 and wanted to celebrate her life well lived with a piece I originally published in the summer of 2022 following that first interview.

    I recently had the privilege of being interviewed by Dianne Barrett who is a co-founder of the B-E Collection. As a personal historian who identifies as lesbian I am, of course, drawn to projects that celebrate oral histories of lesbians and our lives. This is the Mission Statement of the B-E Collection:

    My spouse, Margaret Elfering, and myself, in conjunction with archives such as the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives and the Gerth Archives and Special Collection at California State University Dominguez Hills, will contribute an ongoing series of interviews of lesbians and their careers.  The collection will be known as the B-E Collection: Lesbians and Their Careers.

    The “B-E” of the collection is a shorthand for our last names (Barrett – Elfering).  However, there is a second meaning to our collection’s name:   the verb “be” is also defined as “to exist” or “to occur or take place”.  Our collection is a means of bearing witness to the stories of lesbians of different generations, from different walks of life.

    The mission of this collection is to dignify the accomplishments, pride, and effort lesbians put forth in their careers on their journey in life.  We make oral histories to document our existence then and now.  Many of us had the “don’t talk – say nothing – you are wrong” experience.  Now we are talking.

    We would appreciate a referral of lesbians who might be interested in participating in our project.  We would be more than delighted to speak with anyone who you think would be interested in participating in the B-E Collection.

    Your support is always a gift.

    https://www.b-ecollection.org

    ********************

    Dianne Barrett (December 13, 1941 – December 17, 2023)

    Rest in peace, Dianne, but we will remain restless as a result of your inspiration.

    Onward.

    ​

    ​

  • if it weren’t for second chances, we’d all be alone (2)

    if it weren’t for second chances, we’d all be alone (2)


    When I woke up early this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep, I lay in bed and thought about the million tasks we had to accomplish next month to get moved out of our Texas house that we recently sold out of the blue. This stream of consciousness led me down the memory lane to a post I’d written here about Second Chances two years ago.

    I found it in the archives for September, 2012 and  re-read it, decided it was a little over the top because I devoted so much time talking about the “epistemology” of second chances.  Seriously, what was that about?  Clearly no one gives a hoot or a holler about that word anymore.

    For those of you who are my most loyal followers and who read the epistemology piece before I could figure out how to edit, thank you very much for indulging my big word fantasies. For those of you who just tuned in and have a burning interest in epistemology, please do take the time to visit the archives for the post.

    What I intended to say is I have been extraordinarily lucky to have had second chances to reconnect with my family and friends in Texas since Pretty and I bought our home on Worsham Street in March, 2010.  I’ve shared more holidays, birthdays, domino-playing days and nights, barbecue brisket, bourbon, Tex-Mex, margaritas, Lone Star First Saturdays, wine festivals, bluebonnet pastures, cookie walks, cemetery crawls, country music, front-porch rocking and visiting, bird watching and driving back country roads in the past four years than in the previous forty years. Yee haw – I even got used to wearing cowboy boots and hats again.

    I also found that taking these second chances gave me new first ones, too.  Living on Worsham Street in the little town of Montgomery was a slice of American life I’d lost faith in somewhere along the way.  My neighbors in the 600 block of Worsham became dear friends who reminded me that community and family are not abstract concepts but people who love and support each other through it all. I find that a message of hope for our country and our world.

    I’ve added Rule Number Six to the five rules I made up in that September, 2012 post:  Don’t confuse your second chances with your first choices or your first choices may become your second chances.

    Life is tricky, ain’t it?

    ***************

    I can’t believe I published this piece ten years ago in February, 2014 which means I left Texas, friends, and family then for a second time; but some of my mixed memories from that four-year sabbatical follow me today.  Regardless of the longing in my heart for the Texas of my childhood, a time and place I no longer recognize, I treasure the second chance I had to appreciate new relationships, a renewed kinship with my native land. I believe my dad would have been proud because he told me too many times “you can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the girl.”