I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: photography

  • which little girl had the most fun at the zoo?

    which little girl had the most fun at the zoo?


    Yesterday was hot – not Phoenix, Arizona hot – but a typical summer day in Columbia, South Carolina that was hot with high humidity. What better time for Pretty and me to take our 22-month-old granddaughter to the zoo, right? The zoo?

    No, not the animal viewing side of the zoo. We’ll save that for the fall and cooler temps. Pretty had heard about the Waterfall Junction in the Botanical Gardens, however, and that was our plan for this babysitting day.

    everyone came to play

    Ella (in pink bathing suit) and Pretty stare at boys

    Pretty asks is this the most fun ever?

    Naynay, come – come get in the water with us!

    Ok, then. I’ll hang with Nanna.

    Wheeee – this is the most fun!

    I wonder if these boys would like to play with me?

    Who cares about them – I have my Nanna

    Wow – look at this big rock

    It’s the biggest rock I’ve ever seen up close

    Catch me if you can, Nanna

    I’m hiding from Nanna behind the water

    Sorry, Naynay – I have to play without you today

    I love the water!

    This yellow thing is as big as I am

    I don’t care – I’m strong

    Naynay, do you have my water bottle?

    Have I seen everything yet?

    I hope so – I’m a little tired

    I’m not THAT tired

    Nanna, wait for me! Is that an Olympics balance beam?

    I have to say I’m hard pressed to choose which little girl had the most fun today. Pretty releases her inner child with our granddaughter who has fun wherever we go, and I have fun watching them even when I forgot to wear a hat. Seats in the shade were at a premium; I had to play the old person card to get one.

    Our thanks to our friends Saskia and her son Finn who gave us a family pass to the Riverbanks Zoo for our birthdays this spring. This was our first time to use it, but I promise it won’t be the last.

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • how could I skip when I was two and seventy

    how could I skip when I was two and seventy


    Three years ago I published these reflections (with pictures) a week before my 72nd. birthday. I don’t know why, but I thought they deserved a second read. We’ll see what you think?

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    I had a very sweet Happy Birthday message today on my Columbia High Class of 1964 (Texas) message board from one of my boyfriends who I noticed sent me birthday greetings for the past 3 years on this website which I never check. Thanks so much to Tim for remembering me. I immediately went to Facebook and added him as a friend so that I can send him birthday greetings on whatever day his might be. I confess I have been remiss in wishing others a Happy Birthday unless I am prompted to do so by the Big Brother of Facebook who is forever watching over me.

    I am struck by how soon my 72nd. birthday will be…April 21, one week from today. Sweet Lady Gaga, as The Red Man famously said, how did this happen. My first birthday card came from my personal Medicine Man Dr. Martin and his entire staff. These are the people who see me most frequently, and I appreciated the Life is Meant to Live and be Celebrated sentiments. I figure if they’re hopeful for my future, I should be, too.

    I’ve received not one, but two, birthday cards from former President Jimmy Carter and the Carter Center, both of which were quite lovely and one signed by the President himself. Why two, you might ask, as I did. And then, of course, my bank ATM machines have been unusually prompt on good wishes whenever I’ve made withdrawals in April which I assume has something to do with their corporate guilt for the outrageous service charges they favor me with every month.

    The message board for the 1964 Columbia High School graduating class in West Columbia, Texas took me back 54 years to that senior year when I was about to graduate from high school and leave my little town of Brazoria, Texas that was 15 miles from the Gulf Coast for summer school at the University of Texas in Austin 90 miles away. Big changes were on the way for me, but take a look at the images of my senior year when I was voted by my fully segregated all white 90+ students class as the Best All Round favorite, or as my dad invariably teased me by saying, she was the best all the way around.

    Return with me to those thrilling days of yesteryear when my mother was always so happy for me to be dating a boy.

    Note particularly the hands and feet

    (Poor photographer – he must have spent hours on that pose)

    (our mascot was the Roughneck)

    I am the one on the far left with fist pumped

    (one of the original fist pumpers)

    Senior prom

    (different boyfriend, Kerry, who gave a huge corsage)

    my mother rolled my hair until I left for college

    Note black and white striped shirt – 

    I was calling a junior high basketball game. 

    Yes, that’s right.  A teenager in public with my hair rolled.

    Mom made it a condition of my going to the gym.

     

    Senior Follies – and they were

    I sang an unremarkable rendition of the St. Louis Blues,

    but the bright yellow fringe dress was memorable.

    my lifelong love of tennis began here…

    on real tennis courts. Hard cement. 

    But I saw myself playing at Wimbledon.

    …and basketball, too

    as Coach Knipling used to say about my game,

    Sheila is short and slow, but she can shoot a free throw

    and of course, the political

    deals were struck between me

    and my good friend Leon

    who made an awesome VP

    The photos today are courtesy of me with my cell phone and my yearbook so quality leaves much to be desired, but you get the general idea of this 18-year-old baby dyke trying her best to be straight but  unknowingly about to add complexity to her sexual awareness through life in a women’s dormitory at the state’s largest university where the population of the dorm was greater than the population of the town where she grew up. Talk about trouble.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

  • Imagine. Dream. Believe. Always.

    Imagine. Dream. Believe. Always.


    Backpack, pink summer shoes, water bottle, today’s art work and daily report…our granddaughter Ella’s accessories for summer camp today. Imagine. Dream. Believe. Always. 

    (I wonder how many Olympians had a version of this mantra when they were children?) 

    IMG_20210729_145712550  “Tube, Tube.” You Tube videos

    serious business after nap this afternoon

    IMG_20210729_181045968

    July 29, 1898. My grandfather George Patton Morris was born in Huntsville, Walker County, Texas. This is a picture of his family except for the eldest son who had already left the farm when this picture was made. George is the little fellow standing to the right of his mother in the bottom row. He was the 9th. of 10 children – seven boys and three girls – born to James W. and Margaret Antonio Moore Morris in their home(s) in Texas. This family portrait looks very similar to many family images I’ve seen at the turn of the century in the early 1900s. 

    But of course, what makes these people special to me is that I am their descendant. George had three children in his twenties, the youngest was my father. When George was 47 years old, I was born to that son Glenn and his wife Selma.

    My grandfather’s family was neither prominent, wealthy, nor even well educated. From what I have found through oral family lore, they weren’t a fun loving group, either; yet they worked hard and somewhere along the way held fast to imagine, dream, believe, always. 

    I had the greatest good fortune to grow up in Richards, the town where my grandfather had a single chair barber shop – a town less than 30 miles from where he was born, a small town in rural southeast Texas. I learned many lessons from my grandfather in that barber shop – not the least of which was that he loved me without reservation and helped me to imagine, dream, believe in family, always.

    My grandfather I called Pa would have been 123 years old today. I wish he could have met Ella James – he would have loved her without reservation, and that’s a gift I will happily pass on to her every chance I get.

    Thankfully family isn’t limited to direct ancestry – occasionally we have second chances for broader understandings of the bonds we share with others. 

    Huss Brothers at Desk

    The Fabulous Huss Brothers as I knew them

    Pretty and I had a home on Worsham Street in Montgomery, Texas from 2010 – 2014. Montgomery is a town in Texas coincidentally only 18 miles from Richards. We had wonderful loving friends there during a difficult period, and I had grandparent “schooling” from three little boys I called the Fabulous Huss Brothers.  Although I haven’t seen them in more than four years, their mother Becky sends me pictures at random moments. This week she sent me several from a canoe trip vacation on the Boundary Waters, including this one that I think is priceless.

    output (78)

    l. to r. George (8), Oscar (12), Dwight (10)

    From our twenty-two month old granddaughter Ella to my grandfather who would have been more than a century old today to the Huss family on Worsham Street in Texas – nothing means more to me than the people of my past and present who are  always…family.

    Imagine. Dream. Believe. Always.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned. 

  • 01/06/21 Just Another Normal Group of Tourists?

    01/06/21 Just Another Normal Group of Tourists?


    The most absurd statement, however, came from Rep. Andrew Clyde (R. Georgia) who said, out loud, in public: “Let me be clear, there was no insurrection and to call it an insurrection, in my opinion, is a bold-faced lie. Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures. You know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January 6, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.” – Vanity Fair- HIVE – May 12, 2021

    A “tourist” on January 06, 2021 at US Capitol

    Photo by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for the Washington Post

    Seriously? Comments like Rep. Clyde’s insult the intelligence of all Americans and our friends across the globe.

    To woman in the picture: help me understand what motivated you to take leave of your senses – who are your people?

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated, and please stay tuned.

  • leaving on a jet plane – returning with a rough landing

    leaving on a jet plane – returning with a rough landing


    Ok – who put that bird on my head?

    Our good friends Nekki (with monkey on shoulder) and Francie contacted Randy at Travel Unlimited who made the arrangements for Pretty and me to celebrate not only our birthdays but also our vaccinated selves with a little rest and relaxation in the Dominican Republic which is adjacent to Haiti on the island of Hispaniola – in case anyone is interested in geography.

    In July, 2014 Pretty and I flew from South Carolina to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. The trip was a mixed bag of fun and frustration for me for several reasons: tropical heat with few air conditioners for very spoiled gringos, hills within the city that seemed higher to climb every day, the realization that my knees were beginning to rebel as I tried to keep up with Pretty who is one of the world’s foremost explorers in foreign lands – and is fourteen years younger than I am. We met wonderful people, though, and brought home a new game for us called Mexican Train that we both loved. Thankfully, it’s played with dominoes and can be played while seated.

    What neither Pretty nor I realized at the time was we wouldn’t be taking another trip that required jet planes until May, 2021. This past week we visited Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, yet another tropical climate more than 1,300 miles from our home in South Carolina, a place where the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea meet. My laptop didn’t make the trip with me, the weather was perfect and, although I didn’t try parasailing, I was entertained by those who did.

    breakfast, beach, discussing lunch, margaritas, lunch,

    pool, discussing dinner, Presidente cerveza and margaritas,

    dinner, wine, sequence, spades —- repeat the next day

    Pretty made friends with margaritas again –

    as Nekki supervised pool recreation

    I was amazed at the warmth, the genuine friendliness, the kindness of the people we met at the all-inclusive resort. I, too, was cynical and skeptical of their care for us at first as being more concerned with our American dollars than for our having a memorable visit to their country. I know that tourism is very important to the Dominican economy. Yet, I felt the culture’s respect for their elders – my white hair was treated with a dignity I don’t receive here at home where senior citizens may be ignored or considered a liability while youth is celebrated with a fervent passion.

    When we came home to South Carolina this week, the news stories were very much as we left them with the exception of the Republican Party’s removal of a woman who had served as Chair of the House Republican Conference in the 116th. Congress.  Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) was removed for her unwillingness to participate in the “war against the Constitution…and the unraveling of democracy” which took place when the Party refused to accept the 2020 election results.  I have never been a fan of anyone whose last name is Cheney, but I admire her for her truth telling which has come with a remarkably high price.

    As one of the vicissitudes of life that my daddy claimed would intervene in the best laid plans of mice and men, I had traveled in a jet plane without incident to another country only to have a rough landing on the asphalt of a road near our home as I walked my dog Charly on Friday, the 14th.  Not even the 13th.

    As I bent to be a good neighbor to retrieve Charly’s deposit onto the grass of a very pristine yard we walked pass every day, Charly noticed a car passing by and jerked the leash from my hands which, in turn, jerked me to the pavement. High drama ensued, but two Good Samaritan women in separate cars stopped to rescue me. They called 911, an EMS vehicle picked me up and took me to the ER of our Lexington County Hospital. One of the women took Charly, who was horrified by my inability to get up and continue our walk, home. The other woman sat down next to me on the grass of the pristine yard. We had a lovely chat.

    All’s well that ends well, right? The cat scan in the hospital revealed no fractures or bleeding, released me on my own recognizance with a list of instructions for the elderly in how to prevent falls. I have now read the instructions and find no mention of being careful when retrieving dog poop. 

    My face resembles Rocky’s face after a boxing match, my bionic knees are now blue with a tinge of black, but my good spirits refreshed by my vacation remain. And the concern of my granddaughter for my “boo-boo?” moved me to tears. I am the luckiest Nana today.

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

    P.S. One of the women who rescued me stopped by our home that night of my accident and brought us a lovely plant in a gorgeous pot. I was touched twice by her kindness that day.