I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: politics

  • Hillary, Nancy, Ruth – Ruth?

    Hillary, Nancy, Ruth – Ruth?


    Nancy said know your why – what motivates you – what matters to you – what you believe – the why. Hillary said get the naysayers and the whiners and the snipers to go to the back of the room… this country can still do good stuff with Joe Biden. Ruth said educators have to be at the forefront of fighting the country’s impulses to become ignorant again. Three amazing women on TV this morning before 9 o’clock, and it’s September – six months after Women’s History Month in March. Such a wonderful surprise for me when, yes I admit it, I am languishing without tennis at the US Open. I needed a swift kick in the butt to energize me for 2024, to shake me out of my whining and naysaying, to remind me of my personal “why.”

    Nancy Pelosi is a household name and, depending on the household, revered as an American politician who led fierce opposition to a Republican president when she was Speaker of the House of Representatives the second time, just as fiercely led support for President Joe Biden that produced the most sweeping legislation the country has seen since the LBJ administration. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi was born in 1940 to a family with Italian heritage and a commitment to public service.

    Hillary Clinton is also a household name and, again depending on the household, celebrated as the first woman to be nominated by a major political party for the office of President of the United States in 2016, an election she lost to her opponent. Clinton was born in 1947, influenced during her college years by the Vietnam War and the American Civil Rights movement, was a fomer first Lady of the United States, former US Senator, former Secretary of State. This year she will be a professor and fellow in global affairs at Columbia University.

    Dr. Ruth Simmons, on the other hand, is not a household name, but she is an American educator who became the first Black president of an Ivy League college, Brown University, in addition to serving as presidents of two other colleges: Smith College and Prairie View A&M University. She did her undergraduate work on scholarship at HBCU Dillard University in New Orleans, earned a master’s and Ph.D from Harvard. She was born the youngest of 12 children in Grapeland, Texas to a sharecropper’s family in 1945 when the message to people of color was you are not smart enough to ever become anyone. Her memoir Up Home: One Girl’s Journey was published last week by Random House and is already a New York Times Bestseller.

    Ok. Now I’m wide awake, feeling guilty for my fears for the future when I’ve heard three women who are in my cohort by age only (I was born in 1946), three women who refuse to give up on a flawed America too often characterized by our differences in world view rather than the similarities of our hopes and dreams for our children, three women who continue to look forward to change rather than fear it. May Sarton writes in her Journal At Seventy if someone asked me what are the greatest human qualities, I would have to answer courage, courage and imagination. If Sarton could have lived to hear these three extraordinary women this morning, I think she would agree with me that they all possess the greatest human qualities. They are women of courage, imagination and I would add perseverance.

    To paraphrase Nancy today, I am an optimist. But I have a lot of worries.

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

    Slava Ukraini. For the children.

  • Dr. King had a dream on August 28, 1963

    Dr. King had a dream on August 28, 1963


    Historian Jon Meacham writes that, “With a single phrase, King joined Jefferson and Lincoln in the ranks of men who’ve shaped modern America.” (Wikipeda)

    Sixty years ago today at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom which attracted 250,000 people to the nation’s capitol, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech which was to become one of the most iconic speeches of the American Civil Rights Movement as he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to address the throngs gathered on the mall. Speaking from a script prepared fewer than twelve hours earlier, according to one of the co-writers, singer Mahalia Jackson shouted from the front of the crowd as he spoke, “Tell us about the dream, Martin.” And he did.

    I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

    I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

    I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

    I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

    I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, . . . one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.

    I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

    This is our hope. . . With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. . . .

    And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” (excerpt from Teaching American History)

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

    I have a dream, too, that one day the AR-15 rifles that contribute to the killing fields across America – including the most recent hate crime at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida while the 60-year anniversary of the March was being celebrated in Washington, D.C. this past Saturday – that those weapons of mass destruction will be banned permanently from the face of the earth. Our hearts are with the families of the innocent Black people who were still being judged by the color of their skin.

  • not one, but TWO HUGE nights in Hotlanta this week!

    not one, but TWO HUGE nights in Hotlanta this week!


    Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson had a history-making career-high game Tuesday night in Atlanta, Georgia during one of the best player outings ever in the 27-year history of the Women’s National Basketball Association. Her 53 points matched the WNBA single-game scoring record set in 2018 and was only the third time in league history that a player had a 50+ point game. Wilson also had seven rebounds and four blocks during the game which saw the Aces bounce back from a loss to the Los Angeles Sparks on the previous Saturday to defeat the Dream 112 – 100. The only thing hotter than A’ja Wilson was the temperature which was also breaking records across the southern part of the country.

    As the crow flies west the distance from our home in West Columbia, South Carolina to Atlanta, Georgia is approximately 200 miles. Traveling by grannymobile on Interstate 20 West the exact mile count is 214 and travel time is a little over three hours, while making that same trip with Pretty who prefers to avoid the interstates in favor of back roads like she did this past Tuesday the 22nd., the trip stretched closer to 300 miles and five hours in the grannymobile because she stopped along the way to search in remote antique malls for treasures to bring back with her to sell in her own empire. I don’t know how long that crow would take from our house to Atlanta, but I’m sure there would be fewer stops.

    Pretty and our good friend Susan took their own sweet time on their drive Tuesday – they left at 9 a.m. with their only deadline destination the Gateway Center Arena @ College Park for a 7:00 p.m. WNBA tip between the Atlanta Dream and the Las Vegas Aces. Susan, one of our favorite Gamecock basketball buddies, was celebrating her birthday that day and invited Pretty to go to the game with her at the last minute when her husband Chris had to work. Whenever A’ja Wilson was anywhere in the neighborhood of her former alma mater, a huge University of South Carolina Gamecock nation travelled to see her play. Not even her most avid supporters, though, could have imagined her performance they would witness that night at the Gateway Center Arena.

    Pretty was on Cloud 9 when she got home in the wee hours of Wednesday morning – I had kept up with the game on TV so I celebrated with her the next day. We talked about the joy Coach Dawn Staley must have felt not only when A’ja had the monster night but also to see three other Gamecock players (Laeticia Amihere and Allisha Gray for the Dream, Alaina Coates rejoining Wilson and the Aces) on the WNBA rosters. It was a great night to be a Gamecock.

    Oh, yes. I almost forgot the other huge event. Two nights later the Trump airplane landed in Atlanta to drop off the former president so that he could drive to Fulton County to surrender for arrest for his alleged participation in RICO violations involving the Big Lie. As my favorite writer Eudora Welty said once upon a time, to know the truth I also had to recognize a lie.

    Go Gamecock Women’s Basketball! Go Fulton County DA Fani Willis!

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

    Slava Ukraini. For all the children.

  • Pretty scolds me

    Pretty scolds me


    As we turned into the driveway this morning from running errands that included taking Carl to the vet over the river and to the city for evaluation and annual shots by 9 a.m., then driving completely in the opposite direction from the vet to my eye doctor to pick up a pair of eyeglasses being repaired but breaking the heavy traffic with a quick stop at the Rush’s drive thru for our daily fix of iced tea. When I saw the large Ukrainian flag we fly at the edge of our carport, I said oh my goodness. Those poor Ukrainian people are having such a horrible life; I see the images every day of their losses. I continuously worry so much about the children.

    When Pretty came to a stop at the carport, she turned to me and said you are so negative. You always see the worst in everything anymore.

    To which I replied, maybe because I am getting old.

    May Sarton (1912 – 1995) was a Belgian-American novelist, poet, and memoirist who wrote in her journal At Seventy published in 1984: “What I want to convey is that, in spite of the baffling state of the world around us – war in the Falklands and in the Middle East, poverty, recession, racism at home – it is still possible for one human being, with imagination and will, to move mountains. The danger is that we become so overwhelmed by the negative that we cannot act.”

    What I want to convey to Pretty is that, in spite of the baffling state of the world around us – war in Ukraine and in the Middle East, poverty, inflation, racism at home, a former president of the United States surrendering today for defying the laws set forth by our founders in the Constitution – it is still possible for one human being, with imagination and will, to move mountains. The danger is that we become so overwhelmed by the negative that we cannot act.

    I believe that in the past six years I have become more overwhelmed by the negative than I realized so from this day forward I promise to project positivity for the sake of my family, friends, and followers.

    Hm. I hope I haven’t chosen a bad day to make that pledge. TV news off.

    ***********

    P.S. The eyeglasses weren’t ready – the woman told me she had been on vacation so the lens had arrived but they hadn’t been placed in a frame. They will call me. But not to end on a negative note, the woman at the Rush’s drive-thru was the friendliest person ever. Seriously, the…friendliest…person…ever.

  • longing for Happily Ever After

    longing for Happily Ever After


    A benefit of having written 869 posts over the past fourteen years is the luxury of searching for subjects I’m certain I must have written about at some point in time. As I prepared for the onslaught of news surrounding the surrender of a former president of the United States to the state of Georgia tomorrow for issues concerning the election of 2020, an ex-president who was well acquainted with the concept of human frailty, in addition to the circus atmosphere already evident in preparation for the first debate in the 2024 presidential election by the Republican candidates tonight, I searched for a piece I wrote in 2016. Sure enough, as my mother would say, I found my opinions on human frailty haven’t changed.

    Full disclosure to avoid any semblance of plagiarism – I stole this idea from my current favorite BBC series Lark Rise to Candleford. (Current to me but originally aired in 2008 – 2011.) Dorcas Lane was the postmistress caught in a wave of changes to her small town of Candleford in Oxfordshire at the end of the 19th. century. Her notoriety extended beyond the walls of the post office due to her persistent meddling in everyone’s affairs.

    Her maid Minnie was a wonderful addition to the cast in the second season with her penchant for asking questions that were “extraordinary.” In the episode I watched today, Minnie was a-twitter with questions about just what does Happily Ever After really mean in affairs of the heart. Dorcas was prepared to answer with wisdom to share and spare.

    “We all want life to be simple and our relationships to be enchanted, and then along comes human frailty. Before we know it, all will be lost.”

    Human frailty. I have seen a ton of that going around in the world lately. So much so that it seems like an epidemic. Waves of it. Oceans of it. Human frailty runs rampant from Orlando to Dallas to Minnesota to Baton Rouge. It zigzags through a packed crowd in a huge commercial truck in Nice, France before striking again in a failed military coup in Turkey. It shouts angry hate-filled  rhetoric in a large convention hall in Cleveland, Ohio before skipping across the Atlantic again  with gunfire in a shopping mall in Munich. Behind every evil stands the specter of human frailty.

    Thank goodness for the relief of Lark Rise, a break from the onslaught of bad news on my favorite 24-hour news channels with their 24-hour news cycles. Yes, give me a good conversation with Twister Terrell, another of my favorite friends from Lark Rise, who sums up what happens when human frailty runs rampant.

    “Some folks got neither logic nor reason nor sense nor sanity.”

    Here’s hoping somewhere… sometime… somebody unravels the key to human kindness and compassion for each other that will not only change the news cycles but enable us to rediscover the logic, reason, sense and sanity that our human frailty disguises.

    Like Minnie, I long for Happily Ever After.

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

    Slava Ukraini. For the children.