by sheila morris
wishing our friends in cyberspace March Gladness!
particularly nine-day-old Penelope a/k/a Penny
Penny is the newest addition to our good friend Susan’s farm in Elgin – Susan loves her Gamecock women’s basketball team almost as much as she loves Penny.
Here’s to new life in the spring, renewed hope in a future that includes another national title for Coach Staley and her Gamecock women in the NCAA tournament starting today in Columbia!
Go Gamecocks!
On June 30, 1966, the National Organization for Women was founded by activists who wanted to end sex discrimination. Who could argue with that lofty goal?
Oh, well. Just about everyone. Many men felt threatened in those early days by a national organization formed to remove barriers of discrimination they liked and needed. Women of color often felt excluded because they weren’t represented in the movement. Queer women felt equally left out. Voter suppression wasn’t a major talking point. Intersectional feminism, what exactly was that? Misunderstood, misconstrued, lost in translation – the challenges of the early days of the National Organization for Women.
In an effort to better explain its mission, Article II of the bylaws adopted by the NOW membership in 2020 states the following:
NOW’s purpose is to take action through intersectional grassroots activism to promote feminist ideals, lead societal change, eliminate discrimination, and achieve and protect the equal rights of all women and girls in all aspects of social, political, and economic life.
NOW’s 2024 Action Plan aims to “win a feminist vistory in the 2024 elections, defeat estremist attacks and restore women’s rights” through grassroots campaigns.
I was able to kill Roe v. Wade
love ya, ladies
Donnie
The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not “get over” the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again, but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same. Nor would you want to. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (1926-2004)
Kubler-Ross devoted most of her adult life to death and dying. She was a pioneer in hospice care, palliative care, and a leading researcher in the lives of the terminally ill. “One of her greatest wishes was to build a hospice for abandoned infants and children infected with HIV to give them a lasting home where they could live until their death. Kübler-Ross attempted to set this up in the late 1980s in Virginia, but local residents feared the possibility of infection and blocked the necessary re-zoning. In October 1994, she lost her house and many possessions, including photos, journals, and notes, to an arson fire that is suspected to have been set by opponents of her AIDS work.” (Wikipedia)
In her lifetime Kubler-Ross wrote over twenty books on death and dying, was in the National Women’s Hall of Fame, was one of Time magazine’s Top Thinkers of the Twentieth Century, Woman of the Year in 1977, and became a leader as an advocate for spiritual guides and the afterlife despite scandals from her association with a charlatan medium in the late 1970s.
When I enrolled my mother in hospice care in 2011, I didn’t realize the connection the excellent end of life care she received through the program had been co-founded by a woman who believed in treating the dying with dignity. The team of caregivers we had for the last few months of Mom’s life were compassionate, capable, and centered on her needs. I was also amazed by their assistance throughout the first year of my grieving process following her death.
As I approach the twelfth anniversary of my mother’s death, I want to honor Elisabeth Kubler-Ross during Women’s History Month, one of the women who had the courage to explore her passion for peace, to protest injustice, to pursue theories considered to be too controversial in an unknown frontier. Elisabeth gave us permission to grieve for losses too painful to deny.
Yes, the reality is that we will grieve our losses forever, but it’s also true we will be whole again. Never the same, but whole again. That’s cause for celebration.
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For all those who grieve.
Since I neither quilt nor sew, why would the friendship quilt above have special significance to me? Because the signature in this particular block was made by my maternal grandmother Louise Boring (1898-1972) as part of a friendship quilt given to my paternal grandmother Betha Morris (1903-1983) by a group of her friends during the Great Depression before Louise and Betha became in-laws in 1945 when Louise’s daughter Selma eloped with Betha’s son Glenn. My grandmother Betha Morris a/k/a Ma to me kept the quilt forever, and I miraculously ended up with it.
Quilts were popular during the Great Depression of the 1930s because they were usually made from leftovers of scraps from other sewing. The “friendship quilt” was unique in its composition because it was composed of signed blocks of the same pattern, often followed by an inscription.
Note that Lucile Whitfield’s date shown was 1930 while the only other date (1932) belonged to Francis Walker. I’m assuming those are the only dates to indicate when the quilt was begun and when it was finished.
I remember asking my grandmother Ma about the names on the quilt when she took it down from the top (and only) shelf in the tiny closet in her spare bedroom where I often slept as a child. That room felt like a refrigerator in the winter time, and I begged Ma for more covers. She would get her friendship quilt and one more I still have.
Somehow in my travels, moves, relocations, embarrassing exits that took me from my little hometown of Richards, Texas, with its familiar names on the friendship quilt to far away places I didn’t know existed seven decades ago, I managed to hang on to these two quilts that have come to rest in a closet at our home on Cardinal Drive in South Carolina.
Due to circumstances beyond our control regarding Pretty’s health, I was banished to sleep in our “guest room” on my paternal grandparents’ bed, another treasure, which required reinstating these two quilts which seventy years ago kept me warm. Although the quilts now show wear and tear, they still kept me warm on a cold night this week. As I fell asleep under the weight of the quilts, I thought about my grandmothers and their connection to The Great Depression of the 1930s they survived to become major influences in my history – two women whose love and devotion became my North Star that led me home.
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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