I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

For any who want more, complete list of all posts by month since 2011

  • Nadal’s List of Unlucky Losers


    Yes, yes I know what you’re going to say. Why devote time and space to a sports event in the midst of a pandemic that continues to ravage the health and well being of millions of people across the globe? In the midst of institutional racism, police brutality, a criminal justice system with no justice, authoritarian leaders motivated by greed and mendacity, momentous confirmation hearings for a new addition to the United States Supreme Court rushed through a sham process whose outcome is not in doubt? Crises of climate change exhibited by floods and fires that chip away whole communities in a day?

    Immigrants and refugees living in subhuman conditions administered by a rogue contractor with the chilling initials of I.C.E.? And, not to be forgotten, the 140 million people living in poverty in the USA who slip through the cracks of our collective memory? Finally, the presidential campaign now in full swing again with the candidates hitting the trail heavy and hard in the remaining three weeks. Agent Orange has been healed, ramping up his rhetoric, promising to kiss everyone who isn’t wearing a mask at his rallies. Super fun? Super dangerous.

    Okay, so diversion from current political events was one of the reasons for my passionate following of the French Open at Roland Garros in Paris for the past two weeks.  Number two, as Joe Biden would say, is my ongoing love affair with tennis since my high school days on a tennis team with an unremarkable record. But for the past 15 years since a 19-year-old Spaniard named Rafael Nadal won his first championship trophy at the French Open in 2005, I have followed his career like a groupie for the Rolling Stones.

    Two days ago on Sunday, October 11th. Nadal won his breaking all records Roland Garros Championship number 13 in the men’s singles competition. An earthshaking achievement in the sports world that gave him 20 Grand Slam titles to tie Roger Federer for the most in tennis history, Rafa’s 100th. victory on the clay courts in Paris.

    Who did he beat in the finals for each of those wins? The Unlucky Losers are familiar names to tennis fans around the world:  Argentine Mariano Puerta in 2005. Roger Federer in 2006, 2007, 2008. Robin Soderling in 2010 (Soderling had eliminated Nadal in the Round of 16 in 2009). Roger Federer in 2011. Novak Djokovic in 2012. David Ferrer in 2013. Novak Djokovic in 2014. Stan Wawrinka in 2017. Dominic Thiem in 2018 and 2019. Novak Djokovic in 2020.

    Rafa turned 27 on June 03, 2013

    ( the day of his 8th. French Open title)

    Seven years later at age 34 he won his 13th. title in a tournament moved from its usual summer dates to the fall as a result of the Covid pandemic, with a new kind of tennis balls that resisted his patented spin, in cold temperatures very different from those on his balmy island of Mallorca in Spain, in a new Phillippe Chatrier clay court covered by a retractable roof that was closed for the final,  in a venue that holds more than 15,000 fans but was limited to 1,000 for the 2020 tournament again as a result of safety precautions for everyone who attended and participated. And yet Rafael Nadal prevailed as he had on twelve previous occasions.

    Today Nadal’s home country of Spain awarded him The Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Sporting Merit which is one way of saying he is one of the greatest Spanish sports figures in their history for not only his achievements on the tennis courts but also for his humanitarian efforts away from the courts. In her presentation of the award Vice-President and Spokesperson of the Council of Ministers, Maria Jesus Montero said:

    “There is little to mention about the curriculum of this outstanding person on and off the courts,” Montero said. “We are honored to convey this distinction to him not only for the undoubted sporting merits of one of the best sports in history at an international level, but also it is a pleasure to do it in a person who brings together the values of the youth referents, everything that allows us to be better. The Government makes this highly deserved sports recognition for one of our national pride, Rafael Nadal.”

    I am thrilled for Nadal’s victory Sunday and was moved by his comments in the trophy presentation ceremony that he was, of course, very happy to win but that it was difficult to feel as joyful as he could have felt if the world weren’t facing the challenges of the pandemic.

    His conclusion was the same one he makes in every victory speech, thank you, thank you very much…which is what I want to say to Rafa Nadal for the past fifteen years of entertainment and inspiration as a warrior on the tennis courts, a man who plays every point as if it is his last,  a man who never gives up, never gives in.

    Thank you, Rafa, thank you very much.

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

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned. I have voted. VOTE.

  • tis the season – not that season


    Pretty drew a line in the sand regarding television news following the 2016 election, a line which has stood with remarkably few breaches during the past four years. This boycott includes the presidential and vice presidential debates so I was watching the Veep debate alone in the den while Pretty scrolled Twitter in our bedroom last night.

    Moderator Susan Page had her hands full with the candidates answering questions she hadn’t asked, not answering the questions she had, time violations, talking over, under and around each other – but Ms. Page plowed on with admirable determination. Not a perfect scenario, but definitely easier to hear than the presidential debate last week which hardly qualified as political discourse.

    When the  black fly landed on Pence’s white hair, I thought it was a real fly on my television screen. For a few seconds, I waited to see if it would move. Nope. Still there. I got up from my recliner and hurriedly swiped at the fly on the screen with a napkin. Nothing happened. The absurdity of the random moment got me tickled, and I started laughing while I stood waving my napkin in the air at the fly that had actually landed on the head of the vice president of the United States during a historic debate for the 2020 election.

    Pretty, I yelled to my wife from our den, there’s a fly on Mike Pence’s hair!

    What? Pretty yelled back.

    I said there’s a black fly on Pence’s white hair, and it’s not moving, I shouted to her. I thought it was on the outside of our tv screen, I continued with a loud voice now mixed with laughter, but it’s a real fly on his head, and IT’S NOT MOVING. Quick – turn the tv on back there and look.

    Nothing from Pretty and then this: no need to turn the tv on, she said with equally loud laughter, it’s all over Twitter now.

    A star is born, I thought, as I clicked the remote to end the debate in our house and join Pretty in the bedroom. We were both still laughing as we drifted off to sleep.

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

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned. Make a plan to Vote.

  • the woman that changed my musical life


    From 2010 – 2014 Pretty and I were bi-stateual. For reasons involving my family, we bought a house on a picturesque street in a small town near the even smaller town where I grew up. We kept our home in South Carolina and spent four years chasing each other across a thousand miles of interstates between the two homes in an old Dodge Dakota pickup full of five dogs and us. Whew.

    One of the comforts of our Worsham Street house in Texas I have missed most in South Carolina was my kitchen radio that played  Country Legends music on a station from Houston.  The radio had been left to us by the previous owners and was mounted above the stove in the kitchen. It was tuned by a silver knob that moved the AM and FM stations from one to another. Five buttons were available for saving favorites, but I only used the one FM station for the Country Legends, and that music played on every day. I know, I know. That is truly sad and pathetic on so many levels. For four years I turned the radio on first thing in the morning when I popped the top of my first Diet Coke can of the day and turned it off at the end of the day before retiring. My version of Taps.

    For some of you, the idea that I rely on classic country music for any reason is frightening and the thought that stories of 18-wheeler trucks rolling on down the line to Baton Rouge or knowing that when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em on a train called the City of New Orleans or the Orange Blossom Special or the Wabash Cannonball  brings me comfort is not only strange but slightly off-center.  So be it.  I acknowledge my co-dependence on Garth Brooks and his cowboy crooning colleagues.

    I purchased a small transistor radio from Radio Shack shortly after the Texas odyssey was over and the kitchen radio was no more. I had a transistor radio for many years when I was a child growing up in rural Grimes County, Texas and clearly remembered listening to Christmas carols from another radio station in Houston on warm winter nights.  Surely with the technology of the 21st century and the number of radio broadcasts available I should be able to locate a classic country music station in South Carolina.  I searched my omniscient computer and easily found the station.  I tried, believe me I tried, to like the songs it played.  Let’s just say listening to Darius Rucker –  who I know to be the original Hootie of Hootie and the Blowfish since they got started in Columbia – singing “country” music wasn’t what I had in mind.  I like Darius Rucker and  his solo music, but he is not a Country Legend yet.

    In desperation I began to explore the TV U-verse possibilities several years after Pretty and I left the Country Legends station in Houston. I was pleasantly surprised to locate a true Country Classics station via the medium I had trusted for more than sixty years. Duh. While I listen to my favorites, facts about the song and/or the artist appear on the screen next to the name of the tune and the singer.  When I’m curious, I can stop what I’m doing and glance at the television to see the music I hear.  Now I can be comforted and informed simultaneously.  For example, I’ve always known that Barbara Mandrell was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool, but I never knew she had a pilot’s license to fly airplanes.  I’ve sung along with Tanya Tucker forever to Delta Dawn because it’s one of the very few songs I know all the words to, but I didn’t know Tanya drives a hot pink Harley Davidson.  Not surprised – just didn’t know.

    Alexa, shuffle my music, please. Which playlist, she asks. Songs I love, I reply. And here I sit today happily tip tapping computer keys while Alexa breaks out Hard Candy Christmas by Dolly Parton. Our friends Nekki and Francie gave us an Alexa last year in an effort to bring Pretty and me musically into the 21st century – Alexa is the woman who has changed my life. When I want to hear a song, all I have to do is ask Alexa who has allowed me to collect my favorites on a playlist which she can randomly shuffle forever. It’s a musical miracle. Alexa is so very clever she can even tell me who’s singing if I ask her. Honestly, she is what I would have invented if I’d only known how to.

    Music for me during the pandemic has been a healer of wounds, a balm in Gilead, an inspiration for the future with the Chicks’ March, March. But for the delight of all delights, when Alexa plays Abba’s Mama Mia, our granddaughter Ella begins to boogie on down with Pretty and me. We introduced her to Abba months ago – she has never looked back. Her smiles, squeals, bouncing body in perfect time with the music are the perfect tonic to chase the Covid blues away.

    I’ll be just fine and dandy, thank you very much, Dolly. I won’t let sorrow get me way down. We may all  barely be getting through tomorrow these last months, but still we won’t let sorrow bring us way down. We’ll go on together, regardless of time and distance. March, march.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

     

  • where am I now that I need me? why Peachtree Rock, of course!


    As monuments fall to the ground around us, I was reminded of my love for Peachtree Rock which bit the dust in December of 2013 due to erosion, storms and visitors’ carvings after millions of years of natural life. Named for no one – just a wonderful surprise for amateur hikers and their four-legged friends. (A shout out to my friend Ellen from Great Britain who asked me about the demise.)


    IMG_5907

    I think I see me at the Peachtree Rock Preserve

    We each have our own places that remind us of who we are – or who we would like to be.  Water does it for some people.  Lakes.  Rivers. Oceans.  We are drawn to waters like these for their uninterrupted flows and timelessness.  We can paddle our own canoes on a river or we can swim in an ocean or we can float behind boats in a lake.  Yes, the water reminds us of ourselves and gives us a sense of peace.

    Since I am a Taurus and have a general water phobia, I wouldn’t head to the beach to look for myself if I were lost.  No, I’d go for a walk – not actually a hike these days – but a nice walk.  If I were in Texas, I’d look for me in an old Dodge Dakota pickup truck.  I’d be going for a ride in Grimes County to see the rolling hills and pastures filled with cows and horses, the bluebonnets in the spring or the splashes of bright red and yellow leaves on the hardwood trees in the fall. I’d enjoy the absence of traffic on the back country roads.  Usually I’d stop for my walk at the Fairview Cemetery to say hello to my family and friends who rest there now, but the recent losses make this stop too painful so I doubt that’s where I’d find myself today.

    No, I think I’d go to South Carolina to the Peachtree Rock Preserve.  I’d park in the little area reserved for visitors to start my walk that is a mile on a narrow trail into the thick forest where lo and behold, I’d come to a clearing about halfway up the trail to find the Peachtree Rock rising majestically in the woods, resting on its perch as it has sat for millions of years.  The rock is as timeless for me as the ocean;  my sense of awe when I first saw it was as deep as the sea is for those who worship its eternal waves.  I’ve only been there once, but the feelings of strength, serenity and sheer joy I felt when I was there make it the perfect place to look for me any day when I seem to have gone missing.

    IMG_5933

    It was okay for me to bring a friend – 

    this is Smokey Lonesome Ollie – he also loved climbing

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

  • summertime and the living is, uh, not quite so easy as we’d thought originally


    I asked Pretty to join me on our screened porch last night a little after 9 o’clock. Pretty who had had a stressful day putting out fires she didn’t start, didn’t hesitate. Ok, she said as she began to move outside with me. That’s one of Pretty’s best characteristics – she’s never afraid to switch gears – she’s always willing to humor me when I make a gear switch.  I guess that’s really two exceptional qualities, but who’s counting.

    Today is the summer solstice, I reminded Pretty, it’s the longest daylight of the year. I wanted to enjoy it with you, I said. Look, it’s almost 9:15 and just now getting darker.

    Pretty exclaimed with enthusiasm – oh you’re right. I’m so glad you suggested the porch.

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

    You can blame this on the frogs

    While Pretty and I talked on our porch last night, I tried to explain to her what was going through my head on this first day of my 74th. summer. The sounds from our porch were connected to the sounds of my earliest memories of summer when I slept in a small double bed with my maternal grandmother while a cheap oscillating fan turned slowly from side to side as it valiantly tried to cool us in the hot humidity of an East Texas heat a thousand miles away from South Carolina, a heat that would not be relieved by opening every window on the porch where we slept or the random whisper of cool air from a small oscillating fan made by Westinghouse. The sheets were always clean but never actually cool.

    I never trusted the sheets anyway after discovering a scorpion hiding between them one night.

    But it was the sound of the frogs around our pool here on Cardinal Drive – particularly after a rain – that drew me to those hot muggy nights of Grimes County, Texas where I was raised. My grandmother’s wooden house made from a retail catalog blueprint had many design flaws, but its one awesome feature which had nothing to do with the design really, was the magical pond (or tank, as we called it in East Texas) behind her house.

    The tank was the focal point of my only-child imagination play stories during the day, but it was the tank’s music of those summer nights I hope will never be erased from my memory. Specifically, it was the frogs, or bull frogs as my grandmother used to call them  just before we drifted off to sleep. The low guttural sounds were always behind the house and were somewhat subdued until every light was turned off at night. But then, those frogs got louder and louder until they hit a mighty crescendo. My grandmother and I laughed out loud when we heard them.

    The frogs who live in our backyard on Cardinal Drive are rarely as raucous as the bull frogs in my tank in Richards – I think they are smaller frogs. But occasionally I hear one of those loud guttural sounds looking for something, probably safer water supplies, and I am transported to different days. To a grandmother who guided me with her wisdom – now to a woman who loves sharing another summer solstice with me.

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

    I was blessed with a loving eccentric family who in the end gave me what they could – so much more than I realized. Today I stand with the Poor People’s Campaign and their national Call for a real Moral Revival to discover a soul within ourselves that will move all people to address the intersection of poverty, systemic racism, social injustices.

    One of the co-founders of the movement, Reverend William J. Barber II says, “In the long arc of human history, there are moments when the universe itself groans and declares, ‘It’s time.’”

    It is, indeed, time. It’s also summertime and contrary to the Gershwin hit song from Porgy and Bess, the living is definitely not easy for most of our fellow citizens who continue to demonstrate in our streets or elsewhere. Keep the faith. We must do better.

    Onward.

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.