I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Random

  • maya angelou: a woman of substance and survival


    This post is actually a combination of two I wrote in prior years on the life of one of my favorite writers, Maya Angelou.  The first was written on the day of her death in May, 2014, the second on August 12, 2018. Women’s History Month is the perfect time to repeat. If you haven’t read her works, I encourage you to add to your reading list now wherever you shelter in place around the world during these difficult days.

    I love women.  I truly do.  No offense, guys, because some of my best friends are men.  But when push comes to shove and choices have to be made about the company I keep, I’ll choose a woman.  Every time.

    One of my favorite women is Maya Angelou.  I treasure images of  book covers of her books I’ve read, images of the lines of her poetry and images of  her face and presence  on a television screen. I revere an image of  her on a presidential dais at the inauguration ceremony of American President Bill Clinton.  Images of her with Civil Rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. leave an indelible mark on me because they are a reminder of her lifelong commitment to social justice issues and equal opportunities for all. Today when I heard she died at her home,  all those images flooded my mind.

    But what I will miss most about this woman is what I hear and not what I see. The rich, slow – almost ponderous – rhythms of her speech mesmerized me, and the deep rumbling voice was like the sound of my old Dodge Dakota pickup truck’s muffler when I start it first thing in the morning.  Music to my ears.

    In 1998 Maya Angelou spoke at the Second Annual Human Rights Campaign National Dinner and the HRC Blog today posted an excerpt from her speech that evening on the importance of gay people coming out of the closet.  I lifted an excerpt from the excerpt.

    You have no idea who you will inform because all of us are caged birds,

    have been and will be again.

    Caged by somebody else’s ignorance.

    Caged because of someone else’s small-mindedness.

    Caged because of someone else’s fear and hate…

    and sometimes caged by our own lack of courage.

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

    Maya Angelou was a woman with many gifts and abilities who had the courage to use them to lift us to higher ground and take us to a place we can all call home.  A renaissance woman, a legend in her own lifetime, a woman of substance – all these and more. I will miss her words and the voice that gave them life.

    The words of Maya Angelou never cease to create feelings of admiration and awe for me… to the extent that my gosh- why- couldn’t- I- have- written- that paranoia kicks in. The little paperback I randomly picked up yesterday afternoon on an end table in our living room which Pretty now uses as her rescued books sorting room caught my attention because it was (a) small and (b) written by Maya Angelou. The book was titled Wouldn’t Take Nothing for my Journey Now.

    As I read the book yesterday afternoon, I was grateful to Pretty who always leaves priceless gems around for me to discover, pick up and savor. She knows my love for Maya Angelou and her works so I suspect it was no accident the book was in a conspicuous place…

    My daddy used to tell me to avoid making comparisons to anyone else because there would always be someone who could do something better than I could or someone who wouldn’t be able to quite catch up to my abilities. Needless to say, Maya Angelou is in a category all by herself when the subject is personal essays, and I will never be able to quite catch up to the sheer poetry of her writing in these intimate stories. I can, however, read them with delight.

    Many of her brief essays resonated personally with me probably because she published them in 1994 when she was 66 years old. The topics she covered as she described her own journey took me with her, and I cheered for her courage and power displayed vividly on every page. My mind meandered to the person I was in 1994 and how I would have reacted to this book when I was 48 years old. Would that white middle-aged lesbian activist understand what a blueprint Ms. Angelou’s journey could offer me when the storms of life were raging over the next quarter century of my life. I’m not sure.

    Whether you are a youngster setting off on the journey, a middle-aged traveler  making plans for the next twists and turns, or in the third act of your life seeing the final bends and bumps in the road; I strongly recommend you treat yourself to Maya Angelou in this book or any other writings she’s done. I leave you with her thoughts on people.

    “I note the obvious differences

    between each sort and type,

    but we are more alike, my friends,

    than we are unalike.”

    (Maya Angelou April 04, 1928 – May 28, 2014)

    Stay tuned.

     

     

  • valor above and beyond the call of duty


    I posted this originally on November 11, 2015 for Veterans Day  – I think it’s equally appropriate for Women’s History month in 2020. Be prepared.

    The Medal of Honor is the highest military honor awarded for “personal acts of valor above and beyond the call of duty.” It is awarded by the President of the United States in the name of the US Congress and so it is often known as the Congressional Medal of Honor.  The Navy began the award in 1861 during the American Civil War with the Army following suit a year later. Since the establishment of the award, more than 3,500 have been presented – 1,523 to honorees of the Civil War.

    One Medal of Honor recipient is a woman. One. Out of more than 2.2 million women veterans since the creation of the Medal of Honor, the solo female recipient is Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, a physician from New York,  who volunteered for and served in the Union Army as an Army Surgeon during many battles of the Civil War from the First Battle of Bull Run in 1862  to the Battle of Atlanta in 1864.

    Dr. Walker was captured by Confederate forces in April of 1864 after crossing enemy lines to treat wounded civilians in areas her fellow male surgeons refused to go. She was arrested as a spy and sent as a prisoner of war to a Confederate prison in Richmond, Virginia.  When she was released in a prisoner exchange in August, 1864, she suffered from partial muscle atrophy that disabled her for the rest of her life. At the end of the War in 1865, President Andrew Johnson presented her with the newly created Medal of Honor.

    Dr. Walker became a writer and lecturer following her service in the Army.  She wrote two books that discussed women’s rights including their right to dress as they chose, a cause she embraced personally as she was frequently arrested for wearing men’s clothing. She had grown up working on her family’s farm and had little use for the skirts and corsets women wore routinely in the late nineteenth century.

    In 1871 she registered to vote along with many other women who believed they  had the right to vote already guaranteed in the Constitution. This was the prevailing strategy for suffragettes initially in this country. Later on in the Suffragette Movement, the strategy changed to push for a Constitutional Amendment which would irrevocably provide women the right to vote. Dr. Walker didn’t embrace the new strategy and distanced herself from this new wave of feminists which was ultimately successful in helping to secure the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment that granted women the right to vote in 1918.

    In 1917 the Medal of Honor Board deleted 910 awards, including Dr. Walker’s, and the recipients were ordered to return their medals. Dr. Walker refused to return hers and continued to wear it every day as she had since the day she received it. She wore it until the day of her death on February 21, 1919 at the age of 87 – one year after the passage of the 19th. Amendment.

    On this Veteran’s Day in 2015, I salute Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, a soldier who showed personal acts of  valor above and beyond the call of duty in both her military service as a doctor during the Civil War which has been called one of the bloodiest wars in history and as a civilian who displayed the same courage in the battles for equal rights for women in the country she helped to unite.

    I also salute the more than 2 million women veterans who have served – and are serving in the US military today. The personal sacrifices you make – and have made- are acts of valor and deserve recognition above and beyond what you receive.  I find it shameful that only one of you has been awarded the Medal of Honor. Surely history will rectify this oversight at some point. Until then, you have my admiration, respect and gratitude.

    P.S. President Jimmy Carter restored the Medal of Honor to Dr. Mary Edwards Walker in 1977.  As of this March, 2020 no other woman has received the Medal of Honor.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • lessons in survival: the unsinkable Violet Jessop


    Twenty-four-year-old Violet Jessop, the daughter of Irish immigrants who lived in Argentina when she was born in 1887, worked as a steward on board RMS Olympic, the largest civilian luxury liner of its day,  when it collided with the British war ship HMS Hawke on September 20, 1911. The ship returned to its port at Southampton in England without sinking and with no fatalities.  Seven months later Jessop was hired to work aboard the RMS Titanic which set sail on April 10, 1912 and famously sank four days later after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic. Violet escaped via lifeboat in that historic accident which took the lives of more than 1,500 people.

    Despite surviving two dangerous threats to her life at sea, Violet became a stewardess for the British Red Cross during WWI on a hospital ship  HMHS Britannic that had been converted from a commercial liner. On November 21, 1916 the Britannic sank in the Aegean Sea and took 30 lives out of the thousand on board. Again, Violet Jessop survived – this time by jumping from a lifeboat threatened by the ship’s propellers.

    the unsinkable Violet Jessop

    (1887 – 1971)

    (Wikipedia image)

    What drew me to the Wikipedia stories and the piece by Katie Serena in History Science News that were my sources today was the concept of women who survive…whatever life throws at us. Most won’t be on a huge ship about to sink in the Atlantic Ocean like Violet was when she was such a young woman; but all of us face difficulties throughout our lives that threaten to drown, overwhelm, instill fear, panic, the desire to escape. Sometimes our lifeboats hang by ropes of uncertainty amid the shipwrecks that interrupt smooth sailing.

    And yet, the poet Garth Brooks reminds us not to “sit upon the shoreline and say you’re satisfied…choose to chance the rapids and dare to dance that tide.” – The River

    Violet Jessop dared to dance the tide.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • STRONG IS THE NEW PRETTY: CELEBRATING MARCH MADNESS!


    I’ve never had any doubt about the different strengths of the women in my life, but it sure has been fun watching a team of young women who have proven their physical strength, endurance,  and mental toughness to the many fans who have had the opportunity to see them in person or have watched them on television during the 2019 – 2020 NCAA women’s basketball season. The University of South Carolina women’s basketball team has been rated Number One in the nation for the past 9 weeks. Last week they finished their regular SEC season with a perfect 16 – 0  to place first in the conference. This past weekend at Bon Secours Arena in Greenville, they won the annual SEC tournament championship as well.

    If strong is the new pretty, these young women are gorgeous!

    Senior leadership we will miss next year:

    Kiki Herbert Harrigan and Ty Harris

    Mad Kiki and Chill Ty – you girls have been the best – thanks for your guts and glory!

    Zia Cooke, Victaria Saxton, Destanni Henderson, Aliyah Boston

    They will be back – and they’re fierce!

    Winning is the most fun!

    Slo, Pretty, Gamecock G,

    with outstanding player Lele Grissett who had a great season!

    Hey, Ref, don’t mess with my team!

    The women who make our Gamecock basketball go round:

    Head Coach Dawn Staley and Associate Head Coach Lisa Boyer

    Huge congratulations to Coach Staley and the Gamecock women’s basketball program for a wonderful  regular season. As Coach says to her players, don’t flinch now. Onward.

    Stay tuned.

    (Clearly, I lifted most of these pictures from ESPN’s game coverage without their permission, but the picture of Lele Grissett with her fans courtesy Brian Murrell.)

     

     

     

  • remembering The Red Man (December, 2000 – February 22, 2016)


    The good news is the Angel Band played, Big Dawg Bernard came to The Middle to announce promotions and this time when the roll was called up yonder The Red Man’s name was on it. He made it to the Top and joined his running buddies Tennis Ball Obsessed Chelsea, Paw Licker Annie, Smokey Lonesome Ollie and even ran into Sassy the Old One. It was a joyous reunion – everyone was happy to see him…well, maybe not happy…more like glad he made it, if you catch my drift.

    In September, 2010 Red began the rants and raves with his post I’m a Talker which produced the first two “Likes” he ever had: Wayside Artist and Terry1954. They have stayed with us for the whole ride with Red and Pretty and the Old Woman Slow and the rest of the cyberspace folks who gave us 69,666 hits in the past six years while posting 666 posts – a nice number to end with, don’t you think?

    It’s very hard for me to let go of Red’s Rants and Raves but I find it difficult to “edit” for Red when he no longer dictates to me while lying next to my feet as I sit at my desk. I feel I have to let him rest in peace with his brother and sisters.

    I hope all of Red’s 1,649 followers will follow me to my I’ll Call It posts (www.iwillcallit.com.)  – I think many of you already have – and so the writings and photos from Casa de Canterbury will continue on my other site, hopefully with Red’s keen insights and observations serving as my muse when the days lack inspiration otherwise.

    I thank all of you so very much for the “likes” and “comments” and hits through the past six years. Truly Red’s Rants and Raves changed my life.

    Get me outta here, Percy – and he did.

    Red’s favorite spot…in Pretty’s lap getting Pretty pets

     

    in the beginning was The Red Man…

    and the Old Woman Slow loved him

    (Posted on Red’s Rants and Raves September 02, 2016)