I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Random

  • Pardon Me While I Skip Politics this Week – and Focus on the Australian Open


    Thank goodness for T-E-N-N-I-S on TV – more specifically thank whatever stars there are for the first Major of the year…the Australian Open. I’m so happy for this distraction from weightier matters, including my own questionable New Year’s Resolutions that are rapidly slipping and sliding into the oblivion of past years. Hooray for the Australian Open in the beautiful city of Melbourne!

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    Angelique Kerber the defending champion 

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    Serena Williams – always a threat

    newly engaged to be married

    and chasing history for Open title # 23

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    I love Chris and Darren 

    It’s like having old friends drop in to visit

    at Casa de Canterbury

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    made it through Round One…

    which made me even happier

    Pretty and I still cling to the slim chance that Roger Federer or Rafa Nadal will make it to another trophy…but reality is that will not happen again for either so we are thrilled to see them playing in the early rounds.

    Regardless, the Australian Open is a tradition at Casa de Canterbury much like the Golden Globes, Oscars and of course our current favorites: the women’s basketball team at the University of South Carolina – go Gamecocks tomorrow night – we will see you at Colonial Life Arena for either Kiki’s chicken and waffles or Cake Lady’s chicken salad…let’s hope our Gay Boys Basketball Buddies bring their appetites…it’s embarrassing to eat fried chicken wings in front of them.

    Not.

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    P.S. Shout the Good News – Will and Grace are coming back for a new season 2017 – 2018!!

  • Home is the Sailor, Home from the Sea – and the Lady Gamecocks, Home from the Road


    And so apparently Pretty and Slow’s Chicken Road Curse for the Lady Gamecocks is officially stomped out with another road victory yesterday at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Great Balls of Fire – the girls in the Lady G uniforms finished with an 81 – 62 win against a very good Florida team and three very busy refs who loved to blow their whistles more than most refs will do all season. I’m not kidding.

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    Hey, there – we’re the refs…

    and we’ve got these shiny new whistles we like to blow

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    Please don’t play nice –

    we can’t wait to blow our new whistles

     

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    Lady Gs warm up – Gators bonding

    Coach Dawn Staley had her 200th. win at Auburn Thursday night and kept right on sizzling for number 201 Sunday afternoon. Pretty and I love our coach and have to confess we drive by her house sometimes since she lives a few blocks from Casa de Canterbury – no sightings other than seeing her jog by our house early one morning last summer. That was fun. Thanks, Coach Dawn, for keeping us all on track.

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    Hey, there – old lady with the white hair… 

    You look familiar – do I know you?

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    Coach Staley has a teachable moment during the game

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    Everybody, listen up

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    Associate Coach Boyer has a word with #22 A’ja Wilson who scored 23 points and had 13 rebounds

    (and also scared us to death with an ankle injury in the 4th. quarter – sending good wishes for her speedy recovery)

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    Bianca, did you understand what she just said?

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    #10 Allisha Gray had a big game with 18 points – 

    (everybody takes plenty of notes)

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    The halftime entertainment was an amazing woman 

    who committed unnatural acts right in front of us

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    Never in my wildest dreams

    When the game was over, Pretty and I made our way back to our dogs who had spent two hours in the car with the windows properly ventilated and were thrilled to have our company as we started the 400-mile trip home to Casa de Canterbury.

    All’s well that ends well, as The Red Man was fond of saying, and we arrived home safely in time to catch Meryl Streep on the Golden Globes last night. Wouldn’t have missed her for the world – she was a wonderful reminder of the importance of our resistance to inertia in the days to come in the face of what we know is wrong. Everybody, listen up.

    Finally, there is good news and bad news for us as we settle back in at Casa de Canterbury. The good news is I was able to purchase a new Road Atlas at a truck stop in Georgia yesterday on the way home  – that makes me very happy and eager for another road trip.

    The bad news is Pretty has a horrible cold which puts a damper on her usual good spirits, and Charly destroyed two leashes by chewing them in pieces that can never be put back together again – much like Humpty Dumpty after his great fall.

    Bless us for a safe trip, as Granny Selma used to say when she was in her right mind.

    Stay tuned.

  • Road Trip Detours


    Two possibilities exist to explain how any road trip from Auburn, Alabama to Gainesville, Florida passes through the tiny (pop. 683) town of Plains, Georgia: (a) you are way lost or (b) you really want to go there. For Pretty and me yesterday, it was a little bit of both.

    For most of my life, I’ve traveled with a Road Atlas the size of a very large paperback book bound with plastic spirals – the kind with each state on one big page (or two if it’s Texas) and the most obscure county roads shown on the maps as well as the state highways and interstates with the little numbers in red or blue showing the distance from one town to another. As a matter of fact, I used one so much in the past five years, it disintegrated and I had to throw it away last year.

    No need for another one, said Pretty, since we have all directions in our GPS cyberspace maps now. The GPS knows where we are and if we know where we want to go, a pleasant brilliant woman tells us how to get there. This is, indeed, a fine system as long as we know exactly where it is we want to go.

    If, on the other hand, we are on a road trip without a specific agenda and only a vague idea of where Gainesville is in relation to Auburn, I personally would prefer a Road Atlas to get the general lay of the geography before I strike out. But, then, we might have missed our detour to Plains.

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    Plains is the home of President Jimmy Carter

    Pretty and I have visited Plains two other times and when we found that our GPS navigator sent us east of Columbus, Georgia yesterday through the peanut farming country, we remembered we were near Plains and decided to take a detour to visit again. The brilliant woman told us just how to get there.

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    Plains is one main street – no stop light

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     One Historic Inn with Antiques

    (note the one vehicle parked in front – ours)

    Pretty walked through the store while the dogs walked me and my camera outside in the drizzle.

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    Not much going on at the Plains Pharmacy, either

    Hey, but don’t worry about business in Plains because this weekend former President Jimmy Carter will be teaching his Sunday School class at the Maranatha Baptist Church, and the Plains Historic Inn is full… with a waiting list, thank you very much. People still come from all over the world to hear this peanut farmer who became the 39th. President of the United States in 1976 and chose to come home to live where he grew up when he left the White House in 1981.

    My love for the Carters is no secret, but I had to marvel again yesterday as we wandered around Plains, at the simple country school house and the memory of “Miss Julia,” the school superintendent who told those little peanut farmers’ children that one of them could grow up to be President of the United States one day – and one did.

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    It’s a long way from Trump Tower

    And so are we. We did make it to Tallahassee last night…and will use our GPS to find our way to Gainesville today.

    Stay tuned for Lady Gamecock updates tomorrow.

  • Here’s a Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares


    Guantanamo Bay – Revisiting the Obama Presidency
    19 inmates are scheduled for release in the next few weeks in a mad dash to the finish line of the Obama administration, but the prison will remain open with 40 inmates still held there and a promise from the president-elect to fill it again with “very bad dudes.”
    Have mercy…

    Sheila Morris's avatarI'll Call It Like I See It

    In 1991 the great country troubadour Travis Tritt wrote and sang these immortal words about an ex-girlfriend who had apparently had a change of heart and wanted to reconnect with her former sweetheart.  Alas, as the songwriter penned, her man wasn’t buying it.  Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares, he suggested.  In 1991 a quarter was the cost of a local telephone call in those dinosaur-like objects we called pay telephones.   They are as extinct as the Tyrannosaurus Rex is today —  to everyone except my four-year-old friend Oscar who continues to experience their magic every day in his vivid imagination.

    One year later in a totally unrelated incident the government of the United States created Operation Sea Signal to get ready for a huge migration of refugees from Haiti and Cuba.   Two years later in 1994 Operation Sea Signal became Joint Task Force 160 which was responsible for taking care of more than 40,000 migrants who would be…

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  • Body Ink – Revisiting the Obama Presidency


    As the year comes to a close, I’ll spend time saying goodbye to the Obama family and his presidency. This essay was originally published here in August, 2011 and later became a chapter in my book I’ll Call It Like I See It: A Lesbian Speaks Out.

    Sheila Morris's avatarI'll Call It Like I See It

    THE TATTOO

          I  got a tattoo two years ago in November, 2009.     I think it’s beautiful. It’s an elaborate cursive “T” in the standard bluish-green tattoo ink used by first-time tattoo getters. It originally stood for Teresa, my life partner of the past ten years.

    Now, I notice all tattoos with greater interest and find a wealth of visible body art on display. Most of what I see is far more creative and in much brighter colors than my three-inch alphabet letter on the inside of my left wrist. However, other people’s ink creations don’t put a damper on my enthusiasm for my own ink.

    The young man who performed the artistry tried to hide his surprise when I walked into his business and announced I wanted a tattoo. I told him I mulled it over for fifty years and thought that was an adequate amount of time to consider…

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