I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Random

  • Today is the First Day of…


    …the rest of your life? Exactly….but today is also the First Day of December which means Christmas music, holiday parties, magical outdoor lighting and indoor decorated trees, Santa sightings, frantic shopping sprees, too many cookies – not enough fiber, too much eggnog – not enough water, too many rum cakes – not enough veggies…too many reindeer – not enough sleighs.

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    Annual Cookie Walk in Montgomery, Texas

    Ellen’s busy giving away the farm with her Twelve Days of Christmas, and Pretty is busy wondering why we aren’t in the audience for one of those days. I told her we would make that part of our financial plan for 2017. As a matter of fact, we can make that the cornerstone of our financial plan for next year.

    So clearly in the spirit of the season, the president-elect is tweeting “we the people” our leadership gifts for the next four years.

    On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me

    a partridge in a pear tree –

     a promise to drain the swamp in D. C.

    On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me

    two turtle doves –

    (Breitbart Steve and Reince)

    and a promise to drain the swamp in D.C.

    On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me

    three guys named Mike –

    (Pence, Flynn, Pompeo),

    Breitbart Steve and Reince –

    and a promise to drain the swamp in D.C.

    On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me

    three billionaires and their Goldman Sachs adviser –

    (Betsy, Wilbur, Donald, Steven),

    three guys named Mike,

    Breitbart Steve and Reince,

    and a promise to drain the swamp in D.C.

    On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me

    five Golden Tweets –

    three billionaires and their Goldman Sachs Adviser,

    three guys named Mike,

    Breitbart Steve and Reince,

    and a promise to drain the swamp in D.C.

    Ah, the joys of the holiday season in a presidential election year. I can hear the bells going jingle, jangle – or is that my nerves.

    Party hearty.

     

     

     

  • Suzanne (Part I)


     

    Thank you for Suzanne and all the other music you gave us. Rest in peace, Leonard Cohen.

    (Reblogged from February 28, 2014)

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

    Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river

    You can hear the boats go by, you can stay the night beside her

    And you know that she’s half-crazy, but that’s why you want to be there.

    And just when you mean to tell her that you have no love to give her,

    She feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China

    Then she gets you on her wave-length and lets the river answer

    that you’ve always been her lover.

    And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind

    And you know that you can trust her,

    for you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind.

    ————- Leonard Cohen

    Alrighty then.  Why Suzanne?  Why Leonard Cohen?  All I can tell you is that my friend Donna and her partner Jenn served delicious fruit as a healthy dessert choice to go with the German chocolate…

    View original post 422 more words

  • A Little Good News and Sweet Dreams


    When I was a little tomboy growing up in Grimes County, Texas, which was one of the poorest counties in the rural southeastern Piney Woods side of the state, my dad’s brother, my Uncle Ray who lived in the big city of Houston, was a huge country music fan…and when I say huge, I do mean huge. He was like the most faithful Saturday night radio Grand Ole Opry  and Louisiana Hayride kind of country music fan.

    The rest of my family was luke-warm to what are now considered the country music classics because they were all gospel music folks, snow white Southern Baptist church music kind of folks: quartets, singing conventions on Sunday afternoons with dinner on the grounds, Baptist Hymnal songs played on the organ and piano on Sunday mornings for the congregational singing.

    Out of that place I began to sing solos in the little country church we attended before I could read the words to the songs. My mother taught them to me by repeating the words over and over until I could remember them. Then she would have me stand on a little folding chair on the floor just below the minister’s pulpit on Sunday morning to sing the “special music” for the service while she accompanied me on the piano.

    I could look out on a congregation of maybe 50 people that included my two grandmothers, my dad, my grandfather, and at least two of my uncles…sometimes one more if my Uncle Ray came from Houston for Sunday lunch at my grandmother’s house. They all beamed back at me with love and great appreciation for my singing talents.

    So much so that my Uncle Ray paid me the highest compliment he could give me one Sunday when I graduated to standing without the chair and actually was able to read the words to the music on my own. I must have been around eight years old at the time.

    Sheila Rae, he said, you sing as good as Patsy Cline. You should be on the radio on the Opry or the Louisiana Hayride.

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    Well, now this suggestion made quite the impression on my prepubescent self – remember this was in the 1950s before American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, The Voice and reality TV – and that comment sparked my interest in country music that has lasted for the past 60 years. Could I sing as well as Patsy Cline? Clearly not, but I could fall in love with her music.

    In times of trouble and deep distress, therefore, I am more apt to listen to George Jones than I am Hootie and the Blowfish or the new country sound of Darius Rucker. Yesterday I resisted MSNBC, Blue Bloods, In the Heat of the Night, a tennis tournament in Singapore, Ellen and Sharon Osborne… and found myself with the Country Classics. It was good for what ails you.

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    Here’s a portion of my playlist…

    That Woman I Had Wrapped Around My Finger

    Came Unwound

    (George Strait)

    A Wound Time Can’t Erase

    (Stonewall Jackson)

    Blue Moon with Heartache

    (Rosanne Cash)

    It’s a Long, Long Way to Georgia

    (Don Gibson)

    If I Miss You Again Tonight

    (Tommy Overstreet)

    Ghost Riders in the Sky

    (Johnny Cash)

    Sweet Dreams

    (Patsy Cline)

    I Met a Friend of Yours Today

    (Mel Street)

    Don’t Fight the Feelings of Love

    (Charley Pride)

    Together Again

    (EmmyLou Harris)

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    The Right Combination

    (Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner)

    A Little Good News

    (Anne Murray)

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    I’ll let the titles do the talking.

    Until we meet again, I leave you with this Irish blessing: may all of your troubles be less and your blessings be more and may nothing but happiness come through your door.

     

  • Calling All Cousins!


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    So Pretty and I have always been interested in our family trees, and this year I decided to give us our DNA tests as a Christmas present to each other. I can never pick any gift for Pretty because whatever I pick she already bought for herself years ago, and that makes me struggle to come up with something creative for special occasions. DNA idea was brilliant, I thought.

    I’ve been dealing with ordering the kits, supervising and returning sample collections and registering at the appropriate sites to activate. Whew. Quite the ordeal.

    Hooray, one of our results came in this week: mine. I have been thoroughly entertained with the pie chart and other info. Seriously. Thoroughly entertained. I can roam through the site for hours looking for relatives.

    Now I am searching for the 710 cousins who are Out There Somewhere…Calling All Cousins…let’s catch up.

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    Oh, as for Pretty, well, her sample didn’t pass the sample test – so she has to do another one. Sigh. So much for creativity

  • Guess Who’s Coming to the Al Smith Dinner?


     

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    Okay. So raise your small hands (or medium or large ones) if you’ve never even heard of the Al Smith dinner until last night.

    Aha. I see those hands, as the Southern Baptist revival preachers used to say from the pulpit during the altar call or “invitation” as we called it back then when we sat on the small wooden pews with the large ceiling fans moving too slowly to stir the air in the Texas summer heat – even in a church as tiny as ours was in the 1950s. The revival preacher would be hotter than a two-dollar pistol when he was preaching about the fire and brimstone hell would bring to all sinners who refused to repent that  very night – who knew if you would make it until the next night of the week-long revival…

    “Bow your heads. Close your eyes, and pray,” he would say as he grabbed for the white handkerchief in his suit pocket to wipe the sweat dripping from his forehead to the tip of his nose. “Now with every head bowed and every eye closed, just raise your hand if you know you are a sinner bound for hell unless you get right with God tonight. That’s it. Just slip that hand on up right where you are without anyone looking. Yes, I see that hand.”

    And so did I.

    Because of course, I had to look. My head was bowed, but my eyes were not closed. I confess I wanted to know who was going to hell. I wanted to make sure all the people I loved weren’t raising their hands and I was always particularly focused on one of my uncles who was suspect.

    Last night’s Al Smith Catholic Charities dinner also ended with a prayer, but it was a benediction – not an altar call. The Al Smith fundraiser takes place every four years during the political campaign season and gives the two presidential candidates an opportunity to meet on neutral ground breaking bread together and sharing a few jokes to make fun of themselves in front of a thousand people who paid $6 million dollars to hear them. You know, jokes, as in funny hahaha or lol if you prefer.

    Unfortunately, this year’s Al Smith dinner was the night after the final presidential debate which was the conclusion of three such meetings that were all notorious for the brutal exchanges between the two candidates. Mean, mean and not a dancing machine between them. But here they were having dinner at a long table with only a Catholic Cardinal between them. I pitied Cardinal Dolan. He tried so hard to divide his conversation evenly between the two of them that his head was actually spinning and his little red cap fell off. Uh, oh. Bad sign.

    The candidates both proved they weren’t comedians but did get a few laughs – and a few boos. It’s really difficult to be booed at the Al Smith dinner, but DT didn’t get the memo about the event being just for fun and engaged in inappropriate behavior and mean-spirited attacks against Secretary Clinton that provoked loud boos. Imagine that. Rudy Giuliani didn’t get the memo to smile when he was on camera. Tsk. Tsk. Rudy, Rudy, Rudy.

    I have a really good friend named Donna who didn’t see the dinner on TV last night but woke up this morning to the clips that showed the jokes that were more insults than funny haha and she texted me that she was so disgusted with the campaign she was going to shut down her Facebook and TV altogether until the election is over…maybe forever.

    I totally get that. But here’s the thing. We are now less than three weeks away from November 8th. We are in the home stretch. This will end for almost everyone on election day so don’t throw up your hands whatever size they are now because I will be looking to see if you have stayed focused and voted.

    That’s right – even in cyberspace I will keep my eyes open to make you heed the altar call to vote.

     

    P.S. My dog Charly is unaffected by the political turmoil of this campaign season – I hope your weekend is as laid back as hers.

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