I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Random

  • The 400-Pound Hacker in the Room


    Donald Trump on our national security in the debate tonight:

    “Hackers could be anybody sitting on their beds weighing 400 pounds.”

    Whaaaaaaat? What did you say? What does that even mean?

    Donald Trump on foreign affairs:

    “I haven’t given lots of thought to NATO…I just know we have to knock the hell out of ISIS.”

    Really? Not much thought to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? You might want to add that to your debate prep topics for next time.

    Donald Trump on the war in Iraq:

    “I was against the war in Iraq…all you have to do is call Sean Hannity and ask him. He knows I was against the war in Iraq.”

    Somebody please call Sean Hannity… and restore a little sanity.

    Donald Trump on deal-making in the Obama administration:

    “You almost can’t name a good deal they’ve made.”

    I can name that deal in three notes…or was that tune…deal, tune…whatever.

    Donald Trump on what it takes to be President:

    “To be President of the United States, you have to have the stamina.”

    It also helps to have an understanding of the job description.

    Hillary Clinton on preparation:

    “Yes, I prepared for this debate. I’ve also prepared to be President.”

    And with that I say to all good night and good luck.

     

     

     

     

     

  • a letter to my grandparents


    Dear Ma and Pa,

    It is Sunday afternoon in the first week of autumn in South Carolina, and I am thinking of you and the visits we used to have on Sundays. I can see you both standing on the tiny concrete block that was your back door stoop while you waved goodbye to me as I honked my car horn and drove up the little hill away from the small dingy house that badly needed a fresh coat of white paint. Why can I see the paint peeling now but never noticed it when you lived there? I guess it wasn’t important to any of us then.

    When I think of you, I always picture the moment I am leaving rather than the hours I spent talking and laughing and eating and drinking the sweet iced tea you made yourself, Ma. You actually boiled the tea bags and made a dark strong tea which I probably wouldn’t have liked as much if you hadn’t sweetened it with several cups of Dixie’s Pure Cane Sugar.  I wish I had known then to tell you how good it was, but that kind of tea was all I knew. We never bought sweet tea anywhere else, thanks to yours. I’m telling you now it was delicious. I miss it as I miss you this sleepy Sunday afternoon.

    We have two dogs, Pa. Spike and Charly. Charly is a little brindle colored dog with white trim that reminds me of your old bird dog Scooter. I remember you used to try to make Scooter talk to you so he would howl and howl when you told him to speak, and then you would laugh and laugh and interpret for me.  Scooter had the same thing to say every time. Howww are youuuuu…and then shake his big old head like he was laughing with us. Charly is equally talkative – but without any prompting from me and with an annoying sharp bark which I have now learned to translate as get up and go get me my food, lazy woman. You would get a kick out of this little dog, Pa, but you wouldn’t, Ma.  You were the only person on either side of my family that never loved a dog. I knew it. We all knew it, but I didn’t have the good common sense to ask why. I wish I had asked.

    I got married this year in April on the 24th., three days after my seventieth birthday. I know you always wanted me to get married and had almost given up hope. The one tiny little hiccup, Ma, was that I married a woman rather than a man. Now I’m sure that doesn’t shock you…not really if you stop to think about it. Just think of the fun we could have talking about my wife who reminds me so much of you. I skipped a generation backwards and married a woman who has an awesome sense of fun and humor just like you had, Ma. And she’s beautiful and smart but the best part is she loves me back. Imagine the gossip you would have to tell Vivian McCune. Don’t worry – she won’t be surprised, either.

    I’m thinking of both of you this afternoon, and I just wanted to tell you how much I love you. I’m sorry I hurt you by moving so far away from my Texas roots. I never meant to stay gone, truly I didn’t. Talking to you every Sunday afternoon on the phone just wasn’t the same as being together and sharing family stories, was it? I missed too much time with you in my adult life, but I owe you for much of my happiness in my childhood. You both were a gift of love that I try to pass on to my family and friends today.

    A Sunday afternoon letter isn’t even as good as a phone call, but how I wish I’d saved the ones you wrote me faithfully every Monday, Ma. It’s old blue Monday, you’d say every week…

    Just remember I still love you both with all my heart and think of you more and more as the years go by and the times change more than the seasons. I will write more later.

    Your granddaughter,

    Sheila Rae

     

  • Miss Hotcha


    Post cards from the edge…of WWII…

    001

    Let’s face it. Who wouldn’t have been sold on Cadillac camp stationery with a sister in each Box or Packet…plus the bonus of a Writing-Guide which is something I often long for.

    I was cleaning out the little store room of my office recently and found a plethora of cards which translates into WAY too many old postcards I’ve found in T’s collectible hide-away and claimed as my own. Time to return to sender.

    This one is my favorite.

     

  • Learning New Tricks from Old Dogs


    From the time I was five or six years old growing up in rural southeast Texas in the 1950s, my daddy used to take me with him to hunt quail during what I remember as a relatively short season in the late fall and winter months. Quail lived in coveys in fields in the countryside around us and were excellent at hiding from their enemies in the tall grasses that would become hay when baled. You could walk and walk and walk some more until you felt like your legs were going to fall off if you had to put one foot ahead of the other again, but the quail were always one step ahead of you unless you had help locating them.

    Enter the hunter’s best friend: the German short-haired pointer a/k/a in Grimes County, Texas as the bird dog. A good bird dog could run through a field sniffing and sniffing, sometimes whining, until he caught a whiff of a covey of quail and then he would stop, raise his right front leg to a ninety-degree angle,  curl his medium-length tail over his back and point his nose exactly in the direction of the covey. He remained in this precise position until the hunter walked up beside the dog which would cause the quail to take flight with the sound of their fluttering wings making a whoosh noise as they left the ground.

    Whoosh! Bam! It was over that quick. The covey rose from the ground cover, and my daddy would shoot his twelve-gauge shotgun. Occasionally a bird would fall, and I would run to retrieve it and put it in my jacket to take home to my grandmother who would be happy to fix it for our supper. We rarely got our  legal limit, but we would usually have enough for a meal.

    The problem my daddy had was he never had a “good” bird dog.  He got the puppies from different people  in the area who always assured him their dogs were the best in the field, but invariably the pointer he got didn’t respond well to training. A common trait Daddy’s dogs had was rather than stopping to point and hold their position, they would  stop to point for a split second and then run as fast as they could to try to catch the birds by themselves. Of course, the quail would take flight when they heard the dogs and be long gone out of  shooting range by the time we caught up with the dogs. Daddy would halfheartedly fuss – and the dogs rarely improved.

    As I think back on this now, I believe our dogs had an identity issue which caused their lackluster performance in the field. Whether they did well or not in the hunting arena, they were fed regularly with  delicious scraps from our table (dog food wasn’t on Daddy’s radar screen) and petted and hugged on an equally regular basis. They came indoors for their pets and Daddy often scooped the big dogs up and held them on his lap while he talked to them about their shortcomings. My daddy was a very diminutive man – about five feet six inches tall – and those dogs weighed almost as much as he did. They looked at him with adoring eyes and absolute trust…and seemed to be saying I promise I’ll do better next time…but they wouldn’t.

    My daddy loved his bird dogs. We always had at least one dog in our family for as long as I can remember and at one time when I was in high school, we had three.  I know that for sure because I still have the original oil paintings he commissioned  at that time from an artist friend of his.

    001

    Daddy’s Bird Dogs: Rex, Seth and Dab (circa 1966)

    No wonder I love my dogs. I’ve never personally owned a bird dog, but I’ve been on the receiving end of the adoring eyes and plaintive expressions of more than a few dogs of my own throughout my adult life. I confess to holding them on my lap if I can scoop them up, but even if I can’t do that, I will give them lots of love and kisses whenever and wherever they will stand  or sit or lie down to be so smothered.

    Loving dogs – or any animal for that matter – is the gift that keeps on giving to us mere humans, but the gift comes with a high price tag because their lives are relatively short. Indeed,  it seems the older we are, the faster we lose them.

    Two of our three remaining dogs that have given us much more loyalty and adoration than we deserve over the past decade have now been diagnosed with cancers that will ultimately take them from us. What I have learned from them is that they both keep their pain to themselves without complaints. They are not troubled by wondering why they are in their particular situations, and I think this allows them to try to keep changes in their routines to a minimum. They like to roll the way they’ve always rolled if they possibly can.

    I am a contemplative person – I can’t help myself. I find I can spend a great deal of time trying to figure out “why” this happened or that took place. Unfortunately, discovering “why” doesn’t necessarily lead to productive change. As a matter of fact, the opposite is likely to occur. So when I find myself in a position similar to the ones my dogs are facing today, I hope I have learned my lessons from the examples they have set for me and focus less on “why” and more on “so what.”

    That’s the way I’d like to roll.

    P.S. My daddy never asked anyone to make an oil painting of me.

  • The Good, the Bad and the Ugly


    The Good:

    This past Thursday evening a small group of LGBT activists met at a local restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina to celebrate with Jim Obergefell, one of the plaintiffs in the  recent historical SCOTUS decision to legalize same-sex marriage in all fifty states in the USA. We were a jubilant group – full of laughter, chatting happily, enjoying the fruits of many years of hard labors, toasting with champagne given to us by the delightful wait staff who wanted to recognize our group for our “contributions to the state of South Carolina.” An amazing evening. Unimaginable in 1984 when our organization of the movement began in earnest in the state.

    The Bad:

    On that same Thursday last week on a different continent a world away six people were stabbed as they marched in the Jerusalem annual gay pride parade – stabbed by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man who had just been released from serving ten years in prison for stabbing a gay man in another march  those years before. Two of the people were taken to the hospital, and yesterday Shira Banki, a sixteen-year-old activist, died. An amazing event – unfortunately,  still not unimaginable in any country today – but a tragic loss for the entire LGBT community which shares the sorrow of her family and friends in Israel.

    More Good:

    Jim Obergefell and local activist Nekki Shutt served as co-Grand Marshalls of the Charleston Pride Parade two days later on a rainy Saturday in the low-country capitol of the state- but the rain didn’t dampen the spirits of the  hundreds of marchers who had waited for the opportunity to step out for equality with pride. The music was loud, the floats were festive – and the entire atmosphere was electric with the possibilities ahead for the LGBT movement toward full equality.

    More Bad:

    That same weekend a Russian Military Holiday was observed in St. Petersburg, Russia. Several gay activists staged individual protests  during the festivities because of recent government anti-gay measures and were taunted by the Russian Airborne Services who tore up the protesters’ posters. Russian police intervened in the confrontation and took the activists away, although the law permits one-person protests. One of the paratroopers had this to say: “We’re in Russia and not in America. Let them do what they want in America, but not in Russia.”

    The Ugly:

    And finally, a report released  today by an independent project called Airwars alleges that U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in the past year targeting the Islamic State group may have killed more than 450 civilians. The U.S. denies these numbers but said there are four ongoing military investigations into allegations regarding the deaths of civilians during airstrikes.

    I understand why…no, I don’t. Not really. Life is so much better for me when I don’t read or listen to the news. Just let me drink my champagne in peace, but no…

    How can one man love another man so much that he will try to change the attitudes of an entire country so that their love will have the same status  in that country as  those who love members of the opposite sex? And then how can one man hate this same love so much that he will stab a teenage girl to death simply because she chose to get out of her bed one Thursday morning and look in the mirror and say, Today I will be myself. I will be who I really am, and I want the world to see me as I am.

    Life isn’t always filled with days that are good and bad or even ugly. Most of our days are just opportunities to go one way or the other – to choose to make a difference right where we are in this moment – or to let that chance slip away with a shrug of indifference. Jim  Obergefell chose a path that led him on a long journey to the highest court in the United States. Shira Banki’s choice led to a much shorter journey – but one that was no less important.   As for the civilians allegedly lost in Iraq and Syria, well, they had no choice.

    My investigation is ongoing, but the preliminary findings indicate good and bad are always in a tight race for our best selves and some of us win or lose depending on the day of the race. Blessed are those that win more days than they lose, for they shall drag the rest of us to the finish line and we will be grateful.