I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Reflections

  • From One Mother to Another – WWII


    On May 29, 1945 my mom Selma and my dad Glenn eloped to get married by a justice of the peace in Magnolia, Texas. Magnolia was a small town 30 miles south of the even smaller town of Richards where they had grown up and gone to public school together. I’m not sure how they decided on Magnolia unless they had set out for Houston which was another 60 miles down the road – and couldn’t wait.

    They eloped practically the day my father returned from England after flying 32 bombing missions over Germany as a navigator on a B-25 bomber. He had volunteered to enlist in the army soon after graduating from high school, gone to officer training school in the Army Air Corps, served in the 8th Air Force in England, received the Air Medal of Honor, was honorably discharged, came home to the rural Grimes County, Texas home he had left and married the woman he loved. She was 18 – he was 21.

    My father had a brother, Ray, who was two years older than he was. My Uncle Ray also enlisted in the Army as soon as he finished high school. Even though the brothers had been separated for two years, they both were amazed to find themselves stationed together with the 8th Air Force in England. Ray loaded the bombs in the planes on the ground, and Glenn dropped the bombs from the air.

    Ray and Glenn’s mother, my grandmother Betha Day Robinson Morris, kept this letter dated August 16, 1945 from a mother written to her from another mother in Doncaster, England. Apparently Betha’s sons had spent quite a bit of time in her home while they were stationed across the Pond during the war. Glenn was home and already married before Ray’s tour was over.

    16 -8 – 45

    Dear Mrs. Morris,

    Many thanks for your letter. I was very pleased you appreciated my letter. I expect you have Ray home now.  We do miss him but let’s thank god the whole war is over & our boys won’t have to face that Pacific. I dreaded hearing that any of the U.S.A. boys who stayed with me would have to face that ordeal. Fancy Glynn being with you when my letter arrived. I could just imagine him saying that about the Yorkshire pudding. Yes Mrs. Morris my dear son arrived home safely & we’ve had a lovely 10 days with him. We had his coming home party last Saturday & what a party. Ray will tell you what a lively house this is like your own. I didn’t know what to do when the telegram came saying he had landed in England. I laughed & cried together so I know your feelings when that great big son of yours arrives. He’s a great guy. We’ve got his photo on the piano. I often talk to him. Pleased to hear you have 3 children. We only have 2 boys and my grandson who really is a beautiful child. I’ll send you some snaps when we can obtain some films for the camera. He’s so proud of his dear daddy. Ask Glynn to send me a picture of his wife. She sounds a jolly good sort of a girl. We get very few American Boys here now. I see a few was over for J.V. Days & everybody went mad. Tell Ray the Market Tavern was crowded. When we got in, you couldn’t get out again. My son who works there was tired out. What beer they sold & we was all dancing in the Market too. Give Ray this message from Shelia “She sends her regards to him & if she wasn’t marrying Nash, he stood the second chance.” She’s a sweet kid. I’ll enclose you the recipe for Yorkshire pudding  it’s really good. With roast, beef, mutton, or pork. We very seldom have a dinner without in England. As it’s very tasty with onions cooked. Let’s hope you make a success of it. It needs a lot of Beeting (sp.) up. Well dear space is short and time marches on. Give my love to my two Boys from their Limey Mum.

         So I’ll say cheerio. 

              Sincerely yours

                          E.Hughes

             Regards from all the young at heart to Ray & Glynn

    Sender’s name and address: E. Hughes, L.L. Christ Church Rd, Doncaster, England.

    P.S. I can only imagine my grandmother’s strictly tee-totaling Southern Baptist self as she read the part about the Market Tavern, beer and dancing. Oh my god.

    P.S.P.S. Family lore always attributed my name Sheila to a girl in England. There is truth to that story apparently. My middle name Rae was my daddy’s attempt to feminize his brother’s name. So I guess I might have been named Betha Day instead of Sheila Rae had it not been for WWII.

    Cheerio

  • A Declaration of Independence – July, 1848


    In July, 1848 seventy-two years after the original Declaration of Independence was ratified and signed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the first women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York. A group of approximately 300 women and men gathered to address the state of women’s rights in the United States of America. Using the 1776 document as a model, 68 women and 32 men adopted the following Declaration of Rights and Sentiments (thanks, Wikipedia)…reader beware…may hit a little too close to home in July of 2017 for all of us.

    When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

    We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these rights, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

    Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed, but when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.

    The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

    • He has not ever permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.
    • He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
    • He has withheld her from rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men—both natives and foreigners.
    • Having deprived her of this first right as a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
    • He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
    • He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
    • He has made her morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement
    • He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of the women—the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of a man, and giving all power into his hands.
    • After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.
    • He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.
    • He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.
    • He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education—all colleges being closed against her.
    • He allows her in church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.
    • He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.
    • He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.
    • He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.
    • Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.

    Happy Independence Day to all our friends and followers in cyberspace who are celebrating in the USA – practice kindness and caution this weekend wherever you are in the world.

  • Happiness Barometer


    at Casa de Canterbury in November, 2016

    at Casita de Cardinal this week

    Even the miraculously still alive 70th. birthday plant is happier in its new home. 

    Just saying.

    Beat the heat this weekend, cyberspace amigas this side of the equator…or stay warm to all our amigos in Capetown, South Africa where our good friend Dr. Saskia visited for three weeks recently and almost froze to death. According to her, everyone wears coats all the time because there is no heat in any building she ate, slept, shopped, or did research in. Brr. I must only visit South Africa in their summertime.

  • summer solstice


    i want to be sure i stay awake until midnight tonight.

    don’t waste a minute of the last gasps of spring.

    summer begins to steal the daylight hours

    as surely as heat rises.

     

  • We Will Not Let Hate Win


    This week marks the one-year anniversary of the massacre of  49 members of the lgbtq community in Orlando at the Pulse night club.

    We all remember and will stand with the people of Orlando who refuse to allow this tragedy to disrupt their ongoing belief, expressed again this week in their mantra, We Will Not Let Hate Win.

    The little girl in the picture looks up hopefully to the flag from the March on Washington in 1993. Forty years after that picture was taken, she carried a flag similar to this one preserved by Dick Hubbard who marched with Freddie Mullis and a large contingent of South Carolinians alongside her. It was a defining moment for all who stood tall for equality that weekend and returned home to begin the work of changing the political landscape of their state.

    There were no casualties during that protest, but there have been many since then… the Pulse shootings among the most notorious.

    I keep pictures of the little girl I was in my new office at Casita de Cardinal – originally because I thought they went well with  Pretty’s juvenile book collection she brought with her in the move. I asked for that bookcase to be placed in my direct vision on the wall across from my desk. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were favorite sleuths of mine in my childhood so they create a wonderful atmosphere for my new work space.

    Now, however, I think the pictures are important on many levels. They are vivid reminders of a time and place where questioning, longings and determination to pursue the whole earth as my territory, as my daddy promised me, led me to become the woman who marched in Washington in 1993.

    Today during the anniversary week of the Orlando tragedy we understand we’ve come too far to turn back, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s  famous quote became the poster for the 1993 march. For the survivors of the Pulse nightmare, the families of those we lost who continue to mourn, and for those who would limit our pursuit of happiness, his words of wisdom continue to be relevant in our ongoing adversities:

    “Our freedom was not won a century ago, it is not won today, but some small part of it is in our hands, and we are marching no longer by ones and twos but in legions of thousands, convinced now it cannot be denied by human force.”

    We will not let hate win.