I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Reflections

  • Mr. Speaker

    Mr. Speaker


    Samuel T. Rayburn (D-TX), the longest serving Speaker of the House of Representatives at 17 years, 53 days (cumulative) said “Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one.”

    Since the first American Congress convened on March 4, 1789 the House of Representatives has elected a Speaker 128 times, 118 at the beginning of each of the two-year congressional sessions and ten other times when a vacancy arose due to death, resignation or more recently a motion to vacate the position when Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was “vacated” on October 3, 2023 – the first House Speaker to be removed in the nation’s history. The “vacation” lasted for 22 days of spectacle worthy of Shark Tank episodes as the Republicans searched for a candidate to satisfy their splintered majority caucus, to enable them to reach a consensus that promoted America’s national security as war intensified in the Middle East and Ukraine, domestic terrorism threats by conspiracists on both the left and right multiplied at alarming rates. On October 25th. Mike Johnson (R-LA) received a total of 220 Republican votes to become Speaker of the House, a position critical to national security, a man who is now second in line to the presidency following the vice-president, a man who does not believe Joe Biden was duly elected President.

    Mr. Sam, as Speaker Rayburn was known, refused to allow television cameras in the House: “When a man has to run for re-election every two years, the temptation to make headlines is strong enough without giving him a chance to become an actor on television. The normal processes toward good law are not even dramatic, let alone sensational enough to be aired across the land.” I wonder what Mr. Sam would have thought about the images being broadcast not only in the United States but also around the world as the public display of a dysfunctional government dominated the daily news from October 3rd. to the 25th. with three Speaker nominations voted down.

    Mike Johnson was relatively unknown on the national stage until he became Speaker of the House where his position as a staunch social conservative with a long history of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and support for stricter abortion laws became more transparent.

    “Johnson on Monday unveiled legislation from House Republicans that would provide $14 billion in U.S. military assistance for Israel as it fights its war against Hamas. But the bill is a non-starter for both the Democratic-controlled Senate and President Joe Biden’s administration because it doesn’t include provisions for other U.S. allies, such as Ukraine.” USA Today, November 2, 2023 

    Maya Angelou said “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

    I’m concerned Mike Johnson is not the carpenter Speaker Rayburn had in mind to rebuild the barn.

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

    For the children of Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, immigrants along the Texas border – all the children everywhere. Guard, save and protect.

  • from Longstreet gunfights to Main Street businesses: one small town’s coming of age in rural Texas before WWII

    from Longstreet gunfights to Main Street businesses: one small town’s coming of age in rural Texas before WWII


    “During the many years the Scotts and Nebletts [original landowners] farmed the Richards townsite, two communities grew up on either side of the future village. Longstreet, one of the toughest communities in Texas came into being two miles east, and the peaceful community of Fairview (or Dolph) rose about three miles west. Longstreet had two saloons, several stores, a race track, two gins, two sawmills and some bad characters who from time to time faced each other at high noon with six shooters blazing.” Richards, Texas: 1907 – 1987

    “Richards is on Farm roads 1486 and 149 and the Burlington-Rock Island line in east central Grimes County. It was founded in 1907, when the residents of several communities in the vicinity of Lake Creek moved to a newly constructed line of the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway where it crossed the road between Fairview (or Dolph) and Longstreet. The area had been settled by Anglo-American immigrants in the early 1830s, but no community was established until the coming of the railroad. Residents of Fairview and Longstreet led the migration to Richards; some employed log rollers to shift homes and businesses intact to the new townsite. Richards was named by railway officials for W. E. Richards, prominent South Texas banker and organizer of the Valley Route and Townsite Loan Company.” — Texas State Historical Association, general entry by Charles Christopher Jackson

    James Marion Boring, Sr. (r) and brother Tommy Boring (l)

    proprietors of the Boring Cafe with

    patrons in the small town of Richards, Texas circa 1930s

    Hazel Ward Wells, Clara McCune, Esther Davis Wilcox

    Marie Witt, Fannie Kate McCune, ?, Catherine Joyce Keisler,?

    My mother Selma Louise Boring Morris (1927-2012) remembered working as a child in one of my grandfather J.M. Boring’s several business ventures turned “ad-ventures” in the tiny town of Richards, Texas where she grew up but had more memories of picking up the mail at the railroad depot to deliver to the town post office than she did helping to wash dishes at the Boring Cafe, or at least that’s how she told her story. Her three older brothers and mother worked with their father and uncle at the cafe, one of eighteen businesses in Richards in 1936 when the town had a population of approximately five hundred counting chickens and dogs according to my paternal grandfather Barber George Morris whose Main Street shop with its one barber chair was a gathering place for local town news a/k/a gossip.

    No more gunfights at high noon thankfully because Richards was the town I called home from the time I was born in 1946 until I was thirteen years old. When I attended public school there, I had no fear of gun violence, no concern about safety except for the possibility of Russian attacks using atomic bombs which could be survived by hiding under our small wooden desks. The two-story red brick school building constructed in 1912 was the same one my parents had attended. They both had a brief hiatus from Richards when my mom went off to Baylor in Waco after she graduated from Richards High School, and my dad volunteered to serve in the Army Air Corps during WWII following his graduation two years before hers.

    I never knew my grandfather Boring who died in 1938, but I love this picture of him and his brother at the cafe they owned while a little town in Texas struggled to find its way to prosperity during the Great Depression of the 1930s, an impossible task for many who were left behind when the trains began to travel in another direction. My grandfather Barber Morris was one of a handful of Richards businesses to succeed for the next sixty years as the town was unable to experience the growth of its neighbors on farm roads 1486 and 149 that profited from Houston’s breathtaking population explosion toward the end of the twentieth century.

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

    America’s fascination with guns is a story that never ends. Pretty and I are deeply saddened by yet another massacre of innocent people this week in Lewiston, Maine by a gunman using a semi-automatic weapon. Our hearts go out to the families who have been affected by the traumatic losses they’ve experienced this week, the tragic events they will live with for the rest of their lives. We are also keenly aware of the dark days in Israel and Gaza, the ongoing daily deadly warfare in Ukraine. These are dangerous times that remind us of how fragile life is, how precious each breath we take. For all those who suffer in places we know and those unknown to us, we ask for comfort to the bereaved, compassion for the caregivers. Amen.

  • a later life revelation: am I a Quaker??

    a later life revelation: am I a Quaker??


    “While there are no set beliefs in Quakerism, you will often see a common group of goals, called testimonies: simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship (SPICES).” When I read this on my Google search for information on Quakers, I said to myself Wow, this is what you’ve believed all your life, these are your core values, turns out you’re a Quaker. Oh, gosh. I was a Quaker for almost a hot minute before I looked at the division within the Friends on the issues of homosexuality and abortion. Sigh. Personal deal breakers for me. So much for community and equality, but count me in for simplicity and peace.

    And while I’m thinking of peace, I must say I hesitate to write about people, places, or events that have the potential to (1) display my ignorance of the world outside my life with Pretty or (2) unintentionally do more harm than good to the universe or (3) some combination of these. However, the events in Israel over the past two weeks have evoked feelings of outrage eerily similar to the feelings of anger I experience daily with the updates on the continuing suffering of the people of Ukraine for the past twenty months. Whether for two weeks or two years, the clarion call for peace is difficult to ignore.

    President Biden addressed the nation this week to reaffirm America’s commitments in Israel and Ukraine, but our assistance is now delayed by our own House divided in the legislative body that is responsible for appropriations – stymied in a quagmire of political posturing for power by people with no moral conscience while a world desperate for responsible leadership waits and hopes.

    During the hot minute I thought I was a Quaker I read a famous quote by an even more famous Quaker named William Penn. Last night Pretty reminded me to refrain from my focus on situations beyond my control, and the Penn quote today hammered home Pretty’s philosophy of living in the moment.

    “I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness or abilities that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

    It seems to me the issue is not about labels, but the questions remain timely for the ages. Can we be kind, will we do good to our fellow human beings? If not today, when? If not us, who? Live in the moment for sure, leave the past failures with their guilt behind – focus on the present with its opporunities for outrageous acts of kindness, everyday rebellions for building communities where equality and inclusion are the foundations of peace.

    Onward.

  • final goodbyes in Rosenberg

    final goodbyes in Rosenberg


    my grandmother Louise (second from top left) with her Schlinke family

    outside their Rosenberg home in 1917

    matriarch Selma Buls Schlinke seated, pregnant with last baby Mary Ellen

    Louise and Mr. Boring with their first child, James Marion Boring, Jr.

    Widowed in 1938 at forty years of age with four children to support, debts to pay, the Great Depression in full swing, a third grade education, living in rural Grimes County, Texas where opportunities for employment were limited – my maternal grandmother Louise waged a private war against poverty, loneliness and depression for many of her remaining years. In 1948 my mother, father and I moved in with my grandmother to share expenses and me; we lived with her for eleven years until I was thirteen years old. I believe selfishly those were the happiest years of her life because they were some of the happiest years of mine, and when we moved 125 miles south to Brazoria, the old enemies she had fought for most of her life reappeared to haunt her home. She didn’t have a car and wouldn’t know how to drive one if she did.

    my grandmother Louise Schlinke Boring (r) with her immediate family

    mother of four, grandmother of six at Schlinke family reunion in Houston circa 1962

    As Fate would have it, or when the vicissitudes of life played tricks on us according to my daddy, no matter where you ride to, that’s where you are. My mama and daddy moved to Rosenberg, Texas as soon as I started college at the University of Texas in the summer of 1964. My grandmother Louise had been in and out of mental hospitals for years when she moved to Rosenberg to live with my parents in 1971 following my mother’s exasperation with her mother who she felt could be fine if she just had “somthing to do.” My grandmother died in a hospital in Rosenberg in April, 1972 – she had come full circle to the place where she had been born. Since I had used my savings to make the plane trip from Seattle to Houston at Christmas for the holidays the previous December, I didn’t have the money to fly home for her funeral which was on my twenty-sixth birthday. I was heartbroken for the loss and for not being there when she needed me.

    Lots of love, Mother

    This coming Friday, October 20th. is my grandmother’s birthday, and I remember her for the unconditional love she gave me for as long as she lived. She was kind, compassionate, caring and a strong woman who refused to allow the old devil to defeat her faith. I honor her every time I tell my granddaughters how much I love them.

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

    For all the grieving children everywhere.

  • 33 Years of Fun with Dick and Curtis

    33 Years of Fun with Dick and Curtis


    (left to right) Tom, Curtis, Dick and Pretty

    pitchers of Sangria helped everyone’s memory on Game Nights

    Playing variations of Trivial Pursuit on monthly Game Nights with friends was a favorite activity of Pretty’s and mine in the early years of our relationship at the turn of the 21st. century. Trivial Pursuit aficionados changed over the years we played except for our two friends Dick and Curtis who enjoyed the merriment as much as we did and never missed the opportunity to get together for fun and games. We reminisced about those times last night over dinner at their lovely “country” home off Backswamp Road in Hopkins, South Carolina. Curtis mentioned he and Dick celebrated their 33rd. Anniversary this year, and that sounded like such a long, long time rather than the hot minute it seemed to me.

    Dick and Pretty worked together in the residential real estate business for seventeen of those years which added a new dimension to their friendship, but Curtis and Pretty became the real team for Game Nights. When Curtis and Pretty were on the same team, the rest of us were doomed. Dick and I were always left in their dust, usually rolling our eyes at each other when the teams were chosen because he and I were consistently picked last. Our favorite moments on those nights were the delicious dinners served by the hosts.

    Last night wasn’t a Game Night, but we still laugh whenever we gather for the delicious dinners served by our hosts who have welcomed us into their home and lives for as long as they have been together; we celebrate them not only for the joy their friendship gives us but also for their contributions to the advancement of the LGBTQ+ community in South Carolina for more than three decades.

    Onward.