I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: sexism

  • second chances anyone?


    Back in the days when I played more golf than I should have, I learned about mulligans.    Mulligans are a variation of  second chances. If you hit a shot with your driver off the tee on any one hole in a round and the little white golf ball vanishes mysteriously in deep woods closer to the fairway for another hole –  you know for sure you’ll never be able to find your little white ball, but you can say mulligan before you throw your driver in the direction of the same woods. Mulligan means you will have a second shot off that tee before you set off to try to find the driver you threw in the woods. You may hit a beautiful shot for your mulligan or you may not, but the important thing is you have a new opportunity.

    In our personal lives second chances are sometimes painfully obvious and at other times so subtle we may miss them. Lesson Number One: Be open, available, alert and don’t think you won’t ever need a second chance.  You will.  Lesson Number Two:  When you get a second chance, try not to think of it as an opportunity to repeat mistakes.  Mistakes are hard to take back so don’t blow the mulligan.

    Lesson Number Three:  Be sure to tell your friends about your second chance. It may give them hope and inspire them to offer one or accept one. Honestly, can there be too many second chances going around? Lesson Number Four:  Your second chance may be your last chance.   Really?   Really.

    Lesson Number Five: Never be afraid to take a second chance when you have one. As Franklin Roosevelt famously said when the Hounds of the Baskervilles were closing in around him, We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

    I am a survivor of second chances in my 74 years – I have at various times blown them, made mistakes, wished I had been a better person. I also have taken second chances that have brought me much joy and happiness. The point is I have had more than my share of opportunities to make choices.

    I have to believe in second chances not only for us as individuals but also for us as communities and as a country.  We have collectively failed to fulfill our promises of equal opportunity for all through our systemic racism toward people of color in their pursuit of good health care during the current Covid-19 pandemic and beyond, in their pursuit of a good public educational system, in their need of reliable shelter through affordable housing, in their need of a living wage – in their ongoing fear of police brutality. One of our second chances to do better comes in November when we have a say in our democracy through our  votes. We must do better – we must elect new leadership that gives us second chances to become a better people.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

     

  • who has a secret?


    I have a secret to tell you about the power of the vote, 

    but all you care about is pulling my hair. Oh, well. Maybe later.

    Pretty and I were talking about our nine months old granddaughter Ella James yesterday afternoon not just because she was playing in her playpen on our screened porch but also because Pretty said she had been thinking we needed to start making videos of our time with Ella for later on when we might not be here to talk to her in person.

    I said I agreed with her – that neither of us was getting any younger and what a great idea it was to make the videos. Actually, I said, I’d also been thinking about the same inspiration, but Pretty has always been the ideas part of our marriage so I happily gave her credit.

    However, Pretty and I are much better at thinking about good plans than we are at plan execution so let’s not any of us hold our breaths for those videos.

    But Pretty is fabulous with her digital phone camera and takes a ton of pictures like the one above she took yesterday afternoon. I loved the picture. Maybe one day Ella James will see this picture and try to remember what she loved about grabbing my glasses, throwing them on the floor, then pulling my hair. I’m fairly confident she won’t remember my lesson on the importance of voting.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

     

  • the horse you draw is the one you’ll ride


    I originally published this post on December 28, 2013. While I had this conversation with one of my first cousins in Texas after Christmas six years ago, I found his words strangely spoke to me today as a spike in South Carolina coronavirus cases brought the pandemic closer and closer to Pretty and me.

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    A year can fly past in a hurry and yet the passage of time, regardless of our perception of its speed, never leaves us unchanged. I was talking to a cousin who called me on Christmas Day to wish me a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  I appreciated the call and the visit we had. The thousand miles that separated us couldn’t break the ties that bind us through our DNA.

    We were talking about the vicissitudes of life, as my daddy used to call them, and Gaylen who has spent over forty years hanging out with cowboys at rodeos in and around the Houston area told me one of their favorite quotes:  “The horse you draw is the one you’ll ride.”

    I like it.  No apologies.  No excuses.  No whining about why did I get this horse.  No wondering about whether this rodeo was one I should’ve signed up for.  No mulling over how I ever got to be a cowboy in the first place.  It’s now or it’s never – so you ride.

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    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.

     

  • our community lost a fighter who was also a good friend


    Profile photo of Nigel Mahaffey

    Nigel M Mahaffey, Jr.

    (August 07, 1959 – June 25, 2020)

    (photo from Linked In)

    The obituary for this friend began “Nigel loved life and was one of the most joyful people to grace this earth.” I couldn’t agree more. He always greeted me with a smile that wasn’t forced, a hug to match the smile. Joyful – that’s a compliment these days when not many people are full of joy. Nigel was a true believer in sharing joy regardless of the circumstances.

    Tige and Nigel. Nigel and Tige. I never really thought about them separately because Pretty and I rarely saw one without the other for the past twenty-seven years they were together. Tige and Nigel worked together in their political consulting business, lived in the same neighborhood for most of their married life, and more importantly to us they both loved to play trivial pursuit on regular game nights at their house or someone else’s. If Nigel were here writing this, he would add that Tige, Pretty and another friend named Curtis were always favorite picks for any trivial pursuit team while Nigel joined the race for the last ones chosen that featured me and Curtis’s husband, Dick. Such fun times.

    Nigel and Tige made many contributions to the lgbtq community over the past 30 years, not the least of which was their magazine In  Unison which was a professionally produced news magazine intended for the lgbtq community in the southeast. During the early days of organizing our  queer movement in the southern states, In Unison was a powerful voice for a community struggling to discover that voice. The articles in the magazine, the advertising supporters, the distributors – everyone wanted to encourage the co-founders  to continue their positive messaging on behalf of the queer community in South Carolina and the surrounding area.

    Pretty and I ran into Nigel and Tige earlier this year at The Kingsman restaurant. Truth be told there were so many gay customers in the restaurant that night I thought I must have missed the invite to a family party. But Tige and Nigel got up from their dinners, gave us both a big hug and we all promised each other we would definitely get together for a game night in 2020.

    Opportunity lost forever – Nigel, you would have been my first pick if I were ever made team captain.

    I know many of your friends who will join me in grieving your loss, my friend. Rest in peace, Nigel M Mahaffey, Jr.

    Stay safe, stay sane, and stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • i heard dave chappelle say shut up, white women. was he talking to me?


    In Dave Chappelle’s concert “8:46” he opens by thanking young protesters in the streets today –  carry on, young ones, he says.  You’re good drivers, I’m comfortable riding in the back seat.

    I so got that comment. When I watch the protesters in the streets of our major (and minor) cities and towns, I feel exactly the same way. Go on, young people, keep marching. I am comfortable in the back seat with your driving the wheels of change toward a time when equality and justice for all are reality – not just words on handmade signs. Keep at it, young ones, until you reach deep into the heart of every person full of hate, pluck the racism from the blood that flows through it and close the wound in a river of true righteousness.

    By the way, make sure you vote in November. We need you to march all the way to the voting booths.

    White women, I support you, but shut the f— up. Whoa – what’s that you say, Dave? Ouch. Now that was a little too close for comfort. I was all about you until we got to that comment. Thank goodness for Dr. Laura – since she was one of the prominent white women Dave was talking to and about, right? At first, I was startled by the comment. Then I remembered no one was safe from Dave Chappelle’s surgical cuts. I went from a sharp intake of white privilege breath to a moment of quiet realization that he meant me, too. Thank you for the support, Dave – truly. I know you are sincere.

    I also know for sure I do not know the pain of those marching in the streets to claim their identities. I do not know the pain of black women who have lost their sons to police violence, black women who fear for the lives of their children every time one of them  leaves the house. I do not know the pain of siblings who have lost siblings at the hands of those sworn to serve and protect them. I do not pretend to know this kind of pain.

    But white privilege? Me? Yes girl, you, said Pretty who tries her best to make me a better person. But remember, Pretty, I’m a white l-e-s-b-i-a-n. Don’t I get a little extra credit for having that double dip scoop on the ice cream of discrimination? Doesn’t count in this cone, Pretty says with finality. Of course she’s right. Sigh.

    For more than seven decades I never owned the term white privilege because I came from a poor family growing up in the back piney woods of southeast Texas.  I saved my college money from running six cows with my daddy and grandfather when I was a child. My allowance from my daddy in college was $25 a month. Sometimes he was apologetically late. My first jobs after college were in a rich man’s world of systemic oppression of women financially and every day in the workplace. I didn’t think being white gave me good fortune.

    And yet, it did. The older I get, the more I am aware of the racial divide I started out with in my little segregated red brick schoolhouse in 1952 that happened to be on one side of a single street in a dusty southeast Texas town of 500 people where the other side of that main street held a white wooden schoolhouse full of children whose grandparents and great-grandparents were slaves.

    Time for me to shut up.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.