I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: sexism

  • i was the world in which i walked


    In a nod to April as National Poetry Month for the United States and Canada, I celebrate with this post from March, 2015 about an unlikely American poet Wallace Stevens who saw poetry as a second language while the insurance business was his first, or maybe he should have been a prize fighter. Happy National Poetry Month to everyone who writes the poems we love to read! 

    My name is Sheila, and I’m a word-a-holic. I collect them, I store them, I love them. Occasionally I take them out of my hiding places and admire them again. Pretty does the same thing with words – but hers are published in books she takes from a shelf – books that have beautiful covers and words that are strung together in page after delicious page.

    This past week I found a prized addition to my collection – a totally random sighting while I was waiting for Pretty in the lobby of an office building. This jewel was engraved in very small letters on a large plaque as a kind of afterthought following the brief biography of an influential man of medicine.

    I was the world in which I walked. – Wallace Stevens

    I stared at the words…mulled over the words…and was knocked in the head with a bolt of fresh truth and knowledge.

    I was the world in which I walked.

    Uh oh, my little voice of reason whispered to me. You ought to be a bit more cautious in your complaints and cynicism and yes,  especially your downright negativity about “the world” being this or that because it turns out YOU are your world so that must mean the problems start with YOU.

    Well, that was so frightening I decided to find out who Wallace Stevens was to make such an audacious statement of truth. I turned to my trusted friend Wikipedia and got an eyeful. His tagline was Poet, Insurance Executive. He was an American Modernist poet born in Pennsylvania in 1879 to affluent parents. He went to Harvard and the New York School of Law but spent most of his life working for the Hartford  insurance company in Connecticut where he was a vice-president until his death in 1955.

    He started writing poetry later in life with his critically acclaimed works published after he turned 50. He won the National Book Award for Poetry twice: in 1951 and 1955. And he won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955. Gosh, his world in which he walked must have been a bed of roses.

    Not so fast, my friend. Wally’s World was quite messy. The woman he married in 1909 had been a saleswoman, a milliner and a stenographer; his family opted to boycott the wedding because she wasn’t quite up to snuff, as we say in Texas. Wallace never spoke to his parents again during his father’s lifetime.

    From 1922 – 1940 Mr. Stevens spent a great deal of time in Key West, which became an inspiration for his poetry. That was the good news. The bad news was he didn’t play well with others and had unseemly arguments with Robert Frost whenever they were in Key West at the same time. As for his relationship with Ernest Hemingway in Key West, well apparently their disagreements turned to fisticuffs with Wallace having a broken hand and Hemingway a broken jaw in one of their notorious spats.

    So Wallace Stevens was, like most of us, a man who had been at least two worlds in which he walked… so I felt better about my negativity that, to date, has not caused me to come to physical blows with anyone but perhaps needs to be toned down a notch or two  with a more regular nod to the positives in which I walk.

    You are the world in which you walk. Chew on that for an extra minute.

    P.S. One of the more memorable quotes Pretty said to me when we first met was, “I think insurance companies are the scum of the earth.” At the time, I was an insurance agent.

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    Today perhaps more than ever we really are the world in which we walk – and how carefully we walk in that world affects more than ourselves. When we venture out,  we must try to remember the Covid-19 pandemic is not gone simply because we are tired of staying in. Be sensible in your choices, be sensitive to the needs of others.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

    Happy Legal Anniversary, Pretty 

    April 24, 2016

     

     

     

     

  • something old, something new – something special


    I realized today I first published this post about my Aunt Lucy and her friend Jan on March 08, 2013 less than two weeks before my aunt’s death on March 21st. When so much has changed as a result of Covid-19 and its invasion into our world along with all who inhabit it, I felt the need to revisit this story of a relationship that lasted until the storms of life raged no more against it.

    “I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I doubt I deserved my friends.”
    —— Walt Whitman

    Yesterday I visited with my favorite Aunt Lucille who lives in Beaumont which is ninety-nine miles east of Montgomery on Texas Highway 105. I always enjoy my visits with her. She’s got spunk, and contrary to Mr. Grant’s opinion of spunk on the Mary Tyler Moore show a gazillion years ago, I like spunk.

    Lucy refuses to give up her independent living apartment in a retirement community that offers assisted living and other higher levels of care for which she would qualify. Instead, she keeps her mind active with crossword puzzles and other word games in the daily newspaper. Her knowledge of current events acquired through the TV and conversations is as good as it gets. She pushes herself out of bed, showers, dresses and puts on makeup every day.

    My aunt Lucy will be ninety-three years old in May and has a list of ailments plus a personal pharmacy to treat them. A recent setback makes movement even more difficult for her, but she makes a determined effort to rejoin her friends at their reserved dinner table downstairs almost every evening. It’s a long walk from her apartment on the third floor to the lobby of the next building for meals. Trust me.

    Yesterday she told me one of her friends was coming by this afternoon for a visit. I recognized the name because she had talked about Jan for as long as I could remember. She told me Jan was recovering from a stroke and her caregiver would be bringing her by. When Jan arrived promptly at two o’clock, Lucy got up from the sofa in the living room and pushed her walker toward Jan’s. When they met in the middle of the room, they both smiled and hugged each other with genuine joy on their faces. After introductions all round, we sat down to talk.

    Lucy and Jan met in 1953 when they both lived with their husbands in an apartment complex in Beaumont. They first talked when they were outdoors hanging clothes on the clothesline behind their apartment building. Both women were new to Beaumont – Jan’s daughter was born in the spring before Lucy’s was born in October that year. They were new mothers who quickly became new friends. Their husbands luckily liked each other, too which meant the couples got together often. Lucy’s husband Jay died in 1979 while Jan and her husband Otis shared a sixty-fifth wedding anniversary before his recent death.

    What struck me as I listened to them talk about their families, about what was going on in their lives now was how remarkable it must be to have a friendship that stretches across sixty years of change and challenges. Their bond survived everything life threw at them. Hot and cold seasons came and went for six decades, but their loyalty to each other never got too hot to go up in flames or too cold to freeze and wither away.

    In a separate happening this week I was reminded of friendships I’ve lost in the past years along with the pain that accompanies losing them. We are a mobile society; our moving parts rarely stay in the same place for very long. We change our homes, our jobs and the people in our lives that go with them. Sometimes we just change the people in our lives. For Lucy and Jan, however, the new became old over sixty years – but always remained special. Their story of friendship is a remarkable one I continue to salute today.

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    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

  • my recipe for a Happy Birthday!


    They say you’re only 74 once so make the most of it.

    Pretty brought our granddaughter to visit for my birthday today!

    Ella loves her Nanas

     Baby Ella brought her mother Pretty Too (holding cake)

    and her aunt twin sister Pretty Also (holding Ella)

    Pretty Too and Pretty Also made the most beautiful birthday cake EVER

    (per my request angel food cake with pink icing – wow!)

    Have a piece!

    NanaSlo living the good life today

    JOY!

    My good friend Dick Hubbard also surprised me by leaving  his delicious fudge at my back door this morning but shhh…Curtis didn’t want him driving over to our house to deliver it…virtual hugs and love to Dick who never forgets to bring fudge over for special occasions. He’s the Best!

    Many thanks to Caroline and Chloe for the fabulous cake and to Pretty for our family – it’s the light that pierces every darkness. I’m sending hope for better days to all of my friends in cyberspace this day – plus a virtual piece of cake and candy.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

     

  • the anchor holds


    “The anchor holds, though the ship is battered. The anchor holds, though the sails are torn. I have fallen on my knees as I faced the raging seas. The anchor holds in spite of the storm.”

    Lawrence Chewning wrote The Anchor Holds in 1992 during a period of deep depression in his life, but another musical friend Ray Boltz shortened the lyrics and gave the song a lyrical bridge in 1993. The piece, published in 1994 on a Ray Boltz album, was a signature song that was #1 on the national Inspiration charts for three weeks in 1995.

    Chewning was born in 1949 and grew up in Lee County, South Carolina on a cotton farm according to his bio. He became a songwriter, singer, speaker and was the pastor of a non-denominational church in Clinton, Massachusetts for sixteen years. Chewning accepted a position as a social worker for the State of South Carolina in 1994 –  working in foster care, child protective services,  as an adoption specialist – until his retirement from the state in 2018. He and his wife live in Florence, South Carolina where he continues to travel with his songs and preaching. (Florence is coincidentally 85 miles northeast of Columbia where Pretty and I live.)

    The Anchor Holds was unknown to me until recently when one of my Richards, Texas childhood friends, Tinabeth, sent me a link to the song covered by Shara McKee on what else but YouTube. The lyrics and melody have haunted me every day for weeks. That happens to me sometimes with songs Alexa plays for me in my private concerts when Pretty is out of the house on a mission.

    “I’ve had visions, I’ve had dreams. I’ve even held them in my hand. But I never knew they would slip right through like they were only grains of sand…I have been young but I’m older now, and there has been beauty these eyes have seen. But it was in the night through the storms of my life, that’s where God proved His love for me.”

    Like the song says I’ve had my share of visions and dreams slip through my hands to never be held again. Occasionally I can dimly remember young but I’m definitely older now – actually turning seventy-four tomorrow.  I have also seen so much beauty in my travels with Pretty who always prefers an adventurous trip to find beauties wherever they are. Sometimes they are closer to us, though, even close enough to touch.

    But it has been in the night through the storms of my life that I have found an anchor, an ability to stay the course regardless of the cost or loss. For Lawrence Chewning and for my friend Tinabeth, their faith in God is their anchor. I suspect my faith is not the same as the songwriter’s, but I do believe in anchors for our lives. I am confident the covid-19 pandemic has caused each of us to search for our own anchors to survive the fears created by the uncertainties, the upheavals in our lives.

    Maybe The Anchor Holds resonates with me because I am on the threshold of another birthday – maybe it’s coronavirus driven. Regardless of its pull on me, I believe it’s my song of hope for everyone across the oceans or across the street. My hope is for you to find your own anchor and let it hold you during these difficult days.

    “The anchor holds, though the ship is battered. The anchor holds, though the sails are torn. I have fallen on my knees as I faced the raging seas. The anchor holds in spite of the storm.”

    Our grandaughter Ella today while Pretty babysat

    (for sure one of the anchors of hope for Pretty and me)

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • learning new tricks from old dogs


    I first published this post in August, 2015 but I still love it. My dogs have always been my best teachers about what truly matters. I learned that from my daddy.

    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; 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 – but 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), petted and hugged on an equally regular basis. They came indoors for their pets and Daddy often scooped the big dogs up to hold 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.

    Daddy with what he loved most – his dog and his Bible

    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.

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    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.

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    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.