I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: sports

  • the race is on


    GP: James Clyburn and Joe Biden, 190621

    Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) with former Vice President Biden

    at annual fish fry in Columbia June 19, 2019

    Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

    True political confession time. I voted for Pete Buttigieg in the South Carolina presidential primary this past Saturday, leap day in 2020. I hope my friend Linda Ketner (who was the first openly gay candidate to run for the House of Representatives in South Carolina in 2008 and whose political acumen I seriously admire) isn’t reading along since she made a great effort to change my mind to vote for Joe Biden, the person she truly believed was our best hope to beat the current White House occupant this November in the general election. I told her I would wholeheartedly support whomever our nominee was, and I intend to keep that promise.

    I am inclined to vote my heart in the primaries, though, like Al Sharpton in the 2004 primary which John Edwards won in South Carolina. Although Edwards was born in Seneca, SC, which made him a kind of home boy in our state and many people I knew supported him, I remember I struggled even back then about my primary vote. Edwards had good experience, was a successful attorney in North Carolina; he looked good on television which was apparently a huge plus. Eventually John Kerry got the presidential nomination, chose Edwards as his running mate, and promptly lost to Republican Dubya (George W. Bush) in the general. I voted for Reverend Al in the end because of his passion for the poor and those who had been disenfranchised in the political process. The fall of Edwards that followed him in his life afterwards was like a Shakespearean tragedy of epic Hollywood proportions that continued to astound me. I am stunned to discover  Reverend Al still owes almost a million dollars for that 2004 presidential run. Can anybody help him? Mike? Tom?

    The South Carolina primary is over, Super Tuesday is behind us, and the race is on…here comes pride up the back stretch, and heartaches going to the inside…my heart’s out of the runnin’…true love’s scratched for another’s sake. Thank you, George Jones, I couldn’t put it better myself. My guy Pete dropped out after his inability to score support among African Americans in South Carolina, and he knew he wouldn’t win against the presidential incumbent without that support. He and another candidate Senator Amy Klobuchar withdrew Sunday and pledged their support to Joe Biden whose South Carolina victory may be an historical turning point in the 2020 election. Joe needed a big win here, and he got it.

    I thought the media attention given to our state last week was fun and fabulous. For me, watching my favorite MSNBC commentators like AM Joy Reid hosting their programs from a locally owned meat and three restaurant called Lizard’s Thicket in Columbia was as thrilling as spotting Texas A&M’s women’s basketball head coach Gary Blair and his wife strolling around the Colonial Life Arena Sunday afternoon taking in the sights before the game with our Gamecock women’s basketball team. Honestly, presidential politicking at  Lizard’s Thicket and the Aggies in town at Colonial Life Arena for the final home game of the regular women’s basketball season – well, how good does it get for an old sports loving political activist dyke? Not much better than this.

    To me, as my mother Selma used to say when she had her right mind, the person who changed the course of the SC presidential primary in his endorsement of Joe Biden was our House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn who is the highest ranking African American member of the House,  a man who gave a passionate speech for Biden on Wednesday before the Saturday primary. In an interview with NPR host Mary Louise Kelly after his speech, Rep. Clyburn addressed one of my personal questions in this primary process. Why should I vote for another old white man.

    “What I’ve said to people when they say that to me, I say, well, it’s a little bit like saying would you rather have an old Thurgood Marshall or a young Clarence Thomas. You don’t define that by age. You define that by people’s philosophy, so the age ought not to be a factor unless there are other things at play.” I would take Marshall over Thomas every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

    Finally, let me thank the people who have voted in the primaries thus far. I say Bravo to all of you who stood in lines for hours in your states to cast your votes for your favorites. The amazing turnout in the primaries bodes well for the general election in November. I believe the sights of the citizens in long lines indicate the level of dissatisfaction with a divisive president who doesn’t deserve a second term.  My hope is that new leadership in the Senate and White House will allow the American people to participate in moving our country forward in a direction that will lift all boats to steer toward the highest ports of true equality and justice for everyone.

    In the meantime, I am excited to go to the SEC tournament in Greenville, SC this weekend to see our Gamecock women play. We finished the regular season with a 16 – 0 record, but of course we want more. That’s what fans expect. Go Gamecocks!

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • remembering The Red Man (December, 2000 – February 22, 2016)


    The good news is the Angel Band played, Big Dawg Bernard came to The Middle to announce promotions and this time when the roll was called up yonder The Red Man’s name was on it. He made it to the Top and joined his running buddies Tennis Ball Obsessed Chelsea, Paw Licker Annie, Smokey Lonesome Ollie and even ran into Sassy the Old One. It was a joyous reunion – everyone was happy to see him…well, maybe not happy…more like glad he made it, if you catch my drift.

    In September, 2010 Red began the rants and raves with his post I’m a Talker which produced the first two “Likes” he ever had: Wayside Artist and Terry1954. They have stayed with us for the whole ride with Red and Pretty and the Old Woman Slow and the rest of the cyberspace folks who gave us 69,666 hits in the past six years while posting 666 posts – a nice number to end with, don’t you think?

    It’s very hard for me to let go of Red’s Rants and Raves but I find it difficult to “edit” for Red when he no longer dictates to me while lying next to my feet as I sit at my desk. I feel I have to let him rest in peace with his brother and sisters.

    I hope all of Red’s 1,649 followers will follow me to my I’ll Call It posts (www.iwillcallit.com.)  – I think many of you already have – and so the writings and photos from Casa de Canterbury will continue on my other site, hopefully with Red’s keen insights and observations serving as my muse when the days lack inspiration otherwise.

    I thank all of you so very much for the “likes” and “comments” and hits through the past six years. Truly Red’s Rants and Raves changed my life.

    Get me outta here, Percy – and he did.

    Red’s favorite spot…in Pretty’s lap getting Pretty pets

     

    in the beginning was The Red Man…

    and the Old Woman Slow loved him

    (Posted on Red’s Rants and Raves September 02, 2016)

  • flying high in Galveston


    “Riding under a baloon beats making hay, but

    believe me after we came down no more baloons for us.

    How foolish to want to be way up in the air,

    & then after you are up there,

    you want to be down.”

    I’m not sure who the two men are in the “baloon,” but this post card was one of a very few saved by my maternal grandmother, Louise Schlinke Boring a/k/a Dude to me. I believe the man on the right was one of my grandmother’s five brothers, and the man on the left was my maternal grandfather James Marion Boring, Sr. The post card was unsigned and not stamped which makes me imagine it was hand delivered.

    What struck me about the card was the message written in pencil on the back, regardless of the missing names or how it was delivered. The people in my grandmother’s family were farmers so they were well acquainted with the labor involved in making hay in the hot Texas sun. My grandfather, on the other hand, was an adventurer who started and failed in business enterprises from root beer stands in Houston to a movie theater in Richards with four children along the way during his lifetime (1887 – 1938). I can believe the balloon ride was his idea.

    No more balloons for these guys, though. “How foolish to want to be way up in the air, & then when are up there, you want to be down.”

    I’ve felt that same feeling more than once in my life, too…not about balloon rides, of course. I’m not that brave.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

  • celebrating Black History Month with Pearl


    In the tiny Sears Roebuck kit house I grew up in, boundaries were both invisible and highly visible. The home was owned by my maternal grandmother and shared with two of my mother’s adult brothers in addition to my daddy, mother and me. The home was crowded. When I think back on it, I don’t know how we all managed to eat and sleep there – not to mention the scheduling of everyone’s turn in the single bathroom which barely had space to turn around to close the door after entering. That room was tight, and boundaries were tightly defined.

    While the home itself was small, the lot on which it sat was large, a corner lot with an unattached garage (with an attached outhouse that may help explain the bathroom scheduling inside) behind the house. Beyond the garage a small pond which we called a tank in rural Texas lay quietly in an “in-town” pasture that had no fences. My back yard was spacious, vast in a small child’s mind, unique in comparison to the other small frame houses sitting on the few dirt roads that connected them.

    Although the tank wasn’t very big, the fish and frog population that lived there mysteriously thrived, encouraging our relatives from the bigger cities of Houston, Dallas, Rosenberg, et.al., to make regular fishing trips to our place “in the country.” They came with their poles, rods, reels, live and artificial bait to try to land Ol’ Biggie, the name my Uncle Toby gave to the wiser large perch and catfish that proved elusive most of the time. During those early years I preferred running around the banks of the tank with my cousins to dropping a line with a squiggly worm in the water.

    At random times, though, I made an exception to enjoy the company of a full-bodied black woman named Pearl who walked across another invisible line to come fishing in our tank. One paved road we called main street distinctly divided black and white people in my community in those days in the late 1940s and early 1950s;  that street should have been painted blood red. Pearl lived in an area of town on one side of the street I knew simply as The Quarters. I would be much older when I realized the name referenced slave quarters that still separated her world from mine.

    Pearl told me the best stories about all the fish she had caught in the hottest fishing holes around the county. I believed every word she said because I trusted the deep rich voice that spoke. Pearl and my grandmother were good friends who visited together whenever she got ready to leave with her bucket full of fish. Pearl had the best luck catching perch in our tank – never very large – but she bragged that the little ones were better to fry anyway. Made sense to me. My mother also adored Pearl which surprised me since Mama didn’t adore anyone including herself.

    Pearl Harris was the first black person in my life. She was warm, affectionate, funny and always kind to me. I have no idea how she came to be friends with my grandmother. I suspect they met in the general store in town where my grandmother clerked. Whatever the circumstance, I felt their friendship was authentic. They were easy with each other. I now know Pearl’s walk across the invisible racial divide to our fishing tank was not only brave but necessary to put food on the table for her family. My grandmother could relate to that need, too.

    Wanda Sykes says in her Netflix comedy routine that I’ve watched at least four times now, seriously, at least four, that all white people need to have at least one black person who is their friend. Wanda thinks that friendship just might be a starting point to heal the racial divide that is at the center of income inequality and a host of other problems in our country. From a little girl growing up in a Texas town big enough for only one general store but large enough to contain two worlds separated by skin colors of black and white, I say I couldn’t agree more, Wanda. Bravo.

    RIP Pearl Harris (1893 – 1957).

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • this year really is 19


    Nineteen, I argued with Pretty last year, when we were out with our friends Francie and Nekki having dinner to celebrate our anniversary date: February 09th. Pretty shook her head so I persisted with well, we got together February 09, 2001, so that makes 2019 our nineteenth anniversary. At the moment I said those words, I knew I was wrong. Me, the math person in our family, had missed that number which any fool could see was eighteen.

    So now I again say nineteen in 2020, and I feel confident I’m right.

    February 09, 2001 – Cancun, Mexico

    I look at this picture, see those smiling younger women having dinner at a restaurant in Mexico, and wonder if they had any inkling of the journey they started that weekend.  I think journeys weren’t even in their minds. I was trying so hard to impress Pretty I boldly poured the hottest salsa on my tacos which produced a heat surge not unlike a hot flash. I almost fainted.

    Pretty on the other hand did as she has done for nineteeen years of my trying to impress her. She laughed. That laughter has sustained us through the roller coaster rides life brings to everyone who risks the journey.

    Today we were driving to retrieve our pickup that was in the Dodge shop having airbags replaced. Our conversation focused on my cell phone which Pretty has disparaged from the time I purchased it a few months ago, a phone which I still can’t use properly. I told Pretty the problem was now compounded because I have lost the vision in my left eye (I’ll have laser surgery to correct shortly). Pretty who has an iPhone said, you have a funky phone because you refuse to pay for a good one. How could she help me if I didn’t have an iPhone. Point taken. Give me 48 hours to think about it. I love the 48 hours trick.

    Conversation topics change over the course of a marriage, but for us Mexican food is still a comfort meal. I go easier on the salsa caliente, though.

    Elizabeth Barrett Browning makes me wish I were a poet. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life; and if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.”

    I love thee, Pretty.

    Stay tuned.