Pretty and me in earlier days
Welcome to my blog and thank you for stopping by. I hope this will be the first of many visits! I call myself an essayist with humorist tendencies, but I’ve recently learned to embrace the label of personal historian + flash nonfiction writer which means I have something to say but I don’t waste many words in saying it. Basically I tell short stories that are true.
This blog is an extension of my lifetime commitment to working for social justice. Civil rights, women’s rights, queer rights – these are the causes that captured and continue to inspire my writing. Issues involving police brutality toward people of color, gun control, abuse of power and corruption of our government, the hash tag me too movement, treatment of asylum seekers, outrageous incarceration rates of people of color, the insurrection of January 06th – these topics have emerged out of my original Big Three categories to become targets for my political essays.
Don’t expect every post to be too serious, though, because this blog is also about family; family today and family yesterday. My wife Pretty and I celebrated 20 years together in February, 2021 – unbelievable that our commitment to each other began at the turn of the century in 2001. The years pass too quickly…
On October 01, 2019 our son Drew and his wife Caroline gave us the greatest gift of a lifetime, a beautiful baby girl named Ella Elisabeth James who has quickly become the subject of an inordinate amount of love and photos – and blog posts as well. As much as we vowed to avoid being the typical grandparents, we are now the typical grandmothers so enjoy with us. If you decide to follow along, you’ll be the first to know when our second granddaughter Molly makes her debut in January, 2022!
The year 2021 was our first cat rescue now known as Carport Kitty, but Pretty has never been one to pass on a rescue of both creatures with four legs and those of us with only two legs. That’s Pretty. CK joins our three dogs rescued at various times during our 20+ years together: Spike, Charly and Carl. We love them all!
I hope you will join our family of readers in cyberspace from all over the world – you’re so very important to us. What are storytellers without listeners…
Follow us, and stay tuned.
Warmest wishes,
Sheila
Pretty and our granddaughter Ella James – January, 2021
Ella and Pretty in the pumpkin patch – October, 2021
Pretty and Ella in January, 2022 at Colonial Life Arena
I'll Call It Like I See It 