I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • have you heard the one about…


    the little old lady who walked into the West Columbia Location of the South Carolina Diagnostic Imaging clinic late yesterday afternoon to have two MRIs performed?

    (Masks were provided, social distancing observed by all patients and personnel in the facility – thankfully.)

    The little old lady asked if she could take a pain pill before they started. Much younger technician Tammy replied of course and provided her with water while at the same time also offering  her two bright yellow ear plugs. It gets a little loud in there, Tammy said. Would you like headphones with music, too?

    Oh yes, said the little old lady. Definitely. Can you have them play ABBA music?

    How do you spell ABBA, asked Tammy.

    Then we got down to business on my right bionic knee when Tammy rolled me into the MRI tube as the machine began making noises like roofers who are hammering nails in the final sections of replacing a roof. Bam, Bam, wham, bam…louder in staccato…and then in loud warning signals reminiscent of sirens in WWII announcing the bombs are coming, the bombs are coming. But did I care?

    Not really because the pain pill apparently kept Abba always singing in the back of those headphones:  lots of my favorites like Take a Chance on Me, Super Trooper, Dancing Queen, Fernando and finally when I thought I would go mad from the hammering noises, Mama Mia (the fav of my grandbaby) sang me out of the first procedure. I pictured the little 8 month old baby loving to bounce up and down in her playpen to Mama Mia. And then I was rolled back out of the tube – thinking ABBA might not have been the best choice for remaining totally motionless during the procedure. I had been tempted to groove just a little, but NO WAY.

    After a quick bathroom break, I was back on the table being slid down once again into the tube with its deafening blows to take pictures of my lower lumbar. Tammy remained most professional as she adjusted the headphones for my music. This disc jockey wasn’t a hard core ABBA fan so s/he threw in other fan favorites from the era like Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline, the House of the Rising Sun by James Taylor, Carole King I Feel the Earth Move which I did, by the way, when Tammy slid me out of the tiny tube which I felt getting tinier the second go round. For some reason the lumbar didn’t seem to take as long.

    Maybe it’s because time had stood still during the 1 and one half hour procedure. Tammy helped me slowly sit up.

    While I gathered myself to stand, Technician Tammy said, “I’ve burned you a CD – it should be ready about now.”

    To which I replied, “Oh, you burned me a CD? Thank you so very much – that’s really sweet. I hadn’t heard some of those songs in years.”

    To which Tammy said in a somewhat subdued tone, “The CD is for your doctor. It’s your images.”

    To which I replied, “Oh, well of course.”

    Pretty was waiting for me in the car, and when I told her about the CD, she laughed uproariously as only she can do when something is really funny – we both laughed all the way across town to pick up her Wednesday night pasta at her favorite Mediterranen Tea Room. We were still laughing last night when I passed out at 9 o’clock from exhaustion.

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.

     

     

     

  • from tinkering to transformation: the intersection of equal justice under the law


    The United States Supreme Court ruled early yesterday morning that gay and transgender people are protected from workplace discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  I heard the actual Breaking News on my tv as I sat in my favorite blue recliner with my dog Charly who really didn’t understand my sudden outburst into tears – not my usual response to the Breaking News recently.

    My commitment to social justice issues for more than 40 years made this news especially sweet to an old dyke growing up in the 1950s in a tiny town in the piney woods of southeast Texas. The marriage equality decision by the Supremes in June of 2015 had been huge and one I never thought I would live to see. And now, another unimaginable move forward for the gay and trans communities with protection in the places we work. We can no longer be fired for who we are. The 6 – 3 decision was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, whose phone must be ringing off wherever he keeps it today. Good on you.

    Charly has become more accustomed to outbursts of anger with expletives directed at the perfect storm created by the Covid-19 chaotic governmental responses to a pandemic that continues to spike in my home state of South Carolina as it rages along in other states having similar numbers – always sure to warrant choice words from me – plus the murders of two black men by white policemen in recent weeks that have called to our public consciousness once again the systemic racism we have continued to address and ignore sporadically for more than 400 years of our country’s history. As Maya Wiley, an attorney and American Civil Rights activist, explained “We must move from tinkering with change to true transformation.” Amen to that.

    My Texas sister Leora called me early today and shouted a loud “Congratulations!” over the phone. I was not quick enough to understand what she meant. When I asked her, she said for the Supreme Court decision yesterday for you and Pretty and all the other people who are trying to find equal justice where you work. I was overwhelmed and told her my celebration had been muted by the other horrific acts in recent days to which she responded: “You can breathe right now in this one place so celebrate the moment. We can all breathe again when we get the knees off our necks because of George Floyd’s death.” My African American sister gets it – the intersection of all of our hopes for a day when equal justice under the law is more than just empty words. I love Leora for many reasons, but today I love her for reminding me to be happy.

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

  • a moment’s pause from the madness – enjoy!


    In the midst of continuing spikes in the coronavirus in our state of South Carolina and yet another senseless killing of a black man by police brutality in our neighboring state of Georgia last night, Pretty and I took the afternoon off from pandemics, systemic racism and mayhem to spend a few hours with our 8-month-old granddaughter. We invite you to share these moments of joy with us.

    Billy Blue is my Go-To toy at the Nanas’ house

    NanaSlo has a shiny watch

    NanaT is in charge of the most important bottle

    Pool Time!

    NanaSlo, here’s your shiny watch

    Hm. 

    Now where did I get this Happy Birthday toy?

    It’s hard work standing up all the time

    Luckily I found my best friend Passy

    Hooray for the Passy!

    Charly is ok, but I think I make her tired

    NanaT is in charge of the food, too – she does it all

    My name is Ella James – the Nanas love me the most! 

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.

     

     

     

  • I can’t breathe


    Webster’s Thesaurus defines moral as “ethical, or right and wrong, or proper conduct, personal. Ethical, right, proper, virtuous, just fair, aboveboard; pure, honest, high-minded, saintly…”

    Democracy is defined in the same dictionary as “government by the people, representative government; state having government by the people. Fairness, equality, political equality.”

    After the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmad Arbery in recent days, we have an opportunity to become better people – I hear the voices of our higher angels calling us to be just fair.

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.

  • notes of two native daughters, a native granddaughter, and a native daughter-in-law


    Two years ago Pretty planned a trip for us and two other family members who live in Texas to visit the newly opened Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama plus several other historical sites related to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. We called it our Civil Rights tour, but we could just as easily have called it our Black Lives Matter tour. This post was originally published here in May, 2018 – I dedicate it to the memory of George Floyd whose funeral service is today.  The work of equal justice for all is never finished.

    This quotation from Maya Angelou is written on the walls of what is now The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration located on the site of a former warehouse where slaves were kept in prison while awaiting their fate in Montgomery, Alabama before the Civil War and the emancipation proclamation. Pretty, our tour guide, had made reservations for us to visit this museum at 9:30 last Saturday morning so our group of four was up and about very early on a gorgeous warm day. Our motel was right around the corner from the museum so we all walked over – still laughing and teasing each other about the winning and losing from the card games the night before.

    The museum itself is open to the public by reservation, but it is not staffed by tour guides. Everyone is allowed to wander at their own pace to read the explanations of the artifacts, documents and jars of dirt collected at verified lynching sites across the country from 1882 to the present. The number of sites is still undetermined but from 1882 – 1968, nearly 5,000 African Americans were reportedly lynched in states across this country. Congressman John Lewis who wrote the foreword for the book Without Sanctuary calls these lynchings the  “hangings, burnings, castrations and torture of an American holocaust…what is it in the human psyche that would drive a person to commit such acts of violence against their fellow citizens?”

    Our group split up as we meandered around through the various amazing exhibits. Pretty and I wandered in one direction, Leora and Carmen went off on their own journey through time as we all saw the intimate lives of American slaves come alive through the magic of hologram technology that portrayed the heartache of families savagely separated from each other, the pleas of the children looking for their mother. Interesting fact:  approximately 12 million people were kidnapped over the three centuries of slave trade to America, according to The Legacy Museum. 12 million living, breathing individuals. I felt overwhelmed by the atrocities with each turn Pretty and I made on our visit.

    Overwhelmed, ashamed, guilty, angry – those are the emotions that swirled around in my mind with each personal account of my legacy as a white person in America. The pictures that showed cheering crowds of us – sometimes in the thousands – while an African American man was hanged, shot, burned…pieces of his body sold as souvenirs…post card pictures made…popcorn sold. I dreaded looking at the people watching the horrific acts in a party mood with as much fear that I would recognize someone in the crowds as the fear I felt for forcing myself to look at the actual horrific acts perpetrated by the mob violence. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Leora and Carmen felt.

    “The museum connects the legacy of slavery with subsequent decades of racial terrorism and lynching. Visitors see the link between codified racial hierarchy enforced by elected official and law enforcement with both the past and the present. Contemporary issues surrounding mass incarceration are explored with interactive exhibits and examination of important issues surrounding conditions of confinement, police violence, and the administration of criminal justice.”  (Legacy Museum – Equal Justice Initiative)

    Interesting fact: One in three black male babies born today is expected to go to jail or prison in his lifetime.  One in three. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. In 1979 when Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs, roughly 320,000 people were in prison in our country. Now, the current total incarcerated is 2.1 million people with a higher percentage of people of color.

    As Pretty and I were getting ready to leave the museum, Pretty wheeled me to a very large interactive map of the USA. By merely clicking on an individual state, the number of lynched persons discovered to date in that state was highlighted. I foolishly couldn’t resist my native state of Texas. The total number was 338. The interactive map also showed the details by county: the name of the person and the date of the lynching. I made the mistake of going to my home county, Grimes, and saw the names and dates of 10 black men lynched there. Right in my home county. Where were my grandparents on those days, or did I really want to know?

    Shortly thereafter, Pretty and I left the museum. Leora and Carmen were not far behind us. We were all truly lost in our own thoughts and the walk back to the hotel was very quiet.

    As usual, Pretty saved the day by encouraging us to finish packing for checkout, finish the leftover food in our room, and call for our car. We were headed for what turned out to be redemption for us all at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church and a woman named Wanda who helped us shift our focus from evil to good. Hallelujah!

    daughter-in- law Pretty, daughter Leora,

    granddaughter Carmen,  daughter Sheila

    (clockwise left to right)

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.