I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • the times they are a-changin’

    the times they are a-changin’


    Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t feeling jubilant for her Silver Jubilee in the trailer for Season 3 of the Netflix series The Crown as she rode in the parade inside the royal golden carriage pulled by six white horses. Rather, the fifty-one year old Defender of the Faith was portrayed briefly as a middle-aged woman sitting alone in a coach, focused more on her failures than hope for the future as the ominous percussion of Fort Nowhere grew louder when the lyrics to the music began: Come gather ’round people wherever you roam, for the times they are a’changing...The enormity of the changes that would take place before the Queen’s death during her Platinum Jubilee year in 2022, forty-five years following the Silver Jubilee in 1977, made Bob Dylan’s classic song from 1964 more prophecy than poetry.

    Meanwhile, on another popular Netflix series a Canadian woman in her twenties who was sometimes known as the Miracle Girl from Hudson, Alberta because of her unique relationship with horses was suddenly forced to confront unimaginable loss by tragic circumstances that left Amy the Miracle Girl with similar feelings of hopelessness and dread of the future in Heartland‘s 14th. season as Queen Elizabeth II had faced in the third season of The Crown. Episode 7 (Courage) of that season ended with Fort Nowhere again framing the background music while Amy began her lengthy journey from despair to hope: Come gather ’round people wherever you roam and admit that the waters around you have grown. And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone if your time to you is worth saving. And you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changing…As the present now will later be past, the order is rapidly fading. And the first one now will later be last, for the times they are a-changing.

    Now you may be thinking I watch too much Netflix when I can connect random dots from Queen Elizabeth II to a Miracle Girl from Alberta, Canada; but it is the music of Bob Dylan through the voices of Fort Nowhere, a person (group?) I didn’t know, that inspired me to reconsider the lyrics to the times, they are a-changing. When I did look at Dylan’s words, I found a powerful personal message which is, after all, the secret to his musical legacy.

    Come writers and critics
    Who prophesize with your pen
    And keep your eyes wide
    The chance won’t come again
    And don’t speak too soon
    For the wheel’s still in spin
    And there’s no tellin’ who
    That it’s namin’
    For the loser now
    Will be later to win
    For the times they are a-changin’

    The older I get, the faster the wheel spins.

    *******************

    Slava Ukraini. For the Ukrainian tennis players in the 2024 Australian Open.

  • the Civil War, old tapes, social media and crazy liberals

    the Civil War, old tapes, social media and crazy liberals


    As the race toward the 2024 election begins to heat up with Iowa caucuses in the rear view mirror, the New Hampshire primary next Tuesday,  I look more frequently at the map of the red states and blue states that make up our United States to wonder anew at Abraham Lincoln’s commitment to keep the country united as one. I understand the problem better for sure. I always wondered how brother fought brother on different sides during the Civil War. They were family first after all, right? Not so fast, my friend. A post I published in the summer of 2017 is a reminder of how messy families can be – particularly when we get together in cyberspace.

    My grandmother invented social media via the telephone party line we had in our little town as surely as Al Gore invented the internet. She relished listening in on other people’s conversations and delighted to repeat juicy gossip at her kitchen table… but please dear God, don’t ever mess with her family.

    This week I did something I almost never do. I responded on social media to a post made by a first cousin twice removed who has a world view that I have long ago accepted as different from mine. Most of the time I hide his offensive posts from my timeline and move on.

    I can’t bring myself to “un-friend” him because I truly love the little boy I remember visiting us in Richards so often with his grandmother who was my grandmother’s sister. But this week he posted that liberals must have a “mental illness” to think the way we do, and that struck a nerve for me.

    You see, I grew up during a time when being a homosexual was considered to be a mental illness. Think about how you would feel if you grew up believing that you had a secret mental illness and, if exposed, you could be institutionalized. Lock her up. Throw away the key. I heard an old tape begin to  play in my mind.

    Somehow our thread on Facebook took an unpleasant turn, as I already knew it would and we got into a discussion regarding a prevailing Muslim  belief in some places that gays should be killed. Unfortunately, one of my cousin’s friends chimed in with the following comment: “We knew someone many years ago that would probably want to buy a plane today, load them (gays and lesbians) up and drop them off over there (wherever Muslims live). I sure miss him.”

    Wow. I was transported to a conversation I had in the early 1990s with a client who sat in my office and said, “If it were up to me, I’d take all those queers and put them behind barbed wire in Kansas and tell them to stay there.” I didn’t respond then. The old tape was playing louder now.

    One of my mother’s most infamous quotes for me was that she wished all those gays would go back in the closet where they belonged. She would be happy to slam the door shut. The old tape was so loud now I could barely hear myself think.

    Luckily, I didn’t accept the old tapes as I don’t accept my cousin or his friend’s thinking about who I am today. I’ve spent my entire adult life working for equal treatment and fairness – my liberal social justice beliefs. In 1974 the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. I was 28 years old. In 2017 at the age of 71, I am personally declassifying liberalism as a mental illness.

    I resolve to limit my social media interaction with my first cousin twice removed to Happy Birthday wishes. No need going up that blind alley again.

    I feel better already.

    *******************

    P.S. Sadly I have “un-friended” my cousin twice removed in the intervening years since 2017 because I had to get out of his kitchen. I couldn’t take the heat.

  • say it ain’t so, Rafa

    say it ain’t so, Rafa


    Rafael Nadal announced yesterday he will become the tennis ambassador to Saudi Arabia in an effort to promote the visibility of tennis in the kingdom which will open a Rafa Nadal Academy there for the purpose of developing young talent in the country.

    “Everywhere you look in Saudi Arabia, you can see growth and progress and I’m excited to be part of that,” Nadal wrote in a statement. “I continue to play tennis as I love the game. But beyond playing I want to help the sport grow far and wide across the world and in Saudi there is real potential.” (Josh Fiallo, The Daily Beast, January 16, 2024)

    Okay, cyberspace friends. Hopefully your jaw found a soft landing on that news. My jaw felt like the ground hit by the ball dropped in Times Square in New York City at midnight on New Year’s Eve. I felt gobsmacked, somehow personally betrayed by a close friend. Obviously Rafa and I aren’t close personally, but I have loved him throughout his career since he began playing professional tennis in 2001 as a sleeveless young fourteen year old boy with more guts than glory back then. It was the same year Pretty and I got together, and we will have our twenty-third anniversary next month.

    My feelings for Rafa were that he was not only one of the greatest tennis players of all time but also a humble, good guy who had respect for the game of tennis and everyone who played it. Say it ain’t so, Rafa. Where in the world did you look in Saudi Arabia to see “growth and progress everywhere?” Did you look at their treatment of homosexuals, for example?

    The Wahabbi interpretation of Sharia law in Saudi Arabia maintains that acts of homosexuality should be disciplined in the same way as adultery – with death by stoning. Homosexuality or nonconformant gender expression can also be punished by corporal punishment, flogging, imprisonment or forced ‘conversion’ therapy. In 2019, the Saudi Arabian government orchestrated a mass-execution of 37 men who were accused of espionage or terrorism, five of whom were also convicted of same-sex intercourse after one was tortured into confessing. (Fair Planet May 27, 2023)

    Rafa, the following tidbit from the Human Dignity Trust hits closer to home for me – did you see it?

    In April (2020) a Yemeni blogger living in Saudi Arabia was arrested for advocating for equality for LGBT people. In July he was sentenced to ten months’ imprisonment and a fine, followed by deportation, under ‘public indecency’ laws. While in detention he was subjected to solitary confinement, beatings, and torture.

    While the Saudi Tourism Authority has apparently updated its website according to CNN Travel in May, 2023 to say gay travelers are welcome in the kingdom in an effort to attract more overall revenue from international tourists, no governmental assurances have been made to make LGBTQ+ individuals feel safe.

    And Rafa, did you read this post on the status of women in Saudi Arabia by Tracey Shelton in January, 2023 on abc.net.au?

    Rei na Wehbi, MENA regional campaigner for Amnesty International, said while Saudi Arabia is “rebranding its image” as a progressive state, the underlying reality is very different. “‘Positive’ changes have mostly been social reforms and are very far from genuine human rights reforms in Saudi Arabia,” she said.

    “They are meant to deflect attention from the continued brutal crackdown on activists and human rights defenders and other flagrant human rights violations.”

    She said most human rights defenders, independent journalists, writers and activists have been arbitrarily detained. In 2019, just as the kingdom announced that women could drive, the women who had campaigned tirelessly and publicly for precisely this right were arrested and locked away. More recently, Salma al-Shehab, a PhD student and activist who posted support for women’s rights activists on Twitter, was re-sentenced to 27 years in prison in January, 2023.

    Money talks, right, Rafa? But will you sell your soul for twenty pieces of silver…or twenty gazillion? Will you sacrifice your personal integrity for an alliance with a country recognized around the globe as a repeated offender of human rights – not to mention terrorist organizations connected to the events of 9-11 in New York City? I cringe at the thought.

    I am a seventy-seven year old woman who has loved you like a family member for more than two decades, but you have broken my heart over your alliance with a country that in my opinion is aligned with evil.

    Say it ain’t so, Rafa.

    ****************

    And don’t even get me started on the Women’s Tennis Association going to Saudi Arabia for its season-ending finale this year. OMG. What are they thinking?

  • say it plain, say it loud

    say it plain, say it loud


    Benjamin Mays was the child of former slaves,. He was born on an isolated cotton farm near Ninety Six, South Carolina in 1894. His parents were sharecroppers. The darkest years of Jim Crow segregation were just descending on the South; humiliation, mob violence and lynching by whites were common threats for African Americans. Mays learned at an early age the searing lessons of racial inferiority. He had a vivid memory of being stopped with his father by a group of armed, white men on horseback. “I remember starting to cry,” Mays wrote. “They cursed my father, drew their guns and made him salute, made him take off his hat and bow down to them several times. Then they rode away. I was not yet five years old, but I have never forgotten them.”2 (American RadioWorks: A Century of Great African American Speeches)

    In 1940 following a fascinating journey from this inauspicious beginning Mays became the President of Morehouse College, a respected black school for men in Atlanta; Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Morehouse graduate in 1948 and considered Mays to be his “spiritual mentor and intellectual father.” On April 9, 1968 five days following the assassination of King, Mays delivered his eulogy in an open-air memorial service on the Morehouse campus where a crowd estimated at over 150,000 people attended.

    As we celebrate the actual birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929) with a federal holiday in the United States in 2024, the words of the Mays eulogy still speak plain and loud.

    “God called the grandson of a slave on his father’s side, and the grandson of a man born during the Civil War on his mother’s side, and said to him, ‘Martin Luther, speak to America about war and peace. Speak to America about social justice and racial discrimination. Speak to America about its obligation to the war. And speak to America about nonviolence.‘

    Let it be thoroughly understood that our deceased brother did not embrace nonviolence out of fear or cowardice. Moral courage was one of his noblest virtues. As Mahatma Gandhi challenged the British Empire without a sword and won, Martin Luther King Jr. challenged the interracial injustice of his country without a gun. And he had faith to believe that he would win the battle for social justice. I make bold to assert that it took more courage for Martin Luther to practice nonviolence than it took his assassin to fire the fatal shot. The assassin is a coward. He committed his dastardly deed and fled. When Martin Luther disobeyed an unjust law, he accepted the consequences of his actions. He never ran away and he never begged for mercy. He returned to the Birmingham jail to serve his time...

    Morehouse will never be the same, because Martin Luther came by here. And the nation and the world will be indebted to him for centuries to come… 

     I close by saying to you what Martin Luther King Jr. believed. If physical death was the price he had to pay to rid America of prejudice and injustice, nothing could be more redemptive. And, to paraphrase the words of the immortal John Fitzgerald Kennedy, permit me to say that Martin Luther King Jr.’s unfinished work on earth must truly be our own.”

    Say it plain; say it loud. America remains indebted to Martin Luther King, Jr. on what would have been his 95th. birthday in a new century, and his unfinished work on earth must truly be our own. We have much to do.

    Onward.

  • I hope you dance – a refrain

    I hope you dance – a refrain


    Two years ago on the 26th. of this month Molly Iris James was born to her parents Drew and Caroline, big sister Ella, and an assortment of extended family members who couldn’t believe their good fortune in welcoming the birth of a second baby girl to the village that would be her home. When I think of her second birthday in two weeks, the lyrics to the song “I Hope You Dance” by Tia Sillers and Mark Sanders float through my musical memories, a refrain from a previous post.

    I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
    You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
    May you never take one single breath for granted,
    God forbid love ever leave you empty handed,


    I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
    Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
    Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance,
    And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

    I hope you dance… I hope you dance…

    I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
    Never settle for the path of least resistance,
    Livin’ might mean takin’ chances, but they’re worth takin’,
    Lovin’ might be a mistake, but it’s worth makin’,


    Don’t let some Hell bent heart leave you bitter,
    When you come close to sellin’ out reconsider,
    Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
    And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

    I hope you dance… I hope you dance.

    ****************

    For my 76th. birthday in April, 2022 Pretty took me and our two granddaughters to the zoo. She carried Molly in her car seat, diaper bag on her back, often carrying two year old Ella in her left arm while I tagged along with my two bionic knees. We had a small parade of our own. Please know I offered to rent a stroller when we entered, but Pretty said the line to rent one was too long to wait. There were two people ahead of me.

    The day was a memory maker, and Pretty deserves an award for creating a magical time for the four of us. I love these little girls to the moon and back.

    that day I hoped they both would dance…

    …and they do!