I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • 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!

  • hail, hail – the gang’s all here – what the heck do we care now?

    hail, hail – the gang’s all here – what the heck do we care now?


    Sometimes a song won’t let go of you for reasons known only to the universe and your memories. I published this piece in March, 2018; but the song (first published in 1917) has been playing in my head again so I thought this post was worthy of a second look. What the heck do I care now – let me explain.

    Christmas memories seem strange on Good Friday, but then the mind often ignores time or at least is able to reconstruct its meandering corridors to bring buried secrets to the surface of consciousness.

    One of my favorite Christmas gifts when I was a child growing up in Richards, Texas in rural Grimes County was not one I received but one  I gave to my maternal grandmother Louise whose name I shortened to Dude when I was unable to pronounce Louise. Louise became “Dude-ese,” then simply Dude.

    I was two years old when my dad, mother and I moved into my grandmother’s small Sears Roebuck designed house in Richards in 1948. We lived in that little house with her for eleven Christmases, and each Christmas she gave me two new pairs of underwear she bought from the general store where she clerked six days a week from 8 in the morning until 6 in the evening with an hour for lunch. Two new pairs of underwear wrapped in last year’s red paper she carefully saved, used again and again, tied with a gold string and a tiny tag signed in her scrawling handwriting Lots of love, Dude.

    The Christmas before we moved away from Richards I bought Dude a present at Mr. McAfee’s drug store from money I saved from my allowance. I had never bought her a gift before and was so excited about my purchase: a door chime that played Hail, Hail – the Gang’s All Here. I hadn’t told anyone about my gift, so imagine the look on Dude’s face when she opened it. Just what she needed, she said, and had me believing it.

    Dude had been 50 years old when we moved in with her and was 61 when we moved away to a town 70 miles from Richards leaving her with a disabled adult son, no transportation since she never learned to drive, and very little income. My family came back to visit her every two weeks; whenever the front door opened we were welcomed with the chimes playing hail, hail – the gang’s all here, what the heck do we care? On those weekends her gang was there.

    I was totally unaware of what loneliness combined with the loss of laughter and love must have been for her the other days and nights of her life at that time because I was, after all, a self-absorbed teenager whose only experience with loneliness was self-imposed and transitory. I was never at a loss for laughter.

    By the time I graduated from high school, my grandmother’s life had the beginnings of her roller coaster battle with depression that would plague her for the rest of her days – a war really – on battlegrounds she fought in doctors’ offices and hospitals,  fought sometimes with medicines, sometimes without medicines, sometimes with electroshock therapy.

    My visits to see her became less frequent when I went away to college, and I remember being surprised on one of those visits to discover the door chimes no longer played when I opened the front door. Surprised, but totally unaware of the significance. Her gang was no longer there.

    This morning I was taking a shower and for some reason the shower song du jour was Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here which brought the Christmas memories of my grandmother’s door chime pouring over me like the hot water that rinsed my hair. Dude was the first woman to love me unconditionally with all her heart. I hope wherever she is today her gang is there, too because I want her to be surrounded with the love she gave each of us in the little Sears Roebuck home in Richards.

    Dude (1898 -1972)

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

    Slava Ukraini. For the children.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • the mystery of the unknown children

    the mystery of the unknown children


    The children in these photos had significance to my mother who lost interest in her family history somewhere along the road to losing her memories. Pretty and I found these pictures among hundreds of them dumped haphazardly in boxes in my mom’s garage when we were cleaning out her house to move her from her home in Rosenberg to a memory care facility in Houston in 2007. I could identify most of the people in her large collection, but I am clueless on these children whose photos had no names anywhere. I love these photos for the times and places they represent, but what wouldn’t I give to know who they were and what their relationship was to my mom.

    who is this little girl framed by flowers?

    she had five identical pictures of this little boy –

    but no name on any of them

    this little girl seemed happy with being photographed

    these two little girls didn’t look happy at all

    Blackburn Photography took this formal portait –

    still in photography business in Houston today

    The moral of this story (if there is one): ask questions today of the ancient ones in your family if you want to avoid unsolved mysteries in your future. Starting the new year is a good time to begin. My Uncle Marion might have said “discover more in 2024.” I say go for it.

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

    Slava Ukraini. For the children.