I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • not one, but TWO HUGE nights in Hotlanta this week!

    not one, but TWO HUGE nights in Hotlanta this week!


    Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson had a history-making career-high game Tuesday night in Atlanta, Georgia during one of the best player outings ever in the 27-year history of the Women’s National Basketball Association. Her 53 points matched the WNBA single-game scoring record set in 2018 and was only the third time in league history that a player had a 50+ point game. Wilson also had seven rebounds and four blocks during the game which saw the Aces bounce back from a loss to the Los Angeles Sparks on the previous Saturday to defeat the Dream 112 – 100. The only thing hotter than A’ja Wilson was the temperature which was also breaking records across the southern part of the country.

    As the crow flies west the distance from our home in West Columbia, South Carolina to Atlanta, Georgia is approximately 200 miles. Traveling by grannymobile on Interstate 20 West the exact mile count is 214 and travel time is a little over three hours, while making that same trip with Pretty who prefers to avoid the interstates in favor of back roads like she did this past Tuesday the 22nd., the trip stretched closer to 300 miles and five hours in the grannymobile because she stopped along the way to search in remote antique malls for treasures to bring back with her to sell in her own empire. I don’t know how long that crow would take from our house to Atlanta, but I’m sure there would be fewer stops.

    Pretty and our good friend Susan took their own sweet time on their drive Tuesday – they left at 9 a.m. with their only deadline destination the Gateway Center Arena @ College Park for a 7:00 p.m. WNBA tip between the Atlanta Dream and the Las Vegas Aces. Susan, one of our favorite Gamecock basketball buddies, was celebrating her birthday that day and invited Pretty to go to the game with her at the last minute when her husband Chris had to work. Whenever A’ja Wilson was anywhere in the neighborhood of her former alma mater, a huge University of South Carolina Gamecock nation travelled to see her play. Not even her most avid supporters, though, could have imagined her performance they would witness that night at the Gateway Center Arena.

    Pretty was on Cloud 9 when she got home in the wee hours of Wednesday morning – I had kept up with the game on TV so I celebrated with her the next day. We talked about the joy Coach Dawn Staley must have felt not only when A’ja had the monster night but also to see three other Gamecock players (Laeticia Amihere and Allisha Gray for the Dream, Alaina Coates rejoining Wilson and the Aces) on the WNBA rosters. It was a great night to be a Gamecock.

    Oh, yes. I almost forgot the other huge event. Two nights later the Trump airplane landed in Atlanta to drop off the former president so that he could drive to Fulton County to surrender for arrest for his alleged participation in RICO violations involving the Big Lie. As my favorite writer Eudora Welty said once upon a time, to know the truth I also had to recognize a lie.

    Go Gamecock Women’s Basketball! Go Fulton County DA Fani Willis!

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

    Slava Ukraini. For all the children.

  • Pretty scolds me

    Pretty scolds me


    As we turned into the driveway this morning from running errands that included taking Carl to the vet over the river and to the city for evaluation and annual shots by 9 a.m., then driving completely in the opposite direction from the vet to my eye doctor to pick up a pair of eyeglasses being repaired but breaking the heavy traffic with a quick stop at the Rush’s drive thru for our daily fix of iced tea. When I saw the large Ukrainian flag we fly at the edge of our carport, I said oh my goodness. Those poor Ukrainian people are having such a horrible life; I see the images every day of their losses. I continuously worry so much about the children.

    When Pretty came to a stop at the carport, she turned to me and said you are so negative. You always see the worst in everything anymore.

    To which I replied, maybe because I am getting old.

    May Sarton (1912 – 1995) was a Belgian-American novelist, poet, and memoirist who wrote in her journal At Seventy published in 1984: “What I want to convey is that, in spite of the baffling state of the world around us – war in the Falklands and in the Middle East, poverty, recession, racism at home – it is still possible for one human being, with imagination and will, to move mountains. The danger is that we become so overwhelmed by the negative that we cannot act.”

    What I want to convey to Pretty is that, in spite of the baffling state of the world around us – war in Ukraine and in the Middle East, poverty, inflation, racism at home, a former president of the United States surrendering today for defying the laws set forth by our founders in the Constitution – it is still possible for one human being, with imagination and will, to move mountains. The danger is that we become so overwhelmed by the negative that we cannot act.

    I believe that in the past six years I have become more overwhelmed by the negative than I realized so from this day forward I promise to project positivity for the sake of my family, friends, and followers.

    Hm. I hope I haven’t chosen a bad day to make that pledge. TV news off.

    ***********

    P.S. The eyeglasses weren’t ready – the woman told me she had been on vacation so the lens had arrived but they hadn’t been placed in a frame. They will call me. But not to end on a negative note, the woman at the Rush’s drive-thru was the friendliest person ever. Seriously, the…friendliest…person…ever.

  • longing for Happily Ever After

    longing for Happily Ever After


    A benefit of having written 869 posts over the past fourteen years is the luxury of searching for subjects I’m certain I must have written about at some point in time. As I prepared for the onslaught of news surrounding the surrender of a former president of the United States to the state of Georgia tomorrow for issues concerning the election of 2020, an ex-president who was well acquainted with the concept of human frailty, in addition to the circus atmosphere already evident in preparation for the first debate in the 2024 presidential election by the Republican candidates tonight, I searched for a piece I wrote in 2016. Sure enough, as my mother would say, I found my opinions on human frailty haven’t changed.

    Full disclosure to avoid any semblance of plagiarism – I stole this idea from my current favorite BBC series Lark Rise to Candleford. (Current to me but originally aired in 2008 – 2011.) Dorcas Lane was the postmistress caught in a wave of changes to her small town of Candleford in Oxfordshire at the end of the 19th. century. Her notoriety extended beyond the walls of the post office due to her persistent meddling in everyone’s affairs.

    Her maid Minnie was a wonderful addition to the cast in the second season with her penchant for asking questions that were “extraordinary.” In the episode I watched today, Minnie was a-twitter with questions about just what does Happily Ever After really mean in affairs of the heart. Dorcas was prepared to answer with wisdom to share and spare.

    “We all want life to be simple and our relationships to be enchanted, and then along comes human frailty. Before we know it, all will be lost.”

    Human frailty. I have seen a ton of that going around in the world lately. So much so that it seems like an epidemic. Waves of it. Oceans of it. Human frailty runs rampant from Orlando to Dallas to Minnesota to Baton Rouge. It zigzags through a packed crowd in a huge commercial truck in Nice, France before striking again in a failed military coup in Turkey. It shouts angry hate-filled  rhetoric in a large convention hall in Cleveland, Ohio before skipping across the Atlantic again  with gunfire in a shopping mall in Munich. Behind every evil stands the specter of human frailty.

    Thank goodness for the relief of Lark Rise, a break from the onslaught of bad news on my favorite 24-hour news channels with their 24-hour news cycles. Yes, give me a good conversation with Twister Terrell, another of my favorite friends from Lark Rise, who sums up what happens when human frailty runs rampant.

    “Some folks got neither logic nor reason nor sense nor sanity.”

    Here’s hoping somewhere… sometime… somebody unravels the key to human kindness and compassion for each other that will not only change the news cycles but enable us to rediscover the logic, reason, sense and sanity that our human frailty disguises.

    Like Minnie, I long for Happily Ever After.

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

    Slava Ukraini. For the children.

  • say her name Laura Ann “Lauri” Carleton

    say her name Laura Ann “Lauri” Carleton


    Laura Ann “Lauri” Carleton

    Hate had no place in her heart or in her store when sixty-six- year-old Lauri Carleton was shot and killed at her place of business on Friday, August 18th., 2023 for her refusal to take down a gay Pride flag she flew outside her store in Lake Arrowhead, California every day. She will be celebrated by her family and friends as a brave ally of the LGBTQ+ community who gave her life in the outrageous act of believing love is love.

    Rest in peace, Lauri, but know that the community you died for will never rest in peace as long as forces rage against equal justice for all.

    Say her name: Laura Ann “Lauri” Carleton.

  • the power of the written word

    the power of the written word


    I never fully understood the power of writing until I heard other people read what I wrote.  My stories were safe.  They would be remembered and told by these women and others like them.  Although I thought the night revolved around me, I was wrong.  They inspired me. These women treasured words and ideas that created bonds among them.  My words were now a little part of their wealth of knowledge that lived beyond the pages. I was elated and honored to be the first author invited to attend their book club meeting, the eleventh anniversary of the diverse group of ten members. The club had chosen my second book Not Quite the Same as their book of the month in August, 2011. The night was not only great fun but also inspirational.

    Dame Daphne du Maurier, the English author and playwright, decries our infatuation with literary public readings by writers, noting that “writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.” She makes a good point, although I have to admit I love to read my own words aloud.  Maybe it’s because I often read audibly as I write. Therefore it makes sense I like to read to other people. I was so taken with the sound of my own voice I made an audio version of my first book, Deep in the Heart:A Memoir of Love and Longing. My thanks to the three people who actually bought that CD, wherever you are. 

    I believe all of us have stories to tell, that storytelling is a primal need. I’ve seen stones in New Mexico that are hundreds of thousands of years old, and you know what’s on them?  Narratives of tales someone wanted to tell. They’re told in drawings on the rock faces, but they were someone’s disciplined efforts to communicate, and I felt I was there with the storyteller when I stood next to their work. I never sat down to write a book. I wanted to save my stories of the people and places in them. They became a book because I couldn’t quit writing.  Now, it’s like not being able to turn off a faucet.

    *********************** 

    Flannery O’Connor, the noted Southern Gothic writer, answered the question for me of why I write: I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I write.

    Tell it, Sister Girl.