I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • an unexpected nugget from Pretty

    an unexpected nugget from Pretty


    Yesterday I was in the unfortunate position of needing postage to mail my cousin Melissa’s birthday card – the card I already know will be late – when, alas, the postage stamps I’d ordered from the usps hadn’t arrived in the mail. At various times during the past 20 years Pretty has offered her stamps in the unlikely event I should ever run out. I routinely rejected her offer but I was in a bind yesterday and had forgotten why I refused her generosity in the past so last night Pretty found her stamp collection in a small retail shop bag she had carefully kept in the bowels of her office.

    I rummaged through the bag and a flashback hit me. Pretty doesn’t buy forever stamps because that would be too easy. Instead I found an assortment of stamps ranging from 2 cents to 33 cents. Seriously, Pretty? I couldn’t call this a stamp “collection” but it was a collection of stamps. I managed to come up with enough postage to mail Melissa’s card; usps now says a card from South Carolina to Texas could take until her next birthday to get there. Regardless, thanks to Pretty for saving the day.

    But greater thanks to her for this nugget of writing that was copied on a sheet of regular 8 x 11 white paper, folded in half and oddly mixed in with the stamps. I felt these words about racism from the American author and poet Scott Woods speaking directly to me – I wish I had written them.

    “The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know /like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes Black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. And so on. So while I agree with people who say no one is born racist, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like being born into air: you take it in as soon as you breathe. It’s not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It’s a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it’s hard work, but it’s the price you pay for owning everything.”

    Sometimes I’m a storyteller. Sometimes I’m a word collector much like Pretty’s stamp “collection” which saved those words for me, for all of us.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • close encounter of the cat kind

    close encounter of the cat kind


    stray cat adopted by Pretty who named her Lilibet

    (I call her Pussy)

    Naturally Pretty would settle on the nickname of Queen Elizabeth II for the recent interloper who crashed our carport four weeks ago, who now sits at the top of the steps of our kitchen door with the expectation of Fancy Feast meals twice daily, but refuses human touch. Her Royal Highness.

    I have solid reasons for resisting Pretty’s cat rescue attempts over the past 20 years: my cat allergies, our dogs’ instinctual desire to murder cats, additional vet bills…I could go on.

    Why give up the fight over the cat with Pretty now, the reasonable reader asks, to which I reply I got nothing on that. The cat showed up. Pretty started with giving her water. The next thing I knew I was ordering Fancy Feast from the grocery store. End of story.

    My friend Ellen Hawley (notesfromtheuk.com) has a cat named Fast Eddie and asked for a photo plus name of our Stray Cat so here you go, Ellen.

    I also would like to dedicate this post to the memory of my friend Luanne Castle’s cats (writersite.org/2021/10/06/making-after-loss/) Pear, Felix, Mac and Izzie. No one could love a cat more than Luanne and her husband the gardener although Pretty will surely try her best.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • boo at the zoo, are we there yet? not yet

    boo at the zoo, are we there yet? not yet


    My friend Dick Hubbard who has been my most faithful reader since the days of the OG Red Man (the rescued Welsh terrier that became my alter ego in Red’s Rants and Raves) called me after my last post to say that my “grandmother inspired” posts were excessive. Now Dick is the only person who consistently rates my blogs as 5 star excellent so I want to apologize in advance to him for yet another Ella inspired post.

    Yesterday Pretty and I planned an adventurous outing at Riverbanks Zoo for the annual Boo at the Zoo experience in October. Please ask me if we have ever gone to this annual Halloween celebration. The answer is No, negatory, nunca in our 20 years together, but I ordered our tickets to take Ella and her mother Pretty Too later this month. The tickets come with complete instructions for costumes, trick or treat buckets, masks for adults, etc. I didn’t expect Boo to be so complicated.

    I hope Boo at the Zoo will be as fun as our first visit with Ella to one of Pretty’s favorite haunts: Barnes and Noble.

    Naynay, please?

    Pretty and I seem to struggle with setting boundaries.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • international day of the girl (or two girls!)

    international day of the girl (or two girls!)


    Pretty and I are fortunate to celebrate international day of the girl every week when we care for our granddaughter Ella who turned 2 years old on October 1st., but we were thrilled to find out earlier this year Pretty Too and Number One Son are expecting another little girl in January! Ella announced the news to everyone last week…

    May be an image of baby, sitting and indoor

    Pretty Too shared this picture of our quite grown up two year old who is more than poetry in motion – she is a force of nature – and language. Movement, words. Every new experience requires exploration and discovery. Frankly, my dears, her energy exhausts this grandmother who was 73 years old when she was born and two years older today, but Ella insists I keep up with each game we play in her imagination informed by the adventures of Deema and Sally on YouTube videos.

    The world Ella and her little sister Molly will inherit from Pretty and me will afford them opportunities to learn in an environment richer in technology with access to a wealth of answers to questions we didn’t know how to ask, but how will historians frame those answers. Who will narrate the journey of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the Equal Rights Amendment failure in the 1970s and beyond, the Gay Nineties, Black Lives Matter, Love is Love, Time’s Up, a woman’s right to choose…will these historians represent the truth and consequences of denying climate change, the power of divisiveness and income inequality, the reality of hunger for the poor children not just in America but also around the world, the election of Joe Biden in 2020, the insurrection in the Capitol building on January 06, 2021. We must safeguard these truths and pass them on to our granddaughters.

    The message will be clear from us. Love who you are, love others as you do yourself. Learn to identify the difference between what is right and what is wrong. When you see something that is wrong, work to change it.

    When Ella began to love the music Pretty played for her on her cell phone, one of the first videos she saw was March, March from The Chicks. This is my message for the village that is entrusted with the care of all little girls everywhere.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and stay tuned.

  • view from the cheap seats

    view from the cheap seats


    Some dogs love to howl at the moon, some dogs stare at the moon but prefer to bark at the mailman, a few dogs never notice the moon at all. They think if they ignore it, the moon will gradually go away – kind of like rain. Dogs who could sing would make up songs like Moon, Moon, go away – come again some other day.

    The United States Senate reminds me of a dog pound. You ain’t nothing but a hound dog Mitch McConnell loves to lead the rest of his pack in howling at the moon on a regular basis, but he’s also learned to sing. This week Sing Along with Mitch brought the hit song Debt Limits, Debt Limits Go Away – come again some other day. Like in early December.

    But then the rest of his minority pack started barking at Mitch for losing an imaginary game of Wake, Wake Don’t Blink at Me with Chuck Schumer who can’t sing at all – can’t even carry a tune as we used to say about my Aunt Sister. Nope. Chuck and his majority pack must be saving their howling for the mailman or the boogeyman or some other man because they’ve 100% lost their voices when it comes to howling at the moon. They can’t even whimper on their own. Whatever song Mitch leads, they sing along from one rousing chorus of Proud Donald to another stanza of Catch the Falling Star of Joe Biden.

    As for voting rights, infrastructure, income inequality, raising the minimum wage, institutional racism, police reform, gun control, burning bushes, floods, pandemics, vaccines against said pandemics, insurrectionists who evidently would be happier without democracy – most of us are like the dogs who choose to ignore the moon. If we ignore the moon, maybe one day it will just go away on its own.

    But what if there’s really a Blue Moon from Kentucky that ain’t ever going away, then what?

    And that’s the view from the cheap seats.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and stay tuned.