I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Tag: covid-19 pandemic

  • 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.

     

     

     

     

     

  • the murder of George Floyd in america – anger, fear, hatred, uprising


    Videos of the killing of a 46-year-old black man in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25th. by four policemen responding to a call concerning a fake $20 bill allegedly passed at a nearby corner grocery store have spread as fast as Covid-19 in nursing homes and have been viewed more than once by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

    No video viewer is likely to forget the final nine minutes of George Floyd’s life in which he repeatedly begged for breath from policeman Derek Chauvin who sat nonchalantly with his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck while two other policemen, Thomas Lane and Alexander Kueng, held him down on the ground to further impede his breathing. Ton Thau, the fourth policeman, walked around the scene but also ignored Mr. Floyd’s cries for help.

    The Minneapolis Police Department fired the four policemen this week. Yet, while local, state and federal agencies investigate the murder, no arrests have been made as of this morning. Black people and their allies are outraged by a failure of the justice system to press criminal charges against these four policemen, another failure in both a long and short list of police brutality against people of color – particularly black males – with no end in sight.

    I am angry, but my anger is unlike the anger of our black citizens who must couple their anger with fear for their lives. As commentator Joy Reid said this morning, “Every black person in America now considers themselves to be hunted.”

    As for the uprisings in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area this week, I rely on the words of Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who said a riot is the language of the unheard. Point taken. We must do better.

    Finally, heed these words from Dr. King that hit home to me today as clearly as the daily death number updates from the Covid-19 pandemic:

    Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

    We must do better.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

  • how did Stella really get her groove back?


    Getting our collective “grooves” back across the world will be far more complicated, doubtless a much lengthier process than Stella’s in the 1998 film shown above. But hey, we have to start somewhere. Originally published here in February, 2013, I’m dedicating this re-run to the groove seekers during Covid-19. 

    I was talking to Leora (who is one of my favorite soul sisters) tonight when she said something that crackled across the phone and smacked me upside the head with a satellite wave whack. It’s time for me to get my groove back, she said; and I understood immediately what she meant because I knew that was my problem, too. I’d lost my groove. Somewhere in the midst of the vicissitudes of life, as my daddy used to say, I’d buried my groove as surely as I’d buried the ashes of my mother in the little Fairview cemetery in Grimes County ten months ago.

    I hadn’t heard the reference to “getting your groove back” since I watched the movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back years ago, but I remembered the essentials. Apparently a young sexy shirtless Taye Diggs was the spark plug for a middle-aged Angela Bassett’s recovery of her misplaced spontaneity, the optimism for her life. As I recall, Stella (Ms. Bassett) located her groove in less than two hours of screen time to happily rejoin the human race she had forsaken. Sigh. Now, that’s what I’m talking about. Fixer-upper for lost groove. Quick, fun, and easy.

    Let’s not kid ourselves. I’m fairly confident a shirtless man won’t be the impetus for getting an old lesbian’s groove back.  I can also say with certainty the process will take longer than two hours. Regardless, I do recollect Stella’s outlook became brighter – she seemed more hopeful for her future at the end of the film.

    I’m beginning to feel a small crack in the tortoise shell of grief that has covered me during the last year. Death and dying are two separate but equal tragedies that exact a price on those who watch and wait. The tragedies remind me of my own mortality which brings questions of legacy and the life I chose to live. For those of us who tend to be contemplative about the meaning of life on a regular basis, facing our own mortality is a daunting undertaking. Undertaking. Hah. Get it?

    The grieving doesn’t end, but the images I carry from the tragedies dim and dwindle away leaving me with a knowledge of the importance of this moment in this day in this time because I am not promised another breath. I’m thinking that’s my first step toward getting my groove back.

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    Stay safe, get groovy and stay tuned.

  • different war, different century – same yearnings


    Danger, danger, danger – where are our safe places, our safe people, our safe distances from our safe people in our safe places…to mask or not to mask, that is the question. But of course we are not the only generation to wage war against enemies seen and unseen. Seven years ago I published this post about a young soldier who tried to comfort his mother on Mother’s Day from a place that existed only in her imagination.

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    The handwriting on the letters has almost faded away, the yellowed paper and envelopes  so torn and fragile I’m afraid to open them for fear they’ll disintegrate. The dates of the letters are in May of 1918, which I calculate to be 95 years ago this month. They are three letters written by a young Marine serving “somewhere” in France in World War I to his mother who evidently thought they were worthy of saving. Pretty discovered the letters  when she was on one of her fishing expeditions for treasures in old houses.  Occasionally on her adventures at yard sales or estate sales she finds words for me to read – words that someone saved for a reason. No longer wanted by family, they’re sometimes stuck inside the pages of books she buys or in a little box or even in a scrapbook tossed aside as unimportant. I don’t think the names are necessary but I will say the mother lived in Indiana. I’m glad she thought her son’s words were worthy of saving. I believe they’re worthy of being read again.

     Somewhere in France,  May 12, 1918

    Dearest Mother,

    Today is “Mother’s Day” – your day – and I wish I were home to spend the day with you.  Altho I cannot send you a big box of flowers I will endeavor to send a little flower that grows near me on a green hillside.

    I hope you are well and happy today.  Of course I realize how you feel about me being over here, the two battles you have to fight, that is, keeping up a brave front and smile when I know you feel bad about me.  Mother dear, I really am safe and the best news I get from home is that you are well and enjoying life. I would rather hear that you enjoyed a good show, say once a week, than to hear that you had denied yourself one little thing to help the Cause along. I sort of figure that you have done your bit, so please try to have a good time and remember that I don’t fare so bad.  It isn’t nearly so bad here as you all imagine.

    We eat, sleep, read magazines, letters and roam around to see everything going on. We aren’t getting any furloughs at present. I mean my outfit, but maybe it won’t be long until we can go touring again. I’ll have many stories to tell you when I get back, and I’ll trade stories for some good pies & cakes – and any eats at all that you cook. We move so much that I thought I’d have to throw away some pictures, but I’ve found a way. We always find a way. It seems a necessary part of a Marine to get along most any old place and get along well.

    I sent a list home of some things I want – and you may add on to that list a few pounds of homemade candy, preferably fudge. I don’t care how old fudge gets, it is always the best tasting eats we ever get from back there. I can buy French candy & chocolate at the Y.M.C. A. huts, so you see that we really don’t suffer for those things, but nevertheless some good old homemade candy is the stuff.

    I write you once a week, when possible, as an answer to Dad, Sis & your letters so they must not feel slighted, but this is your letter, and nearly every mother who has a son in France will get one too. Spring is coming in very beautiful, but the rain is so frequent here.  After a big rain the sun pops out with a blue sky and green hills – then everybody is happy.

    I tried to subscribe for one of the 3rd Liberty Loan Bonds but they aren’t selling them here.  I would like to have one of each issue. I have no kick coming about getting mail now as it is coming pretty regularly.  I’d appreciate some of those fried chickens you spoke about but I think I’ll wait until I come home.

    Well Mother dear, next Mother’s Day we will celebrate properly and have a good time.

    Love to Dad & Sis, and you…

    Your loving son, Buddie

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    Perhaps next Mother’s Day we will all celebrate properly and have a good time without fear of the invisible enemy that attacks us through the Covid-19 virus. Ironically this letter written in 1918 by a soldier looking forward to the spring in France was a Marine who had no way of knowing a pandemic that would sweep across the world was about to begin. The Spanish flu or the 1918 influenza pandemic began in the spring of 1918 and lasted through the summer of 1919 with an estimated 500 million confirmed cases according to Wikipedia. Did Buddie survive both the war and the virus… I wonder…

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.

     

  • dropkick me, Jesus


    When I was a high school student in West Columbia, Texas (what are the odds of living in West Columbia, South Carolina sixty years later?) I was a member of the “pep squad” which cheered for our football team every Friday night in the fall under lights that were as important to our town as those in the 2006 – 2011 TV series Friday Night Lights. Our team, the Columbia High Roughnecks, weren’t nearly as successful as the fictional team in Dillon, Texas but that didn’t matter. We loved them anyway. At home during football season my daddy and I loved to watch the UT Longhorns on Saturdays along with the bowl games during the holidays. On Sunday afternoons my daddy, granddaddy and I watched the Dallas Cowboys together.  We were a football family – the following is a post I published in March, 2015.

    My love affair with country music is rivaled only by my love affair with football and until very early this morning when I was in the kitchen making toast for Pretty to have before she went to work, I never knew their paths had crossed. Country music and football, that is.

    I could hardly believe my ears. As a matter of fact, I thought I had misunderstood the words I heard. I was fixing toast that refused to brown for some reason known only to the stove that is possessed by evil demons named Burning and Undercooking when I thought I heard the words dropkick me Jesus blaring from the country classics radio station playing on the TV.  What’s that you say? Stick with me Jesus? Is that a country classic? Maybe gospel country music?

    Two things as background. One, my AT&T U-verse decided over the weekend to change its music programming to a different venue and now uses something called Stingray for all music channels. Two, I hate change.

    But I am between hell and hackeydam in this case and must use the new station if I want to hear the country classics. Many of the “classics” on this new station are different so it’s possible I won’t recognize some of the tunes I hear anymore. (Where’s Willie when you need him?)  So when I thought I heard the lyrics dropkick me Jesus I assumed I didn’t really hear those exact words – just maybe something like those…which is common for my super-senior hearing.

    But then I clearly heard the lyrics I’ve got the will Lord, if you got the toe. I lost the padded glove I was using to pull the toast from the oven and rushed around the corner past the liquor cabinet to the den where the TV showed the current song with its artist. Sure enough, as Granny Selma used to say when she was in her right mind, Bobby Bare was singing:

    Dropkick me Jesus through the goalposts of life

    End over end, neither left nor the right…

    Straight through the heart of them righteous uprights

    Dropkick me Jesus through the goalposts of life.

    The song went on with references to the departed brothers and sisters forming some sort of offensive line, but mostly it repeated the title enough times that I knew the refrain by heart. Actually, I doubt I’ll ever forget it. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

    Bobby Bare recorded the song written by Paul Craft in 1976. How could I have missed this gem for so many years. Thank goodness I caught it today. I will mull over the sentiments of dropkick me, Jesus for at least the rest of the week, and to think I owe it all to the Stingray music channel I didn’t know I wanted or needed – the same channel which is now playing Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.

    I’ll put that on hold for another day.

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    As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to ramble like a wrecking ball through our lives, I wonder about sports in general, football in particular because decisions will soon have to be made determining the fate of the 2020-21 season. I don’t envy the calls those officials will have to make, but I hope the decisions are made with more than a coin toss.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

    Pretty holds Ella who is fascinated by Charly

    (Charly hasn’t quite figured Ella out yet)

    This is a totally unrelated picture taken yesterday from our screened porch.