I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Tag: women’s history month

  • I got the gavel, and I’m not afraid to use it


    Thank you very much, Congresswoman Maxine Waters.

    Last night Congresswoman Waters (D – Cal) received the Chairman’s Award at the 50th NAACP Image Awards.  Her acceptance speech included the following:

    “After a long career journey, tonight I stand before you as the first woman and the first African American to chair the powerful U. S. House Financial Services Committee. It is indeed an honor to hold the chairwoman’s gavel and yes, I got the gavel, and I’m not afraid to use it.”   (Katherine Schaffstall, Hollywood Reporter)

    Today marks the last day of Women’s History Month, and I’m ending it with a bang – the sound of a gavel struck by a powerful Congresswoman who was celebrated for her service to her country for her many years in Congress as a lawmaker.

    Whether we are making laws or trying to change them, I believe every woman has a gavel and the right to use it without fear. When we speak up for what we know is right and believe to be true, when we reach out to help others who may not be able to ask for our help, when we take a stand against injustice in any form – we honor the memories of the women who came before us and rightly celebrate the women of today and tomorrow…not just during Women’s History Month but every day.

    Stay tuned.

     

  • hail, hail – the gang’s all here


    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 that I received but one that 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 and 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 that 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 and 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 63 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 dad and mother and I came back to visit every two weeks, and whenever the front door opened we were welcomed with the chimes playing hail, hail – the gang’s all here. And on those weekends her gang was there.

    I was totally unaware of what loneliness and 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 (1898 -1972)

    In this final post I will make for women’s history month, I honor with love and gratitude one of the most important women in my life, the first woman to love me unconditionally with all her heart.

    And on this good Friday I hope that your gang, however you define it, will be with you this weekend.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • talking guns with Texas columnist Molly Ivins


    Although Molly Ivins was born in Monterrey, California in 1944, her family wasted no time in moving her as a young child to Texas where she grew up and  lived off and on for the rest of her life. I claim Molly not only as a Texan but also as one of my favorite women “essayists with humorist tendencies.” When I come back in my next life, please God, let me come back as Molly Ivins  with the voice of Maya Angelou.

    Molly Ivins was a syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate, Inc. and on March 13, 1993 published this column called Taking a Stab at our Infatuation with Guns. As I watched students across the country walking out of their schools today to protest gun violence, I thought of Molly’s words. Twenty-five (25) years later they sadly still ring true.

    Guns. Everywhere guns.

    Let me start this discussion by pointing out that I am not anti-gun. I’m pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife.

    In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We’d turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don’t ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.

    As a civil libertarian, I of course support the Second Amendment. And I believe it means exactly what it says: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Fourteen-year-old boys are not part of a well-regulated militia. Members of wacky religious cults are not part of a well-regulated militia. Permitting unregulated citizens to have guns is destroying the security of this free state.

    I am intrigued by the arguments of those who claim to follow the judicial doctrine of original intent. How do they know it was the dearest wish of Thomas Jefferson’s heart that teen-age drug dealers should cruise the cities of this nation perforating their fellow citizens with assault rifles? Channelling?

    There is more hooey spread about the Second Amendment. It says quite clearly that guns are for those who form part of a well-regulated militia, i.e., the armed forces including the National Guard. The reasons for keeping them away from everyone else get clearer by the day.

    The comparison most often used is that of the automobile, another lethal object that is regularly used to wreak great carnage. Obviously, this society is full of people who haven’t got enough common sense to use an automobile properly. But we haven’t outlawed cars yet.

    We do, however, license them and their owners, restrict their use to presumably sane and sober adults and keep track of who sells them to whom. At a minimum, we should do the same with guns.

    In truth, there is no rational argument for guns in this society. This is no longer a frontier nation in which people hunt their own food. It is a crowded, overwhelmingly urban country in which letting people have access to guns is a continuing disaster. Those who want guns – whether for target shooting, hunting or potting rattlesnakes (get a hoe) – should be subject to the same restrictions placed on gun owners in England – a nation in which liberty has survived nicely without an armed populace.

    The argument that “guns don’t kill people” is patent nonsense. Anyone who has ever worked in a cop shop knows how many family arguments end in murder because there was a gun in the house. Did the gun kill someone? No. But if there had been no gun, no one would have died. At least not without a good footrace first. Guns do kill. Unlike cars, that is all they do.

    Michael Crichton makes an interesting argument about technology in his thriller “Jurassic Park.” He points out that power without discipline is making this society into a wreckage. By the time someone who studies the martial arts becomes a master – literally able to kill with bare hands – that person has also undergone years of training and discipline. But any fool can pick up a gun and kill with it.

    “A well-regulated militia” surely implies both long training and long discipline. That is the least, the very least, that should be required of those who are permitted to have guns, because a gun is literally the power to kill. For years, I used to enjoy taunting my gun-nut friends about their psycho-sexual hang-ups – always in a spirit of good cheer, you understand. But letting the noisy minority in the National Rifle Association force us to allow this carnage to continue is just plain insane.

    I do think gun nuts have a power hang-up. I don’t know what is missing in their psyches that they need to feel they have to have the power to kill. But no sane society would allow this to continue.

    Ban the damn things. Ban them all.

    You want protection? Get a dog.

    Molly Ivins (1944 – 2007)

    photo by Carol Kassie

    Tell it, Sister Girl.

  • saluting the Little Women of Worsham Street for women’s history month


    March is Women’s History Month as my good friend Luanne reminded me with her post last week, and today I salute the Little Women of Worsham Street who were my special friends in the Texas years from 2010 – 2014.

    Carol lived diagonally across Worsham street from me, taught me all I ever knew and learned to love about photography, played dominoes with me a lot of evenings and watched football with me on the weekends. She’s a retired school teacher who is now an antique dealer in charge of the downtown Montgomery Antique Emporium. Since I’ve been gone, she is a grandmother for a second time with real babies but continues to love and adore her fur ones that bring her as much joy as ours do for us.

    Lisa lived directly across the street from me and I sat many days on our front porch at 609 Worsham in a rocking chair staring at her house that I loved, listening to her three dogs bark when the trains came through on Old Plantersville Road while she worked as a high school administrator for the Conroe Independent School District. She went to work every morning before I woke up and got home late in the afternoons…almost made me feel guilty but not quite. One of my favorite pastimes in the fall was watching her decorate for Christmas – climbing around on her roof to make sure every light was in its proper place – creating a showcase of outdoor decorations for the entire street to enjoy. Since I’ve been gone, she decided to finally retire after way too many years commuting those long hours.

    Finally, my good friend Becky lived down and across the street and gave me a great reminder of how important mothers can be. Becky and her family moved to Worsham Street shortly after we did, and it wasn’t long before two-year-old Oscar had invited himself and his baby brother Dwight inside our house for a visit. I will never forget the conversations I had with Becky while we visited on the front porch in the late afternoons after the boys woke up from their nap. She and I shared a background in financial services – what were the odds of our ending up together on a quiet rural Texas street talking about our favorite female detective at the time, Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on The Closer, after careers in the high-powered world of finance.

    While I was there, Becky had a third son practically in our living room at the baby shower we had for her just hours before George was born. Talk about cutting it “close.” Brenda Leigh had nothing on Becky.

    So I’m starting Women’s History Month with three of my favorite women who became friends when I was saying goodbye to the significant women in my life: my two mothers, Selma and Willie, and my favorite Aunt Lucille. These friends were steadfast in their support for me during this difficult time and displayed the love and friendship I believe only women can offer each other. I’m not sure I ever told them how grateful I was and continue to be, but this is a start.

    Lisa, George, Dwight and Oscar today

    walking on Worsham Street and I like to think looking back at 609

    Montgomery City Councilwoman Becky with husband Gary

    and the Fabulous Huss Brothers George, Oscar and Dwight (with cat)

    P.S. I must never forget a fourth Little Woman of Worsham Street, Dana, who left the neighborhood but not Montgomery. She and I still continued our friendship with talks on the porch and in the kitchen even after she moved all the way across Highway 105 to Buffalo Springs.

    P.S.P.S. The pictures today are courtesy of Carol Raica.