When we met recently, I learned that Barbara Morris had been writing letters to The Post and contributing articles to our pages for more than 50 years.
Even after she entered hospice care, Barbara was still writing to us, dictating to her best friend, Donna Fisher, and emailing me from her phone. Word arrived on Monday morning that she had passed away at 92.
We’re honored to republish a collection of Barbara’s contributions to The Post’s letters section here.
— Alyssa Rosenberg, letters and community editor
Back to the real bagels | Oct. 8, 1995
After nearly 60 years of eating bagels (real New York bagels), I now find out that a bagel is a “toroidal cousin” of the doughnut [“A Hole Lot About Doughnuts,” news story, Sept. 25].
Toroidal? I looked it up: pertaining to a doughnut-shaped surface generated by the revolution of a conic about an exterior line lying in its plane.
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What is this? It’s bad enough that modern bagels come in designer flavors — cinnamon and pumpkin — and are crudely pockmarked with blueberries and nuts. Now they’re toroidal cousins of the doughnut.
Enough with fancy names and flavors. Let’s go back to bagels as God intended them to be. Pure. Simple. Round. Smooth, fat and shiny. The color of golden toast. Hard outside, chewy and doughy within.
To be eaten — reverently — with cream cheese and lox.
Amen.
Monopoly around the family table | Oct. 29, 1998
The story on the demise of board games [Style, Oct. 16] brought back memories of my first Monopoly game. In 1942, when I was 10 years old, Monopoly — only nine years old — was the absolute rage. I had to have my own game.
I don’t remember the cost. Whatever it was, my parents — still impoverished by the Depression — sadly told me it was a luxury we couldn’t afford.
But Monopoly was in my blood. I borrowed a set, and — with scissors, cardboard and crayons — made my own board, property cards, money and tokens. I played with that set until the flimsy cardboard went limp and the crayon colors blurred. Only then, convinced of my devotion to the game, did my parents scrape together the money to buy me the real thing.
My game was only one of the 160 million that have been sold, but I’m sure it was the most cherished. What wonderful evenings it gave my family — together around the table with play money, “dirty” real-estate dealings, vigorous bankruptcy battles and, of course, giant bowls of buttered popcorn.
The hearings and the hair | July 17, 1987
If First Hairdresser Robin Weir had his way, the wonderful, mesmerizing cast of characters of the Iran-contra hearings would be Weir-ized into a line-up of tidy, blow-dry look-alikes [Style, July 13].
It’s depressing enough to read that all over this great land of ours otherwise sane and normal men are rushing to get an “Ollie Cut.” Now the First Hairdresser wants to neutralize Senate Chief Counsel Liman’s distinctive “fettuccine locks” and Chief House Counsel Nields’ lank “Ichabod Crane Haircut,” both of which take guts and character to carry off.
A readable feast | April 25, 1992
It was April 16 in the early morning and the newspaper was open to the Style section and there was a hot and steamy story about espresso bars and it was amusing and clever and good and the start of the morning was good with this hot and steamy story.
A chuckle that was deep and rumbly began deep in my throat and grew and swelled and burst into the air of the kitchen which smelled rich and full with the aroma of black and hot morning coffee.
I sipped and savored and laughed and looked at the byline of the story and it was not Hemingway. It was Martha Sherrill. And that was very good.
The terrain in Spain | April 11, 1999
Jerry Haines’s hilarious story of his auto tour through Spain [“Turista on Board,” March 28] brought back memories of our trip through Scotland, where you drive on the left side of skinny one-lane roads bordered by stone walls and knee-high curbs. My husband tells me that Scotland’s scenery is spectacular. I wouldn’t know; my eyes were riveted on the left curb, which was so close I could see the legs on the ants. As for roundabouts, they’re a great place to meet other Americans; you wave and exchange rigid, frightened smiles.
The strain of auto touring in Scotland was such that every afternoon I had to be revived with scones and clotted cream.
A road not taken | Nov. 28, 2024
Once again this year, I give thanks that I didn’t die in a savage storm on the high seas of the North Atlantic on Thanksgiving in 1956, when I was in my 20s.
Two girlfriends and I were returning to the United States after rambling around Europe for three months on a budget of $5 a day.
We were supposed to be on a steamship of the American Line, but being carefree and almost out of cash (and stupid), we had canceled those high-priced reservations to get money to buy tickets to a bullfight. Not just any old bullfight, but Spain’s famous annual charity bullfight in Madrid, which would attract dictator Francisco Franco, Ernest Hemingway and Xavier Cugat. We had to go! (We did, they did, and it was fantastic!)
That’s how we wound up on the very small, very slow, very low-price, storm-tossed Spanish freighter Guadalupe along with tons of melons, sherry, fighting cocks and horses for Mexico’s bullrings. Most of this cargo was stored on the boat’s open decks, where it perilously shifted around as the Guadalupe was tossed like a matchstick on monstrous swells. I crawled to the deck and cried for the terrified, battered horses in lurching, makeshift stalls, their eyes rolled back with only the whites showing.
Our third-class area was crammed with small, ancient, black-clad Spanish ladies who huddled together, fingering prayer beads. Their mournful prayers echoed through the ship, competing with the creaking timbers and hammering waves. My journal of that trip calls this the “most terrifying experience of my life, being up against the sea and weather, things infinitely stronger than I have ever encountered. I’m hemmed in a tiny cabin.”
When calm returned, we wrote a note about our experience, sealed it in our Thanksgiving wine bottle and tossed it overboard.
Calm weather also brought a complete change: music, champagne and dancing in the small lounge with the young, flamboyant ship’s officers and a Cuban sugar plantation owner who, on the last day of the voyage, proposed to me! It was tempting. He was handsome. Rich. Great dancer.
After intense thought and prayer, as we sailed by the Statue of Liberty, I said no.
That “no” is another reason I give heartfelt thanks today.
Trump’s federal employee policy would take us back to the 1800s | Jan. 30, 2025
Regarding the Jan. 20 Style article “An ode to American artists”:
The story about the vice president’s home took me back 60 years to when I, a brand-new Navy lieutenant, was the guest of honor at a luncheon there. At the time, it was the official residence of Adm. David L. McDonald, the chief of naval operations, and his wife, Catherine “Tommie” McDonald.
I was stationed in the office of Adm. Laurence H. Frost, commandant of the Potomac River Naval Command. My job as liaison between Frost and a prestigious committee for the annual Navy ball made up of 12 wives of high-ranking officers. The admiral and the committee women treated me less like a liaison and more like a beloved daughter. Still, when I got engaged, they surprised me by hosting a luncheon for me.
Unfortunately, I remember only one thing about that fantastic day: the carpets. Yes, carpets. Plural. Plush, wall-to-wall carpeting covered with other large, luxurious area carpets. I had never before seen carpets on carpets. And I had never tried to walk on them in high heels. The pulpy depths sucked at my feet and threatened my balance.
To this day, I can feel the clutch of fear that gripped my stomach as my wobbly heels sank in so that, terror-stricken and fighting for balance, I had visions of pitching across the room like a drunken sailor. No wonder I forgot everything else.
From the interior photos of the home as it is today, I see the carpets are normal: just one sturdy layer, thank the Lord. If I’m invited back, no problem. In high heels, I’ll stride in, look around closely and remember everything else!
Ban cellphones in schools? Teachers and a student weigh in. | May 20, 2024
The very first sentence of The Post’s recent editorial on smartphones and young people, describing Americans with “shoulders hunched, head down, eyes glued to a smartphone screen” instantly reminded me of a dreary scene that caught my eye recently when my car was stopped at a red light on a downhill street in suburban Virginia.
It was a beautiful day.
I rolled down the window for a clearer view of the perky daffodils lining the curbstone and a large hedge of pink azaleas that overhung the sidewalk. I smiled, breathed deeply and whispered a soft word of “thanks.”
At that moment, a teenage boy and girl, both in fashionably torn jeans, trudged up the hill in the exact posture The Post described in that opening line. These teens seemed as if they must be among the nearly 1 in 5 who say they use social media “almost constantly.” I don’t know whether their cellphone use caused them mental distress. The Post’s suggestion that further studies should focus not just on “screen time” but also on what impact different kinds of screen time have on users makes sense to me.
In the meantime, one thing was clear about the phone-addicted teens that I saw. Because of their “experience blockers,” those two were missing the sheer delight of spring flowers in full bloom all around them.
Hope requires work | April 6, 2023
Amanda Ripley’s March 31 Friday Opinion commentary, “For news organizations, there is a story called ‘hope’” offered several definitions of “hope.”
Hope, she wrote, is one of three most notable needs for humans to thrive in the modern word, along with agency and dignity. The piece described hope as more like a muscle than an emotion, a belief that your future can be brighter and better, that it is a process with well-being the outcome, that it is malleable and is a defiant way of being in the world on the lookout for what might be.
Granted, I agree with all of the above, except I have trouble envisioning hope as a muscle. My own definition of hope comes from a long-ago sermon by my then-rector. His definition, which perked up my ears, was: “Hope is to expect something you desire with confidence and with a great sense of anticipation.” I’ve posted his comment in my office, where it reminds me that before you can have hope, you must think. You must evaluate your ideals and back them up with truth before you can hope for them. To be fulfilling, this definition requires work on the part of the hopeful person. When I do the work, I feel good. I feel hopeful.
Making peace by chucking it | Sept. 9, 2023
What a coincidence! Just one day before reading Valerie Tiberius’s Sept. 3 op-ed, “Why you should swap your bucket list for a chuck-it list,” I had started my very own chuck-it list.
After months of fatigue and frustration trying to do everything I felt compelled to do, I stopped racing physically and mentally and spoke sternly to myself: “Listen up, girl. You’re 91 years old. There is no rule that says you must knock yourself out to do everything on your bucket list. Give yourself a break.” With that, I swept my desk clean, poured some chilled pinot grigio and plunked down with a good book, “An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us,” by Pulitzer Prize winner Ed Yong. And you know what? Life is good. Really good.
Ms. Tiberius’s theory of a chuck-it list has validated my own slightly guilt-ridden decision. I don’t just accept my list; thanks to her, I embrace it. Moreover, as Ms. Tiberius wrote, a chuck-it list of “abandoned goals” gives you time to find “pleasure in the achievements of others.”