Author Archives: Woody

Part 2: The Man Who Loves ‘Ulysses’

by Woody

My new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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There was no tinkling bell above the door. Instead, my entrance was greeted by a singsong voice as warm as a Writers’ Tears toddy: Helloooo, and where are you from?”

It was not the last music the proprietor of Sweny’s small bookshop in Dublin, Ireland, would treat me to. Shortly thereafter, he retrieved a handsome guitar and sang—in Gaelic, so I have no idea what the words meant, much like reading James Joyce can sometimes feel; yet nonetheless, again like Joyce’s prose, was lovely to the ear.

Patrick Joseph Murphy, introduced in this space two weeks past, is as Irish as his name suggests; so Irish his family founded iconic Murphy’s Stout Brewery in County Cork, some 150 miles southwest from Dublin, in 1856, its dark nectar becoming the first beer transported around the world on refrigerated ships; so Irish his accent makes you think of leprechauns.

Patrick James Murphy, proprietor of Sweny’s bookshop, in song…

In appearance, however, “P.J.”—as he prefers to go by—brings to mind America and Hollywood and “Back to the Future” movies, specifically the charismatic mad scientist, Dr. Emmett Brown, with longish wild electrified white hair and the enthusiastic verbal energy of a lightning bolt.

Also like Doc Brown, and in a nod to his fourth-great-grandfather Frederick William Sweny, who originated the store as a pharmacy in 1853, P.J. always wears a white lab coat at work. Too, on this day, P.J. wore an easy smile and a bowtie as colorful as a stained-glass window.

His family continued to own and run “F.W. Sweny & Co. Ltd. Dispensing Chemists” through 1926, at which time it remained a pharmacy in other hands until 15 years ago when it was sold to become—“Great Scott!” as Doc Brown would say in exasperation—a dispenser of upscale coffee. Unable to bear that thought, P.J., then in his late 60s, reacquired the store and turned it into a bookshop devoted solely to famed Irish writer James Joyce, who frequented the original Sweny’s and included a lengthy encounter within in his epic novel “Ulysses.”

At well over 700 pages, treading fully through the tome is the literary equivalent of climbing Mount Everest; many who begin the journey do not reach the summit—or final page. P.J. admits he quit in the early going the first time, at age 18, he set out to conquer the voluminous volume. Many years later, he tried again and succeeded, and has kept climbing as untiringly as Sisyphus ever since.

At last count, P.J. has scaled Mount “Ulysses” a staggering 73—yes, seventy-three—times! Adding to this Herculean erudite feat, he has done so in all seven languages (English, Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian) he speaks, often reading aloud to groups he hosts at Sweny’s nearly every evening. Not surprisingly, he readily quotes passages from the novel at length from memory.

“I’ve earned an unofficial PhD when it comes to Mr. Joyce, I should think,” Professor P.J. noted. “I’ve read everything he wrote, though of course ‘Ulysses’ is my favorite.”

Later, during our hour-long visit, he cajoled: “After being in Dublin, you must read ‘Ulysses.’ It’s all about Dublin. After you finish it you can come back from California and we can talk about it more.”

With a wink, P.J. added a nudge: “ ‘Ulysses’ is best enjoyed with the book in one hand and a whiskey in the other.”

“That’s a lot of Jameson,” I laughingly replied, then asked for a shorter Joyce recommendation. Thus I purchased a copy of “Dubliners” that, at only 202 pages, was no threat to push my suitcase overweight as would “Ulysses.”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

Finding Beauty After Being Lost

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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In response to a warm tide of readers expressing disappointment that my weekly column recently cut back to every other Friday, henceforth I will select one of my old columns – let’s call them vintage – from the archives to fill this space between new offerings. The one originally ran in October of 2010.

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Google Maps was of no assistance when I was recently lost for well over an hour inside a corn maze – a maize maze, if you will.

Exploration Acres in Lafayette is billed as “Indiana’s Largest Corn Maze” with more than 8 miles of paths. I’ll take their word for it, although to me it seemed no less than 20 winding miles of dead ends. When I finally escaped – from the Entrance, not the Exit, I must confess – I had a strong craving for cheese.

I also had a reminder that we often take things in our own backyard for granted. Most of the fellow mice I met in the maze were tourists and it struck me the locals were missing out on this Midwestern fun.

The bucolic beauty surrounding the maze drove this point home. Autumn’s change of colors was in full glory, the trees ablaze in rainbows of golds and oranges and reds. I spent my first 12 years of life in the Midwest – Ohio – but this honestly felt like the first time I had witnessed fall’s pageantry of watercolored leaves.

As the late British philosopher Bertrand Russell observed: “In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”

The change of colors made me hang a question mark on my backyard that is Ventura County and the Gold Coast. How many things do I – and perhaps you, likewise – take for granted here, from the scenic sights to historical sites; from entertainment attractions to recreational adventures?

To list one local gem of a destination such as the San Buenaventura Mission or Ronald Reagan Presidential Library is to omit myriad more. And that doesn’t touch on natural wonders like our harbors and Lake Casitas and the Los Padres National Forest, to mention but three. Suffice to say, many of us too often take our backyard for granted unless we have out-of-state visitors to show around.

Perhaps the brightest Gold we ignore is our Coast itself. Because we can go to the beach in mere minutes, and with ease, we often put off doing so until tomorrow, next weekend, when summer arrives. Meanwhile, others drive for hours, even fly across the country or further, to vacation on our beaches and play in our surf; to take a boat to the Channel Islands; to marvel at our sunsets that would make Monet misty-eyed.

 Sometimes you need to get away from what is special to fully appreciate it. I recall last Thanksgiving when we joined my wife’s side of the family at a beach resort timeshare in Mexico they all go to annually. It was our first time, and over and over we kept hearing about the spectacular ocean sunsets we were going to be treated to.

“Ooh! Aah!” the others marveled each evening as the sun sank, sank, sank and disappeared over the horizon.

Ho-hum thought my wife and I, unimpressed because the sky didn’t change colors like a kaleidoscope, like a nautical version of autumn trees in the Midwest, as is the habit on our Gold Coast. Nor was there an island silhouetted in the background to add dimension and further beauty.

Even being lost in a corn maze was a more memorable.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

Part 1: A Most Unique Irish Bookshop

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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Don’t judge a bookstore by its front façade is a lesson I learned in Ireland, in Dublin, in the late afternoon after stepping inside a dog-eared shop, taller than wide, with a recessed front entryway bookended by two display windows above which are three rising arched panes, each one topped by rectangular signage of capitalized gold letters on black, reading left to right:

DRUGIST / SWENY / CHEMIST

To be sure, nothing on the outside suggested a bookshop. My first impression—and second, third, sixth, for I walked past it the daily from across the street for nearly a week—was that it was a pawnshop. And so, while I adore bookshops as dearly as I do ocean sunsets, I kept passing by without stopping to look more closely.

Some of the 45 editions of “Ulysses” all in different languages.

On our last full day in the Emerald Isle’s capital not too long ago, however, after getting happy in Kennedy’s Bar, established in 1850 and famous as a hangout for renowned writers Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde and James Joyce, I pointed kitty-corner and inexplicably suggested to my wife, “Let’s check it out.”

It proved to be like finding a four-leaf clover.

Built in 1847 as a physician’s office, six years later it became a pharmacy: “F.W. Sweny & Co. Ltd: Dispensing Chemists.” Flipping the calendar pages further forward to 1904, James Joyce stepped through the front door and consulted with the pharmacist, Frederick William Sweny himself, a visit that is described in great detail in Chapter 5 of Joyce’s novel for the ages, “Ulysses.”

Sweny’s also lies within 50 yards of the location where, that very same year, Joyce was stood up by Nora Barnacle. Two days later, on June 16, his future wife yielded to his advances and thus the date would famously become know as “Bloom Day” in honor of the hero, Leopold Bloom, in “Ulysses” which takes place entirely on that single day.

And so it is that Sweny’s has the great honor of being immortalized in sumptuous prose within the tome’s pages when Bloom comes into the shop. Two very brief excerpts: “He waited by the counter, inhaling the keen reek of drugs, the dusty dry smell of sponges and loofahs.” And: “He strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under his armpit, the cool wrappered soap in his left hand.”

More than a century later, I walked inside and inhaled not a reeky smell, but a lovely fragrance of a bookstore and later strolled out with a book in my left hand—Joyce’s “Dubliners,” a handsome limited edition green-cloth hardback with gilt lettering wrappered old-timey in brown paper.

The upper reaches of the soaring shelves, for the ceiling is as lofty as a poetic tree, remain stocked with antique medicine bottles of sea-glass green and ocean blue and fog white. The lower shelves, and handsomely old countertops too, are filled with a different medicine, for the mind—books.

Uniquely, every dose of pages for sale is by James Joyce: “Finnegans Wake”, “Dubliners”, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” … and, most prominently, “Ulysses”—including a collection of editions in 45 different languages. Also on display is a rare death mask of Ireland’s arguably most celebrated writer.

But what truly makes the Joyce-themed Sweny’s one of my all-time favorite bookshops is the proprietor, the great-great-great-great-grandson of Frederick William Sweny. Patrick Joseph Murphy, who goes simply by P.J., is as interesting as the day is long—rather, as interesting as “Ulysses” is long at 700-plus pages.

And I will tell you much more about P.J. here next time.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

Laughing Through Mourning Tears

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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“Tonight’s the night we make Greg shoot milk out his nose,” the 10-year-old oldest of three brothers whispered conspiratorially to the middle sibling, two years his junior, as the youngest boy and victim, age 5, sat across the dinner table totally unaware.

For nearly six decades I have remained in the dark that one of the most memorable meals in our family lore had been orchestrated, at my expense, by my two big brothers. With the statute of limitations for being grounded having long expired, Doug, the middle brother, recently confessed to the premeditation during a beautiful eulogy for Jim.

Though their plan was hatched hastily, it nonetheless was executed to perfection: when I started drinking greedily like a parched man lost in a desert, a wicked wisecrack was delivered and the resultant burst of laughter turned my nose into an Old Faithful-like geyser of chocolate milk. If you have never had milk spew out your nose, I do not recommend it for it stings so greatly as to make your eyes cry.

Here is something else I want to share from the “Celebration of Life” honoring Jim’s masterpiece span that was cut far too short by cancer (today, September 13, he would have turned 69): Never be so afraid of saying the wrong thing that you fail to say anything to those who are grieving.

Indeed, I have come to realize since Jim’s passing, and my 97-year-old father’s death only a few months prior also to despicable cancer, that any words of condolence are more appreciated than no words.

Even just a couple words can speak volumes and mean the world. When I posted my column about Jim’s death on Facebook, a dear friend posted a comment of exactly two words in full—“Oh, Woody”—that touched my heart deeply and brought to mind a line by Bodil Malmsten, a Swedish poet, who once conceded: “This hurts too much for words.”

When words hurt too much, just the simple expression “I’m sorry” is a welcomed balm for grief. As another friend says to the idea of worrying about saying something awkwardly: “When it is said from the heart, it will be received by the heart.”

Those who shared their own memories of Jim, in person or by note, warmed my heart more than they can know. Donations in his honor, flowers or planting a memorial tree, or dropping off meals were all likewise touching.

At the service, I am not sure which was a more powerful salve for the soul: seeing the familiar faces one knows, without question, would be there—or faces that were wonderfully unexpected. Of the latter was a teacher from my adult kids’ past who, despite it being a school day, hustled nearly a mile on foot to the church during lunch break to express his condolences before the memorial got underway and then raced back to class.

Being in a mourning fog, and also mentally rehearsing the eulogy I would shortly give, I do not recall exactly what our teacher friend said to me. And yet I will not forget that he, and every single person who expressed condolences in any fashion at all, made Maya Angelou’s often-quoted words ring true:

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Doug, meanwhile, made me wonderfully feel 5 years old again with his belated confession. Had I been drinking milk I surely would have snorted it out while once again laughing through my tears.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at

Short Walk to Long Remember

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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Going for a walk, Walt Whitman poetically penned, left him “enrich’d of soul” and I am of a similar mind.

Indeed, few things leave me feeling more “enrich’d” than a walk on the beach, barefooted naturally, ideally at the shoreline where retreating waves leave the sand wet and cool and firm, but also little squishy between one’s toes.

A walk in the woods is likewise soulful, Walden Pond being one of my most memorable strolls for it is as beautiful as it is famous, and yet such natural splendor is not required to for a walk to be unforgettable.

Nor is a magical walk measured always by miles or hours. The other day, as example, a short walk on a city sidewalk instantly claimed a spot in my heart alongside a second-date beach stroll with a lovely brunette who would become my wife; alongside a hike up-Up-UP the switchbacking trail of Yosemite Falls with my son when he was in grade school; alongside a saunter down the aisle with my daughter, her hand wrapped around my arm and my heart wrapped around her little finger, on her wedding day.

I wish you could see a photograph of my latest walk to remember. It was snapped surreptitiously from behind as my 5-year-old granddaughter and I walked side by side, her little hand reaching up and engulfed in mine reaching down.

Maya, her sandy-blonde hair in a ponytail, seems a human rainbow in a blue-white-and-peach T-shirt, shamrock green leggings and pink sneakers, with a purple backpack decorated with a yellow heart and smiley face.

Her monochromatic escort, meanwhile, wears grey hiking shorts, a black pullover with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows for the morning is sunny and already warm, and black flip-flops.

Unseeable from behind, Maya and I are also wearing smiles.

We are on the way to school, her next-to-last day of preschool before starting kindergarten. To the left of us are some handsome trees, parked cars to the right, and a scattering of fallen leaves on the narrow sidewalk underfoot.

Our strides match perfectly—our outside feet stepping forward and inside feet pushing back in unison in the photograph—as Maya takes slightly longer steps than usual, almost skipping with helium in her socks, while I have shortened mine.

Walking from our car parked down the block to the school’s front door, then two hallways to Classroom 1, takes only a few minutes yet is time enough to talk a little and laugh some, too.

“What are you going to do in school today?” I ask.

“Play,” Maya answers with unusual succinctness.           

“Play is good,” I say and try again: “What do you think you are going to learn today?”

“I don’t know or I’d already know it,” Maya replies, looking up with a wry and playful smile.

She proceeds to tell me that NeNe, this being what she calls my wife, wants to come to school—not to drop her off, but to be a student so she can learn new things.

“What classroom would she be in?” I ask and the reply comes sprinkled with a giggle: “I think there isn’t a classroom number high enough because NeNe is too old for my school.”

“How about me?” I follow up. “Could I be a student here?”

“Oh, yes, Bruno,” Maya sings, using her pet name for me. “You can be in my classroom because you act like a kid.”

“An early-morning walk,” said Henry David Thoreau, echoing Mr. Whitman, “is a blessing for the entire day.”

My day had been blessed indeed, my soul “enrich’d.”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

The Bamboo Field Life Lesson

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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I have a craving for corn on the cob.

Also, memories being a funny thing, my mind has leapfrogged from fresh corn to garbage cans and jumped again to saying “hello” to total strangers. All of this because Chi Chi Rodriguez, one of the greatest and most charismatic golfers ever, died last week, his age matching the number of keys on a piano and in my cerebrum’s ear I hear the music of a story he once told me.

Let me begin, however, with a memory about Sparky Anderson, the late Hall of Fame baseball manager, who, on his daily morning walks through his Thousand Oaks neighborhood, would personally deliver onto front doorsteps any newspapers still resting in driveways. Moreover, on trash day he would go for an evening walk and move empty garbage barrels from curbside up to the garage doors.

Asked why, Sparky replied simply: “Woody, it don’t cost nothing at all to be nice.”

It also don’t cost nothing at all to be friendly, as another Hall of Famer, basketball coach John Wooden, illuminated to me with an anecdote. He was driving a friend to the airport after a weeklong stay in Southern California and the Midwestern visitor complained to his transplanted Hoosier host: “John, I honestly don’t know how you can stand to live here. No one is friendly like they are back home.”

“Sure they are,” Wooden answered. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve been here an entire week and not a single person out on the street or sidewalks has said ‘Hi’ to me.”

“Did you say ‘Hello’ to them?” Wooden wisely asked.

“Well, no,” the visitor explained with slight exasperation. “I didn’t know any of them.”

Even to strangers Wooden made friendliness a fine art. An excellent example is an encounter a woman shared with me after I gave a talk about my long friendship with Coach.

She was in a coffee shop, very early, literally the only customer at the moment. Enter Wooden, who walked over—remember, every other table was available—and politely asked if he could join her. Years later, she still lighted up in the retelling of her masterpiece breakfast with a perfect stranger.

Which leads, as promised, back to Chi Chi Rodriguez, one of the nicest and friendliest athletes I ever had the privilege to meet, and the inspiring lesson that sprang to life in my mind upon hearing of his death.

“When I was a young boy we had a little field that was overgrown with bamboo trees,” Rodriguez had recalled of his childhood in Puerto Rico. “My father wanted to plant corn, but clearing the bamboo would have taken a month. He didn’t have the time because of his job. So every evening when he came home from work, my father would cut down a single piece of bamboo.”

A pause.

“Just one piece.”

A knowing smile.

“Every evening.”

A longer dramatic beat.

“The very next spring, we had corn on our dinner table.”

A hole-in-one grin.

“The bamboo story to me is the secret to success,” Rodriguez went on. “If you really want something and set your mind to it and work hard enough, one by one, little by little, miracles happen.”

And so, this weekend I plan to have corn on the cob on my dinner table; sweet and fresh-picked from a roadside stand; boiled with some salt and a little butter added to the water; then served in honor of little miracles and a 5-foot-7 golfer and champion philanthropist who stood tall as a single stalk of towering bamboo.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

Writing Streak’s Rhythm Slows by Half

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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I have a thing for streaks.

I have been married to my college crush for 42 years, come next month, “God willing and the creek don’t rise” as the saying goes; have run at least three miles for 7,698 consecutive days and counting; and for 730 weeks in a row, also through kidney stones, Coronavirus and vacations, have written this general interest column for The Star.

Beginning today, it will instead run every other week.

A reader could be forgiven for hoping the cutback will improve the quality. After all, it will allow me to be twice as selective of my topics; to biweekly cull the worst—“least good” would be more charitable—column I would otherwise undertake and simply not write it. And thus tender only the better of the pair.

The fly in the QWERTY alphabet soup is that I possess no such writer’s ESP. Indeed, I am often surprised when a column I consider slightly frivolous strikes a chord with myriad readers who praise it more widely than ones I consider superior.

Compared to producing a fresh 600-word theme weekly, at first blush writing fortnightly seems like easy street, and downhill at that, yet to be honest it spawns more than a little anxiety. For the past 14 years my life has had a familiar rhythm; with the beat slowed by half, will I lose my writing groove?

Moreover, without a weekly deadline will Writer’s Block—something I have never believed in previously, precisely because deadlines are an inoculation against it—come knocking? Or, will I feel pressure to swing for a home run every at-bat and thus strike out more frequently instead of choking up on the bat handle now and again?

In my press box days of yesteryear, for a good while I wrote three columns a week. Then, for a time, it was pared to two and I suddenly felt an extra dose of pressure because each column carried 50 percent more weight. Before, when I wrote a clunker I had a chance to make amends in two days. But with only two columns per week, the next opportunity was three or four days away—and back-to-back foul outs quickly added up to a weeklong slump.

Similarly, now I will have to wait two Fridays instead of just one before I can try to make up for a subpar column. And bookended bungles, a full month of disappointing my readers, is a literary bogeyman peering over my shoulder.

So, then, why cut back? Let me first express gratitude to My Favorite Newspaper for affording me this time-honored soap box, stewarded before me by the esteemed Chuck Thomas and Bob Holt and Joe Paul, for too many newspapers have done away entirely with local columns. Therefore, even appearing in this space only every other week still feels like a sandcastle holding its own against a rising tide.

Again, why now? The recent release of my debut novel “The Butterfly Tree: An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations” has been such a rewarding experience, with readers and reviewers praising it and even a handful of awards already honoring it, I have a growing hunger to write a second novel without delay and hopefully more.

Furthermore, the recent deaths of my father and eldest brother, just four months apart, have been stark reminders not to put off things one wishes to do. Lastly, with my first weekly column appearing July 24, 2010, this past July 19th’s column seemed like serendipitous anniversary timing.

So, see you next week—oops, make that in two weeks.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

Stung in the Heart by a Yellowjacket

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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Let me begin, despite eyes blurred by tears as I write this, with a laugh.

It was a hot summer day in my boyhood, in Ohio, in the late 1960s. My two older brothers and I, our younger sister too, had gone swimming in a pond.

Suddenly, on the short walk back to a weekend cabin, Jim, the eldest and five years my senior, started yelling and hopping wildly about as if dancing on red-hot coals. He was 13 or 14 years old and gangly, already his full adult height of 6-foot-3 but skinny as a brand-new No. 2 pencil with a shock of hair as red as its eraser.

The reason for the impromptu Irish jig was because, somehow, a yellowjacket had gotten inside his cutoff jeans swimsuit and was stinging and biting him, again and again, over and over, in the crotch while Jimmy frantically tried to unbutton and unzip and peel off his clingy wet shorts. For us three sibling spectators, it was side-stitch hilarious.

Today, my heart feels like it has been assaulted by a dozen angry yellowjackets: Jim died earlier this week, mid-morning Monday to be precise, a midsummer day with too much lovely sunshine for such searing sorrow. He was 14 months shy of the Biblical “threescore years and ten,” and oh, god, am I furious at cancer for stealing his wonderful life.

The heinous disease attacked relentlessly over the past seven years, but Jim valiantly kept extending the battle. He lost both his ears, literally, but never his bottomless sense of humor. At a wedding reception in a museum a few years back, Jim removed an ear prosthesis and positioned it on a tooth of a replica dinosaur skeleton that was not roped off. As he posed for a selfie, a docent materialized and gently commanded: “Sir, please remove your ear from the dinosaur’s mouth.” T-Rex-sized laughter was the norm whenever Jimmy was around.

A hundred columns would not suffice in telling all about my big brother, but this single sentence speaks volumes: Jim was more of a dad to me than my dad was. The latter was overly busy with his surgical career and so it was Jimmy who showed me how hit a baseball and throw a football spiral; taught me to play cribbage and euchre; helped with my homework.

Jim showing off his new “ear” prostheses!

When I was very young and would have a nightmare, it was Jimmy’s bed I climbed into—and he would let me stay until morning. When I was older, he gave me the sex talk and taught me to drive a stick shift with nary an angry word when I grinded the gears of his Pinto.

Throughout my adulthood, Jimmy remained a role model and was there for me in big ways and small. A small example: he would text me when one of my columns especially delighted him. How dearly I am going to miss those big-bro kudos.

A big example: during our forever-goodbye visit mere days ago, Jimbo reached for my hand and held it and squeezed it as he whispered, using a private nickname he gave me when I was maybe 5 and ever after always called me by: “Grog, you’ve been a great little brother.” Tears instantly overflooded my eyes, yet helium filled my heart.

Jim married his college sweetheart, was a Girl Dad three times over, and eventually had seven grandchildren—and his next greatest love was being a surgeon. I think his blood flowed Scrubs Green in color, not red. His patients absolutely adored him; nurses and fellow doctors, likewise.

Let me end with another summer memory, this one when Jim was in medical school, in New York, and I flew out to spend a couple weeks with him. At one point he shared that while learning to insert a catheter they each had to do so to their own self. I flinched empathetically and said something like, “Ouch! That must really sting.”

Not missing a beat, Jimmy replied: “It wasn’t nearly as bad as a yellowjacket in my shorts.”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

Readers Recall Rite of Passage

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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My rite-of-passage adventure with my 5-year-old granddaughter, Maya, taking her to get her first library card, as chronicled here last week, prompted a torrent of notes from readers.

As a different Maya, the poet Angelou, once wrote: “I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.” Indeed, it seems childhood memories of the library never leave us as.

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“We moved an average of once per year when I was growing up,” Wayne Kempton shares. “As soon as we arrived in a new town, Mom would take me to the local library. Mom loved reading and education, and she passed along those loves to my sister and me.”

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Maya proudly displaying her new library card!

“I also remember getting my first library card!!” wrote Sheila McCollum. “My great aunt was a librarian and though she did not participate with me getting my card, she quietly observed. When my mom and I left the library that day, each with almost too many books to carry, we were two happy girls! Countless visits ensued to our favorite place, the Oxnard Public Library!”

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“Your column entitled ‘It was a big day for a little girl’ touched my heart deeply!!!” Michele Dunn shared. “I take my 3- and 4-year-old grandchildren each Wednesday to story time at the Hill Road branch and have interacted with Miss Veronica—she is a jewel!”

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“My mom walked me to Fillmore Library and helped me get my card,” Noreen Berrington fondly recalls. “Many lovely walks there!!! I still walk there!”

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“I am a lifelong reader,” Sharon Marshak began. “I was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, by two Holocaust Survivors with limited English speaking skills. So my mother took my brother and me to the library almost every day. To help herself, and us children, learn English, she would read children’s books out loud.

“Today, many foreigners learn English by watching TV, but we didn’t even have one at that time (I was born in 1955). Both of my parents’ educations were cut short due to the war, but my mother went to night school as an adult; got her high school diploma; and applied for a New York Library job. Her first assignment was at the main Brooklyn Public Library. It was a two-bus-each-way commute for her, but she loved it.

“Neighborhoods in Brooklyn were like small towns back then. All the kids went to the same schools; the shops were family owned, many by local people; so everyone knew my mother! As a teenager I had a part time job there.

“I left Brooklyn after college and moved to Santa Monica. I went to Northridge University to get my teaching credential and Masters degree, worked as a teacher’s aide and a few nights a week worked in the Santa Monica library.

“To this day I love libraries. I raised my two children to appreciate all that libraries have to offer and now try to do the same with my six grandchildren.”

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“I grew up loving libraries, looking upon them as a safe place to escape the realities of my childhood’s difficult life,” Dave Stancliff shares. “Escaping into a book has always been my favorite form of entertainment.”

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“I don’t remember exactly when my mom took me to get my first library card,” Matt Bell reminisced, “but I do remember riding my bike to the library and discovering Jules Verne. Couldn’t put those books down. Thanks, Mom, for helping me get my card.”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

Big Day For A Little Girl

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here) and orderable at all bookshops.

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“What kind of adventure?” she asked.

“It’s a surprise,” I volleyed back.

Being five years old, Maya loves adventures and loves surprises and so her answer naturally was “Yes!!!” with three exclamation marks, at least, perhaps even two more to match her age.

Getting Maya into her child’s car seat was an adventure in itself, for today’s contraptions require squirming into harness straps, buckling buckles, then tightening, re-tightening, and re-re-retightening the straps as if trying to secure Houdini in a straightjacket against escape. Apollo astronauts readying for liftoff in their capsules surely fastened up more easily.

Maya’s and my rocketship was headed to the moon—or to Mars, or elsewhere in space; to anywhere on earth or even Middle-earth of the hobbits; to Wonderland or Oz; to any place a book, and one’s imagination, can take you for we were headed to the library.

Maya is already a regular patron at her local library in the Bay Area, but has been denied a library card there for being too young. “Stuff and nonsense!”—as Wonderland’s Alice tells the queen—is my thought on that rule. I got my first library card the summer before starting kindergarten and still clearly and fondly remember checking out “Where the Wild Things Are” that magical day. Just as my mom took me then, I now took Maya’s mom to get her library card at age 5.

I wish you could have seen dear Maya’s face, radiating with excitement like it was Christmas morning come early in June, when Veronica, the librarian on duty at the Hill Road branch, cheerfully handed her a “Ventura County Library” plastic library card. To Maya’s eyes, its childlike artwork of green mountains and a blue sea beneath a yellow sun was as beautiful as a Monet painting.

“It’s my very own?” Maya asked, her tone an amalgam of disbelief and awe. Veronica smiled and said “yes” and then bent down when Maya reached out to give her a thank-you hug. Again, I wish you could have seen it.

And, oh how I wish also you could have seen my granddaughter sign the back of her “very own” library card, writing M-a-y-a with the careful penmanship of John Hancock signing the Declaration of Independence, albeit in small printed letters not oversized cursive.

Studies show that children who grow up going to the public library will have greater literacy, and numeracy, in adulthood. Public libraries, invented in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, also foster in children a lifelong love of not just reading, but of learning, no small things.

That is all well and good and important, but Maya’s delight as she zoomed off like a rocketship to search the shelves for a handful of books to bring home during her Ventura visit said far more than any studies or statistics can.

And when Maya was unable to find any of the Owl Diaries series, currently her favorite books followed closely by the Unicorn Diaries, she learned a valuable lesson: ask a librarian for help. Quick as two shakes of a unicorn’s tail, Veronica guided Maya to a distant, but low and reachable, shelf with a selection of Owl Diaries. Just like that, a frown of frustration became a big smile.

Indeed, it was a big day for a little girl. For me, too, for in her glowing face I could again see my adult daughter’s 5-year-old glee and also relive my own long-ago childhood adventure, such is the magic of a library card.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.