Category Archives: Columns

Making The Holidays More Perfect: Woody’s Ball Drive Kicks Off

by Woody

“You can’t live a perfect day,” John Wooden believed, “without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

He taught this lesson by example. One such occasion remains as vivid as if it happened last week, not three decades ago. Actually, it is a series of remembrances that merge into one from every time I visited Coach in his Encino home.

In my mind’s eye I can still see the plastic postal bin, the size of a laundry basket, filled with outgoing fan mail: photographs, trading cards, magazine covers, even basketballs and UCLA jerseys people sent Coach to autograph. Requests for a signed Pyramid of Success were also common.

These gift balls are stacked in a real Pyramid of Successful Giving!

Surprisingly, most of these fans did not enclose return postage. No matter. Coach trekked to the Post Office once a week and footed the bill himself.

Once again, we all have a chance to emulate Coach’s example and live a perfect day by helping others who can never repay us through Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive that kicks off today.

The inspiration for this annual endeavor occurred 25 years ago at a youth basketball clinic when former Ventura College and NBA star Cedric Ceballos awarded autographed basketballs to handful of lucky attendees. Leaving the gym afterward, I happened upon a 10-year-old boy who had won one of the prized keepsakes…

…which he was now dribbling on a blacktop outdoor court, and shooting baskets with, all while perhaps imagining he was Ceballos with the game clock ticking down to the final buzzer.

Meanwhile, the real Ceballos’ Sharpie signature was quickly wearing off.

Curious as to why the boy had not protectively taken the trophy basketball home to put safely on a bookshelf, I interrupted his playing to ask.

“I’ve never had my own basketball,” he answered matter-of-factly between shots.

With visions of that boy – and other boys and girls who do not have their own basketball to shoot, soccer ball to kick, football to throw – dancing through my head that winter, I asked you dear readers to help brighten the holidays by donating new sports balls for disadvantaged kids. You responded like champions then and have every year since.

Are you up to the challenge once more? If so, drop off new balls (no batteries required!) at a local Boys & Girls Club, YMCA, Toys For Tots, fire department or house of worship. The organizations will pass them into deserving young hands.

You can also drop balls off (weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Dec. 16) at Jensen Design & Survey at 1672 Donlon St. near Target on Telephone Road in Ventura; or have online orders shipped to this same address (California, Zip Code 93003); and I will take it from there.

And please be sure to email me about your bouncing gifts at woodywriter@gmail.com so I can add your generosity to this year’s tally.

We are already off to an early start as Jim Parker, my old Star colleague, bought three basketballs way back in July. Jim is usually the first to donate, but this year he was beaten to the punch. In March, various members of the Somis Thursday Club donated 12 basketballs with John Vincent, a retired firefighter, adding 10 more, noting: “I didn’t always give to my church the way I should have when I was younger. Now that I’m retired and wiser, I’m trying to make up for it.”

And just before Halloween, Katherine and Frank Anderson gave an early treat with four basketballs while my dad tossed in five footballs.

Together, we can make the holidays a little more perfect.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Moved To Tears By Girl In Pompeii

by Woody

“We do not take a trip,” John Steinbeck wrote in his 1962 gem, Travels with Charley: In Search of America, “a trip take us.”

In 2022, in search of the Pompeii ruins in Italy during my Travels with Lisa, our 40th wedding anniversary trip took us to tears.

To learn that an estimated 2,000 inhabitants of this ancient city died in less than 15 minutes after Mount Vesuvius, less than 15 miles away, erupted two millennia ago is overwhelming. Indeed, imagining the horror of noon on August 11, 79 A.D. brings to mind the nightmare morning of September 11, 2001.

Strolling the cobblestone streets and alleyways, ducking into living quarters and brothels, seeing the basilica and amphitheatre and the massive main city square with a colossal statue of a centaur warrior, all brought on a sense of wonder.

A narrow alleyway in the ancient ruins of Pompeii.

And yet it was a single room, small and simple, that brought on misty eyes. Here, one story represented every story on that calamitous day. Here, in a sarcophagus-like glass box, was a plaster casting of one of the exhumed victims. Here was a 14-year-old girl.

She died lying prone, forehead resting on her right forearm and left hand covering her nose and mouth, as though she were pleasantly sunbathing on a beach while shielding her eyes from the summer sun and face from wind-blown sand. In truth, she was trying to protect herself from the aerial tsunami of falling ash and swirling gasses that suffocated the residents of Pompeii – in the streets, in their homes, in their beds – long before the molten waves of lava arrived.

A steady line of tourists, hushed and solemn in expression, filed past the plaster girl with many snapping photographs as if this were merely an art sculpture imitating life – or, in this case, death.

The following day, 150 miles to the north in Rome, the Pompeiian girl seemed to reappear on the beautiful Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II pedestrian bridge spanning the Tibre River and connecting the historic city centre with the Vatican. Midway across, and also centered widthwise, was a life-sized sculpture. Instead of white plaster, it was cast iron and grey; instead of a girl in her home, it was a homeless man lying in a similar prone position with his forehead pillowed on a forearm. Again, tourists took pause to reflect in thought and take pictures.

The amphitheatre with a stage of white marble.

Shortly past the end of the triple-arched stone bridge, less than a half-mile walk from St. Peter’s Basilica where the poor are daily blessed, was a third figure in a nearly identical pose as the ancient girl of plaster and the man of iron. But this was a real person, a man, in his fifties perhaps, lying on the sidewalk with his head turned to the side as if taking a swimmer’s breath, a raggedy blanket pulled up to his scraggy-bearded chin.

For all the attention given to the sculpture of a homeless man on the nearby landmark bridge; for all the reverence paid to the Pompeiian girl who died in a famous disaster long, long, long ago; the opposite was now the norm. The person still drawing breath seemed to draw only blind eyes, not empathy.

Homelessness is everydayness in most cities worldwide, yet the manner in which passerby’s collectively sidestepped and averted their eyes from a living person whereas they visually embraced a plaster girl and a cast-iron man, this juxtaposition was as silently heartbreaking as a thunderous Vesuvius eruption.

To be continued, more happily, in Rome in two weeks after the kickoff of Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive next week…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Greece’s ‘Green Gold’ and Blue Word

by Woody

“It’s better, I think, when we all stay together,” said Nicolette, a green-eyed, olive-skinned, sunny-voiced, sandy-blonde, thirtyish-year-old Greece native who served as tour guide for our group of two dozen sightseers at the ancient ruins of Olympia.

It seems to me this is wise advice for life in general. As an African proverb puts it: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”

Our bus driver, however, wanted to go both fast and far and thus expressed impatient displeasure with the dawdling driver ahead of us by blaring the horn with one hand while making a gesture of anger with the other. With his mouth, he barked briefly in his native tongue.

“We Greeks, we do not respect speed limits and traffic signs,” Nicolette sang out with a laugh, perhaps as a hint to our coachman to not tailgate and certainly not try to pass on this winding two-lane rural road.

Champions at the ancient Olympics received olive wreaths instead of gold medals, Nicolette had explained earlier at the Games’ historic site. Now, on the 30-mile drive back to port in Katakolon, she talked about the golden value of olives.

“We call olives ‘green gold’ because 600,000 families make their livings from growing and selling olives and olive oil,” she said, further noting that almost every family with a backyard has at least one olive tree, and usually three or four – or even 30, as with her childhood home – to produce olive oil for their own use.

“It is not common for people to sell their private olive oil,” Nicolette continued. “If you have more than your family needs, then you give it to friends and coworkers who do not have trees in their family.”

Winter, from early November to Christmas, is olive harvesting season. The “green gold” is always picked by hand because mechanical culling is believed to damage the trees and bring bad luck – and bad taste – to the fruit.

“Picking” is not quite accurate. Men climb the trees and shake the ripe olives loose while women and teens accomplish this by banging the lower limbs with clubs. The fallen gems are then gathered from a tarp below. One tree produces 80 pounds of the stone fruit, give or take, which yields roughly six quarts of liquid gold.

“Olive oil is our culture. My father even makes natural soap from the olive mash – it is so healthy for the skin,” Nicolette said, her flawless fashion-ad complexion serving as evidence of the soap’s beautifying powers.

A few miles later, at a four-way stop, a car to our right came to a full halt and waited even though it had the right of way. This drew the ire of our bus driver.

Ho-n-n-n-n-k! – longer this time.

Hand gesture(!!) – made more wildly.

Two syllables!!! – even louder than before.

“Greeks lack patience,” Nicolette said, again playfully, trying to calm our driver and perhaps rescue her monetary tips. “We are always in a hurry, especially when driving.”

Further proving her point, our bus lurched through the intersection as the other car, its driver obviously not Greek considering his or her patience, remained at a standstill.

“What did our driver say?” I asked Nicolette. Ever the good sport, she repeated it, translated into English, then coached me in pronouncing it correctly.

Obviously, Nicolette’s gratuity from me was not only rescued, but increased twofold. After all, she taught me all about Greece’s “green gold” and also a Greek blue word.

Onward next week to Naples, Italy, and the ancient ruins of Pompeii…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Ancient Olympics Site Sparks The Imagination

by Woody

Zeus was the God of the Sky in ancient Greek mythology, so it seemed like a smile from the heavens to visit Greece’s Olympia ruins – including the Temple of Zeus – under a cloudless sky as blue as the nearby Ionian Sea.

Adding a divine wink, my wife and I were there on an early September day, the exact time on the calendar the original Olympics were held beginning in 776 B.C. Still, it was difficult to imagine these historic grounds in their former glory because all that remains are toppled stone blocks scattered about like colossal headstones in a cemetery of disrepair.

Among the ancient ruins at Olympia with Lisa.

One area, however, does remain largely as it once was: the track stadium. Visitors today can even use the special entrance, called the Krypte, with its stone archway still intact overhead. To be honest, however, the stadium that awaits across this threshold is underwhelming. Unlike the breathtaking Colosseum in Rome, some 300 miles due south, Olympia’s “stadium” had no seating structure. Instead, two grass slopes rising up gently the full length of the track on both sides provided Standing Room Only for 45,000 spectators.

The dirt track is not an oval but rather a long-and-narrow drag strip measuring just over half the width, and nearly twice the length, of a modern football field. Start and Finish lines of white marble mark off a distance of 192 meters – called a “stade” – with races ranging from a sprint of one length to 24 up-and-backs equaling nearly a three miles.

The “Krypte” entrance used by ancient Olympic athletes.

Before competing in footraces, as well as events later added such as the long jump, javelin, wrestling, and boxing, athletes rubbed olive oil over their bodies and then dirt.

“Other than a dusty sheen,” noted our tour guide, Nicolette, a sandy blonde whose olive skin was undusted, “they competed fully nude.”

A javelin toss from the track’s Krypte was Olympia’s most important building, The Temple of Zeus. Nearly a matching bookend of the Parthenon in Athens, the temple had 38 limestone columns, each 30 feet high, surrounding the perimeter and supporting a marble-tiled roof that shone as white as a full moon. The centerpiece inside was a 40-foot tall statue of Zeus, made of copper and bronze and covered with gold, and considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The statue was stolen in the 5th century and later destroyed in a fire. Seven decades later, the temple was fully razed by a pair of earthquakes. Standing among the present rubble it is again hard to envision the glory that once rose here.

The historic starting line made of marble…

Speaking of glory and imagination, at the track visitor after visitor toed the two-foot-wide, inch-high marble starting line posing in runners’ crouches to have their photographs taken. More than a few let their visions run further, literally, by bolting into sprints as if a starter’s call had just bellowed.

Most of these Olympic daydreamers were men of middle age or older. One even shuffled with a quad cane. Not surprisingly, their initial dashes typically slowed to a jog by the halfway mark and became a walk for the return stade.

Invariably, except for the gentleman with the cane, the competitors resumed a sprint for the final 10 meters or so, always beaming as if the champion’s olive wreath was up for grabs.

Watching them, for I did not join in, I could not help but smile as well – with thanks that they did not take their ancient Olympic daydreams so seriously as to run wearing only olive oil and dust.

To be continued next week with more about olive oil…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

 

Gondolier Lorenzo and ‘Anna Silvia’

by Woody

Head to toe, Lorenzo looked as one imagines a Venetian gondolier should.

His outfit included a flat-brimmed straw boater with a red hatband; loose-fitting, short-sleeved, white-linen shirt over a polo with traditional horizontal stripes of navy and white; black pants and black rubber-soled shoes. Oh, yes, and seemingly a song on his lips.

On the recent Italian afternoon of our 40th wedding anniversary, my wife and I were excited to celebrate with an authentic gondola ride. As we strolled toward a long ticket line, a charismatic gondolier intercepted us and guided us to the nearby dock where his long and narrow boat with high-rising stern and bow was moored.

Celebrating our 40th anniversary in Venice with a gondola ride thanks to Lorenzo.

No sooner did we sit down on a thinly cushioned loveseat bench than I began to wonder if we had been hoodwinked into an unseaworthy vessel for it tilted to the right, and greatly so. A heavy wake from a passing motorboat taxi would surely have us taking on water.

Not to worry. When Lorenzo took his position, standing above and behind us atop the left-hand side of the stern, the boat largely righted itself thanks to his wiry-framed weight. Not only is this imbalance by design in all gondolas, the keels purposely curve slightly to the right because rowing with a single 13-foot-long oar, always mounted on the starboard side, naturally pushes the boat leftward.

Rowing, by the way, is actually a short motion called “stirring”. Thanks to the forearms of a blacksmith, Lorenzo effortlessly stirred the gondola through the “streets” of Venice, as the canals are called. In truth, he only made it look easy.

“I’m 62 and getting too old,” he said at one point as the thermometer’s mercury approached 90 degrees. “It’s a young man’s game. It’s physically taxing and takes more effort that it looks like.”

Lorenzo with his 13-foot-long magic wand of a boat oar.

Lorenzo can still turn back the pages of the calendar. Not only did he turn the oar into a wizard’s wand, he sometimes assisted his steering by dancing on the wall like Fred Astaire in the most memorable scene in “Royal Wedding.” Specifically, Lorenzo would lift and place a foot on the side of a building rising from the water and push off. The gondola, despite measuring 36 feet in length, fishtailed gracefully to turn on a dime around blind corners.

“Gondolas are all handcrafted only in Venice and cost very much money,” said Lorenzo, whose black beauty originally belonged to his father. The floating family heirloom, in accord with the local custom of bestowing gondolas with two female names, was christened “Anna Silvia” after Lorenzo’s mother and sister.

“My dad died much too young at age only 52,” the boatman continued, noting sadly he thus inherited his father’s boat – and job – “at age only 18.”

With more than four decades experience, Lorenzo gave us a masterpiece tour. Here was Casanova’s Palace; there was the home believed to have been the residence of Marco Polo; here was Libreria Acqua Alta, the self-proclaimed “most beautiful bookstore in the world”; there, passing overhead, was the Bridge of Sighs, its name coming from the poet Lord Byron, who wrote: “I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; a palace and a prison on each hand.”

And here, inside the bow of “Anna Silvia”, was another quote, painted in black upon a carved olive wreath of gold, from a poem by Dante: “Lo Bel Pianeta Che Ad Amar Conforta.” Translation: “The beauteous planet, that to love incites.”

Certainly this beauteous city, and our smooth-as-a-magic-carpet ride with Lorenzo, incited anniversary love.

To be continued next week in Olympia, Greece…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

By Any Nickname, Venice Is Lovely

by Woody

Our Italian gondolier, Lorenzo, told us Venice has nearly as many nicknames as bridges.

This is an exaggeration, for spans over the canals number nearly 400, but Lorenzo did easily spit out a mouthful of sobriquets: La Serenissima (The Most Serene), Queen of the Adriatic, The Floating City, and The City of (take your pick) Canals / Water / Bridges / Love / Masks, the latter relating to the annual Carnival.

Not to quibble with Lorenzo, who shares his name with Jessica’s lover in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” and whose own family roots reach down through the shallow waters of the canals deep into the earth below, but I always thought Paris owned trademark rights to “The City of Love”.

Lisa and me beginning our trip in beautiful Venice, Italy.

And yet after an hour gliding as serenely as an autumn breeze through a labyrinth of canals, I concluded that all of the nicknames are fitting – most especially, perhaps, The City of Love. After all, my wife and I, seated together on a narrow wooden seat, on a Venetian afternoon as sunny and warm as the Ventura day we exchanged wedding vows exactly 40 years earlier, at one point floated past Casanova’s Palace.

To be sure, there is much to love about this enchanted city. Upon our arrival less than 24 hours before, after checking into our hotel after a long, long, long night, day and evening of travel, we found a nearby trattoria – cozy Italian restaurant. It was well past 9 o’clock when we were seated at a table for two on the patio, under the stars with an orange half-moon rising, the lapping water of the Grand Canal a short stone toss away. The pasta and desserts, all homemade by Maria the owner, were as perfect as the setting.

The following day, our actual anniversary, we visited St. Mark’s Square and the magnificent Basilica di San Marco. Thereupon, we took to heart – and feet – the sage advice a dear friend of mine, a travel writer who has visited the four corners of the globe, always reminds me of before I embark on a trip: “Be sure to turn down a hidden alleyway, or go inside a quiet doorway off the beaten path, because that’s where you’ll find some of the most memorable experiences.”

A view of the Grand Canal from the Ponte di Rialto Bridge.

Venice has pedestrian alleyways off of alleyways off of alleyways. Getting lost in this funhouse-like mirror maze was how we found a quiet doorway to a small shop that was like a museum exhibition of hand-blown glassworks made on nearby Murano island. The breathtaking pieces ranged from elegant goblets and bowls that seemed as delicate as butterfly wings; to graceful butterflies themselves; to a resplendent turtle the size of a couch cushion and an even larger dolphin, both featuring swirling currents of blues and greens within as if filled with colorful seawater.

Less beautifully, the canals are so opaque they seemed filled with wet paint. This filled Lorenzo with great sadness.

“The water was so clean during the worst of the pandemic,” he recalled, referring to the Grand Canal, “we saw dolphins.”

Meanwhile, the inner canals – measuring one to two meters in depth, depending on the tide – were so crystalline that a gondolier peering down from his standing perch could see to the water’s bottom with such clarity as to accurately call a coin heads or tails.

Alas, motorboat traffic has returned fully, and with it the green-sheened murkiness, causing 62-year-old Lorenzo to lament: “Man never learns. Man is a dummy.”

Taking a gondola ride with Lorenzo, however, was a smart decision – to be chronicled further here next week…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Vacation Photos – Less Can Be More

by Woody

Third try was indeed the charm.

After twice having a dream vacation canceled by the coronavirus nightmare, my better-half, who is half-Italian, and I finally made it to the land where her family roots reach deep into the fertile soil. Specifically, we sailed fully around the thigh-high boot setting out at Venice, through the narrow Strait of Messina at the toe, up the western coast and over to Barcelona with nine port stops en route.

The starting and ending bookends proved to be our favorites, although perhaps this was partly because we spent extra nights in both and were thus able to explore them a little more fully than the daytime destinations.

The ancient Colosseum in Rome was definitely photograph worthy!

A cruise, in my view, is sort of like speed dating in that you learn who (or where) you want to get to know better. In this case, we didn’t ask Croatia and Albania for their phone numbers. Don’t get me wrong, the former’s Old Town Dubrovnik – with white marble streets and forts of stone so magnificent “Game of Thrones” filmed myriad scenes there – was memorable, yet an afternoon inside these historic walls was plenty. Similarly, a few hours sufficed at the ancient sites of the Olympics in Olympia, Greece, and the Pompeii ruins near Naples, Italy.

Our two ports in France – Villefranche-sur-Mer and Toulon – are both gorgeous coastal locales, but to be honest we much prefer Ventura’s similar charms so feel no strong gravitational pull to return. Rome and Florence, however, like Venice and Barcelona, already beckon us back for longer sojourns.

In the coming weeks, I will share here some snapshots-in-words of my favorite experiences from our two-week trip: from memorable people and meals to the canals of Venice to the Colosseum in Rome to the breathtaking La Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, and more.

Speaking of snapshots, my cell phone camera kept freezing with the command: “Out of Storage. Free Up Space.” Just my luck…

…good luck, that is.

In these old lands I was forced to go old-school. Instead of mindlessly snap-snap-snapping endless digital photos, I was forced to point-and-shoot judiciously. It was like going back in time and using a camera with film that comes in 12, 24 or 36 exposures. Instead of paying to have prints made, I had to spend time deleting files.

So it was I found myself taking in the sites, and sights, in their full grandeur through naked eyes instead of miniaturized on a pixel screen. Thus, I found myself absorbing the scenes and memorizing the moments before selectively choosing the very best ones to photograph.

In this reframed frame of mind, it saddened me to see so many others touring these goosebump-inducing historic places, even a museum filled with Picasso artwork, while largely squinting at their tiny cameras. They seemed more concerned with reliving these experiences in the future rather than living them in the present. One romantic couple we encountered seemed to be experiencing their entire gondola ride through the canals of Venice digitally instead of actually.

Conversely, instead of hundreds of photos, so many as to be overwhelming, I came home with only a few “rolls” of selectively snapped images to be developed at Fotomat, so to speak. This was a silver lining, as mentioned, for it seems to me that too many pictures is like not being able to see the forest for the trees. Indeed, the graceful stone columns in La Sagrada Familia are meant to invoke towering trees, a forest of them, something one might miss if looking through a camera lens.

To be continued next week…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Rants and Raves on This and That

by Woody

If you want sugar and pumpkin spice and everything nice, call your grandma on Zoom because I’m in a puppy dog ate my homework kind of mood.

For starters, I was annoyed because what I thought was an extreme case of jetlag after spending 14 hours in the air – with a baby across the aisle from me crying for half of it – instead turned out to be COVID-19…

…but I love that thanks to modern science/medicine and being vaccinated and double-boosted, my symptoms have been akin to a very bad cold.

I get annoyed because I know the same handful of anti-vaxers who routinely gunk up my inbox will do so again now…

…but I love hitting the email “trash” key.

I get annoyed by impatient and rude drivers…

…but I love it when two lanes merge into one in a construction zone and every single driver allows another car in like a clothes zipper merging together perfectly.

I get annoyed when half the sesame seeds on my bagel fall off and make a mess…

…but I love it when a frozen yogurt has a mess of toppings.

I get annoyed by knuckleheads…

…but I love that my daughter calls knuckleheads “yo-yo-heads.”

I get annoyed at myself because I continually underestimate the slow-as-a-doctor’s-waiting-room traffic on the local freeways and wind up late for engagements…

…but I love when I hit a string of green lights in town and wind up arriving ten minutes early – which, as Coach John Wooden said, is actually merely being right on time.

I get annoyed when a doctor’s office is running 30 minutes behind schedule…

…but I love it when a receptionist performs a magic act and squeezes me in the very day I call in with an illness or ailment – which may be why another patient has to wait 30 minutes.

I get annoyed when a quick-service restaurant meal for eating on the premises, not take-out, comes wrapped in two pounds of aluminum foil, cardboard and paper – a lot of waste for 30 seconds of use…

…but I love it when I remember to take reusable bags to the grocery store.

I get annoyed when autocorrect makes me look like a yo-yo-head…

…but I love when my Star editor corrects a typo to keep me from looking like a yo-yo-head.

I get annoyed that school children see a need to send military care packages filled with requested items like cookies, chips, trail mix, jerky, granola bars and candy bars, and gum. If our troops want these items, the military should provide them!…

…but I love when kids send letters, cards and handmade items to our soldiers.

I get annoyed when I read the news crawl across the bottom of the TV screen and then lose track of what the news anchor is saying…

…but I love crawls that show me all the other scores and updates while watching a sporting event.

I get annoyed when dog walkers don’t clean up their pets’ messes…

…and I would love an ordinance that requires these yo-yo-heads to clean the shoe soles for those of us who take a messy misstep.

I get annoyed when I see litter anywhere, most especially on our lovely beaches…

…but I love the enthusiasm of volunteer beach clean-up days.

I get annoyed by the hypocrisy of so many yo-yo-head politicians…

…but I smile recalling my grandpa Ansel’s refrain that sometimes it’s good to deal with dummies because they make you feel so smart.

There, I feel so much better I think I’ll Zoom call my sugar-and-spice granddaughter.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Bookend Poems on Autumn’s Arrival

by Woody

Poems about autumn, which arrived almost unexpectedly yesterday and as silently as if sneaking in on tiptoes for summer still seems in the air, surely outnumber all the leaves of reds and golds and flaming oranges in a forest of maple trees.

Not unexpectedly, one of the best of these poems was written by Emily Dickinson, a short offering published in 1896 and titled “Nature Poem, 28: Autumn.” It reads, in full:

“The morns are meeker than they were, / The nuts are getting brown;

“The berry’s cheek is plumper, / The rose is out of town.

“The maple wears a gayer scarf, / The field a scarlet gown.

“Lest I should be old-fashioned, / I’ll put a trinket on.”

The nuts here on the Golden Coast may not be getting brown, but our mornings certainly are noticeably meeker than before. Too, our evenings now grow darker, earlier. Indeed, it is as if the setting sun is in a race to call it a day a little sooner each evening. Soon, a walk on the beach may require a gayer scarf.

Greeting autumn with a hello embrace means in turn bidding a melancholy adieu to summer. Indeed, I love summer and will miss her dearly. In the heart of my youth, summer was without question my favorite of the four seasons for two reasons: warm weather and no school.

I have since learned that choosing a favorite season is a fool’s errand. It is like asking me to choose between Steinbeck, Hemingway, Twain and Shakespeare. Impossible.

Spring, for starters, is blooming flowers and flying kites and, as Tennyson poetically observed, when young men’s fancies turn to thoughts of love – so what’s not to love about this fair season?

Summer is beach outings and pool parties, fireflies and fireworks, ice cream and vacations – again, what’s not to adore fully?

Winter, meanwhile, is cozy fires and family gatherings, mistletoe and Auld Lang Syne and the New Year’s promise of approaching spring – how can you not love all that?

Thus, my favorite season is whichever one is currently visiting. And right now that is autumn. Many call it “fall”, but I think “autumn” is lovelier. By either name, its arrival brings with it…

…a crispness in the air that is invigorating.

…coffee shops and market shelves offering Pumpkin Spice This, Pumpkin Spice That, Pumpkin Spice Everything!

…corn mazes and hayrides and pumpkin patches and school children spending half an hour to select The Perfect Pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern with all the care of a bride choosing her wedding dress.

…carving jack-o-lanterns, going trick-or-treating, and having an excuse as a grown-up to dress up like a superhero.

…comfort foods such as homemade soups, chili and cornbread, marshmallows toasted over a fire, pumpkin pie/bread/pudding/cookies/coffee.

…football and Thanksgiving.

…fall foliage showing its true colors, not as grandly in Southern California as on the East Coast and Midwest, yet in a way our limited-edition outbursts of Monet-worthy leaves-scapes make them all the more precious and beautiful.

Speaking of leaves, fall’s arrival brings to mind another of my favorite poems, a bookend to Dickinson’s “Autumn.” Titled “Fantastic Fall” it was written by my daughter, Dallas, then in the fourth grade:

“Fall is a great season, here is my reason:

“The leaves on trees turn golden brown,

“Then the leaves fall DOWN, Down, down…

“You rake them into a giant hump,

“Next comes the good part – jump, Jump, JUMP!

“Leaves sail through the crisp autumn air,

“And fall down, Down, DOWN everywhere!”

Yes, right now I love autumn best. Until winter rings my doorbell.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Some Books Merit Special Shelves

by Woody

No matter how many books you own, I have a hunch you have one special shelf that holds your most cherished volumes.

For example, I have a lawyer bookcase with glass panels that contains a prized signed statuette of John Wooden, clay hand imprints my son and daughter made in kindergarten, and other such keepsakes. A different shelf within proudly displays 20 moss-green hardcover 1922 editions of Mark Twain’s works and an 1884 printing of “Red-Letter Poems By English Men And Women” with 648 gilt-edged pages featuring a Who’s Who lineup that includes Shakespeare, Byron, Browning (both Robert and Elizabeth), Keats, Donne, Milton, Tennyson and Wordsworth.

Despite their age, none of the above volumes are of great monetary value – yet all 21 are priceless personally because they belonged to my maternal grandfather and are the lone survivors from the inheritance of his vast book collection, the rest having been lost in the Thomas Fire that claimed my father’s home.

Family ties are behind two more special shelves belonging to dear friends of mine.

Kay Giles, easily one of the most well-read people I know, not surprisingly has upwards of 2,000 books in her home – among them 16 volumes that merit their very own top shelf in a prominently displayed bookcase. They are the full collection of Charles Dickens’ works, a special edition circa 1930, handsomely bound in rich walnut-brown leather with gold lettering on the pristine spines.

Most importantly, they belonged to Kay’s paternal grandparents and she calls them her “dearest inheritance.”

“My dad packed them up from his parents’ house in London when he went back there to take care of their affairs after my grandmother died,” Kay remembers, noting she was 16 years old at the time.

Houston Wolf was even younger when his father brought home a set of books that would similarly become dear to him, a 1952 printing of “The Great Books of the Western World”, a whopping 54 volumes that weigh about as much as a grand piano. Humble in appearance with cloth covers in a rainbow of hues – blue, green, red and gold, all faded by time – the books came with an equally modest waist-high wooden bookcase, the middle shelf now sagging slightly under its load.

“I’m so proud to think that I’ve carted these books around with me wherever I’ve moved for nearly forty years,” Houston shares, noting there have been many, many moves. “I’m also proud I never sold them, even in periods of desperation – at least what I considered to be desperation at the time. These books, and the knowledge I knew I’d someday absorb, were my security blanket. As long as I had these books, my life would be okay. I would always have something to live for, if just to protect these books.

“At my very lowest,” he continues, “I was offered $500 for the set. I couldn’t do it. Then the same gentleman then offered me $500 for ONE book from the set – Plotinus, Volume No. 17. I’ll never, ever read Plotinus, probably. I don’t even know who he is. But I couldn’t, wouldn’t, do it to a set of books that deserved to remain intact. So I refused. And I really could have used that $500.”

Here’s the kicker: Houston confesses he hasn’t read any of his beloved books!

“So why do I keep them?” he says. “Pride in having taken care of them all these years. And ambition to someday read them.”

To paraphrase Robert Browning: Ah, a To-Be-Read shelf should exceed one’s grasp, or else what’s a heaven for?

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com