Monthly Archives: September 2013

Column: Thoughts On This & That

by Woody

This, That and Some Other Thoughts

 

            Warning: Pepto-Bismol is advised before sampling this smorgasbord of thoughts and comments guaranteed to cause anger and indigestion to some readers.

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            If you have ever badly sprained your ankle and had to soak your foot in a tub of ice water, you know how the initial freezing shock turns into a burning pain before your foot eventually goes numb.

 

            I fear that mass shootings in America are now so common, so routine almost, that our shocked hearts are becoming numb.

 

            Surely we are numbskulls if we cannot find some common-sense common ground to fight this insanity, and quickly before the next senseless shooting – or three or six or . . .

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            Tennis legend “Big Bill” Tilden used to defeat “Little Bill” Johnston with such regularity in the 1920s that newspapers reportedly kept the headline “Tilden Beats Johnston – Again” set in type to save time.

 

            Sadly, TV stations today probably similarly keep “Mass Shooting” and “Shooting Rampage” graphics programmed into save-get keys.

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            Did I miss the story in the sports section about Major League Baseball holding an “Ugliest & Scraggliest Beard Contest” among its players this season?

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            I have to agree with the naysayers who have jumped on Michelle Obama’s case for suggesting we all drink one extra glass of water a day to improve our health. Our First Lady should have added: “And drink one less Big Gulp of sugary soda pop!”

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            If TV weather men and weather girls insist on patting themselves on the back as if they personally gave us beautiful skies and nice temperatures, then I insist they start taking the blame for the stuff that causes floods, droughts and wildfires.

 

            And by the way, isn’t it well past time they were called “weather WOMEN.”

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            If you have or know a young reader, or reader-in-training, mark your calendar three weeks from today – Oct. 12 – for the seventh annual StoryFest from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the park area of the Ventura Unified School District’s Education Service Center at 255 W. Stanley Ave. in Ventura.

 

            The fun-and-free event will feature storytime readings aloud for children (who will all be given a book to take home), food and entertainment, as well as information about education and heath services offered by co-coordinators Ventura Education Partnership and First 5 Ventura Neighborhood for Learning.

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            Speaking of literacy, congratulations to the Ventura County Writers Club for celebrating its 80 th anniversary of working to find a cure for the dreaded affliction “writer’s block.”

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            Video game industry CEOs can cite a few studies until they are blue in the face that there is no connection between shooting/killing games and violent behavior, but anecdotal evidence – the latest being that Washington Navy Yard assassin Aaron Alexis was reportedly addicted to violent video games – shouts otherwise.

 

For one thing, studies on violent video games contain statistics – and we know what Mark Twain said: “There are lies, damned lies and statistics.”

 

For another, the military employs video simulators to train and desensitize soldiers.

 

            Also, if what we watch doesn’t affect our thinking and our actions, then why is video advertising on TV screens, smartphone screens and movie screens so effective?

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            If the NRA changed its aim, and name its to the National Reefer Association, is there any doubt marijuana would be quickly legalized? I mean, if the National Rifle Association can help make it legal for the blind to carry guns in public in Iowa, wouldn’t pot be an easy slam dunk?

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            Look-alikes: Washington Redskins head coach Mike Shanahan and Ventura County Supervisor Steve Bennett.

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            Last week I saw nearly 3,000 small American flags dramatically displayed row after row after row on Pepperdine University’s Alumni Park lawn overlooking the Pacific Ocean, each flag honoring a life taken by the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

 

          Seeing a handful of flags at half-staff around town this week in honor of the 12 people murdered by a mad gunman Monday was no less heartbreaking and perhaps more maddening because unlike after 9-11 we are not rallying together to prevent the next similar tragedy. 

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. His new memoir WOODEN & ME comes out later this month and is available for pre-order at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

 

 

 

Column: Pop’s Winning Smash

by Woody

Octogenarian Out-Smashes Nadal

 

            Today’s theme is tennis, but only loosely. So if you are not a sports fan keep reading anyway. The plot includes stinging suspense and fright in the night.

 

To begin, poor Novak Djokovic. You had to almost feel sorry for the world’s top-ranked tennis player in the finals of the U.S. Open. At times during his recent 6-2, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 loss to Rafael Nadal inside Arthur Ashe Stadium, Djokovic looked like a guy swinging a broom at an angry wasp inside a family room.

 

            In other words, Djokovic looked like yours truly. Remarkably, no light fixtures or picture frames were harmed in my showdown; more remarkably, the wasp eventually was by a two-handed swat.

Pops "The Bat Slayer," right, with grandson Greg and me.

Pops “The Bat Slayer,” right, with grandson Greg and me.

 

            While visiting my dad later that day, before I even mentioned my Man vs. Wild victory he nonchalantly one-upped me by a mile.

 

Switching channels between an old Western, a baseball game and the U.S. Open, Pop turned down the TV volume from its normal “Jet On A Runway” to “Leaf Blower” so I could hear as he filled me in on what he’d been up to the past few days.

 

            After current events were exhausted, I nudged him into retelling some of his favorite old stories. This is kind of like putting on an old Bill Cosby album – you know the routines by heart, but you smile and laugh each time anew anyway.

 

Only a month ago, I would have told you I knew every single one of my dad’s stories word for word. Then out of the blue in a span of 48 hours I heard two new ones that had escaped my ears for 53 years: my dad had been a mailman a couple years during the Christmas rush while in college and that he nearly got a big tattoo of a panther on his shoulder while in the Navy but decided not to for fear of hepatitis.

 

The latter story was prompted by a heavily tatted football player on TV, so now as my dad casually asked, “I told you about the bat, right?” I naturally assumed the Dodgers game on the screen had reminded him of yet another story I had never before heard.

 

Perhaps the bat in question was related to his boyhood, like the time he met Babe Ruth but didn’t have a baseball to get autographed? Maybe in the attic he had just found a baseball bat signed by Ted Williams?

 

 “No, you didn’t tell me about the bat,” I replied.

 

I was right about the attic, but wrong about what had triggered the story. It had been the tennis match (I’ll soon explain the connection) on TV, not the baseball game. The bat in question was a . . .

 

            . . . BAT! Of the pointy eared, sharp-fanged variety.

 

            Pop had been watching a movie – he forgets which one, though it is as safe as gold in Fort Knox to say it was filmed before 1960 – and after seeing that it didn’t end differently on his 57 th viewing, went to bed. No sooner had he turned off the lights when a black bumblebee on steroids started zooming around overhead.

 

            A wasp in broad daylight made my pulse rev like racecar, but a bat in his dark bedroom didn’t make Pop’s 86-year-old heart with a decade-old stent so much as skip a beat.

 

            “I’ve never had a problem with bats,” he said surprisingly given that rats give him the heebie-jeebies.

 

            This bat soon had a problem with my dad.

 

After shooing it into the bathroom and shutting the door, Pop fetched a tennis racket from the attic. Specifically, a Jack Kramer wooden model more suitable for appraisal on Antiques Roadshow than battling a bat in the belfry – or bathroom.

 

            Armed with the old-school racket and limping slightly on an old leg that required total knee-replacement surgery a few months ago, my dad rushed the net so to speak by entering the bathroom.

 

            As I said, Nadal couldn’t have done any better. With one swing – “kind of an overhead smash” the victor recalled – it was game, set and match.

 

            “I gave it a pretty good pop!” Pop said proudly.

 

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. His new memoir WOODEN & ME comes later this month and is available for pre-order at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

 

 

 

 

 

Column: Special Samaritans

by Woody

Serving Up Random Kindness

 

            Following a morning that included a dentist’s drill, a handful of cell-phone-talking drivers so recklessly rude they made me grit my numbed teeth, and a slow-moving line at post office, I was in a mood to write a column of rants.

 

            This changed when I was in line at the supermarket and a woman with a hand basket of items kindly told a young mother with a full cart, and a fussy baby, to go in front of her. This same woman soon allowed another person to leapfrog her, and then a third who also seemed in a rush.SpecialNote

 

            “I’ve never seen anyone let more than one person go ahead of them,” said the cashier, smiling in admiration.

 

            Thus clouds yielded to sunshine, which brightened further with a few feel-good stories that arrived on my computer screen via links on Twitter, Facebook and The Star’s on-line edition. The latter chronicled more than 500 Cal Lutheran University students who, as part of CLU’s “You Got Served” program, spent a day cleaning up hundreds of pounds of trash nearby Olivas Links Golf Course and Harbor Boulevard in Ventura.

 

            Across the country in a pizza parlor in China Grove, NC, Ashley England and her family “Got Served” a surprise when the dinner bill arrived.

 

Ashley, in a story reported by North Carolina’s WBTV, explained that her 8-year-old son Riley has special needs resulting from a severe form of epilepsy. His seizures, which number up to 100 per day, began at age 18 months and have robbed his ability to speak. The boy’s frustration at being unable to communicate leads to outbursts, like the one at the pizza parlor.

 

“He threw the phone and started screaming,” Ashely noted. “The past few weeks have been very hard and trying for us, especially with public outings. Riley was getting loud and hitting the table and I know it was aggravating to some people.”

 

Before she could calm the storm, a waitress came to the table – not to ask Ashley to take her son outside, but to tell her that another customer had paid her family’s dinner bill and also sent over this note: “God only gives special children to special people.”

 

The mystery Samaritan’s kindness made Ashley cry.

 

“To have someone do that small act towards us shows that some people absolutely understand what we are going through and how hard it is to face the public sometimes,” said the grateful mother.

 

            A similar anonymous kindness recently transpired at Tampa International Airport when a traveler had his credit card declined at the check-in counter.

 

Confused and in a rush to make his flight, and perhaps most of all “extremely embarrassed,” the man stepped out of line to check his credit-card balance.

 

Upon returning to the counter with the matter hopefully sorted out, he learned that a Good Samaritan had generously paid his baggage fee and left a note reading: “Hey, I heard them say your card was declined. I know how it feels. Your bag fee’s on me. Just pay it forward the next time you get a chance. Have a safe flight. :)”

 

Here is a third random act of kindness I read about this same day. While vacationing with his family a father was approached by a man trying to sell a flower for money to buy food for his own family, or so he claimed.

 

Remarkably, generously, and perhaps naively if he thought the money would go for food and not alcohol, the vacationing father gave the man a 100-dollar bill.

 

“Fifteen minutes later,” the vacationer was quoted in the on-line story, “we see the same guy walking on the sidewalk again. This time, he had at least 10 bags of groceries hanging from his arms, one of which contained diapers.”

 

Touched by the above examples, I went back to the supermarket and bought a turkey sandwich and Gatorade which I gave to a woman out front who looked down on her luck. I know we are encouraged to donate to worthy charities in order to discourage panhandling, but sometimes you just have to do a “You Got Served” deed right now.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. His new memoir WOODEN & ME comes later this month and is available for pre-order at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.