Monthly Archives: April 2017

Hitting the Books and Backboards

by Woody

1StrawberriesCoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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Hitting the Books and Backboards

            Aristocles would love the Moorpark High boys’ varsity basketball team.

Better known as Plato – the nickname given him by his wrestling coach, from the Greek word for broad, platon, because of his wide shoulders – Aristocles famously preached “a healthy mind in a healthy body.”

The Musketeer varsity hoopsters’ healthy combined 3.611 grade point average for 2016-17 made them the CIF-Southern Section Academic Champions for all boys’ basketball teams from schools with enrollments above 1,500 students.1reportcard

Being No. 1 in the classroom, and being honored at the Angels’ baseball game at Anaheim Stadium on Wednesday, took some of the sting out of a 3-23 record on the court.

The attitude to hit the books as hard as the backboards begins with head coach Blake Jenkins.

“I definitely preach academics and being a model citizen,” Jenkins shares. “I try to hammer home that basketball and athletics need to take a backseat to academics as well as how we conduct ourselves off the court, in the classroom and out in society.”

Jenkins’ sermons resonate with his entire congregation as evidenced by all 45 players in the boys basketball program combining for a GPA north of 3.0.

Below are some of their thoughts on being STUDENT-athletes.

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“I believe academics and sports have a great relationship,” says sophomore Harrison Hanlon, a frosh/soph shooting guard with a 3.8 GPA. “Academics teach me to make a goal and be smart on the court, and the court teaches me to be a hard worker in the classroom.

“The CIF Academic reward is a better reward for our personal futures and future of the program than just a mere league win.”

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“I believe that being a good student and performing in academics go hand-in-hand,” agrees freshman Arvin Hosseini, a frosh/soph guard with a 3.7 GPA.

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“In my opinion, if you want to play a sport you need to have great study habits and time management,” says Jacob Korotzer, a sophomore JV center with 3.6 GPA.

“The next thing you need is to is be devoted to the sport – or to anything you do in life.”

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“In my family, academics come before basketball,” says freshman Jonathan Saiki, a frosh/soph point guard sporting a 4.0 GPA. “If I don’t keep my grades up then I am not allowed to play basketball.

“Sports teach me about hard work and effort which translates to the classroom in the form of studying hard and giving effort in class.

“To be a committed student-athlete, I have to sacrifice hanging out with my friends and free time. I sometimes have to stay up late doing school work, but it is worth it in the end.”

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“Academics teach you responsibility and school comes before sports,” says freshman Noah Martinez, a frosh/soph center with a 3.8 GPA.

“The sacrifices I have to make to be a student-athlete are sacrificing my time and energy, but I don’t regret it for one second.”

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“I think tests are like games in sports because they are actually both tests for how hard one practices or studies,” says junior Branden Johnson, a JV forward with 3.8 GPA.

“Passing a test is like winning a game and failing a test is like losing.

“One sacrifice I had to make to be a committed student-athlete was to give up watching TV completely and it helped a lot. To me, academics come first, then sports.”

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“All my life, I was told that education is the most important thing you can acquire,” says junior Matt Aung, a varsity forward with a 3.7 GPA.

“The way you treat people and how you give back to the community is also very important. The feeling of self-satisfaction in knowing that you contributed to someone’s happiness and well-being is hands-down the best feeling out there.

“And I firmly believe I, along with the other eleven guys on our team this past year, are smart and young individuals – but more importantly, great people.”

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Plato’s response, I imagine, might be: Gratulatione. Vehementi factum. Congratulations. Smartly done.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

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TEDx Talker to Write Home About

by Woody

1StrawberriesCoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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A TEDx Talker to Write Home About

“If I had more time,” Ben Franklin wrote to a friend, “I would have written a shorter letter.”

Julie Merrick takes time to hand write short letters. And long letters. Most of all, she writes letters frequently.

It’s a surprise her right hand isn’t in a permanent claw from writer’s cramp.

1cardjulieTo give you an idea, April is “National Card and Letter Writing Month” and last year Julie took on its stated challenge to write one letter daily for all 30 days. She nearly doubled the goal with 56 letters.

She is about half as prolific almost every month.

“Some ladies buy Coach purses – I buy stationary,” Julie laughs, and then rattles off a string of her favorite stationary stores near and far. Among her favorite recent purchases are cards featuring a drawing of a smartphone with the text: “Not Sent From My Phone.”

Julie believes the pen is mightier than the keyboard.

“A letter means so much more than an email because the receiver knows you went to the trouble of buying a card or stationary, writing the letter by hand, addressing it, putting a stamp on it and mailing it,” Julie explains.

“A handwritten letter conveys that spark of you, your personality, that doesn’t come across when you text or type an email.”

Handwritten letters are time machines, Julie believes, explaining: “Letters preserve lives for future generations. They can be read and re-read and treasured.”

To call Julie an expert on handwritten letters and cards is not hyperbole. This past January, she gave a TEDx Talk on the subject titled “The Gift That Can Last Forever.” (Filmed in the Camarillo Library, it can be viewed at www.tedxcamarillo.com along with eight other local speakers.)

Like a well-written short letter by Benjamin Franklin, Julie’s 12-minute address was long in the making. Her preparation included a four-hour TEDx coaching session.

Next, to assist in memorizing her polished script, Julie taped 49 color-coded index cards on a large mirror in her Camarillo home.

Then she practiced ad nauseam. She practiced to her husband, Bob, a dozen times. She practiced countless times to herself while driving.

“I even practiced in front of my dogs,” she says.

The rehearsals paid dividends. Julie’s delivery on camera was flawless and charismatic; her message filled with passion and inspiration.

“Handwritten letters have the power to change lives,” Julie told her live audience and then shared a few letters that changed hers, including one from two decades past.

In 1987, Julie and Westmont College track team traveled to a meet in Richmond, Va., where their coach grew up. While the rest of the team was outside, Julie ventured inside the house to visit her coach’s grandfather.

“Ten years later on a Thursday afternoon,” Julie indelibly remembers, she received a handwritten letter from her coach thanking her for spending that one-on-one time with his grandfather.

“That really made me realized that the simple gesture of a handwritten letter can actually change lives,” Julie says.

In truth, she had been a letter-writer long before that day.

“Letter-writing has always been a part of me,” Julie notes. “It was instilled in me by my mother when I was young.”

Julie was further inspired by an aunt living in Minnesota.

“She wrote me when she traveled,” Julie recalls. “I don’t have kids, so now I send cards to my friends’ kids when I travel.”

Indeed, Julie walks her TEDx Talk. She sends cards and letters to family, friends, acquaintances and even strangers. For example, she read a newspaper story about the record holder for blood donations. She tracked down his address on the East Coast and mailed a congratulatory card.

Since her TEDx Talk, which has been viewed nearly 1,500 times on YouTube, Julie has received an avalanche of handwritten letters. Also, ironically, numerous emails and texts, too, from people saying they have been inspired to write more handwritten letters.

“The response has been humbling and surprising,” Julie says.

One thing that is not surprising: Julie wrote thank-you notes to everyone who had a hand in her talk.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

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Long Line Leads to a Long List

by Woody

1StrawberriesCoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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Grateful for a Long Line at the Post Office

            Abraham Lincoln said, “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”

In line at the post office the other day, I found myself behind two women who seemingly had their minds made up to be unhappy. Indeed, their conversation was little more than a long list of complaints.

“Why don’t they open another window? . . . I know, they’re always on break. . . . I hate tax season. . . . I don’t even want to talk about my taxes – no refund this year. . . . You won’t believe what my son’s teacher did . . . I don’t know why I bought these shoes – they hurt my feet.”

1yosemitefalls

Yosemite Falls can make one’s mood soar.

On and on it went, yet a surprising thing happened – instead of contagiously bringing my mood down, they lifted it. They inspired me to begin a mental list of simple gratitudes as an antidote to their poor attitudes.

Below is part of that list – not the easy biggies like family and health and a home, but small pleasures and gratitudes. I hope you may be inspired to come up with your own list. Here goes . . .

Having a topic for a column – as happened in line at the post office – fall into my lap.

Wildflowers blooming along the roadside.

Ventura County’s best-in-the-world strawberries in wintertime – and summertime, too. Also, dipped in chocolate.

Watching birds in flight, especially when they float on an updraft without moving their wings.

Butterflies.

Finishing a really good book. In fact, being near the start or in the middle of a really good book.

Related topic: Libraries and librarians and bookstores. And newspapers.

Novocain when I have a cavity or need a root canal.

A foot massage. Actually, both feet being massaged.

Staring at the ocean, listening to the waves crash, watching surfers, seeing energetic dogs run playfully on the beach.

Seeing energetic kids on a playground.

Crawling into a bed freshly made with cleaned sheets.

Going to bed being so excited about tomorrow that I cannot wait to for morning to arrive.

Hearing an old song that transports me back in time to high school or college, to distant friends and places, even to a different me.

Terrific, caring, dedicated teachers. I might as well simply say: teachers.

Being smiled at.

The Channel Islands – viewing from afar and visiting in person.

Yosemite Valley. Especially Half Dome. Best of all, Yosemite Falls.

The feeling that comes after a good day of writing.

Reading something, anything, everything my author daughter writes.

A sincere compliment – giving one as well as receiving one.

Receiving a handwritten letter, note or card – and writing one.

A stately tree with patches of sunlight beaming through its full foliage.

Palm trees.

Pizza. Especially New York City pizza. Best of all, when eating it with my son while visiting him in Manhattan.

A run. Especially along the Ventura beach bike path. Best of all, again, when in the company of my son when he’s visiting me back here.

Ventura County’s talented musicians and artists.

Ventura County’s growing collection of microbreweries that rivals anywhere.

Related to above: A pint. Sometimes a second pint.

Murray has been making our family smile for ten years.

A square, or three, of dark chocolate.

Traveling. Near or far, new places or to see familiar faces.

A welcome-home hug, whether having been gone just a couple hours or returning after months apart.

Visiting an impressive art museum – or a school on Art Nite.

Talking with – more accurately, listening to – someone who has a true passion about something. The less I know about the subject, the better because the more I then learn.

Something, anything, everything that makes me laugh. This includes laughing at myself.

A hot shower after being outside in the cold.

A long hot shower when traveling outside of drought-ridden California.

Friends. Good friends. A few great friends.

Man’s best friend. Tail-wagging dogs. Especially, of course, my goofy, loveable, gray-faced boxer Murray.

One closing gratitude: having endless reasons to make my mind up to be happy.

How about you?

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

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Kids’ hunger for knowledge is good

by Woody

1StrawberriesCoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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School kids should only be hungry for knowledge

The story might be apocryphal, although my belief is it is true. It certainly rings of truth. It reminds me of my friend Danny in elementary school.

Danny did not have a dad. Not because of divorce; death. He never told me how his dad died and I didn’t ask.

Back in the late 1960s, kids brought sugary treats – cupcakes or Rice Krispies squares, usually – to school on their birthday. Danny never did. Not because he had a summer birthday, but because his mom couldn’t afford to feed 20 kids.

She had a hard time feeding Danny. I didn’t know this for a long while.

1schoollunchMost of my friends and I ate packed lunches, but Danny always got the hot lunch. This meant he had to wait in the cafeteria line. With our head start, kids with packed lunches got out to the playground sooner.

One day I complained to Danny that we were getting tired of having to wait for him before choosing up sides for games. I suggested, ignorantly, he should start packing his lunch.

He confided he had to eat the hot lunch because he got it free.

It’s funny the things you remember. During sleepovers at Danny’s house I remember he always wore socks to bed. More specifically, what I can’t forget is that his tube socks always had holes in them – sometimes with two or three toes sticking out.

Danny’s family was poor.

Now you will understand why a short essay on Facebook by a woman named Veronica, a post that has been shared more than 50,000 times, hit me like a punch in the empty stomach. It reads:

“I was a free lunch kid. I will not offer my backstory because it should not matter whether or not we were ‘worthy’ or ‘irresponsible’ trash. I was a hungry child.

“Without free lunch and sometimes free breakfasts, I would not have eaten until dinner. There was no money to get a hot lunch and I suspect no money to buy supplies to pack lunch. I was a hungry child.

“I do not know whether free lunch made me work harder. I do not know whether free lunch improved my grades. I do not know whether free lunch improved my classroom behavior. What I know is that I was a hungry child and I was fed.

“I received my lunch without embarrassment or isolation. Every day, I went through the line with the standard hot lunch. I waved at the nonjudgmental lunch lady. I was a hungry kid and I ate my lunch.

“I was a hungry child and our government, through your taxes, fed me.

“Thank you.”

Veronia’s story made me think of another person who went hungry as a child: Olympic champion Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

“We’d stop to eat after a track meet and everyone else would buy something but I wouldn’t,” Jackie once told me, recalling her long-ago days on the East St. Louis Railer youth track team.

“I’d have to wait until I got home because I didn’t have any money. My mom always taught us, ‘If you don’t have, don’t ask.’ I’d run six events and still say I wasn’t hungry.”

Her youth coach finally figured it out. Since Jackie didn’t have – and wouldn’t ask – he started insisting she share some of his food.

Fast forward four decades. Jackie, who competed in four Olympics and won six medals (three gold), never forgot that early life lesson and kindness. When youths at The Jackie Joyner-Kersee Boys & Girls Club in East St. Louis kept showing up hungry, Jackie didn’t wait for them to ask for food. What if they didn’t ask? She started a free meal program.

If you ask me, feeding hungry kids is a greater legacy than Olympic gold.

Back to my friend Danny. I didn’t start buying the hot lunch – except on pizza days – but I did start waiting to eat my packed lunch until Danny got through the cafeteria line.

Other friends soon followed suit. Then we would go out to the playground together.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

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These News Stories Expire April 1, 2017

by Woody

1StrawberriesCoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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Breaking News with an Expiration Date

            BREAKING NEWS: The items in today’s column expire at midnight tonight.

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HOLLYWOOD – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today issued a press release announcing the embarrassing mistake that the wrong envelope was read 1ragingbullannouncing the winner for Best Motion Picture. The 1980 Oscar belatedly goes to “Raging Bull” instead of “Ordinary People.”

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NEW YORK – In stunning medical news, more than 10,000 oncologists in the United States, and nearly 200,000 other health workers specializing in cancer treatment, filed for unemployment today after losing their jobs.

“It’s the most wonderful news imaginable,” one newly unemployed oncologist said. “We have wiped out cancer with a vaccine so there just isn’t any work for us anymore.”

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WALL STREET – The New York Stock Exchange remains in a tizzy after Facebook stock tumbled for the fifth trading day in a row.

The drop coincides with a week where log-in use of Facebook fell 98 percent because, according to one analyst: “People have decided to go out and live their lives in the real world instead of through social media.”

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CAMARILLO – It was announced today that Mike and Bob Bryan, greatest doubles team of all time, were accidently switched at birth and that Mike is actually Bob and Bob is Mike.

Tennis fans continue to be unable to tell them apart.

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EVERYTOWN, USA – Millions of Baby Boomers marched nationwide in protest of their own nagging complaints about Millennials being overly coddled with an inflated sense of entitlement.

The protesters’ signs included: “Millennials Are Magnificent!”

“Our College Education Was Affordable – Sorry!”

“Millennials Rock at Volunteering!”

“What’s The Heck Is Snapchat?”

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LAS VEGAS – City officials today sent a letter to the National Football League expressing buyer’s remorse.

“We feel the Raiders are too sinful even for Sin City and hereby withdraw our approval for the team to relocate here in 2020,” the letter reads in part. “However, we will happily build a new stadium for the Patriots.”

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NEW YORK – National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell today announced that beginning with the 2017 season, the NFL will address its Traumatic Brain Injury and concussion epidemic by having all players wear 1930’s era leather helmets without facemasks.

“We feel this will stop the players from using their heads as weapons,” Goodell said.

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THOUSAND OAKS – Amgen Inc. today announced second thoughts about opening a new facility in Tampa, Florida, a move that would affect approximately 500 current employees through layoffs, relocation and reassignment.

“The City of Thousand Oaks has been extremely good to us over the years,” a spokesperson said. “We feel a responsibility to return this loyalty to Ventura County and to our local employees who would be adversely effected by the Florida proposal.”

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@realDonaldTrump – “This is my last tweet. Ever! Twitter is 4 losers! Tweeting is a bigly waste of time. So is golf. Time to get to work to KEEP America Great!”

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SILVER SPRING, MD – The FDA, citing a series of recent scientific studies, today officially declared that chocolate chip cookies are a “super food” high in antioxidants as well as high in taste.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Education today announced it will spend billions of dollars expanding a national curriculum in MAC – Music, Art and Creative writing – and place an emphasis on attracting the brightest students.

“While we recognize STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – helps make society better,” a spokesperson explained, “we feel without question MAC makes for better citizens.”

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            COOPERSTOWN, NY – Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred today announced a new rule aimed at shortening game times. Beginning with the 2017 season openers, batters will get only two strikes and three balls.

“A 2-and-1 count is the new 3-and-2,” Manfred noted.

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NEW YORK – The Pulitzer Prize Board today announced a surprise award honoring Woody Woodburn.

A board member explained: “Woodburn is not as good a writer as he should be; he’s not as good as he wants to be; but thank goodness at least he’s better than he used to be.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

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