For a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” mail a check for $25 to:

Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

* * *

Thiscolumnalmostlookedlikethis

Our hot-water heater burst last week and so, nearly, did I.

It was not the 50-gallon boiler that had me steamed for it was still under warranty. This was both fortunate and rare, as my experience with warranties has largely been that they expire two weeks before something breaks.

It was something else that broke – and, par for the course, no longer covered by warranty – that caused my consternation. The space bar on my computer went kaput.

More accurately, the right five-sixths of the space bar stopped working. As a result, unless I struck the left corner perfectly mytypinglookedlikethis.

With the habit ingrained since a high school typing class of tapping the space bar dead center, suddenly mytypinghasmostlylookedlikethis.

The Band-Aid remedy has been to go back and painstakingly insert all the missing spaces while focusing my finger’s aim on the left edge of the space bar.

The real cure has proved even more time consuming. At last count, I have dropped my laptop off at the repair shop four times. And four times the fix has failed.

The initial diagnosis for an “easy fix” of solely the space bar proved wrong. Once inside, the technician discovered the entire keyboard panel needed to be replaced. A new one was ordered. I took my laptop home since a finicky space bar is better than none.

The new keyboard arrived. I dropped off my laptop. Alas, the wrong part had arrived. I retrieved my laptop while a replacement for the replacement was ordered.

A new problem. When I returned home for the third time, the screen remained black. It turns out that during the aborted procedure with the wrong part, a thingamabob was unbeknownst damaged.

And so, while my Frankenstein of a laptop await new parts and new life, this column is being composed on my cell phone. Typing a text or short email on a tiny screen is a modern convenience, but a 700-word essay seems a hassle.

And yet my irritation with the situation was short-lived.

First, I thought back to writing my first newspaper stories in college on a manual typewriter. Rewriting and editing were done with a pencil.

Next, I remembered the first laptop computer I used – a Tandy TRS-80 Model 100 sold by Radio Shack and the staple of newspapers in the early 1980s. It displayed a mere six short rows of text and the cursor moved like it had taken three Quaaludes.

By comparison, my Samsung Galaxy S7 phone is like a Tesla to a Model T.

Besides, the tools should not really matter. For example, I was once touring a golf course Greg Norman was designing. On a par-4, impromptu, he picked up a borrowed driver and hit a perfect shot onto the green.

Similarly, I’m sure a gifted violinist can make any fiddle sing, a gifted artist can create magic with any paintbrush, and so should a professional writer not need anything more than a pencil and paper.

But what really gave my mindset the reboot it needed was recalling a story a friend once shared with me. It was about a writer facing real challenges.

For starters, the writer was told time and again he couldn’t be a writer – because he was only 12 years old.

No matter the naysayers, he dedicated himself to working on a novel every day. He sometimes wrote passages in a notebook during class; often during lunchtime; always after finishing his homework at night.

Moreover, his family couldn’t afford a computer at home. Again, no matter. He wrote longhand and then typed his story in the computer lab after school.

In other words, this boy refused to be deterred by unsupportive teachers, by not having a computer, by too much homework. He made time, found his own inspiration, borrowed a computer.

I never heard if that boy ever finished his novel – and yet I know he did. I imagine he is working on his third or fifth novel by now.

Writing one column on a cell phone is duck soup. The space bar even works perfectly.

* * *

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

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

• Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com
• Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon

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For a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” mail a check for $25 to:

Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

* * *

Bird and Book Lovers Chime In

Picture a flock of seagulls flying in en masse for a sandwich left behind on the beach, or Harry Potter fans lined up for a midnight release, and you get an idea of how crowded my email in-box has been the past two weeks.

My readers, it is clear, love birds and books.

*

From Kathy Youngman: “I love birds, too. I have a birdfeeder outside my kitchen window. I watch yellow finches, orange birds and many others all day.

“We have a boat in Channel Islands marina and across the bay there is a huge eucalyptus tree. In this tree is a nest of blue herons – we watch it all the time. Sometimes we see a flock of pelicans diving into the water to get fish.

“Unfortunately, we had to stop feeding the birds because of rats. We called the exterminator and until the rats are gone, the birds will have to wait for their dinner.”

*

Joy Hart thinks banning books is a ratty thing to do, writing:

“I was shocked, angry, and very disturbed about the proposed book ban on Sherman Alexie’s ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian’ in the Conejo Valley Unified School District.

“This book was instrumental in getting one of my grandsons to actually become interested in reading when he was about 12-13 years old.”

*

From Elmer Barber: “I have two feeders and three birdbaths in my yard. The other day, I went out and filled the feeders and added fresh water to the baths.

“When this is going on, there’s not a bird in sight. After the fills, I like to sit and watch the birds come in from all directions. Sitting there watching, I figured it out – there’s one bird watching the whole process and when I’m done he puts out the word: ‘ALL CLEAR, THE SNACK BAR AND POOL ARE OPEN!’”

*

From Martha, who asked her last name not be used: “You failed to mention that we are concerned over pornographic material being mandated on English 11 AP students. These are minors!”

*

Karen Brooks was among numerous readers who disagreed with the above assertion: “I found the profanity, vulgarity and violence to be pretty tame compared to what my generation read in school, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

“I don’t recall the school board or parent groups threatening to ban ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ with its murder, mayhem, suicide and underage sex.”

*

From Sherrilynn Palladino: “Amazon says the book is for ‘Grade 7-12 and ages 12 -17.’ The grade level in Conejo is 9th grade and approximately 14 years of age.

“Parents of these ‘kids’ have had 14 years to instill their values and morals into their offspring. Kids need to be exposed in high school to those of diverse viewpoints beforethey go into the big, bad world (work/military/college), not kept in a bubble.”

*

Hoping to help burst such a bubble, Glenn, who has a free “Street Library” in front of his Ventura home, wrote: “How about we get a number of copies of the book and let people know they will be free?”

Readers? If you send me a copy (check woodywoodburn.com for my mailing address) of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian,” I will see that Glenn gets it.

*

Thanks to six birdfeeders in his backyard, Dick Holt’s residence has as many incoming flights as LAX. Birds flying into his 5-by-8-foot window is, he writes, “a regular occurrence.”

“Fortunately, most of the time the birds fall to the ground and lay there for little while, usually with their feet pointing up towards the sky, and then after five or 10 minutes shake their heads, walk around for a little bit, and then fly off slowly until they totally regain their equilibrium.”

*

From Audrey Hofteig: “We have had many episodes of downed birds and birds in the house!”

“I wonder though – why don’t you move your trash can so the mama bird doesn’t have to panic?”

She’s not the first reader to suggest I’m a birdbrain.

* * *

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

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

• Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com
• Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon

Save

Save

Save

For a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” mail a check for $25 to:

Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

* * *

Feathers Ruffled by a Pair of Birds

One evening, when they were teens, my daughter and son went to the Ventura Townhouse to visit an elderly woman they had befriended through Caregivers’ Building Bridges Program for local high school students.

Sharing the elevator with them while going up to Jewell’s room was another resident.

“I like your broach,” my daughter said, complimenting the bejeweled bird the woman was wearing.

In a voice filled with as much enthusiasm, and volume, as a kindergartener announcing, “I like ice cream!” the woman replied: “I like birds!”

As do I.

Indeed, I like to listen to their morning songs when I first awaken. I like to spy them outside my window as I write during the day. And I like to watch them soar in flight, especially at the beach floating on an updraft like a kite, no wing flapping required.

Sadly, I saw the opposite occur last week. A bird fell from the sky and crash landed in my backyard.

Actually, I did not see it happen – I heard it.

“Boink!”

Never before had I heard this specific sound, yet I instantly knew what had happened. Our home has a large picture window on the second story. Unadorned, it faces eastward and a bird flying westward had flown blindly into it like a Windex commercial brought to life.

Hurrying outside, I found a bird lying on the grass directly below the window. I knelt and looked for signs of life, but saw none.

Funny, but my next thought was remembering a cartoon from The New Yorker magazine, although it was not humorous at this moment. A bird in heaven asks a winged angel: “You run into a window, too?”

As I said, I like birds – but I am no birder. My uneducated identification was of a common sparrow. Common or not, its fate saddened me greatly as I went to get a small gardening trowel to bury it.

When I returned, however, my heart soared for the bird had apparently done likewise. It was gone, the only explanation being it had suffered a bruised beak and been knocked briefly unconscious.

Meanwhile, another bird story has been turning its pages at my house. For the past month or so, every time I have taken out the trash to the garbage cans at the side of our house, a bird has appeared out of thin air like a dove from of a magician’s hat.

In truth, the bird appears out of the thick ivy growing on a brick wall opposite the garbage cans.

Again, I am only guessing that this is also a common house sparrow – scientific name Passer domesticus. However, even an expert would have difficulty making an accurate identification of this blur flying past his ear.

The first few times this Hitchcock-ian attack happened, the Blurry domesticus made me jump out of my clothes. Eventually, I remembered to expect the feathery flyby and tried sneaking past the bird’s hidden nest. To no avail. It still flushed from cover, its natural instinct being to draw approaching prey away from its nest.

The very day after the other sparrow flew into the picture window, something more tragic happened. When I took out the trash, this bird bolted and somehow the nest was dislodged and fell out of the ivy onto the cement walkway.

Worse, there were eggs in the nest. Four, upon closer inspection. Happily, upon even closer scrutiny, none appeared broken.

And yet the unscrambled eggs were of small consolation because I remember as a kid learning that if a person touches a bird’s nest the mother bird will never return.

If this is indeed true, I now hoped that perhaps the desertion is due to human scent left behind. I put on gardening gloves and carefully tucked the nest back into the ivy.

Then I hoped against hope for the best because I not only like birds, I have come to especially like this bird.

The best happened. The next time I took out the kitchen trash my feathers were happily ruffled.

* * *

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

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

• Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com
• Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon

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