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

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Thoughts on This, That and the Other

In protest of our nation’s bitterly divided house, I am taking a knee while offering to all Americans an Irish blessing I saw in a pub in Dublin: “May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and a smooth road all the way to your door.”

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Okay, in all honesty, I can think of a few individuals that I have cold words for and wish an endless uphill road filled with potholes.

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Earl Warren, the 14th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, famously said: “I always turn to the sports section first. The sports section records man’s accomplishments; the front page has nothing but man’s failures.”

Were he alive today, I imagine Mr. Warren would read the comics first – and toss away the sports section and front page.

Twitter and Facebook would surely cause him to smash his smartphone with a gavel.

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I feel a thank-you shout-out is merited for the kind reader of this space who, anonymously, donated a new copy of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” – which the Conejo Valley Unified School District had considered not approving – to The Brodiea Ave. Books Free Library that I wrote about earlier this month.

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Add Brodiea mini-library: At the recommendation of curator Glenn Egelko, I borrowed a collection of essays titled “Dancing Under the Moon: Love and Sex, Life and Death, and Some Nice Little Italian Restaurants in the Nation of Los Angeles.”

This copy is actually signed by the author: “Happy 40th anniversary, Lois – & 40 more! Al Martinez 8/22/92.”

I hope Lois has now reached a happy 65th. I also wish The Bordiea Library a happy fifth anniversary “– & 40 more!”

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“A boy’s dream is for himself. A man’s dream is for others.” — Wisdom from Roger Thompson

If you see people dancing in the aisles at Trader Joe’s as though they are at a wedding reception, it could be because of this autumn sign now on display: “Welcome to the Land of ALL THINGS PUMPKIN.”

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Add books. In “We Stood Upon Stars: Finding God in Lost Places,” a new offering by Venturan author Roger Thompson, of the numerous beautiful phrases and passages within, I especially love this fatherly wisdom:

“I’ve always had good reasons to not do things, but my boys were getting older. The opportunities would soon pass. If I wasn’t careful, memories of things we did would be eclipsed by regrets of things we didn’t.”

Also, this gem: “A boy’s dream is for himself. A man’s dream is for others.”

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The Ventura City Council didn’t ask me, but I think the downtown parking meters should be tossed into the ocean to create artificial reefs for fish – and not replaced.

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In response to my column about special teachers, reader Robert Newell shared this:

“I remember Miss Look, who was my 5th-grade teacher at Montalvo Elementary. I had a lot of fun growing up on a ranch in Montalvo during WW2. Back then we were all farm kids familiar with all kinds of animals, domestic and wild.

“One day at a recess, one or more boys found a gopher snake and sneaked it into Miss Look’s desk drawer. When recess was over we all waited for the big surprise or scare.

“When she opened the top drawer, Mrs. Look very calmly picked the snake up walked to the window and dropped it outside. Never a word was uttered by her or the boys in our class.”

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Ed Wehan, a local ultra-running legend who – among his feats of feet – placed seventh in the granddaddy 1979 Western States 100 Miler, was also a team captain for the UC-Santa Barbara tennis team.

During his Gaucho days, Ed played Arthur Ashe in the Southern California Intercollegiate Championships.

Thinking of Ashe, let me close here with this wisdom from the late, great champion who once sweated out a 6-3, 6-3 win over my friend Ed:

“From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.”

Be sure to make a life today.

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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

* * *

Warm Handshakes Trump Cold Names

“Eighty percent of success is showing up,” Woody Allen is famously credited with saying. While this may very well be true in show business, and even most businesses, I think it falls short in the classroom.

To learn, it helps greatly if kids show up enthused.

Think back to your own school days. I am fairly confident you had one, maybe a couple – and if you were rabbit-foot lucky, a handful – of teachers who made you happy you showed up for class. They made you feel like your veins coursed with carbonated soda bubbles.

My first-grade teacher, Miss Bauer, was one of these effervescent educators. One memorable example of what made her special: she would occasionally greet us outside Room 4’s door with a pop quiz.

And this quiz was as much fun as the recess we were coming in from.

Miss Bauer would do a rhythmic series of knocks on our open classroom door, each unique offering sounding like a mixture of Morse code and drumming. One by one, we needed to duplicate her knockity-knock-knockings to pass the quiz before we could pass in through the doorway.

As mentioned, this grandly fun entrance happened only occasionally. Which is why a teacher in the Wichita Public Schools trumps even my beloved Miss Bauer. I do not know this teacher’s name – I shall call her “Miss Bonjour” – but I have seen a viral on-line video of her ritual with her students that warms my heart.

“Miss Bonjour” starting her schoolkids’ days off in a unique way for each.

Every morning before the start of class, Miss Bonjour greets each student – fourth-graders, I’m guessing, perhaps fifth-graders – with a handshake. Not any handshake, mind you, but an individualized welcoming for every single kid.

This is no small thing, for on the day the video was recorded 19 students lined up in the hallway waiting their turn. Also, these handshakes are far from simple. They are choreographed and rehearsed routines, some as complex as a Laker Girls halftime dance number.

There are high fives, low fives and patty-cake slaps.

There are fist bumps, elbow thumps and hopping jumps.

There are fingers touched lightly and hands clasped quickly.

Palms are slapped and backs of hands are softly whacked, sometimes in a music-making rapid sequence – slap-whack-slap-slap-whack . . .

Toes are even tapped in a fist-bump-like manner.

All of these various components are combined in singular ways. Some kids incorporate a handful of the pieces and others use the entire kit and caboodle in their signature shake.

While the students only have to memorize their own stylized greeting, Miss Bonjour has each and every one of these “handshakes” down pat – rather, pitty-pat.

A few of the good-morning “handshakes” have a hug, or even two, orchestrated into them between the various hand maneuvers and dance steps.

All the “handshakes” end with a hug – and two smiles, teacher’s and student’s.

The whole procession takes nearly a minute and half, but certainly it is not time wasted or stolen from English, Math or History. Rather, it helps ensure the kids will be enthused learners the rest of the day.

I have watched this video a dozen times, if not twice that, the past month and each viewing has made me smile anew. This week, however, it also saddened me – for why can’t the current president of the United States behave like Miss Bonjour?

Why, instead, must he make up individual disrespectful nicknames for others – such as “Low-Energy Jeb” and “Little Marco,” “Lying Ted” and “Crooked Hillary,” and the bitterly offensive “Pocahontas” for Senator Elizabeth Warren.

And, earlier this week speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, “Rocket Man.” Regardless of which country, which leader, such name-calling is below the dignity of the presidency of the United States.

I wish our president would use his little hands to be welcoming, like a role-model public school teacher in Wichita does each morning, instead of his big mouth to constantly bully.

As Miss Bauer said, and all grade-school teachers do: “Treat others the way you want to be treated.”

Golden advice for all of us, even – no, especially – America’s current president.

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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

* * *

A Few Words About A Lot of Words

Last week was my anniversary and I forgetfully let it pass.

Fortunately it was not my 35th wedding anniversary, but rather marked seven years writing this general-interest column on Saturdays. That adds up to 364 columns of 700 words, for a total of more than a quarter-million words.

Hence, a timely topic seems to be to discuss my wordiness.

Rather, my newfound brevity because for 25 years I wrote a sports column of 800 to 850 words each.

When I began this new 700-word challenge, it felt like trying to pack for a two-week vacation in a school backpack. I found myself still saying hello to an essay subject when it was time to bid goodbye.

But a funny thing happened: my frustration slowly shrank and I found myself enjoying the Haiku-like difficulty. Too, I found truth in Ben Franklin’s apology to a friend: “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

I still usually start by writing north of 900 words, but then I must take the time to write a shorter letter. Oftentimes, eliminating 200 words takes longer than writing the original draft. Trimming the final dozen words alone to get below 700 can take an hour.

Here again I find inspiration in others. Ernest Hemingway had his “Iceberg Theory” in which he believed that the seven-eighths a writer leaves out is as important as the one-eighth he puts in above water.

The poet John Ruskin put it this way: “Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.”

My writing idol, the late Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist Jim Murray, once told me: “Try not to run out of your allotment of commas.” He explained that before filing a column, he would re-read it one final time and replace as many commas as possible with periods.

Mark Twain felt similarly about adjectives, advising: “As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out.”

In other words, easy reading is hard writing. It requires rewriting, striking out words, rewriting again.

“I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter,” the outstanding novelist James Michener said.

Again from Hemingway, who was more blunt than Michener: “The first draft of anything is (doo-doo).” Although Papa didn’t say “doo-doo.”

Henry Beston, an acclaimed author and naturalist, said he sometimes spent an entire morning on a single sentence. Oscar Wilde was even more painstaking, being credited with saying: “I spent all morning putting in a comma and all afternoon taking it out.”

The importance of a comma or a single word is no small thing. Mark Twain, no doubt taking the time to craft a shorter letter, wrote to George Bainton: “The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter – it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

Henry David Thoreau famously advised, “Simplify, simplify.” His friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, replied even more wisely: “One ‘simplify’ would have sufficed.”

“Simplicity is the glory of expression,” Walt Whitman gloriously expressed in a mere six words. Leonardo da Vinci, however, needed only five words: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

It seems to me these thoughts apply to all endeavors, be it writing or engineering or performing surgery.

Simplicity, of course, has its limits. The genius Albert Einstein knew this, explaining: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Antoine de Saint Exupery agreed: “In anything at all perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.”

I will close these 700 words with a few from a Woody far wiser than myself – Guthrie, the legendary folk signer: “Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.”

This fool will continue his quest to simplify his next 250,000 words so they will hopefully not be doo-doo.

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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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