Monthly Archives: October 2017

Powerful Field Trip to FDR Library

by Woody

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Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

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Photos, not Books, Most Powerful in this Library

Second in a four-column series chronicling my recent father-son road trip to the FDR Presidential Library & Museum in Hyde Park, NY, and more.

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Growing up, my favorite part of school was the field trips. I think more learning occurs on them than in the classroom.

As a grown up, I still love field trips and try to go on one as often as possible. And so it was that I recently visited the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum in Hyde Park, NY.

The destination was my son’s choosing, for he collects visits to presidential museums and libraries the way others collect baseball trading cards.

Traveling by foot, by subway, by train, and by Uber, the Library & Museum was nearly three hours from my son’s apartment in Lower Manhattan – and nearly a century back in time.

Entry to a powerful exhibit at the FDR Presidential Library & Museum

Photographs are powerful in telling an ugly chapter in U.S. history at FDR Presidential Library & Museum.

Moreover, we learned that Matthew Vassar’s operation was so profitable it allowed him to establish numerous benevolent causes, including nearby Vassar College. Beer and books have a long college history, indeed.

More history awaited us at FDR’s Springwood estate, which also houses the Library & Museum. The family home is impressive, yet pales to the two homes we visited on our prior presidential field trip: George Washington’s and Thomas Jefferson’s.

At Mount Vernon and Monticello, the sin of slave ownership by our first and third presidents is addressed in depth. At the Library & Museum of our 32nd president, a similar ugly stain is on display front and center: Executive Order No. 9066.

Signed by FDR on Feb. 19, 1942 – 10 weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor – the order led to the incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent, including approximately 80,000 American citizens. They lost their freedom, as well as almost everything they owned.

More than 200 photographs in an exhibit entitled, “Images of Internment: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II,” turns those massive numbers into individual human faces and stories.

In the same manner that Ansel Adams’ black-and-white photographs show the beauty of Yosemite Valley as even color pictures cannot, wall after wall of black-and-white images reveal the ugliness and injustice of this infamous chapter in American history. Adams’ work, by the way, is among the internment images featured.

The photographs reveal cabins with tar-paper walls; horse and livestock stalls used for “evacuees”; living spaces resembling slave quarters at Mount Vernon and Monticello.

The photos show camp conditions that are both freezing and boiling, windy and sandy, desolate and depressing.

The photographs show American citizens as POWs in America.

Here is a long line of families, dressed in their Sunday best as though heading to church, boarding railcars while a gauntlet of uniformed U.S. soldiers oversees them.

Here is an American soldier in uniform, on a few days leave, helping his family move into a stark internment camp.

Here, similarly, is a son, father and mother posed together before an American flag backdrop – and on her lap she is holding a framed photograph of a second son in U.S. military dress.

Here is a barren, dust-blown internment camp with two long rows of small cabins. In the open dirt area, two children – the only people in view – are running together. And at the center of the camp, dominating the photograph, is an American flag waving high in the wind. It is a haunting image.

That is an important thing about field trips: the best ones don’t necessarily entertain you, so much as they affect 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 Kickstarter Front PhotoCheck 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” …

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Silver Lining Appears Before Clouds

by Woody

1StrawberriesCoverWooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upFor 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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Silver Lining Appears Before Flying Into Clouds

First in a four-column series chronicling my recent father-son road trip to the FDR Presidential Library & Museum in Hyde Park, NY, and more.

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“People don’t take trips,” John Steinbeck observed in “Travels with Charley: In Search of America”– “trips take people.”

My previous visit to see my son in New York City was less than 24 hours underway when the trip took me to urgent care for 16 stitches after a subway door mugged my right index finger.

My most recent trip to Manhattan, last week, took even less time to get off track. Again it was transportation related – my shuttle to LAX got caught in late-morning traffic that was worse than usual, meaning it was horrific.

Fortunately, I am of the ilk that likes to get to the departure gate two hours early. This has served me well in books read and never missing a flight.

Unfortunately, this time I had brain freeze doing the simple math of subtracting four hours – two hours for the shuttle ride, one hour to get my boarding pass and pass through security, and a safety cushion to read “Lincoln in the Bardo” by George Saunders – from my flight’s boarding time.1scarequote

I did not realize my muddleheaded error until Sky Way nearing LAX became a virtual parking lot. The slower the shuttle crept, the faster my heart raced.

Adding to my panic, I was flying out of distant Terminal 7.

“I could run faster than this shuttle is moving,” I thought as we crawled to Terminals 1, 3, Tom Bradley International, and 4.

And so that is what I did. Even pulling a rolling suitcase and weaving between pedestrians, I left the shuttle in my rearview mirror, so to speak, as I raced to Terminal 7.

Reaching my airline, the long line inside brought to mind this famous line from Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

Directly ahead of me was a family of four, plus two dogs and luggage enough for the Queen of England. I asked when their flight left and the father answered, “Three o’clock.” This was more than two hours hence, so I desperately explained mine began boarding in ten minutes, adding: “Can I please cut ahead of you?”

“No. Can’t you see we have two dogs?” came the unsympathetic, and nonsensical, reply.

My FastPass forward, one family by one couple by one lone traveler at a time, was thwarted before it began.

Ten minutes passed and the line advanced only two spots while the number of agents working diminished by one. I texted my son telling him I was going to miss my flight.

No sooner had I hit “Send” when I received a bolt of inspiration out of the ether in the words of Eleanor Roosevelt: “Do one thing every day that scares you.”

Asking strangers for special privileges, especially because the fix I found myself in was of my own making and dull-headedness, is a dozen ZIP Codes outside my comfort zone.

No matter. The introvert in me swallowed hard, stood up tall, and announced bravely but politely: “I’m going to miss my flight to see my son – would any of you mind if I took cuts in front of you?”

The family directly in front of me notwithstanding, everyone else said “Yes!” or “Sure!” or “Of course!” or raised an affirmative waving hand. Words fail to describe the surge of warmth their kindness gave me.

With my boarding pass in hand and my suitcase out of my hands, I apologized once more to my traveling altruists and offered another sincere “Thank you,” only to receive more kindness.

“Good luck!” one told me.

“Hurry!” said another.

“Have a great time with your son!” shouted a third.

Good luck was unexpectedly having TSA Precheck and sailing through security.

Hurry I did, running through the terminal to my gate and onto the plane as the final passenger to board.

Have a great time with your son – thanks to friendly strangers, and an assist from Eleanor Roosevelt, doing so began at the original ETA.

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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 Kickstarter Front PhotoCheck 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” …

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Readers Shoot Back Pro and Con

by Woody

1StrawberriesCoverWooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upFor 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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Readers Shoot Back Pro and Con

My 700-word column a week ago on the Las Vegas mass shooting, where I used the word “dead” 58 times and “wounded” 527 times to emphasize the carnage, resulted in thousands of words in email responses, including these praiseful ones from a reader named Bruce:

“You deserve a Pulitzer! You hit the nail precisely on the head very dramatically and with very few words.”

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A handful of readers, however, were more inclined to think of me as a putz than as a Pulitzer nominee, including Mike “An Ex Subscriber” who wrote:

“Thank you for your article. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I have finally decided to cancel my subscription to the Ventura County Star as I can no longer continue to support such a biased ‘news’ reporting vehicle.

“I’m surprised that you didn’t say we should pass a law to make it illegal to break the laws already in place. How many existing laws were broken in the Las Vegas shooting?1MailbagTypewriter

“I also find it hard to believe that I, as a Law abiding citizen, cannot carry a weapon to defend myself because when seconds count the police are only minutes away.”

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An anonymous reader agreed with Mike “An Ex Subscriber,” emailing just one word to me: “Fool.”

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From Peggy: “My opinion is that we have WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION un-checked. These are wielded by white men, not Muslims, Mexicans, black men, etc.

“No ‘spines’ in Congress.”

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Another Peggy wrote: “Thank you for your unique and startling column that not only disturbingly demonstrates the toll from the Las Vegas massacre, but also draws sharp attention to the change in weapons from what our Founding Fathers initially dealt with.”

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From Bill, who began with a sarcastic, “An impressive column” and proceeded: “But 58 dead by shooting is the average monthly homicides on the south side of Chicago.

“Former President Obama has a ‘residence’ on the white Hyde Park island around the University of Chicago. It is mere blocks away from the daily mayhem that Obama totally ignored while being president for eight years. So, who is really our idiot president?”

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From David: “Impactful article. I agree with your assessment of the American people. We have to be idiots to insist on gun rights and elect the likes of Trump. It’s not his sanity I question – it’s ours.”

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From Jim: “I thank you for making an incredibly powerful argument against the idiocy of our ‘gun love.’ ”

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From Chuck: “I’m sure you will hear a lot of negative feedback from 2nd Amendment, NRA, gun-rights extremists; but your are correct – America is stupid.

“However, I hold no optimism for anything being done about the easy availability and proliferation of guns in the U.S. If the Congress did not have the political or moral will to take any action after Sandy Hook and the slaughter of 24 first graders, nothing will be done now.

“It is sad that U.S. policies concerning weapons meant solely for mass killing in war is dictated by a minority of Americans.”

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Fred disagreed with me at length, but was rare in doing so with civility. He concluded: “Let’s face it Woody, we Americans are of two different worlds when it comes to defining what freedom is, and I hope with all my heart that as a country we continue to challenge each other with ongoing discussions such as this.

“I also hope and pray that we will never (ever!) be of only one political view because that would be the end of America as the Founding Fathers envisioned.”

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Terri echoed the viewpoint of a number of others: “The time for the uproar is now.”

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From Rick: “Thank you Woody, for such an enlightening, informative, cogent Article today. I learned so much. Instead of your usual pithy comments, you waste all of your space on nothing. Congrats!”

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Sorry, but I had no pith in my heart a week past. Next Saturday, I will try to again be pithy.

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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 Kickstarter Front PhotoCheck 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” …

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Boston Massacre Misnamed Today

by Woody

1StrawberriesCoverWooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upFor 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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The Boston Massacre Misnamed Today

On March 5, 1770, eight British soldiers fired into a crowd of civilians and the result was The Boston Massacre.

What a quaint use of the word “massacre.” With flintlock muskets of the 19th century, the tally was: three dead and two mortally wounded.

On Oct. 1, 2017, one man with an armload of 21st-century assault rifles and here is what a massacre has become:

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If this—59 dead, 527 wounded, by one civilian—is what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment, they were idiots.

I do not believe our Founding Fathers were idiots.

I believe we Americans are.

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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 Kickstarter Front PhotoCheck 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” …

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