Monthly Archives: August 2018

Today’s Column is a “Safe Space”

by Woody

Is your Club or Group looking for an inspiring guest speaker or do you want to host a book signing? . . . Contact Woody today!

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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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‘Safe Space’ Free of Depressing News

Today’s column is hereby declared a “Safe Space” like those designated spots on college campuses where uncomfortable and upsetting topics are banned. For the next 600 words, this zone will be a haven of positivity.

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I was catching up with a dear friend at a local coffee cafe recently when a man – probably homeless; certainly with mental challenges – approached our al fresco table asking for a handout.

Normally I am a soft touch, even though those who work in the trenches implore us not to give money handouts. Rather, they say the best way to help a homeless person is to donate to programs focused on helping. This time, I heeded those words.

My friend, a small business owner, reacted differently. She greeted the man by first name and then, realizing she had no cash, kindly told him to walk to her store where $5 would be waiting to buy lunch. As the man walked away, my friend phoned her shop assistant and instructed her as such.1smile

I smiled at my friend’s big heart even as I felt a little small. I know the $5 may not have gone towards lunch. All the same, I confess that the next time I will have a hard time doing as those in the know advise.

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My column last week about Jim Murray and mentoring brought in a flood of emails. Here is one from Glen Zeider:

“I first started reading Jim Murray when I was about 7 or 8 years old. I was one of those terrible readers that languished in the ‘D’ reading group. The one thing I loved was baseball.

“My mom would save the sports section for me after my dad left for work, and exposed me to Mr. Murray. He changed my life in many profound ways. Learning to appreciate how words can convey ideas, knowledge and emotions has been one of the great joys in my life.”

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Jim Murray, and sports, sparked Oxnard’s Bill Organ to share this memory from his childhood in Long Beach.

“The Country Club had decent tennis courts so they hired a tennis pro. My little sister, Susan, enrolled along with her school buddy, Susan Williams, and another friend.

“Susan Williams was clearly good at the game and after a few months the pro confided to my mom that he thought my sister also had great potential, but doubted their other friend would ever be any good at the game.

“Sister Susan gave up tennis soon after but we all greatly enjoyed watching what became of her other friend, Billie Jean Moffitt (King).”

For the record, King won 12 Grand Slam singles titles on her way to the Tennis Hall of Fame.

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Let me finish with an encounter shared by a friend, whose own friends in the story wish to remain anonymous.

Four sisters went with their mom to their dance recital. Their dad couldn’t attend, but was in a generous mood and gave each daughter $25 to spend at the mall afterward as a reward for all their hard work.

At lunch, on the way to shopping, their waitress noticed the dance clothes and told the girls she, too, had danced when she was younger. Conversation ensued, and the waitress revealed she was a single mom with 3-year-old twin girls and a 4-year-old son. To make ends meet she has two other part-time jobs.

While the waitress was serving another table, the daughters took a vote and it was unanimous – they pooled their spending money gave all $100 as a tip.

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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” …

Mentoring: Take Baton, Pass It On

by Woody

Is your Club or Group looking for an inspiring guest speaker or do you want to host a book signing? . . . Contact Woody today!

* * *

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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Mentoring is a Relay: Take Baton, Pass It On

For the longest time, I never quite understood why Jim Murray wrote me a return letter and later became my mentor.

After all, “Mr. Murray” – I never could call him “Jim” despite his request – was already on the Mount Rushmore of Sportswriters while I was a just college senior seeking career counsel.

That was 36 years ago, long before the ease of email, and Mr. Murray penned me a thoughtful page-long handwritten reply that included this gem: “If you are meant to be a writer, you will be. No one can stop a writer from writing. Not even Hitler could do that.”

This Thursday – Aug. 16 – marked the 20th anniversary of Murray’s death. My goodness, what a debt I will forever owe him. He not only helped me become a better writer, but a better person as well.

Woody_and_Jim_Murray

With my writing idol and mentor, Jim Murray

For example, my annual Holiday Ball Drive has his fingerprints all over it. Reading “The Best of Jim Murray” three decades past, I was deeply moved by a passage about his pre-sports days as a crime reporter. Specifically, he told of his heartache doing a story on a little girl who lost her leg after being run over by a truck.

“The thought of her going though life that way made me shrink,” Murray wrote.

My literary hero took $8 he had left from his paycheck – “which was only $38 to begin with in those days” – and bought the girl an armful of toys and took them to her in the hospital.

That next Christmas, I bought an armful of basketballs and donated them to the Special Olympics. Later, when I saw a young boy ruining a keepsake autographed basketball because he had no other basketball to play with, it was only natural to start an official ball drive.

Further emulating Murray, when I received a letter from a 13-year-old Thousand Oaks boy about 20 years ago, I responded. Fast forward: Jon Gold is now a gifted sportswriter proving he can make it anywhere by making it in New York City.

Three Februarys past, that boy-turned-man made me feel like a Pulitzer Prize winner by inviting me, out of the blue, to his wedding. More unbelievably, he told me I was his Jim Murray.

“I couldn’t wait to read your sports column,” Jon shared. His words that followed caressed my heart: “What you wrote back to me is something I carry with me to this day. You were a hero, are a hero, and more, a friend.”

My goodness, I hope my similar sentiments expressed to Mr. Murray made him feel half as wonderful.

Another wonderful feeling was mine when Camarillo resident Stephen Jester sent me a copy of his new book of poetry – with a surprising dedication page for all to see: “To Woody Woodburn, my friend, mentor and fellow author.”

I was floored. What had I done to deserve such an honor? It seems that after Stephen had been harshly told to give up his dream of becoming a writer, I simply sent him words of encouragement. Probably, I even quoted Mr. Murray’s Hitler line.

“Telling someone to continue to follow their dreams, and you’re proud of them, is a powerful message that goes right to the heart,” Stephen told me recently. “You inspire and encourage me to continue my writing journey. That’s why you’re on the dedication page.”

Mentoring is a relay event in life. Take the baton, run, pass it on. As John Wooden said: “I have lived my life to be a mentor, and to be mentored, constantly.”

I’m thankful Jim Murray felt likewise.

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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” …

Using Darkness For Illumination

by Woody

Is your Club or Group looking for an inspiring guest speaker or do you want to host a book signing? . . . Contact Woody today!

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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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Darkness as Source of Illumination

The stories stay with me, unforgettable in their clarity, haunting as tales told around a campfire often are.

I speak not of ghost stories, however. And instead of being told to a gathering of youths by an adult, it was the children themselves orating to a camp counselor.

The stories, plural, were really one singular story told time and again to my daughter when she was in college and serving as a counselor/educator at a weeklong summer camp.

Held in the San Bernardino Mountains for 200 disadvantaged fourth- and fifth-graders from the inner city, the retreat offered typical camp activities like arts and crafts and games, horseback riding, singing and dancing.

Also, naturally, there were gatherings around a campfire each night. It was here that one youngster after another said, in different ways but with a shared tone of awe: “Wow! I’ve never seen the stars before!”

Can you even imagine that? Being 10 or 11 years old and, because of light pollution and because you have never before traveled outside the city limits, never having seen stars except on a movie screen or TV or in a book?

Not being able to pick out The Big Dipper or Orion or Cassiopeia is one thing, but to be blind to the twinkling night sky is quite another. This all comes to mind now because of the ninth annual “2018 Wild and Scenic Film Festival” to be held Aug. 18 on the Ventura County Credit Union’s campus on Vista Del Mar Drive in Ventura. (Ticket information: venturalandtrust.org/2018_wsff )1lostlight

Specifically, “Lost in Light” – one of the festival’s 11 short films – has me thinking of those wide-eyed summer camp kids. Shot mostly in California, the 3-minute film shows how light pollution affects our night skies. Opening with a skyline view of San Jose with the stars completely erased from visibility by Light Pollution Level 8, the time-elapsed scene shifts to Level 7 in Mountain View with a few scattered celestial pinpricks discernible.

The night skies slowly come alive as the film moves through Light Pollution Levels 6, 5, 4 and 3. Reaching Level 2, at Mt. Shasta, the heavens sparkle in breathtaking fashion and in Death Valley, Level 1, the firmament seems like a luminous blizzard where each snowflake is a star.

Other short films (all range from 3 to 17 minutes) at the festival include “Water Take One: Ventura Land Trust” showcasing VLT’s work to protect and preserve Ventura County’s open space and natural resources; “Brothers of Climbing” highlighting diversity in the rock climbing community; “Dragging 235 lbs. Uphill Both Ways” about a mother’s effort to help her four children unplug from electronics and embrace the outdoors; and “Grandad” about a man rising at dawn for a daily meditative journey rowing around a lake.1level1

Back to “Lost in Light.” Filmmaker Sriram Murali writes of his visual creation: “The night skies remind us of our place in the Universe. Imagine if we lived under skies full of stars. That reminder that we are a tiny part of this cosmos, the awe and a special connection with this remarkable world, would make us much better beings – more thoughtful, inquisitive, empathetic, kind and caring.

“Imagine kids growing up passionate about astronomy looking for answers and how advanced humankind would be, how connected and caring we’d feel with one another, how noble and adventurous we’d be. How compassionate with fellow species on Earth and how one with Nature we’d feel.”

Masterful as it is, I wish Murali’s film was one minute longer – with the illuminated faces of children seeing the stars for the very first time.

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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” …

Life Stories Written ‘On the Road’

by Woody

Is your Club or Group looking for an inspiring guest speaker or do you want to host a book signing? . . . Contact Woody today!

* * *

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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Writing Life Stories ‘On the Road’

Jack Kerouac, in his 1957 masterstroke novel “On the Road,” wrote: “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”

In my mind’s eye, I also see old-time commemorative luggage stickers from different destinations around the country, and globe, bedecking the battered suitcases. Those sticky souvenirs, popular in the early 20th century, provided a personal reminder of journeys taken while quietly shouting to others, “Look where I’ve been!”

Travel is on my mind because the Ventura Storytellers Project, hosted by The Star and starring local residents, will hold two shows Saturday evening with the Keroucian theme “On the Road.”

(Both shows at the Bell Arts Factory are sold out but will be available on-line at a future date. Visit www.storytellersproject.com/ventura for more information.)

To get the wheels rolling, below are some of my favorite observations on travel from a few writers wise on the subject.1ontheroad

Mark Twain pointed out why we should travel, writing: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

In his on-the-road memoir “We Stood Upon Stars,” Ventura author Roger Thompson adds an additional command to Explore, Dream and Discover – Get Lost. He writes:

“While traveling I’ll often veer onto a road that wasn’t on my route. This is the beginning of adventure. It’s how I’ve discovered tiny towns and sunsets and secret fishing holes and the Philipsburg Brewing Company in Montana. It’s also how I’ve gotten myself desperately lost. And since it takes an act of Congress to get me to turn around, I keep going over switchbacks and single-lane roads until either the curiosity is cured or I run out of snacks. Before turning back I get out and survey the landscape, looking to mountain peaks or rivers or stars for clues. It’s always there, deep in the wilderness, with my wife or my kids or my buddies or alone, where – in desperation for answers or simply curiosity – I am met by God.”

Another Venturan, award-winning travel writer and novelist Ken McAlpine, who has visited the earth’s four corners, always reminds me before I embark on the road: “Be sure to turn down a hidden alleyway or go inside a quiet doorway off the beaten path because that’s where you’ll find some of the most memorable experiences.”

Wise advice, indeed, for no less a philosopher than Ralph Waldo Emerson memorably beseeched: “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Or, as Robert Frost poetically noted, take the road less traveled by for that will make all the difference.

Emerson’s younger contemporary, Henry David Thoreau, put it this way: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

Were he on the “On the Road” stage Saturday night, Dave Stancliff, my first newspaper editor, would surely include his observation: “There’s many things to see in this world that aren’t in tourist guides for one reason or another.”

In other words, grab your battered suitcase, throw off the bowlines, go down a hidden alleyway, step to the music you alone hear, get desperately lost and, coming full circle to Kerouac, “lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”

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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” …