Monthly Archives: April 2019

If Ever Twain And Muir Had Met

by Woody

If Ever Twain And Muir Had Met

Sunday past, a special literary date passed by, as it does annually, once again as unnoticed by most people as a wildflower in the woods. John Muir was born in 1838 on April 21 and 72 years to the day later, in 1910, Mark Twain died.

Except for a story believed to be apocryphal of the two famous writers attending a dinner party hosted by Robert Underwood Johnson, a New York editor, there is no account of Twain and Muir having met. Below, using their own written words, is how I imagine the conversation might have gone had they shared a campfire in Yosemite.

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Muir: “Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue.”

Twain: “Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.”

Muir: “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”

Twain: “The laws of Nature take precedence of all human laws. The purpose of all human laws is one – to defeat the laws of Nature.”

Muir: “God never made an ugly landscape. All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.”

Twain: “Architects cannot teach nature anything.”

Muir: “Compared with the intense purity and cordiality and beauty of Nature, the most delicate refinements and cultures of civilization are gross barbarisms.”

Twain: “Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”

Muir: “No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening – still all is Beauty!”

Twain: “One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a really beautiful woman is after considerable acquaintance with her; and the rule applies to Niagara Falls, to majestic mountains.”

Muir: “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.”

Twain: “There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it.”

Muir: “One day’s exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books. See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographers’ plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul.”

Twain: “Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

Muir: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.”

Twain, bombastically: “When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”

Muir: “Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.”

Twain: “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”

Muir: “The power of imagination makes us infinite.”

Twain: “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

Muir: “The snow is melting into music.”

Twain: “Ah, that shows you the power of music.”

Muir: “I had nothing to do but look and listen and join the trees in their hymns and prayers. In our best times everything turns into religion, all the world seems a church and the mountains altars.”

Twain: “I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.”

The two wordsmiths’ conversation concludes next week in this space.

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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” …

Friend in Deed is Friend Indeed

by Woody

1StrawberriesCoverWooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upFor a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” use the PayPal link on my home page or mail a check for $25 to:

Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

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Friend in Deed is Friend Indeed

In an ironic turn of events, our microwave oven had its goose cooked the other day.

Finding a replacement of similar dimensions for the built-in spot proved to be a wild-goose chase. Four local stores, and an on-line search, all came up short – or, more accurately, came up too wide or too tall.

Unlike Goldilocks’ napping beds, none of the microwaves was “just right.” The best solution was to get a smaller model and add a shelf to position it suitably.

Alas, my last foray into woodworking was making a skateboard in eighth-grade shop class. I got at best a C-plus on the assignment – and a D-minus while on the skateboard.

Indeed, I’m a wordsmith, not a woodsmith (which isn’t a word, but should be). I can use a hammer and screwdriver and duct tape, but that’s about the extent of my This Old House-like skills. For me to invest in additional tools would make as much sense as buying surgical instruments. I’m handy only with my typing fingers.

Therefore, even for a simple shelf, I reached out for help. My first thought was to ask my friend, Mike Pederson, because he has the skills of Noah and MacGyver combined. I believe he fully remodeled his kitchen during halftime of an NFL game. More recently, he started rebuilding his mother’s garage that burned down in the Thomas Fire and will probably complete it before I finish writing this column.

Mike with wheelchair athlete and friend Alvin.

The reason I didn’t ask Mike, however, is because I embarrassingly still owe him a couple pints at a local micro brewery in payment for the last fix-it job he did for me.

Instead, I asked my Facebook friends if anyone could help me out with a piece of plywood measuring 23-1/4 inches by 15 inches. I promised that All-Thumbs Me could sand and paint it.

Two days later, my posted request far from mind, I was out for my daily run at Kimball Community Park. Rounding a corner on my familiar loop, I spotted a familiar Paul Bunyan-esque figure ahead, then a familiar face, finally a familiar smile.

I stopped to say “hi” and Mike greeted me by revealing from behind his back a shelf. Not a slab of plywood cut to needed size, mind you, but rather a finely sanded shelf complete with decorative front rail. It is so handsome that no painting by me was required. My old woodshop teacher would have graded it “A-plus.”

John Wooden would have loved Mike because he “makes friendship a fine art.” Mike also creates a lot of such “art.” As example, Mike has twice escorted our mutual friend Alvin Matthews, a wheelchair athlete, in the Los Angeles Marathon.

“As busy as he is with his own life and family’s, he always seems to find time for me,” Alvin says, noting further that Mike frequently drives him to training outings and assists him in and out of his missile-like racing chair; researched a beach-access wheelchair; and has been by his side in the hospital. “He’s top-notch as a friend!”

Given Mike’s giving nature, it seems fully appropriate he was born on Christmas Day. To be sure, he brings to mind the poem “On Friendship” penned by Coach Wooden:

“At times when I am feeling low, / I hear from a friend and then

“My worries start to go away / And I am on the mend

“No matter what the doctors say – / And their studies never end

“The best cure of all, when spirits fall, / Is a kind word from a friend”

Or, in Mike’s case, a kind deed.

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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” …

“Friends of Library”, Friends To All

by Woody

1StrawberriesCoverWooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upFor a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” use the PayPal link on my home page or mail a check for $25 to:

Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

*   *   *

“Friends of Library” Are Friends To All

I am fairly certain I got my first library card before I could even print my name, which goes a long way in telling you I had a masterpiece mom.

While I can’t remember the first book I ever checked out, the first unforgettable one was “Where The Wild Things Are.” In my mind’s eye as I peel back the calendar pages, I re-re-re-checked it out week after week until the librarian finally told me I had to return Max and his beasts for other kids to enjoy.

So it was at a modest library on Tremont Road in Upper Arlington, Ohio, that my love affair with libraries began. It continues to this day.

The Library of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, is the most breathtaking library I have yet seen – especially The Long Room and Book of Kells believed to date back to 800 AD – but The New York Public Library is only a half-stride behind.

Too, I love our local libraries and have a special fondness for The San Buenaventura Friends of the Library. In addition to supporting our city libraries and summer reading programs, this all-volunteer organization holds book sales that are ridiculous bargains.

To give you an idea, I recently bought nine books from these generous “Friends” – six near-new children’s books although, alas, not “Where The Wild Things Are”; two popular novels; and a 676-page hardcover “The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain” in wonderful condition – all for the grand sum of …

… five dollars! I felt guilty of larceny.

Since books and reading are food for the mind, let me share a family story that springs to mind when I think of the “Friends” book sales.

James Dallas Woodburn, my great grandfather, loved a good steak. Actually, good was not good enough; he insisted on a superb cut of beef. In his quest, after retiring from personally butchering livestock on his Ohio farm, J.D. would go into town to buy fresh beef from the meat market – which was next to the fruit and vegetable market, and bakery, there being no “supermarkets” in the 1930s.

Unlike other customers, my great-grandpa did not tell the butcher what he wanted. Rather, J.D. stepped behind the counter, tied on a white apron, and cut his own selections.

One Sunday during the Great Depression, in 1934 when my dad was eight, he accompanied his Grandpa J.D. to the meat market. J.D. proceeded to carve nearly seven pounds of deep-red, well-marbled – two key elements he always looked for – beefsteak at fifteen cents a pound.

That evening, J.D.’s wife, Amanda, pounded and breaded half-inch-thick slices of the fresh beefsteak before cooking them in a sizzling cast-iron skillet. The end result was a turkey platter piled so high that even after being passed around the supper table to six adults and two kids, the stack of country fried beefsteak seemed barely diminished.

Eying the surplus mound, my dad’s dad – Ansel – sarcastically needled his father: “Dad, do you think you bought enough meat?”

Replied J.D. with a wink: “Ansel, I wanted everybody to have plenty. So I got a dollar’s worth so we can all fill up!”

From the past to the present, beefsteak to books. Today, to cap off National Library Week, the Buenaventura Friends of the Library is holding a special “Bag o’Books Sale” at the Vons grocery at Telegraph and Victoria roads from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. For just $3 you can stuff a bag with all genres.

In other words, make sure everyone in your family has plenty to read and fill up with three dollars’ worth!

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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” …

Memories Surpass Memorabilia, Part 4

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” use the PayPal link on my home page or mail a check for $25 to:

Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

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Memories Surpass Memorabilia, Part 4

Julia Ruth Stevens, Babe Ruth’s last surviving child, passed away in March at age 102. A decade past, I interviewed Stevens – more accurately, had the great joy of listening to wonderful stories about her “Daddy.” With the Major League season underway, it seems the perfect time to share some of her tales. This is the final in a series of four columns.

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Babe Ruth fell deathly ill with throat cancer in 1948.

“Most of those days are fuzzy in my mind,” Julia Ruth Stevens recalled, yet more than a half-century later two mental photographs remained in perfect Ansel Adams-like focus.

The first occurred on June 13, 1948. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of Yankee Stadium – “The House That Ruth Built” – The Babe, wearing a topcoat to keep his frail body warm and using a baseball bat as a cane, walked slowly out to home plate as a tumultuous ovation rained down from the triple-decked stands. Once again, and for the final time, Ruth rose to the occasion and managed to croak out a few words into the microphone.

“I was there and I remember that speech,” Julia told me. “It was a very sad occasion – not just for me and his family, but for everyone who was his fan.”

A dying Babe Ruth, using a bat for a cane, at a day in his honor.

An even sadder moment, she said, came after a doctor’s appointment at Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases: “I’ll never forget when he left the hospital. I looked out the window and watched him need help into the car. Poor Daddy, he had been such a rugged man and to see him so frail. I had a tear running down my cheek.”

Babe Ruth, at age 53, died shortly thereafter on August 16, 1948. Four years later, Julia’s only child, Tom, was born.

“I regret (Tom) never met Daddy, but he’s heard a lot of stories,” Julia said. “He’s heard them all.”

The stories of how much Babe Ruth adored children are not exaggerated, according to Julia, who noted: “He loved kids and wanted to bring them sunshine and happiness. I’m certain it was because growing up he was so alone himself.

“I loved to see kids smile when he gave them an autograph. He’d always sign – never turned down a kid for an autograph, or even an adult. He signed almost everything you can imagine: balls and gloves and bats and caps and shirts, ticket stubs and scraps of paper. You name it, if someone asked, Daddy signed it.”

And yet Julia had no such signed memorabilia.

“I don’t have a single bat or ball with Daddy’s autograph,” she said, adding after a moment’s reflection: “Why would I get an autograph from Daddy? I’d never have thought to ask, ‘Daddy, can I have your autograph?’ To me he was just Daddy.”

Actually, she did ask numerous times for her friends – once they learned who her father was.

“I tried as hard as possible when I met someone new to keep it a secret,” Julia shared. “I’d never tell them because I wanted them to like me for who I was, not because I was Babe Ruth’s daughter. Of course, when they’d finally come to my house they’d be speechless.

“I wish I had an (autographed) ball or bat,” Julia went on, yet without a trace of regret in her voice. “But I don’t and that’s fine because I have my memories of Daddy and that’s even better. As great as Daddy was as a ballplayer, he really was just as great as a father. I loved being Babe Ruth’s daughter! It was just so much fun!”

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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” …