Quoth the Raven, “Vote Ever More!”

October 31, 2020 by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

Quoth the Raven,

“Vote Ever More!”

What writer better to quote on Halloween than Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote in his most-famous poem The Raven: “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering fearing / Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

Below are some dark dreams that would make any mortal scream “Nevermore!” loud enough to rattle their chamber door…

From the moment you fall asleep you find yourself resolutely standing – six feet from the person in front and behind you – in a line stretching more blocks than the eye can see.

Despite dreaming in real time during a full eight hours of sleep, upon awakening you still have not reached the voting booth.

In another dream, you finally reach the front of the line only to find that you must unlock your high school locker before you can cast your ballot. Taking a wild guess, you spin the dial – clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise – and give the lock a quick yank.

“Wrong! I’m sorry,” the lock tells you, “your signature does not match the squiggle we have on file from when you signed for a FedEx package using your index finger on a touchscreen, so your ballot will not be counted.”

You walk to your familiar voting place but it has been shut down; so you drive to the next nearest poll but it, too, has been shuttered; so you drive further still and finally arrive at the only open poll in your county only to be greeted by a 10-hour line – which you find yourself standing in naked.

Your wise subconscious has decided to skip the long lines by using a vote-by-mail ballot. Alas, this results in a different nightmare as you put your ballot inside a security/privacy envelope before putting that envelope inside a second envelope specified for mailing …

… and then, like Russian nesting dolls, you put that envelope inside another, and another, and another until you wake up screaming in frustration.

In a similar dream, you have mistakenly used your security/privacy envelope to jot down a grocery list on and thus mail in your naked ballot inside the mailing envelope only. When you learn your ballot was invalidated by this technicality, you wake up screaming in anger.

Again you dream of using a vote-by-mail ballot, but to avoid nesting doll-like envelopes or having the Postal Service deliver it too late to be counted, you take it directly at an official ballot drop box – but are faced with two identical looking ones.

One box contains a tiger that will bite your hand off when you drop your ballot inside while the other box will count your vote correctly. To determine which box to use, you must solve a Rubik’s Cube in 30 seconds or recall your Netflix password on the first try.

In your final dark dream, your polling site in an affluent suburban neighborhood and you have flown through the line in 2 minutes and 43 seconds.

However, inside the voting booth you realize you have forgotten your election crib sheet. Looking at the propositions you suddenly find yourself again trying to open your high school locker; while standing naked in the hallway; and running late for class to take a final exam you need to pass in order to graduate.

You awaken each time thinking “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore’ ” but then vow, “No, that is wrong. Vote, vote, vote always ever election more!”

* * *

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.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 at WoodyWoodburn.com

Three Winks From The Universe

October 24, 2020 by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

Three Winks From

The Universe

Whether the glass is half full or half empty, sometimes it gets knocked over. And sometimes when this happens the universe laughs at you, but other times it smiles and gives you a wink.

Last Sunday, the glass in question was a nearly full bottle of maple syrup waiting to be poured over pancakes. Reaching for the syrup, I carelessly knocked the bottle over …

… with its lid already off …

… the bottle toppled onto its side …

… its mouth coming to rest hanging over the edge of my plate …

… and the syrup poured onto my pancakes …

… in the perfectly desired amount …

… without any sticky syrup spilling onto the table or floor.

It was all a one-in-a-million shot and a playful wink from the universe asking, “How Did You Like That Trick?”

* * *

My luck appeared to change the next day with a half-full mailbox.

In order for a card I was mailing to arrive on time, I needed to get it out on Monday. Our postal carrier usually comes by in the afternoon, but to be safe I strolled to my neighborhood’s community mailboxes at midmorning.

My mistake was dropping the letter into the outgoing slot before checking my own box. Alas, the mail had already been delivered so my card would not go out for another day. Had I looked first, I could have instead mailed the card at the post office for timely delivery.

As the universe giggled at me, I gently chastised myself for not mailing the card an hour earlier.

Then the universe’s laugh grew louder. As I was walking back home, the postal carrier rounded the corner to exit our neighborhood. I suddenly wished I had come out to mail my letter two minutes later than I did because then I could have flagged down our mail carrier and handed her the letter directly.

Quick as a wink, I decided to wave frantically anyway …

… the postal carrier stopped her truck …

… listened to my tragic tale of being a bonehead …

… and promised to retrieve my card from the outgoing box.

* * *

If the universe wasn’t laughing at me the following evening, my wife surely was when my reading glasses disappeared. Fifteen minutes earlier I had been reading on the couch and now I had all the cushions off, searching the crevices, with no luck.

I retraced my steps from earlier that evening, from the entire day, even checked rooms I hadn’t been in for days.

As my frustration grew, I expanded my search to the kitchen trash and counters, cabinets and drawers that made no sense. I turned the couch inside out a second time.

If our 22-month-old granddaughter had been visiting, I would have been convinced she carried them off somewhere while playing and laughed it off. Instead, as I continued looking high and low and every height in between, the thought that I was losing my mind crossed my mind.

Alas, like Edgar Alan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” or the last Easter egg often to be found, my reading glasses proved to be in plain sight …

… in the same room across from the couch …

… resting on top of a typewriter …

… that sits on a table I had checked at least a couple times.

On that keyboard is where my wife claims to have found The Purloined Glasses. She didn’t wink, but I’m convinced she conspired with the universe to prank me.

* * *

Personalized signed copies are at WoodyWoodburn.com

80th Birthday is a Superspreader

October 19, 2020 by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

80th Birthday is

a Superspreader

Sharon Martin recently turned 80 and her milestone birthday celebration turned into a superspreader. There wasn’t an outbreak of coronavirus, however – it was kindness that proved widely contagious.

“At my age I have enough stuff,” the longtime Simi Valley resident says, and thus asked family members and friends to each do a “Random Act Of Kindness” in her honor in lieu of a gift-wrapped present.

“I could hardly wait until the big day to open my birthday cards and see what RAOK people had done,” Sharon further shares. “I was like a 5-year-old waiting for Christmas Day.”

Her virtual Christmas tree had more than 50 “gifts” beneath it, including monetary donations to food banks, rescue missions and other charities while food and blankets were given to an animal shelter.

The RAOKs benefited the young and old alike. One woman donated an American Girl Doll to a foster child while several friends “adopted” senior citizens to visit by phone and drop off meals to during the pandemic.

One woman rallied her coworkers and put together 75 back-to-school backpacks filled with supplies for an inner-city elementary school. Similarly, two friends made donations to For The Troops to send “We Care” packages.

“My great-niece joined with others to help clean up the beach,” Sharon said and similarly noted that a 90-year-old nun has started picking up trash on her daily walks as a birthday gift.

“Some were small things,” Sharon continued. “My brother was at a health clinic and when he was leaving he found a pen on the floor. The pen had a special inscription about a nurse and he knew it was important to someone. He spent quite a bit of time interviewing all the nurses and finally found the right one. She was so appreciative as it had been given to her on the day she graduated from nursing school.”

One friend baked homemade bread and delivered it to a neighbor recovering from surgery, along with a good book to read, and another woman made gallons of apple butter to help raise money for families in need.

Another woman tallied up how much money she had NOT spent getting her hair done during the pandemic and sent an equivalent check to a family that is struggling.

“Residents at the Simi Valley Care Center will soon have a pretty gazebo to sit under,” Sharon happily reported, “thanks to a donation to the Eagle Scout project by Josh Hoover.”

One friend saw a man at Costco unsuccessfully trying to squeeze a large piece of furniture into a car that was too small. He brought his pickup truck around and then followed the man home with the special delivery.

Sharon proudly noted that Bill, her husband of 59 years, “is always doing random acts of kindness” and for her birthday celebration this included helping a friend take 5,000 pounds of donations to a Catholic food share.

Naturally, the couple’s three sons honored their mom with RAOKs: Chris went out of his way to make sure a food delivery got to the right person; Greg found a baby quail with a damaged wing and rushed it to a rescue hospital for successful care; and Tim cleaned out the rain gutters for the widow of a victim in the 2017 massacre in Las Vegas.

Turning 80 is a big deal, but how can it compete with the childhood excitement and cake-and-sugar rush of a fifth birthday or eighth or tenth? By giving, that’s how.

As Sharon concluded: “I can truthfully say that this was my very best birthday.”

* * *

Personalized signed copies are at WoodyWoodburn.com

Making Friendship A Fine Art

October 10, 2020 by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

Making Friendship

A Fine Art

My friend Kurt phoned out of the blue the other morning for no other reason than to say “hi” and catch up. His timing was perfect as I was in need of a little pick-me-up. By the time he said “ciao” my socks were filled with helium.

After hanging up, my mind drifted to Coach John Wooden – whose birth date, coincidentally, is this coming Wednesday – and some lessons on friendship he taught me during the two decades I knew him.

The first time I joined Coach on his daily four-mile morning walk some 30 years ago, he gave me a laminated card featuring his father’s “Seven-Point Creed” that includes “Make friendship a fine art.”

In an effort to be such an artist, the next time I visited Coach I brought along a small gift. Knowing his love of poetry, I selected a hardback collection by Rumi. Shortly thereafter, I received a handwritten thank-you note and a copy of a poem authored by Coach titled On Friendship:

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

More prized than the signed poem is that over the ensuing years Coach turned those stanzas into curing words, and deeds, when my spirits fell – particularly after my mom passed away and later when I was nearly killed by a drunk driver.

Coach also had a gift for raising my spirits when they were already high. For example, when I next visited him he recited a poem from the gift Rumi book. I must confess I did not know who he was quoting until he told me. Fittingly, the selection was titled “Love” which Coach insisted was the most important word in the English language.

The poem recital was a thoughtful gesture of rare grace and a lesson through example that saying “thank you” is nice, but to show thanks is far better. In other words, wear a new sweater or necklace the next time you see the person who gave it to you; put a gift vase on proud display before the giver visits; memorize a poem or line from a book given to you.

Another life lesson put into practice was how Coach always gave his full attention on the phone and never seemed in a hurry to hang up. Indeed, if he was too busy to talk he would simply not answer in the first place rather than risk the prospect of having to be in a rude rush.

I fondly remember visiting Coach once when the phone rang and he let the call go through to his answering machine. It was his way of telling me I was his guest and merited full attention. This unspoken kindness became even more meaningful seconds later after the “Beep!” when a very familiar voice could be heard leaving a message.

“That’s Bill Walton!” I said, excitedly. “You’d better answer it!”

Coach Wooden did not reach for the phone and instead told me with a devilish smile: “Heavens no! Bill calls me all the time. If I pick up he’ll talk my ear off for half an hour and then you and I won’t get to visit. I’ll talk with him later.”

I’m glad I did not have a visitor when Kurt phoned the other day while making friendship a fine art.

* * *

Personalized signed copies are at WoodyWoodburn.com

Ticking Off a List of Complaints

October 3, 2020October 3, 2020 by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

Ticking Off List

of Complaints

“You know what really ticks me off?” Grandpa Earl says to his friend Clyde as they sit on a park bench in the comic strip Pickles. “Old people who sit around and complain about things.”

“But you’re an old person, and you sit around and complain about things,” replies Clyde in the second panel.

“I know,” concludes Earl. “And that really ticks me off.”

Well, if I were sitting on a park bench with Grandpa Earl – at opposite ends with both of us wearing masks, of course – here are some of the things I’d complain about . . .

People not wearing masks who don’t respect the six-foot social distancing cushion.

When someone rushes ahead of me in the grocery line and then stalls at the register while waiting for their child or spouse to arrive with an armload of items.

Self-checkouts because then I’m the one holding everyone else up with my befuddlement.

Speaking of lines, I’m forever grumpy at drivers in the front at a stoplight who need a wake-up honk when it turns from red to green.

Also, drivers who straddle halfway in a turn lane instead of scooting all the way over.

And pokey freeway drivers who clog up the left lane so a string of cars has to pass them on the right.

Speaking of speed, when a mom or dad runner pushing a baby stroller passes me. Such show-offy-ness just seems uncalled for.

When bad things happen to good people really ticks me off.

When I forget to take the trash out to the curb the night before pickup and then hear the garbage truck the next morning without enough warning to get my barrels out in time.

Forgetting passwords has me muttering quite often.

Facebook posts that confuse “they’re” and “their” and “there” as well as “your and “you’re.”

But it ticks me off even more that I never know whether to use “whoever” or “whomever.” Oh well, whatever.

When someone’s mask droops down below their nose. Nobody asked me, but in these situations I suggest we all adopt the phrase “Your fly is down” – even for women.

Heck, I’ll even accept, “You’re fly is down.”

Basketball telecasts that insist on showing a close-up of whoever (whomever?) just made a shot and meanwhile we miss the fastbreak going back the other way.

I don’t like Lakers’ home jerseys that are now brighter than a yellow highlight marker.

Long before last Tuesday’s unPresidential Debate Debasement, I have been complaining about political debates not having kill switches on the mics to prevent Thanksgiving dinner-like free-for-alls.

When emails that I want wind up going into spam and robocalls that are harder to keep blocked than ants materializing in a kitchen.

When I have a discount code for an online purchase and then forget to type it in before hitting the “Complete Purchase” button.

I have been complaining like an old-school curmudgeon for months about Major League Baseball’s experimental rule this coronavirus-shorten season of putting a runner on second base at the start of each extra inning’s at-bats.

But it really pains me, Mr. Traditionalist who still grinds his teeth at the Designated Hitter, that I actually find myself liking the bonus runner rule and the different strategies – Play for one run? Go for a big inning? – it creates.

So now I’m complaining that the extra-runner rule is not being used in the playoffs!

I thought of a couple more really good things to include in this column, but forgot what they were. Like Grandpa Earl, sometimes I really tick myself off.

* * *

Personalized signed copies are at WoodyWoodburn.com

WOODY WOODBURN

Writer, "Streaker" & Speaker

Monthly Archives: October 2020

Quoth the Raven, “Vote Ever More!”

Three Winks From The Universe

80th Birthday is a Superspreader

Making Friendship A Fine Art

Ticking Off a List of Complaints