Monthly Archives: September 2022

Rants and Raves on This and That

by Woody

If you want sugar and pumpkin spice and everything nice, call your grandma on Zoom because I’m in a puppy dog ate my homework kind of mood.

For starters, I was annoyed because what I thought was an extreme case of jetlag after spending 14 hours in the air – with a baby across the aisle from me crying for half of it – instead turned out to be COVID-19…

…but I love that thanks to modern science/medicine and being vaccinated and double-boosted, my symptoms have been akin to a very bad cold.

I get annoyed because I know the same handful of anti-vaxers who routinely gunk up my inbox will do so again now…

…but I love hitting the email “trash” key.

I get annoyed by impatient and rude drivers…

…but I love it when two lanes merge into one in a construction zone and every single driver allows another car in like a clothes zipper merging together perfectly.

I get annoyed when half the sesame seeds on my bagel fall off and make a mess…

…but I love it when a frozen yogurt has a mess of toppings.

I get annoyed by knuckleheads…

…but I love that my daughter calls knuckleheads “yo-yo-heads.”

I get annoyed at myself because I continually underestimate the slow-as-a-doctor’s-waiting-room traffic on the local freeways and wind up late for engagements…

…but I love when I hit a string of green lights in town and wind up arriving ten minutes early – which, as Coach John Wooden said, is actually merely being right on time.

I get annoyed when a doctor’s office is running 30 minutes behind schedule…

…but I love it when a receptionist performs a magic act and squeezes me in the very day I call in with an illness or ailment – which may be why another patient has to wait 30 minutes.

I get annoyed when a quick-service restaurant meal for eating on the premises, not take-out, comes wrapped in two pounds of aluminum foil, cardboard and paper – a lot of waste for 30 seconds of use…

…but I love it when I remember to take reusable bags to the grocery store.

I get annoyed when autocorrect makes me look like a yo-yo-head…

…but I love when my Star editor corrects a typo to keep me from looking like a yo-yo-head.

I get annoyed that school children see a need to send military care packages filled with requested items like cookies, chips, trail mix, jerky, granola bars and candy bars, and gum. If our troops want these items, the military should provide them!…

…but I love when kids send letters, cards and handmade items to our soldiers.

I get annoyed when I read the news crawl across the bottom of the TV screen and then lose track of what the news anchor is saying…

…but I love crawls that show me all the other scores and updates while watching a sporting event.

I get annoyed when dog walkers don’t clean up their pets’ messes…

…and I would love an ordinance that requires these yo-yo-heads to clean the shoe soles for those of us who take a messy misstep.

I get annoyed when I see litter anywhere, most especially on our lovely beaches…

…but I love the enthusiasm of volunteer beach clean-up days.

I get annoyed by the hypocrisy of so many yo-yo-head politicians…

…but I smile recalling my grandpa Ansel’s refrain that sometimes it’s good to deal with dummies because they make you feel so smart.

There, I feel so much better I think I’ll Zoom call my sugar-and-spice granddaughter.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody 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 SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Bookend Poems on Autumn’s Arrival

by Woody

Poems about autumn, which arrived almost unexpectedly yesterday and as silently as if sneaking in on tiptoes for summer still seems in the air, surely outnumber all the leaves of reds and golds and flaming oranges in a forest of maple trees.

Not unexpectedly, one of the best of these poems was written by Emily Dickinson, a short offering published in 1896 and titled “Nature Poem, 28: Autumn.” It reads, in full:

“The morns are meeker than they were, / The nuts are getting brown;

“The berry’s cheek is plumper, / The rose is out of town.

“The maple wears a gayer scarf, / The field a scarlet gown.

“Lest I should be old-fashioned, / I’ll put a trinket on.”

The nuts here on the Golden Coast may not be getting brown, but our mornings certainly are noticeably meeker than before. Too, our evenings now grow darker, earlier. Indeed, it is as if the setting sun is in a race to call it a day a little sooner each evening. Soon, a walk on the beach may require a gayer scarf.

Greeting autumn with a hello embrace means in turn bidding a melancholy adieu to summer. Indeed, I love summer and will miss her dearly. In the heart of my youth, summer was without question my favorite of the four seasons for two reasons: warm weather and no school.

I have since learned that choosing a favorite season is a fool’s errand. It is like asking me to choose between Steinbeck, Hemingway, Twain and Shakespeare. Impossible.

Spring, for starters, is blooming flowers and flying kites and, as Tennyson poetically observed, when young men’s fancies turn to thoughts of love – so what’s not to love about this fair season?

Summer is beach outings and pool parties, fireflies and fireworks, ice cream and vacations – again, what’s not to adore fully?

Winter, meanwhile, is cozy fires and family gatherings, mistletoe and Auld Lang Syne and the New Year’s promise of approaching spring – how can you not love all that?

Thus, my favorite season is whichever one is currently visiting. And right now that is autumn. Many call it “fall”, but I think “autumn” is lovelier. By either name, its arrival brings with it…

…a crispness in the air that is invigorating.

…coffee shops and market shelves offering Pumpkin Spice This, Pumpkin Spice That, Pumpkin Spice Everything!

…corn mazes and hayrides and pumpkin patches and school children spending half an hour to select The Perfect Pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern with all the care of a bride choosing her wedding dress.

…carving jack-o-lanterns, going trick-or-treating, and having an excuse as a grown-up to dress up like a superhero.

…comfort foods such as homemade soups, chili and cornbread, marshmallows toasted over a fire, pumpkin pie/bread/pudding/cookies/coffee.

…football and Thanksgiving.

…fall foliage showing its true colors, not as grandly in Southern California as on the East Coast and Midwest, yet in a way our limited-edition outbursts of Monet-worthy leaves-scapes make them all the more precious and beautiful.

Speaking of leaves, fall’s arrival brings to mind another of my favorite poems, a bookend to Dickinson’s “Autumn.” Titled “Fantastic Fall” it was written by my daughter, Dallas, then in the fourth grade:

“Fall is a great season, here is my reason:

“The leaves on trees turn golden brown,

“Then the leaves fall DOWN, Down, down…

“You rake them into a giant hump,

“Next comes the good part – jump, Jump, JUMP!

“Leaves sail through the crisp autumn air,

“And fall down, Down, DOWN everywhere!”

Yes, right now I love autumn best. Until winter rings my doorbell.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody 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 SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Some Books Merit Special Shelves

by Woody

No matter how many books you own, I have a hunch you have one special shelf that holds your most cherished volumes.

For example, I have a lawyer bookcase with glass panels that contains a prized signed statuette of John Wooden, clay hand imprints my son and daughter made in kindergarten, and other such keepsakes. A different shelf within proudly displays 20 moss-green hardcover 1922 editions of Mark Twain’s works and an 1884 printing of “Red-Letter Poems By English Men And Women” with 648 gilt-edged pages featuring a Who’s Who lineup that includes Shakespeare, Byron, Browning (both Robert and Elizabeth), Keats, Donne, Milton, Tennyson and Wordsworth.

Despite their age, none of the above volumes are of great monetary value – yet all 21 are priceless personally because they belonged to my maternal grandfather and are the lone survivors from the inheritance of his vast book collection, the rest having been lost in the Thomas Fire that claimed my father’s home.

Family ties are behind two more special shelves belonging to dear friends of mine.

Kay Giles, easily one of the most well-read people I know, not surprisingly has upwards of 2,000 books in her home – among them 16 volumes that merit their very own top shelf in a prominently displayed bookcase. They are the full collection of Charles Dickens’ works, a special edition circa 1930, handsomely bound in rich walnut-brown leather with gold lettering on the pristine spines.

Most importantly, they belonged to Kay’s paternal grandparents and she calls them her “dearest inheritance.”

“My dad packed them up from his parents’ house in London when he went back there to take care of their affairs after my grandmother died,” Kay remembers, noting she was 16 years old at the time.

Houston Wolf was even younger when his father brought home a set of books that would similarly become dear to him, a 1952 printing of “The Great Books of the Western World”, a whopping 54 volumes that weigh about as much as a grand piano. Humble in appearance with cloth covers in a rainbow of hues – blue, green, red and gold, all faded by time – the books came with an equally modest waist-high wooden bookcase, the middle shelf now sagging slightly under its load.

“I’m so proud to think that I’ve carted these books around with me wherever I’ve moved for nearly forty years,” Houston shares, noting there have been many, many moves. “I’m also proud I never sold them, even in periods of desperation – at least what I considered to be desperation at the time. These books, and the knowledge I knew I’d someday absorb, were my security blanket. As long as I had these books, my life would be okay. I would always have something to live for, if just to protect these books.

“At my very lowest,” he continues, “I was offered $500 for the set. I couldn’t do it. Then the same gentleman then offered me $500 for ONE book from the set – Plotinus, Volume No. 17. I’ll never, ever read Plotinus, probably. I don’t even know who he is. But I couldn’t, wouldn’t, do it to a set of books that deserved to remain intact. So I refused. And I really could have used that $500.”

Here’s the kicker: Houston confesses he hasn’t read any of his beloved books!

“So why do I keep them?” he says. “Pride in having taken care of them all these years. And ambition to someday read them.”

To paraphrase Robert Browning: Ah, a To-Be-Read shelf should exceed one’s grasp, or else what’s a heaven for?

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody 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 SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Intoxicated by Bookstores and Libraries

by Woody

If you are at all like me, books never cease to allure you, delight you, amaze and even intoxicate you.

I would rather spend time in a bookstore than a museum, and I dearly love museums, which may explain why I especially adore used-books bookstores – and public libraries, too – because they are like bibliophilic museums, only better, because you are allowed to handle the old artifacts on display.

Yes, some of the best bookstores are second-hand museums, and the best of these remind me of Ventura’s long defunct All Pro Sporting Goods that was owned by legendary Bob Tuttle. It was a hole-in-the wall, barely bigger than a walk-in closet, yet like Mary Poppins’ magical carpetbag anything you were looking for could be found within.

Indeed, in the 1970s you might go into All-Pro to buy basketball sneakers and leave also with a new-but-blemished baseball mitt from the bargain bin in the same manner one might today be interested in a newly released novel at Ventura’s beloved Bank of Books and in addition wind up buying a second-hand copy of a classic.

There is something special about old books and the perfume they release – a trace of mustiness and earthiness, with a hint of vanilla mixed in – when you turn the pages, foxed and yellowing and slightly brittle from age. Used-books bookstores smell sweeter than a nursery greenhouse.

However, I also find delight in new books and independent bookstores where the staff can ask you a few questions and then give you a perfect recommendation that, to borrow from Holden Caulfield in “The Catcher in the Rye”, really knocks you out. Furthermore, indie shops often have reading nooks and dog-eared couches that invite you to pleasantly linger a while. Timbre Books in Ventura and The Bookworm in Camarillo are two of my favorite cozy bookshops.

The breathtaking library at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.

Too, I love libraries. The most beautiful library I have ever been inside is at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, a cathedral of the printed page where the priceless Book of Kells, dating back to 800 A.D., resides. When Jorge Luis Borges said, “I have always imagined Paradise will be a kind of library,” I think he had this Trinity College library in mind.

I think any library is a slice of Paradise. This includes home libraries, whether they contain thousands of volumes or merely a dozen cherished favorites. Growing up, our home library was actually a small bedroom, but very tall, with two opposing walls featuring white-painted pine bookshelves that rose like mountains from the floor to the 12-foot ceiling.

These Twin Peaks were as beautiful as any mosaic in an art museum. Instead of ceramic tiles, or stones, or sea glass, the medium was book spines. Thin spines and thick tomes; tall spines, short ones; spines in rainbow hues and earth tones. Most of the spines were shelved vertically, but some were stacked horizontally. There were leather spines as pristine as shoes polished for church, others dulled by age and creased from use. There were clothbound spines, paperback spines, spines covered by glossy dust jackets. There were new-looking old spines and old-looking new ones. Some spines had fancy gilt lettering while others had titles and authors printed in inks of every color, in myriad fonts.

Twin Peaks had too many books to read in ten lifetimes, but that was fine. As the poet Robert Browning said, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or else what’s a heaven for?”

Next week: Two of my friends and the most cherished books in their home slices of heaven.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody 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 SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

 

This Rom-Com Stands Test of Time

by Woody

Upon meeting a married couple, from newlyweds to having celebrated their diamond anniversary, I love to ask how they met. Blind date or meet cute or online dating match, they always light up in the retelling – as do I in the listening.

In the hopes that you feel likewise, let me share a synopsis of my in-progress screenplay with the working title, “When Woody Met Lisa.” Instead of starring Billy Crystal (dark hair, not the required shaggy ginger-blond) and Meg Ryan (blond, not brunette), the leading characters will be played by Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams.

The movie opens on the campus of UC Santa Barbara, in a dining hall, at dinnertime. There are three hot-food lines and Woody intentionally chooses the longest one. When he finally reaches the front we see why: the server, even with her cascading locks tucked up in a hair net, is the prettiest girl he has ever seen.

Our first date, the very next evening after meeting at a party…

“Lasagna and tater tots, please,” the freshman says, choking on any attempt to flirt because the sophomore beauty is far out of his league. A quick montage follows, showing him in her line all year with similar failed results.

Fast-forward two years to a Christmas party at the off -campus apartment of two of Woody’s wild-and-crazy former freshman dorm mates. Across the crowded room, Woody sees a girl who makes his heart pick up a faster drumbeat. She is wearing a light-blue sweater, and no hair net, but no sooner does he try to strike up a conversation than the keg runs dry and the party breaks up and everyone decides to go to another friend’s bash.

Everyone, that is, except Lisa, who has promised a different friend she would drop by her party. Alas, their romance seems derailed before it has even begun.

“I’ll walk you there,” Woody quickly, and wisely, blurts out and the Nora Ephron-like fun begins. At one point, Woody gets Lisa a beer while she goes to the restroom – and when she returns he has slyly maneuvered himself underneath a hanging sprig of mistletoe. Lisa accepts the red Solo Cup and then unexplainably pulls Woody across the room, thwarting his ploy before he can act on it.

…and still feel like were dating all these years later!

All is not lost, however, as Woody and Lisa do kiss later that evening – with no assist from mistletoe – and then go on a dinner date the following evening and promptly fall in love.

As in all good rom-coms, just when things are going perfectly a break-up strikes like a lightning bolt. Both start dating others and at this low point, with Woody crushed by the flu, Lisa brings him an Easter basket filled with a chocolate bunny and candy, his favorite fresh bagels and cream cheese, and an array of cold and cough medicines. Woody’s fever instantly soars even higher with lovesickness and to this day he counts his lucky stars he got sick.

Also to this day, by the way, Lisa insists she never saw the mistletoe the night of their meet cute.

In two days – on September 4th – the two lovebirds will celebrate their ruby wedding anniversary of 40 years. Woody already knows the toast he will give her at dinner, quoting a line in a novel by one of his favorite authors, Brian Doyle, where the narrator, recalling his first kiss with his future wife many, many years earlier, says: “How can you not stay in love with the girl who was with you the very moment you were introduced to true happiness.”

Our movie ends, naturally, with a kiss beneath a sprig of mistletoe.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody 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 SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com