Monthly Archives: October 2025

Century of Linked Hands

by Woody

Woody’s award-winning novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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When it comes to anniversary parties, Nostalgia always RSVPs “Will Attend” and a celebration earlier this month to commemorate the Ventura County Star’s 100th year in print was no exception.

Familiar faces reaching back to the 1970s, and every decade since, were on hand and familiar bylines who have become names in obituaries were on our lips as we shared stories about colleagues and friends, which is redundant, really, for they are one and the same.

One old memory of mine struck me with new meaning on this venerated occasion. It involves Julius Gius, chief editor of the Star-Free Press as the paper was called during his stewardship in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Mr. Gius is arguably the brightest star the Star has ever been graced with and for good reason is in the California Newspaper Hall of Fame.

I joined the S-FP’s sports staff in September of 1987 and before Mr. Gius retired two months later – hopefully the former did not spur the latter – he shared the following story with me.

It happened in a small farming town in Ohio, in a big wheat field, where a young girl wandered from home and became lost in the crop that had grown taller than she. Her parents called out her name, with growing urgency, while searching frantically.

Her three older siblings joined the hunt, then neighbors too.

But as daylight dimmed and disappeared, hopes did likewise. By now seemingly half the townspeople were hectically racing through the wheat field trying to find the little girl, with no success – the flourishing grainland was simply too vast.

Night fell and with it the temperature. If the little girl was not found very soon she would surely perish from hypothermia. Abruptly, her father called everyone in from the maze of wheat.

No, he had not given up on finding his dear daughter. Rather, he suddenly had an idea. He gathered the volunteers and asked them join hands to form a long human chain. More accurately, they formed a giant human comb.

They now all walked together, side by side by side, combing through the tall amber waves of grain. In this manner they no longer missed areas, as was the case when they searched willy-nilly separately.

Within ten minutes, the search party of more than one hundred individuals, now united as one, found the little girl curled up on the ground, stone still as a grave marker.

They were too late.

No, wait – she was shivering, slightly, alive after all!

Metaphorically, this is how a newspaper is put out each day with all available hands: writers and photographers; copyeditors and section editors; advertising and sales reps; paste-up women men armed in the olden days with X-ACTO knives and glue or wax, today graphic artists with computers; newsboys selling papers on the streets long ago, paperboys and girls on bikes later on, and now adult delivery drivers in cars; and more hands, on and on, linked together.

More specifically, and more personally, it seems to me the wheat field represents the Ventura County Star because from its historic premier printing published on June 15, 1925, with Roy Pinkerton as top editor, it has taken eight more chiefs, including Stacie Galang currently leading the charge; plus every other employee who has ever helped put an edition of our beloved paper to bed; and, also, each reader for without them a newspaper is as silent as a tree falling in a lonely forest – all holding hands across the ages for The Star to find its way to a centennial celebration.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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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.

Modern Prometheus In Dodger Blue

by Woody

Woody’s award-winning novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the fictional scientist who created a monster from reanimated body parts collected from human corpses in the 18th century, has outdone himself in 2025, in real life, by perfecting his newest Prometheus.

In Mary Shelly’s famous novel fully titled “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus,” the unnamed monster measures eight feet tall and is covered from face to foot with horrifying stitches used in assembling the hodgepodge of anatomy, including a brain from the University of Ingolstadt.

This new 21st century Modern Prometheus stands eye-to-eye with the mighty Paul Bunyan, has a physique like Michelangelo’s David that likewise seems carved from Carrara marble, and somehow has been electroshocked to life. It should have a pet named Babe The Dodger Blue Ox.

Shohei Ohtani the Modern Prometheus!

Unlike in the cinematic adaptation, this Modern Prometheus has a baby-smooth face free of scars, no electrode bolts emerging from its neck, nor does it lumber like a drunk walking on stilts on an uneven cobblestone street.

Rather, this monster is as graceful as a Keats poem and fast as the wind – or Ricky Henderson on the base paths – thanks to having been assembled with Hermes’ winged feet and Usain Bolt’s gold-medal legs.

The other appropriated appendages used in constructing this Modern Prometheus include Nolan Ryan’s right arm, albeit with the elbow of Zeus surgically inserted, that throws lightning bolts – straight or veering – with the accuracy of Robin Hood’s arrows.

The only “being” who could possibly hit these bullet-fast projectiles is the new Modern Prometheus itself. Thanks to one eye transplanted from a peregrine falcon and the other coming from Ted Williams, this monster can read the date on a flipped coin from 60 feet, 6 inches away and deciphering the gyroscopic red seams of a baseball is as easy as making out the top letter on an eye chart.

Additionally, this updated Modern Prometheus was injected with a magical serum of mongoose blood mixed with rattlesnake venom. The result is turbocharged reflexes that make a cannonball in flight seem to be in slow motion.

Thus, squeezing a bat in Muhammad Ali’s southpaw fist, which is connected to Hank Aaron’s blacksmith wrist and Hercules’ left forearm and bicep, this monster could smack into orbit every baseball pitched to it if it so chose, but what would be the fun and drama in that?

Instead, like a card shark playing possum before winning the night’s biggest pot, this Modern Prometheus purposely fails time and again until the moment calls for a Hollywood-worthy home run – or three! – and then delivers a skyrocket on cue. Roy Hobbs was “The Natural,” but Shohei Ohtani is “The Supernatural.”

This monster ballplayer’s face is also a conglomerate. On the mound, he has the steely-eyed countenance of an Old West gunslinger. In the batter’s box, he displays Bjorn Borg’s “Iceman” unflappability. In the dugout and circling the bases, he flashes Magic Johnson’s “Showtime” – Shohei-time! – smile that requires no translation into another language.

Ohtani is a great-great pitcher and a great-great-great hitter; as both stitched together, with no apologies to Babe Ruth, he is the G.O.A.T. unicorn.

If not a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein-ian creation, the only other plausible explanation is that Ohtani comes not from Japan, but arrived on earth in a pod sent from a distant planet.

Shohei Ohtani next plays in the World Series – or, in his case, the Out-Of-This-World Series. For fairness sake, Toronto Blue Jays pitchers facing this Superman in a blue L.A. cap with a No. 17 Dodgers jersey covering his red cape should be allowed to doctor the baseball with spit and kryptonite dust.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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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.

‘Psychedelic Snowfall’ Of Butterflies

by Woody

Woody’s award-winning novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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In honor of the “Books, Butterflies & Botanical Gardens” fundraiser benefiting the Ventura County Library Foundation on Sunday, October 19, this column from my archives seems apropos to share anew…

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In “A Moveable Feast,” a memoir of his halcyon days – and nights – in Paris in the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway wrote of F. Scott Fitzgerald: “His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust of a butterfly’s wings.”

A key reason for my traveling to Key West on vacation was to visit The Hemingway Home & Museum in Old Town. Five minutes away by foot, on the same block as the popular Southernmost Point in the Continental United States, is The Key West Butterfly & Nature Conservatory. Being so near, I decided to see some butterfly wings.

Entering the humid sanctuary with a soaring glass ceiling that seems to touch the clouds was to step into a time machine. Within seconds, I became a bubbly kindergartener on a school field trip.

“Look!” I reflexively exclaimed to my wife, pointing at a butterfly fluttering a few feet ahead.

“Look! … Look!” I quickly repeated, almost singing, as two more painted marvels danced through the air in slow motion.

Seeing a single butterfly in one’s backyard lightens the heart; here, inside the artificial outdoors, there are more than 3,000 representing 65 species. I had anticipated spotting butterflies would be like an aerial Easter egg hunt requiring eagle eyes and good luck. Instead, it was like being in the midst of an NBA championship celebration with confetti – oversized and alive! – floating all about.

My reaction to this psychedelic snowfall was as if watching Fourth of July fireworks: “Oooh! … Ahhh! … Wow! … Look at that one!” So unbridled was my childlike delight that I may have half-skipped along the winding pathway.

Scarlett, or perhaps Rhett, struts her stuff.

The climate-controlled paradise boasts beyond butterflies. The botanical garden features a rain forest of plants and trees, a meandering stream with resident turtles, and two gorgeous flamingos as florescent pink as a Key West sunset.

Long-long-long-legged Scarlet and Rhett were not always so radiant. After two years of bureaucratic pink tape to secure them, they arrived sickly and gray. Loving care, and importantly a diet rich in brine shrimp containing a natural dye called canthaxanthin, returned the “Gone with the Wind” pair to “flame-colored” per the Portuguese derivation “flamenco.”

Rhett and Scarlet, each 7 years old with life expectancies up to 75, enjoy the feathered company of 20 other species of exotic birds that seem to have had their feathers colored by imaginative children using the 64-count box of Crayola crayons.

Indeed, the fabulous fowls – “Look! … Oooh! … Another one over there!” – come in purples and pinks, reds and oranges, greens and golds, vibrant hues all. I wish you could see them.

Yet it is the butterflies that steal the show. One of the guides called them “flowers of the sky” which I think is perfect. I bet Hemingway would have loved that description too.

Two especially memorable moments occurred on my breathtaking stroll through this Land of Ahhs. First, a bird of a royal blue variety lighted on my left shoulder and remained perched for what seemed like a minute, although surely it was 10 seconds at most, before flying off.

Shortly thereafter, a “flower of the sky” as luminously turquoise as the local shallow ocean waters, lighted upon my right forearm. With its wings opening and closing ever so slowly for thermal regulation, it rested there for a true minute before bidding me farewell.

On a sheet of paper in a typewriter at Hemingway’s nearby home, a copy of a letter he wrote to a friend begins: “Having a wonderful time!!!”

That aptly describes my visit with the butterflies!!!

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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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.

An Evening Of Silver Linings

by Woody

Woody’s award-winning novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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Sometimes, rare wonderful times, when everything seems to be going wrong it somehow all turns out wonderfully. Such was the case the other evening when a young child cried and technology pouted and traffic threw a tantrum – and serendipity just kept smiling over and again, and once more.

Ever since she was a toddler my daughter and I have gone on “Daddy Dates,” as she called them then, and still does, because to my great fortune she has not outgrown these special outings, just the two of us, even though she is now well into her thirties.

In one of my favorite photographs, Dallas, maybe 5 years old, is in a sunflower dress and holding a bouquet to match, and I am in a “tuxedo” which is what called my sport coat she requested I wear. I requested that when she was older if a boy did not open car doors, and pull out her chair, she not give him another date.

Serendipity brought us to Robert Louis Stevenson’s former residence.

Naturally, when she and I went to a concert in San Francisco’s Masonic Auditorium recently I opened doors and helped her into her seat because I did not want to be unworthy of future Daddy Dates.

This date almost didn’t get out the front door to begin. A tearful two-year-old, with her daddy out of town, did not want her mommy to also leave. A delay that would surely make us late could have been frustrating; instead, it was actually a joy to watch my daughter soothe her own daughter with love and patience.

Heavy traffic, followed by a long security line when we arrived, then a brief snafu with our online tickets, promised to make us miss the opening song. And yet, somehow, we made it to our seats literally five seconds before the house lights went down and the music rose up. It was as if serendipity smiled and asked The Swell Season to wait for us.

As for our seats, a birthday gift from my son, they were terrific: floor level, slightly left of the stage, and so close we could see Markéta Irglová’s fingers dancing – gently sometimes, other times frenetically and mesmerizingly, always seemingly perfectly – on the piano keys.

Similarly, the skill and passion of Glen Hansard strumming his acoustic guitar with speed and fury was a thrill to behold and explains the comet-shaped gash worn through its face just below the sound hole.

The Swell Season sang their familiar old hits from the movie “Once” and new gems from their 2025 album “Forward,” but the highlight was the final encore, an acoustic rendition, sans microphones, leading the crowd of 4,000 in a hair-raisingly beautiful sing-along of the classic American folk song “Passing Through” popularized long ago by Pete Seeger.

Joining in, I was 10-years-old again and transported back to elementary school when Mr. Hawkins, my beloved fifth-grade teacher, would play guitar for sing-alongs.

Walking the city aimlessly after the concert, Dallas and I happened upon 608 Bush Street and serendipity smiled once again with a California Historical Society commemorative plaque noting that Robert Louis Stevenson, the great Scottish writer who penned “Treasure Island” and “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” briefly lived and wrote here in 1879 and 1880.

Our Jekyll-and-Hyde evening continued on the drive home with badly congested freeway traffic from an accident, but this, too, proved to be a silver lining because it wonderfully extended our time together.

Naturally, I walked my date to her front door – but there was no need to apologize to her father for missing curfew by an hour.           

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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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.

Books, Butterflies, Botanical Beauty

by Woody

Woody’s award-winning novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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The most wonderful thing happened when I was four years old, so thrilling it imprinted as one of my very first memories that to this day remains golden as a summer sunrise, so life-changing it planted the seed for becoming a writer – for before one becomes a writer, he or she must first be a reader.

Before I even entered kindergarten, my mom took me to the local public library to get my very own library card, which goes a long way in telling you I had a masterpiece mother.

While I cannot remember the first book I checked out, the first unforgettable one was “Where The Wild Things Are.” Week after week, I re-re-re-checked out this illustrated treasure by Maurice Sendak until the librarian finally told me I needed to return Max and his wild creature friends for other kids to enjoy.

So it was that my love affair with libraries began, a romance that has grown and not diminished six decades later, for I agree with the great author Pat Conroy who once noted: “I was born to be in a library.”

His and my enchanted experiences seem to be the norm, not the exception. Indeed, it is rare to meet an adult who does not fondly recall going to the library as a child.

Long before he became a silver-screen storyteller, Robert Redford was a storybook reader, having recalled before his recent passing: “I don’t know what your childhood was like, but we didn’t have much money. We’d go to a movie on Saturday night, and then on Wednesday my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book.”

Public libraries remain a big deal, and a free deal, providing not just books at no charge but also Wi-Fi and, here in Ventura County in the summertime when school is out, free lunches for kids, and so much more. For example, in addition to enjoying listening to storytimes, my young granddaughters love reading aloud to therapy dogs at the library.

“I discovered me in the library,” said author Ray Bradbury and I feel likewise. It is fair to say I would not be a journalist, nor have authored the novel “The Butterfly Tree: An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations,” if I had not been a library-goer.

As the title suggests, butterflies and botany are woven into its pages; additionally, a public library has a meaningful role; thus, I am especially honored to be a speaker and have a book signing at the “Books, Butterflies & Botanical Gardens” fundraiser benefiting the Ventura County Library Foundation on October 19, noon to 4 p.m. (For tickets or to be a sponsor: https://bit.ly/4gmQXVP )

My daughter Dallas Woodburn, an award-winning YA author who got her first library card, also at age four, at the bygone H.P. Wright Library, will join me as we discuss writing and reading, favorite authors and books, and such.

Also, Jana Johnson, a renowned conservation biologist, will discuss the two-decade-long recovery efforts to save the critically endangered Palos Verde blue butterfly.

Ventura’s Botanical Gardens afford a lofty panoramic postcard scene of our slice of paradise – ocean, iconic pier, islands, mountains – worthy of mailing to the most beautiful locales on earth to make the recipients a little envious. And yet the views inside any public library surpass this or even Yosemite Valley at its Ansel Adams’ best because the books in the stacks can take you anywhere and everywhere in the world – and beyond, to worlds only imagined.

Thanks, Mom!

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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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.