Monthly Archives: February 2026

Top dog shows off Down Under

by Woody

Woody’s award-winning novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available (signed copies) here on my home page and also (unsigned) at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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In 1975, in August, in the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, in the inaugural Canine Disc World Championships, my great boyhood friend Jimmy and I were on hand, down on the football field sidelines, watching with mouths agape as Ashley Whippet, already the Babe Ruth of the sport, raced 30 mph from one end zone to the other, a full 100 yards, to catch up to and catch a hurled Frisbee.

On a shorter toss that dog days of summer afternoon, Ashley Whippet soared nine feet high in the air to bite a disc at its zenith and clinch his first of three consecutive world titles.

It has remained, over the ensuing half-century, the most amazing exhibition of animal athleticism I have ever witnessed…

…until a recent summer morning Down Under in New Zealand, which is winter here Up Top, when I saw Scottie Border Collie do his magic.

The legendary Ashely Whippet in high-flying action!

My Much Better Half and I had traveled an hour by bus from the charming port town of Lyttelton, on the East Coast of the South Island, through the Caterbury countryside that is worthy of Monet’s brushstrokes, to the little town of Little River to tour a working sheep farm.

Manderley Farm’s homestead was built in 1876 and has remained in the same family’s hands for five generations. Consisting of 750 acres, it is considered rather small for a sheep farm nowadays with about 900 head.

What it lacks for in size, it more than makes up for in beauty. With a postcard valley tucked between foothills rising from sea level into the clouds, this slice of paradise looks as if the floor of Yosemite and an Irish farm had a single offspring.

“I cleared all that,” said Ross Millar, owner of Manderley since 1974, pointing to a flat area and then sweeping his hand to a section of the foothills, “and that.”

It is not only the farmland that is breathtaking. Mary tends a large and gorgeous flower garden in the manicured front lawn of their stunningly attractive farmhouse. Basically, their spread belongs in “Homes & Garden” magazine.

But the main attraction is the farm itself, where for five decades Ross has grown his crops, his crops being wool, meaning his crops are sheep (and 180 beef cattle, too), and the stars of raising sheep are the working dogs which Ross breeds and trains – and sells, a gifted pup fetching up to $10,000 (New Zealand Dollars).

Scottie, a black-and-white border collie is the star of Manderley, the top dog, literally, of the five that help Ross manage the farm.

As Ross gave a brief lecture to a dozen tourists, Scottie patiently sat at his owner’s feet watching a few sheep off in the distance in the foothills. Eventually, Ross said, almost in a whisper, “Go” – and it was as if he had shouted the directive with three exclamation marks for Scottie shot off like a fired furry canon ball.

Instead of racing 100 yards on a flat-and-mowed football field in chase of a Frisbee, Scottie was a four-legged comet flying a quarter-mile up Up UP a mountainside as steep as a staircase with ankle-spraining terrain and thick brush you could lose a shoe in.

Calling Scottie a “working” dog, it was readily apparent, is a bit of a misnomer. Herding sheep is not work for him, it is play! Displaying enthusiasm from nose to wagging tail, he made rounding up a lone sheep seem like recess, like he was having as much fun as Ashley Whippet catching a flying disc.

To be continued next week…

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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.

Comforting In-Flight Entertainment

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 in-flight movie screen for Seat 19-B was out of order.

This would have been less bothersome had the passenger in 19-B not brought along a book that he realized, about two chapters in, he had already read.

This, in turn, would have been less bothersome had this recent flight not been from Southern California to New Zealand, a flight of more than 13 hours, a flight so long it took off Wednesday night and landed Friday morning with Thursday disappearing into thin air at 35,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

This would have been less bothersome if the passenger in 19-B was able to sleep on planes and thus had napped through the airborne boredom, and through stretches of rollercoaster-like hair-raising turbulence, until waking up Down Under.

All of this would have been less bothersome if the passenger in 19-B was not me.

And all of this changed for the better when the person in Seat 18-C, one row ahead of me and directly across the aisle to the right, opened a generously sized canvas book bag and, as if it were Mary Poppins’ magical bottomless carpet bag, from it started pulling out an arts and crafts store shelf worth of skeins of yarn – green, gold, red, and two shades of blue – and wooden knitting needles.

Suddenly I was in a time machine transported back half a century, while simultaneously in a flying machine heading forward 6,000 miles, thinking of my mom who was an accomplished knitter. One of the last gifts she gave me before passing away three decades ago was a gorgeous afghan the color of hot chocolate, made lighter by melted marshmallows, with a seashell pattern and tassel fringe.

This knitter, however, reminded me nothing of my mom. For starters, he looked more like a stereotypical motorcycle club member than someone in a knitting club. In his forties, I guessed, unshaven for two days I also guessed, toe to top he wore black boots, blue jeans, faded brown T-shirt with a slightly torn seam on the left shoulder with the short sleeves stretched taut over large biceps, plus tattoo sleeves – a dog’s face, a rabbit wearing a dress, and a butterfly among the images I could make out – on both arms, and a battered baseball cap.

“It distracts me from my fear of flying,” Jason, as I later learned his name to be, shared when I leaned forward to compliment his handiwork/artwork.

Watching him knit was a pleasant distraction for me as well, as calming and entertaining as watching fish in an aquarium.

Jason began by rolling the five skeins into a single ball that speedily grew from a marble into a baseball into a grapefruit into a good-sized cantaloupe that looked like a miniature globe of Earth. More than once, he had to pause his spinning hands in order to untangle a skein that had become as snagged as a back-lashed fishing line in a reel.

Once the knitting began, the two needles flicked and clicked like flashing swords in a Robin Hood fight, all whilst Jason’s fingers danced and his wedding band glinted, and row by row the scarf or sweater or afghan grew, its colors changing at random with some sections wide and others narrow, a yarn sunset unfurling on his lap.

“What are you making?” I asked after we landed.

“A sweater,” Jason answered. “For me.”

He paused and smiled and his round wire-rimmed glasses made him look like a poet or professor, or a knitter certainly, and added: “But my wife will probably steal it.”

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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.

“Cupid” Story Better Than “OK”

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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On the eve of Valentine’s Day, this love story from my column archives five years ago, slightly updated, seems appropriate to share again…

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If the weather app on your phone says 92-percent chance of rain, you had best take along your umbrella or wear a raincoat.

If Netflix ranks a movie title a 92-pecent match with your viewing history, it is only a coin toss you will actually like it.

And if an online dating site finds you a 92-percent match, I would suggest you go meet someone the old-fashioned way at a party, park, bookstore or grocery aisle.

To begin with, if “opposites attract” should you not want more like a 12-percent match? Perhaps dating algorithms take this into account, but I am still a naysayer.

Without ever having used one, my complaint with dating apps is not that they are not good matchmakers but rather that they are raining on one of my favorite things to do when introduced to a couple. Be they engaged or newlyweds or married for decades, I love to ask: “How did you meet?”

Almost without fail, their faces light up and I am treated to a story they love to tell. Quite often it is more entertaining than a movie rom-com. Alas, how does a meet-cute happen in cyberspace?

Let me tell you how. Actually, I shall let my daughter Dallas tell you. As a teaser trailer, imagine “You’ve Got Mail” with Meg Ryan’s book-loving “Shopgirl” character played by an equally adorable girl who loves books and sunflowers. Meanwhile, cantankerous Joe Fox is played by a good-looking young man as likeable as the real-life Tom Hanks.

Spoiler alert: The sunflower-loving girl, a Dodgers fan by the way, and the young man who has loved the Oakland A’s since boyhood, have now been married nine years and have two daughters ages 7 and 3.

And so, with February being the month of “Love and Romance” and Cupid and Valentine’s Day, I now turn the column over to Dallas:

“One night in late January 2014, ‘Sunflowergirl87’ was browsing OkCupid when she came across a photo of a handsome guy with a bird on his shoulder, ‘OaktownA’sFan,’ who the dating-site algorithm declared was a 92% match. She decided to reach out with a message.

“ ‘Hi! I was really drawn to your profile – you seem like such a genuine, adventurous, glass-half-full person, and I just wanted to reach out and say hello…’

“OaktownA’sFan read this sincere, heart-on-her-sleeve message and immediately knew this girl had not been online dating for long, because she sounded way too optimistic and friendly. ‘I better swoop her up fast,’ he thought.

“ ‘Hi there! Thank you for such a sweet and thoughtful message. I would love to meet up for coffee or tea sometime!’

“They messaged back and forth a little bit – about Dallas’s writing, Allyn’s sustainable business MBA studies, dogs, random acts of kindness – before OaktownA’sFan (‘my name is Allyn, pronounced Alan’) asked sunflowergirl87 (‘my name is Dallas, like the city’) out for ice cream at Lottie’s Ice Cream Parlor in Walnut Creek.

“Their first date, on February 1, was a rainy evening – not the best weather for ice cream, but neither of them minded. Allyn ordered the adventurous flavor with cayenne pepper in it. Dallas ordered something chocolate. Allyn was so attentive asking Dallas questions that she talked and talked and talked and her ice cream all melted. They walked down the street to Starbucks to talk longer because neither felt ready to say goodbye yet.

“The next day, Allyn asked Dallas out on a second date.

“Soon after that, they both disabled their OkCupid accounts.”

Me again: I love a cute love story, don’t you?

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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.

Mom’s Act Remains North Star

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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My mother, bless her honey-sweet steel-strong soul, would be 93 years old had she not died fully half my lifetime ago at age 60. I have been thinking of her even more than usual, not because of her birthday or anniversary of her passing, but because I keep imagining her at an “ICE Out” demonstration.

Indeed, were she alive today, there is no doubt in my heart that Mom would be in the streets marching. Even if she were in a wheelchair, she would be standing up for her fellow man and fellow woman and fellow child, be they Americans with Mayflower roots or naturalized citizens or undocumented immigrants, be they Black or brown or white or green or blue or polka-dotted.

My mom felt injustice to one was injustice for all. It was not lip service from her always-Revlon-red-painted smile, either. She walked the talk. She would have hidden Anne Frank. That is a bold statement, but I believe it with my every fiber.

One story goes a long way in telling you why, from when I was growing up to this very day in spirit, Mom has always been my North Star. It happened a long, long time ago, in the previous century, in 1949, in the Midwest, when Auden – more than a decade before she became my mom – was in high school.

There was a must-go-to prom party and Auden was thrilled to be invited. But her excitement evaporated faster than wet footprints on the scorching cement deck of a swimming pool in August after she found out her good friend Trish had not received an invitation.

Auden’s disappointed sizzled into red-hot anger when she learned why Trish was excluded: because she was Jewish.

Understand, this was not just the party of the year, it was The Party of The Senior Class’s High School Lives. No matter. If Trish was not welcomed, then Auden would not go either. Instead, she invited Trish to her house for their own two-person celebration.

Sometimes, far too often I think, we think one voice or one small act cannot make a big difference. We are wrong. My mom’s mini party turned out to be The Biggest PartyOf Allas a growing cascade of classmates followed her example.

“Injustice,” Mom told me often, “is everyone’s battle.”

I am proud to be my mom’s son and I am proud also to have raised a son who would step in to help a young woman if she were shoved to the ground, that he would ask “Are you okay?” and shield her from further harm. In other words, to be like Alex Pretti who, in the process of his kindness, was recently shot dead by federal agents.

Yes, that could have been my son. And if stepping in to aid a person at a protest demonstration can get you shot in the head while you are being held on the ground, then my daughter is not safe either for she, too, has an alloy of compassion and courage just like her Grandma Auden. Nor are my daughter-in-law and son-in-law safe, for they also are marchers against injustice.

If the First Amendment is no more valued than an old grocery list and journalist Don Lemon is not safe from arrest, than neither am I.

If I am not safe, neither are you.

If you are not safe, neither are your loved ones and friends and neighbors and coworkers and on and on.

What would your own mom want you to do during these trying times?

I know mine’s answer.

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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.