Author Archives: Woody

The Bamboo Field and Sink of Dishes

by Woody

“Don’t worry that your children never listen to you,” essayist Robert Fulghum wisely wrote, “worry that they are always watching you.”

Sometimes our little ones do both. This happy insight struck me when my daughter shared a scene from her morning, her retelling evidence that she indeed took to heart a parable I told her when she was growing up and also watched me tackle large tasks with its inspired lesson.

The story, shared with me long ago by golfing legend Chi Chi Rodriguez while recalling his childhood in Puerto Rico, goes like this: “When I was a young boy we had a little field that was overgrown with bamboo trees. My father wanted to plant corn, but clearing the bamboo would have taken a month. He didn’t have the time because of his job. So every night when he came home from work my father would cut down a single piece of bamboo.”

Chi Chi paused, dramatically, then emphasized: “Just one piece.”

Before his conclusion, let me share my daughter’s similar tale.

“This morning,” Dallas said, “I woke up feeling exhausted even though my two young daughters actually slept in and I was able to get a decent amount of sleep. As my husband got them dressed, I got up to make coffee for him and tea for me.

“The kitchen was filled with dirty dishes from not just last night’s dinner, but from the past few days. I looked at those dishes and thought: Ugh! I CAN’T EVEN right now.

“My mind immediately began filling with excuses and reasons to ignore the dishes, yet again, until later. As if by putting them off until later some magical Dish Fairy would sneak into our kitchen and do them all for us. (Which only actually happens when my parents or mother-in-law or sister-in-law come over!)

“But the coffee strainer was dirty, so I had to wash that. Plus, I might as well wash my favorite mug so I could use that for my morning tea. Waiting for the kettle to boil, I did a few more dishes. And it wasn’t that hard to slot a bunch of dirty plates and bowls into the dishwasher. Already the counters looked much cleaner.

“I poured the hot water into my mug and still had a few minutes of waiting for the tea to steep, so I figured I might as well do a few more dishes. I took a sip of tea. Mmmm. Already I was feeling better, less groggy, more ready to face the day.

“My sponge was still soapy and I hate to waste some good soapsuds, so I scrubbed more pots and pans, then dried them and put them away. Meanwhile, Maya and Auden, miraculously, were entertaining themselves in the playroom. This far in, I figured I might as well keep going and finish the job. And that is what I did.

“Looking around the clean kitchen, I felt so much better about the day, my life, myself. It might sound silly, but my clean kitchen made me feel more confident and capable and cheerful. Instead of a sink and counter full of dirty dishes, I now had a clean slate. And it almost didn’t happen. It started with just washing one little dish.”

Just one single stalk of bamboo being cut down is how Chi Chi’s father started his daunting task.

“Just one piece, every night,” Chi Chi emphasized, concluding with a smile: “The very next spring, we had corn on our dinner table. The Bamboo Story, to me, is the secret to success.”

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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.

Music Between Sightseeing Highlights

by Woody

“The music is not in the notes,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is widely attributed to have noted, “but in the silence between.”

Similarly, the magic of travel is sometimes surprisingly found between landmark sites and famous sights.

So it was on a recent trip My Much Better Half and I took to New Zealand and Australia. The magic began in the airport, in a terminal restaurant, in a booth next to a father having dinner with two of the most adorable children imaginable – a daughter perhaps age 5 and a son surely not yet 1.

This family of three was just a delight to watch; the father held the boy lovingly in one arm as he ate with the other; the daughter, sitting across the table, had the manners and charm to match the princess-like dress she was wearing; when her brother, wearing a bow tie on this obviously special occasion, began to fidget, she made him giggle with an elixir of dancing facial expressions and a voice on the edge being a song.

Many, many years ago, on a trip when my daughter and son were not much older than this pair, a sweet stranger secretively paid the restaurant tab for us. Now, alas, the server said their bill had already been settled. Instead, I could only offer the father a compliment on his beautiful family.

And here came the real magic, for he said, nodding at the boy: “We just got him today.”

Was this an adoption homecoming trip? I did not ask, but I knew this: Our trip Down Under had just begun with our lips turned up into smiles.

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A bookend airport scene filled with love occurred two days later, for we skipped a full date in flight, upon our arrival in Auckland.

As MMBH and I crossed the threshold into the arrivals reception area, a man I guessed to be in his 50s raced ahead of us into the open arms of a similarly aged man eagerly awaiting him. It was a vision out of a movie, complete with a long embrace that lifted one of the two off his feet; an embrace that went on and on; an embrace that was accompanied by wet eyes.

It was, I surmised initially, a lovers’ embrace. Or, perhaps, two long-lost old friends reunited? No and no – siblings, it turned out, for as I walked by I overheard one call the other, “Little Brother.”

My new smile widened further when I imagined, half a century from now, the young girl from the LAX restaurant running through an airport to happily and tearfully embrace her little brother.

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Of the many unexpected sounds of music between the notes on this trip, here is one more.

New Zealand is renowned for its wines, and so MMBH and I toured a handful of wineries. The smallest one, off the beaten path, proved to be our favorite.

Its wonderful nectars, however, were not the reason.

With the seating all taken, we found an open spot against a wall to stand and sample two flights. Before either of us had finished our first small pour, a young woman walked across the room to invite us to join her party of four at their table.

“Party,” literally, because these friendly Kiwis – two sisters, one brother, and a husband – were celebrating a 30th birthday. The birthday boy kid brother, naturally, was the playful target of much laughter, and it was a joy to be included in this special occasion.

Indeed, singing “Happy Birthday” was more unexpected music on this trip.

* * *

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.

Ghosts in the Dressing Rooms

by Woody

The only thing special about the doorway was how un-special it appeared. Yet to enter was to pass through a portal as magical as the wardrobe in the beloved novel by C. S. Lewis.

Instead of traveling to Narnia, I not long ago stepped across a threshold from 2026 into 1878.

A white sign above the entryway, in a simple print font in black, read: “AWAY Dressing Room.” Along with its antiquated “HOME” counterpart, the visitor’s quarters are located inside the original Members Pavilion of the historic Sydney Cricket Ground and date back to the first cricket match played in the stadium 148 years ago. Nearly unchanged now from then, both Spartan rooms are still used by today’s stars.

The away dressing room is not a locker room for it has no lockers. Instead, wooden cubby units, each about a foot wide and five-feet high with one shelf at the top, line the walls with uncomfortable wood-slatted benches between groupings of two. Above every bench are three simple metal hooks, a modern upgrade from once-upon-a-time nails.

The cubbies are not without some magic for they are adorned with names and initials carved by pocketknives or scratched with nails, and also written in pencil and markers of blue and red and black. One can almost feel ghosts in the room and imagine not only yesteryear, but yester-century.

The rectangular dressing area is about the size of a wealthy man’s walk-in closet and connects, up four red-tiled steps, to a smaller room with showers, sinks, toilets.

The brick walls throughout are covered by layer upon layer of paint, thick as face makeup on an aging stage actress, the current color being the same cream as throwback cricket flannels.

A couple windows and a single fan hanging from high overhead serve as air conditioning. The ceiling, covered with pressed tin tiles, also features bare metal pipes running along two sides. Only a short florescent tube light betrays the 19th century.

The home dressing room and showers are larger, but not grandly so, although it does have true locker stalls and padded benches. “The home-team advantage,” our tour guide said unapologetically.

My favorite piece of nostalgia was a piece of yellowed paper, slightly larger than a placemat, displayed proudly and prominently above the doorway to be seen when exiting the home dressing room. It is a note, protected behind glass, handwritten by Sir Donald Bradman, the Babe Ruth of Australian cricket players. In easily legible cursive, in blue ink, with his underlined one-word signature “DGBradman” and date “10/12/28” at the bottom, it reads:

If it’s difficult / I’ll do it now

If it’s impossible / I’ll do it presently

The movie “Dead Poets Society” instantly came to my mind, and heart, specifically the scene when English teacher John Keating, played by Robin Williams, addresses his male teenage students in front of a venerable trophy case. The youthful faces in the century-old photographs within were once just like them, he says, full of passion and hopes and dreams and feelings of invincibility, but are now “fertilizing daffodils.”

“We are all food for worms, lads,” Mr. Keating continues, then memorably concludes by telling the boys the Latin term carpe diem – seize the day.

I imagined Sir Bradman, and the other star lads whose names adorn the wood-paneled lists of batting and bowling feats hanging in the two timeless dressing rooms, back when they were young and in their prime hitting “sixes” and throwing “jaffas” before becoming worm food.

Carpe diem. Do it now. Do it presently. The daffodils may bloom tomorrow.

* * *

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.

Singing Praises of an Old Gem

by Woody

The late Henry Lawson, known as “The People’s Poet” of Australia, could not have adequately described the lovely grandeur of the Sydney Opera House in a poem, even an epic one numbering a hundred pages.

Patrick White, the only Aussie to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, similarly in a full novel would have failed to do justice to this waterfront architectural marvel comprised of fourteen gracefully billowing “sails” – or “shells,” depending on the viewer’s imagination – shimmering with more than one million tiles on the outside.

Like the rarest of beautiful people, this World Heritage Site No. 166, which opened in 1973, is somehow even more breathtaking on the inside.

The day after My Much Better Half, herself outwardly beautiful and even more so inwardly, and I toured the Opera House we visited the Sydney Cricket Ground and had our breath taken away anew, and by surprise, by the gorgeous red-brick masonry and overall grandness that greeted us outside and the beautiful history waiting inside.

At Sydney Cricket Ground with MMBH.

The Sydney Cricket House – my nickname for it, trademark pending – is a mere three miles from the Opera House but nearly a century removed, having been founded in 1878.

To put that in some perspective, Wimbledon’s historic Centre Court dates back to 1922 and Fenway Park, the oldest Major League Stadium, was built in 1912. With its preserved old-school architecture and dark-green palette, Sydney Cricket House looks like the shared grandfather of Fenway and Wimbledon.

A dear friend of mine, a travel writer of great merit, always reminds me before I depart on a trip to explore hidden alleyways and gateways and doorways because those are often portals to enchanted experiences.

The Sydney Cricket House is not exactly hidden down an off-the-beaten-path alleyway, but MMBH and I did seek it out almost by serendipity. With a couple hours to fill before heading to the airport on our final day in Australia, the stadium tour simply fit the time opening.

Jimmy Cricket were we surprised and enchanted!

The stadium has been expanded, time and again, and is now a double-decked circular structure, complete with towering lights for night matches, that holds 40,000 spectators. But in the northwest corner, shining like matching diamonds on a necklace, the original twin grandstands remain.

The Members’ Pavilion and Ladies’ Pavilion, as these grand old stands are named, look like something time forgot. Imagine old Yankee Stadium, with its wooden bleachers and support poles for the roof and ornate balustrades on the upper-deck seating, and add a clock tower – analog, of course! – top and center.

The grass “pitch” in the Sydney Cricket House is huge and oval, measuring 155 meters by 140 meters, and is as well manicured as Wimbledon’s Centre Court lawn.

The Members’ Pavilion, originally christened Men’s Pavilion, houses the Home and Away dressing rooms. Exiting these sanctums, players walk down an aisle amidst the spectators to get to the playing field where they make their entrance through “The Sir Donald Bradman Gate” – the Babe Ruth of Australian cricket – bearing a bronze plaque with bas-relief likenesses of his visage and in full swinging a bat, as well as a short biography.

On this day that saw the mercury rise up to 93 degrees – 34 Down Under in Celsius – it was all very cool to see.

Coolest of all, despite not being air conditioned, was seeing the original 19th-century dressing rooms that are still in use by today’s cricket superstars. Entering these doorways was to step through a magical portal to yesteryear and took my breath away.

I will escort you inside both next week.

* * *

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.

Tasmanian Devil Was No Cartoon

by Woody

After three days on end at sea traveling from New Zealand to Australia, my headspace was a little loony.

More accurately, I had “Looney Tunes” on my mind.

Specifically, recalling Saturday morning cartoons from my childhood.

Most specifically, episodes with the Tasmanian devil “Taz.”

This was partly because the cruise ship passed through the Tasman Sea en route to Hobart, and furthermore because our itinerary while in port included an excursion 30 miles north to Tasmania and the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary that promised to have rescued kangaroos, wombats, and Tasmanian devils.

A koala just chillin’!

As for the latter, I found it hard to believe any relative of Taz would ever need rescuing – other than from Bugs Bunny, of course.

Injured “patients” in the animal hospital during our visit included a forest raven (injured in a dog attack), blue-tongued lizard (also bitten by a dog), collared sparrowhawk (hit by a car), and a tawny frogmouth that refused to tell the veterinary staff how it injured its wing.

Outside, in spacious ground habitats and soaring aviaries, we saw an array of other birds; a bare-nosed wombat, which looked like a giant guinea pig on steroids; and a large “mob” of forester kangaroos as tame and friendly as Labradoodles. The Labra’roos even ate kibble out of My Much Better Half’s palm and purred louder than contented house cats when I rubbed and scratched their down-soft chest fur.

A sign at the Tasmanian devil’s enclosure asked: “What does it look like? A dog, skunk, badger, wolverine, rat?” The lone T-devil in current residence refused to offer an answer by hiding in its den.

I did learn that Tasmanian devils are marsupials, but other than having a pouch share little in common with kangaroos. One unstated difference between them is that T-devils do not readily let humans pet their chests.

Also, while ’roos are herbivores, T-devils are scavengers – which is how many of them wind up at Bonorong, being hit by cars while dining on roadkill.

My Much Better Half had been especially keen on meeting a Tasmanian devil, so to drown her sorrows we ended the day at the Hobart Brewing Co. in a big ol’ red barn of a building on the historic railyard waterfront. No much to look at from outside, the craft brewery’s taproom and offerings inspired me to write in my travel journal: “Maybe my all-time favorite microbrewery! So charming – beers so good! Especially the Red Shed Red Ale!”

While we had sadly not seen a twirling, twisting, Taz-like Tasmanian devil, the generous flight of local beers made my head happily spin a little.

Two days later my head spun a new, now with irritation, when MMBH and I missed the boat – literally, due to bad luck – for a harbor tour of Melbourne. As sometimes wonderfully happens when traveling, Misfortune was soon revealed to be Serendipity in disguise.

Healsville Sanctuary, our substitute field trip, proved to be the Hobart Brewing Co. of wildlife reserves. We saw, up close, an armful of cuddly-looking koalas; a dingo, red as fox and handsome as any Best in Show champion at Westminster; a few emus, all tall as men; a duck-billed platypus…

…and a Tasmanian devil!

Resembling a bulldog, black with a flash of white on its muscular chest, albeit with a sharp snout, it scampered hither and dither as if excited to be off leash in a park. All the same, it fell short of my childlike expectations, for this “Taz” did not spin in a dervish blur like a figure skater, or grumble and drool and throw a funny tantrum.

* * *

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.

Staying Upright 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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On a morning so raw and rough the dolphins and whales sighted a day earlier off starboard of this cruise ship now decided to curl up in warm blankets and stay underwater safe from the bone-chilling wind, I went for a run.

To be honest, if I did not have a consecutive-day running streak dating back to July 7, 2003, I would have remained inside wrapped in a heavy wool blanket myself.

Instead, I was outside on the exercise deck of the “Noordam” traveling deep waters between Port Chalmers, New Zealand, and Perth, Australia. Winter still in America, it was late spring Down Under but the weather did not agree with the calendar.

While My Much Better Half showed she is also My Much Wiser Half by enjoying a massage with warmed lotions, I decided to brave the elements for thirteen miles as an antidote to the ship’s abundantly delicious food that can, just by looking at it, add five pounds.

The “Noordam” in port on a slightly nicer day…

The first few miles were not overly miserable but then, as if in time-lapse photography, the unfriendly weather become downright irascible — nasty and cold, windy and wet, with light raindrops that flew sideways and stung one’s face like acupuncture needles.

Meanwhile, the swells grew, Grew, GREW to between five and seven meters — fifteen to twenty feet!—according to the captain. The exercise deck remained open, surprisingly, as it began rising and dipping like a rollercoaster. These gargantuan undulations were accentuated at the bow and stern, making me feel either almost weightless or else experiencing extra G-forces on my legs.

I maintained my “sea legs” for the most part, but the highest crests and deepest troughs caused an occasional stagger as if I had had four Foster’s for breakfast.

While the frequent one-sixth-Earth’s-gravity-moonwalk-like-strides made the maritime run memorable, the best part was sharing the experience — and sharing hellos and a few high-fives; one woman reading in a deckchair shared a book recommendation, The Book of Goose — with a few other sunny-minded souls.

One fellow exerciser, despite standing slightly stooped, stood tallest in my estimation. In his eighties, I guessed, he was an inspiration for certain. Lap after lap (one time around the deck measured a full third of a mile, larger than a running track!) in weather fit only for a goose, he persisted for a full hour…

…using a walker!

His steps were minced greatly and his legs were bowed slightly, yet he somehow exuded the aura of an athlete. When I slowed down on one go-round to say “Hello, you’re awesome!” he took hold of my arm, lightly, introduced himself as Ichiro, loudly, and said he had once upon a time been a runner — “a sprinter, not a distance guy.”

Ichiro wore dark shabby sweatpants and a fisherman’s cable sweater of cream color, slide sandals with soggy socks, and a straw sunhat that I have no idea how he kept from blowing off. In my mind’s eye, I saw Hemingway’s Santiago in “The Old Man and the Sea.”

Charmed by Ichiro’s friendliness, I walked beside him for one length of the ship and This Old Man on the Sea wisely told me to appreciate being able to run even — no, especially — on days like this one because some day I will no longer be able to.

With that, and with a slight formal bow, he waved me away with the request to do an extra mile for him.

Thus my foul-weather run happily, and gratefully, became a fourteen-miler.

* * *

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.

A Sheep Dog, A Sheared Sheep

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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Ross Millar, a New Zealand sheep farmer, for fifty years has lived the song “Whistle While You Work.”

“I am the Elton John of whistling,” he told me not long ago, with a wink, for he is as humbly down-to-earth as his dirty work boots.

Watching Sir Ross in concert is both sight and sound to behold as he guides his working dogs with a sundry of whistled notes that carry a country mile, even piercing through wind, and create a lovely melody.

Racing up a mountainside, Scottie, a star border collie, looked like a black-and-white-drone-with-a-tail skimming just above the grass and shrub. Instead of a handheld radio controller, Ross steered Scottie with short and long whistle blasts, and combinations, the tone and inflection varying in a precise musical language.

Ross Millar and a newly shorn sheep and a pile of wool.

“The dog’s job is to do what I tell him to do,” Ross the boss noted frankly. “And I will keep telling him all day long if I need to until he does it.”

Scottie only needed about seven minutes to silently herd a lone sheep from half a mile away up in the foothills back down down to Ross’s side.

“The sheep thinks ‘this is a wolf and I’m breakfast, lunch, or dinner,’ ” Ross explained as to why Scottie need not bark to do his job.

During the demonstration, Ross did his job like a pool shark calling shots. He would tell a dozen spectators precisely what he wanted Scottie to do: “Turn left – right – stop – come – go above – go around – go down – that’ll do.”

And then: Tweet! – Tooooooot! – TWEETtweeeetTOOT! – or some other shrill melody and Scottie would “muster” the sheep into the side pocket via a bank shot, so to speak. It was nothing shy of amazing.

Here is something else amazing: a working dog on a sheep farm routinely runs ten miles, sometimes as far as a half-marathon, in a single day.

With Scottie’s short work for the moment done, Ross bent to task in the shearing barn. He began by pinning a sheep as a wrestler does an opponent, a feat accomplished with ease for at age sixty-something and standing six-foot-something, topped by thinning grey hair, Ross appears fit enough for competitive rugby.

Next, quick as an Army barber giving a recruit a buzz cut, he sheared the cloud-fluffy-animal as bare-skinned as the day it was born without a single nick and drop of blood or even a patch of razor rash.

Ross said an “expert” can shear a sheep in one and a half minutes – about half the time he had just taken – and tally more than 300 in a working day. Prodded slightly, Ross said that while he was a bit rusty now, he had indeed once been an expert.

Prodded further, privately, Ross told me in his heyday he could shear a sheep in a few ticks under a minute-flat – the equivalent, I guessed, to New Zealander Peter Snell setting the mile world record of 3:54.4 in 1962.

“I love all animals,” Ross said, smiling, as he reassuringly caressed the freshly sheared sheep. “And some humans, too.”

Speaking of humans, I playfully asked if he trained his two children when they were young with whistle commands – to which Ross answered seriously and succinctly, “No.”

When I in turn asked his wife Mary if she did so with her husband, she wryly said with a twinkle, “Oh, yes, but it didn’t take!”

And did he ever try to train her by similar whistling fashion?

Mary, after a short laugh loud as a shepherd’s whistle: “He’s a little smarter than that.”

* * *

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.

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…

* * *

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.

*

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.