Author Archives: Woody

This, That and the Other

by Woody

 My new memoir WOODEN & ME is available here at Amazon

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Clearing Out My Head and Inbox

 Nobody asked me, but I think it’s high time Californians changed the familiar proverb to: “The grass is less brown on the other side of the fence.”

Better yet: “The grass has been replaced with drought-tolerant plants and landscaping on the other side of the fence.”1grass

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Underrated: Donald Trump, in Donald Trump’s mind.

Overrated: Donald Trump, even by his harshest critics.

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While it is wonderful that Scott Holloway, a physics teacher at Westlake High School, has been honored with the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching – the highest honor the U.S. government bestows on K-12 math/science/computer science teachers – I think it is ridiculous he and 107 fellow all-star educators were each rewarded with $10,000.

Given the importance STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education will play in our world’s future, shouldn’t the prize have been $100,000 if not a cool $1 million?

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Underrated (and underpaid): Outstanding teachers in any subject.

Overrated (and overpaid beyond imagination): Pro athletes, as evidenced most recently by DeAndre Jordan re-signing with the L.A. Clippers for four years and $87 million – enough to award 8,700 teachers a $10,000 bonus!

Jordan, who shoots free throws like he’s playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, averaged 15 rebounds and 11.5 points per game last season, but Scott Holloway’s stat line was far more eye-opening with about 150 young minds enriched and inspired.

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My in-box was flooded following my column supporting same-sex marriage. Below is an anonymous sampling:

“The absurdity of the situation prior to the Supreme Court ruling can be summed up by the experience of our friends (names changed) Kim and Karen.

“Karen has been in the Navy Reserves for well over 20 years, so she started during the era of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ Kim has been her partner for over 25 years. For much of their relationship, they had to be somewhat circumspect so that Karen did not hurt her chances for any promotions in the military.

“Karen came from a family of veterans, so she was very committed to the military. All during that time Kim was unable to partake of any benefits that would have accrued to her if they had been a ‘straight’ couple, such as use of the commissary or base hospital – benefits my wife automatically got on Day 1 of our marriage back in 1973.

“About 13 years ago, Kim and Karen decided to have a child. Karen used a surrogate, anonymous sperm donor, and Katrina (name also changed) was born. Kim immediately adopted Katrina, making Katrina the child of ‘two mommies’.

“Fast forward and per the Armed Forces regulations, at the age of 10 Katrina became eligible to get her own government ID. At that point, bada-boom, bada-bing, Kim could use the commissary and other facilities – not because she had been a partner in an over 20-year committed, loving relationship, but because she was accompanied by her 10-year-old adopted daughter. No logical sense whatever.”

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Calling my column “irritating” (which made it the most polite of the negative salvo) one diatribe included: “For me, same-sex marriage is just another step in the aggressive feelings about marriage. … It will be interesting to see what other relationships evolve from this ruling. It astounds me that the vote of one man has the ability to change the definition of a relationship that has been part of human life for centuries.”

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From the other side of the fence where this grass is rainbow colored were these two separate notes:

“Your beautiful words made this July 4th extra special for us in the Rainbow Family which joyously includes you and your wife and all of LOVE however defined between two people.”

“Your point is well taken about how my (same-sex) marriage would not affect anyone else. You’ll probably get some hate mail for your column. I know you can handle it.”

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The hate was made easier to handle thanks to notes like this from someone I admire greatly:

“Best column yet today. Thank you for standing publicly. Your voice matters to all members of our community. Reading your column made me proud to be an American today!”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Sky Doesn’t Fall: #LoveWins

by Woody

 My new memoir WOODEN & ME is available here at Amazon

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Rainbows Fill The Sky After Ruling

A week ago Friday, I kissed my wife goodnight while trying to hide my worry. I didn’t sleep well. I tossed and turned. We’ve been happily married for 32 years, had a good run of it with two great kids, but now what?

1gaymarriageThe warning signs my marriage was doomed were everywhere. And yet despite the hysterical Henny Penny-like cries of “The sky is falling!” I woke up last Saturday morning to blue skies and sunshine. Birds sang outside my bedroom window.

I rolled over and my wife was still beside me after all.

“Good morning,” I whispered, tentatively. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m feeling you should get up and let Murray outside before he pees on the carpet again,” my much-better-half replied.

“I meant how are you feeling about our ‘traditional’ marriage?” I replied.

“Well, to be honest, I don’t think it’s too healthy,” she answered, feeding my fears.

“You mean the anti-same-sex-marriage Chicken Little doomsayers are right?” I asked.

“No,” my wife said. “I mean that if our marriage is ‘traditional’ where the wife traditionally does 97 percent of the cooking, laundry, cleaning, shopping and errands while also working fulltime and the husband traditionally does 97 percent of the TV watching, then yes ‘traditional’ marriage is doomed.”

“I’ll go let Murray out,” I said, making my escape.

“Thanks, honey,” my wife said. “I love you.”

Remarkably, our marriage had survived what one Chicken Little presidential candidate called “some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history” following the Supreme Court of the United States’ ruling that the Constitution provides same-sex couples the right to marry in all 50 states.

Others in the Chicken Little flock sounded a similar alarm: “Judicial usurpation! The Constitution has been run through a paper shredder! The sky has fallen and crushed traditional marriage!”

Here’s my question for the Chicken Littles: How does the SCOTUS ruling in any way whatsoever affect non-same-sex marriages? I’m sorry, but I don’t see how Jessica and Julia’s marriage, or my friends Bob and John’s marriage, diminishes Ted and Tina’s marriage.

I don’t see how a gay or lesbian couple being married – and being able to visit one another in the hospital and make legal medical decisions for one another; being able to share healthcare coverage and pension benefits; being afforded so many other rights denied unmarried couples – negatively affects husband-wife marriages.

I don’t see how a same-sex marriage that provides a sense of family permanence to children negatively affects male-female marriage.

I don’t see how granting same-sex marriage a long-denied dignity instead of treating these couples like second-class citizens suddenly diminishes the dignity of husband-wife couples.

This is not to say same-sex marriage may not affect marriages between a man and a woman – positively. To see how long and hard gays and lesbians have fought for the right to marry who they love surely may inspire some “traditional” couples to not take their own marriages for granted.

Indeed, to those who say same-sex marriage has caused the sky to fall on “traditional” marriage, I borrow the words of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Heykidsgetoffmylawn Scalia: That’s pure applesauce and jiggery-pokery!

Here is more applesauce: SCOTUS ruled 5-4 and not 9-0. That’s my opinion, dissent if you please, but you are on the wrong side of history and moral justice – just like those who opposed the national legalization of interracial marriage in 1967.

The reaction to same-sex marriage’s historic victory, Chicken Littles aside, was not a sky that is falling but rather one filled with rainbows. Parades and parties had rainbow flags and banners. The White House under floodlights became The Rainbow House for a night. Twitter, Instagram and Facebook postings exploded across the Internet with more color than a kindergarten class during painting time.

Today being the Fourth of July, the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence seem fitting: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Marriage is, above all, the pursuit of Happiness. #LoveWins.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

 

Champagne for the Heart

by Woody

 My new memoir WOODEN & ME is available here at Amazon

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Compliments Are Champagne for the Spirit

A short while ago, I wrote about a party for Laszlo Tabori in honor of history’s third four-minute mile he ran 60 years ago. The theme of that occasion, and my column, was exemplified by this old Irish proverb:

’Tis better to buy a small bouquet / And give to your friend this very day,

Than a bushel of roses white and red / To lay on his coffin after he’s dead.

1twaincomplimentWhile the anniversary party was a grand bouquet, I have personally witnessed how a single flower in the form of a few kind words can make a person feel as though champagne is flowing through his veins. Considering compliments cost nothing, it seems a shame we are oftentimes stingy dispensing them.

As my son puts it: “Giving compliments does a lot more good than taking out the trash, and should thus be done more than once a week.”

At the risk of appearing self-serving, I hope sharing a few compliments I have received recently will serve to inspire others to give their own friends, family, and even strangers, a verbal splash of champagne to lift some spirits before they next take out the trash.

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Let me begin with the generous people who complimented me by responding to a request in this space a few weeks ago to sponsor sign-up fees, and buy new gift tennis rackets, for the USTA youth lessons program that began this week at Buena High School.

Led by a generous donation from Carolyn Hertel – who noted with her contribution, “Tennis is not only a sport for life, the people you meet are often friends forever” – readers served up more than $1,200 to give disadvantaged kids a better summer.

As program director Paul Olmsted told me: “Wow! With all the trouble in the world it is uplifting to know that there really are some generous people out there.”

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Among of the nicest compliments I have received as a writer was when a man came up to me at a restaurant, pardoned himself for the interruption, and proceeded to show me one of my columns he keeps in his wallet. I have figuratively folded up the memory for my own safekeeping when I need a lift.

In a span of just a few days another reader came up to me at a “Wooden & Me” book signing and shared that she routinely displays my columns on her refrigerator; a teacher told me she occasionally reads and discusses my columns with her high school class; and a woman at a service group I was a guest speaker at showed me a thick folder of my columns she has clipped out, explaining through tears how my words have affected her life over the years.

As Paul Olmsted put it, “Wow!” Each encounter took only a brief moment from the giver, but I can assure you the good feelings in the receiver have been lasting.

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Sometimes a first-rate compliment can be passed forward secondhand.

Larry Baratte, head swimming coach at Ventura College and a Ventura County Sports Hall of Fame inductee, attended the Southern California Sports Broadcasters Awards Luncheon as a guest two weeks past.

The event featured a Father’s Day theme and one of the speakers was John Wooden’s daughter, Nan. Larry had the opportunity to meet Nan and happened to mention me to her. This in itself was a kind thing to do, but even kinder was his reaching out to me afterwards with Nan’s immediate response: “Daddy loved Woody.”

Hearing those three words left me sitting speechless for five minutes, lost in memories with tears in my eyes but also champagne in my heart. Larry’s forwarded compliment not only made my day a masterpiece, to borrow one of my favorite Wooden-isms, it made my entire month a masterpiece.

Remarkably, despite my two-decade friendship with Coach and many visits in his home, I have never met Nan. This is something I must soon remedy. I need to find the right words, a small bouquet of a compliment, to put some bubbles of joy in her veins.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Dads Forge Memories

by Woody

 My new memoir WOODEN & ME is available here at Amazon

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One Role of Dads is to Forge Memories

Dads have countless roles and surely one of the most important is to forge lasting childhood memories for their kids. In honor of Father’s Day, here is one of mine.

1dadsdayThe summer of 1969, a month before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would walk on the moon and two months before Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin rocked at Woodstock, my dad planned to take my two older brothers on an epic fishing adventure in Canada. Having just turned 9, I was deemed too young to tag along.

I felt more left out than Apollo 11’s third astronaut, Michael Collins, orbiting the moon in the Command Module.

T-minus two nights before our family Plymouth station wagon with faux wood side panels was to blast off, Pop’s friend, Mel Olex, who was to fill out the travel party, fell ill. It was not the first time Dr. Olex had come to my rescue: after separate accidents he put plaster casts on my broken leg and fractured wrist.

Now, he healed my broken heart because in his absence there was room for me. After all, food for four had already been packed. For me it was Christmas in June.

For Pop, now the only driver, it was a long haul from Columbus, Ohio, north across the border to Canada’s Lake Heron. We then hopped a motorboat to an isolated island where we stayed in a one-room rustic cabin at the Westwind Lodge. The name was fortuitous for it brought to mind a poem my Grandpa Ansel used to recite when he took us three boys fishing at farm ponds:

When the wind is from the north, / The wise fisherman does not go forth.

When the wind is from the south, / It blows the hook into the fish’s mouth.

When the wind is from the east, / `Tis not fit for man nor beast.

But when the wind is from the west, / The fishing is the very best.

Fishing at the Westwind Lodge thus promised to be the very best.

In the chill of dawn we would head out on the lake in a small boat with a temperamental outboard motor that leaked an ironically beautiful rainbow of ugly gasoline on the water’s surface.

By late afternoon we would have a collection of pike, walleye, perch and bass which the lodge cook filleted, breaded, fried and served us for dinner.

The first three days we returned to the Lodge for lunch before heading out for a second round of angling. This limited how far we could venture, so when Pop learned about a distant “Secret Cove” – doesn’t every lake have a “Secret Cove” that isn’t really a secret? – where northern pike the size of VW Beetles were reported to lurk, he got the cook to pack us lunches.

Next morning, Pop gave us our assignments: Jim was to make sure the rods and reels were all in the boat; Doug was in charge of the lunches and the cooler with the sodas; and I was told to put on my life jacket and try not to fall in the lake. Again.

We were starving by the time we finally found “Secret Cove” and decided to go ashore for lunch before catching some VWs with gills. We three boys bolted from the boat and soon learned an important lesson: when standing on an uprising smooth rock landscape, don’t pee facing uphill.

Pop (still in the boat): Hey, Dougie, where’d you put the lunches?

Doug (sneakers getting wet on land): I think they’re by the life jackets.

Pop: Nope. I don’t see them or the ice cooler anywhere. Dougie, you didn’t leave the lunches on the dock did you?

Doug: Stone silence.

Pop: (We boys would have gotten our mouths washed out with soap if we repeated what Pop said next.)

While I cannot state this as fact, I am convinced the true native name of that “Secret Cove” was “There Ain’t No Fish Here Cove.”

I am convinced of this, too: hippies at Woodstock didn’t have a more wonderfully memorable summer of ’69 than my big brothers and I did at Westwind.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Help On Our Life Journeys

by Woody

 My new memoir WOODEN & ME is available here at Amazon

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Having Help Along Our Journeys

In addition to offering kind words of congratulations, a number of people have requested I share in a column my induction speech from last Sunday’s Ventura County Sports Hall of Fame ceremony.

Their wish is my day off. Here, then, is an abridged version, picking up midway and including a brief tale I shared in this space a few years ago but warrants retelling.

My personal Hall of Famers -- Greg, Lisa, and Dallas.

My personal Hall of Famers — Greg, Lisa, and Dallas.

“Four score and seven years ago . . .” Oops, not my speech.

“Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.” Oops again, wrong speech although the right sentiment.

OK, here we go:

I am confident finding the right words in a press box under deadline pressure, but even with lots of time to think about it, words escape me in adequately expressing the thrill of being here with fellow 2015 recipients George (Contreras), Jack (Kocur), Eric (Reynolds) and Roger (Evans) – and also joining the likes of Eric Turner, Mike Larrabee, Jamaal Wilkes, Mike and Bob Bryan, and on and on.

None of us being honored tonight, and this includes you remarkable high school and college student-athletes of the year, got here by ourselves. We all had help along the way from parents and siblings, friends and teachers, teammates and coaches, from spouses and an endless string of others.

An example I like to share is Roger Bannister breaking the 4-minute barrier in the mile. Running is a solitary sport – but success isn’t.

Bannister would not have made history without Chris Brasher pacing him through the first two laps and Chris Chataway sacrificing himself to lead Bannister through the third lap.

In life, we all have people blocking the headwind for us and pacing our way.

I’m here because as a kid I got hooked reading Jim Murray’s sports columns and in college had him answer a letter with advice and as a young sportswriter had my writing idol befriend me.

I’m here because of sports editors who believed in me; and copy editors who caught my mistakes and colleagues who inspired me; and athletes and coaches who gave me their time.

I’m here because of Wayne Bryan’s and Coach John Wooden’s mentorship.

And, of course, I’m here because of my wife, Lisa, and daughter, Dallas, and son, Greg.

Let me close with this brief story. It happened in a small farm town in Ohio where a young girl wandered away from home and got lost in the family’s wheat field that had grown taller than she was.

We all get lost in our own "wheat field challenges" and need a helping hand.

We all get lost in our own “wheat field challenges” and need a helping hand.

Her family called out her name and searched frantically, but could not find her. Soon neighbors joined in and eventually half the townspeople were running through the wheat field trying to find the little girl, but with no success. The field was simply too big.

Darkness fell and so did the temperatures. If not found soon, the little girl would surely die from the bitter cold.

Finally, the little girl’s father called everyone in from the wheat field. No, he was not giving.

Rather, he had an idea. He gathered all the volunteers and had them join hands to form a long human chain. They then walked together, side by side by side, and combed through the tall, amber waves of grain.

In this manner they did not miss a single area as they had when searching separately as individuals. Within ten minutes, the search party of nearly one hundred individuals, now united as one, found the little girl curled up on the ground – shivering, but still alive.

We are all lost at times and need others to help us overcome our own “wheat field challenges.”

Other times we must offer the helping hand.

And so to everyone who has linked hands to help me along my journey, to the Hall of Fame Committee and to all my loyal readers, I say to you what Coach Wooden once wrote to me:

“Although it is often used without true feeling, when it is used with sincerity, no collection of words can be more expressive or meaningful than the very simple word – Thanks!”

Thanks!

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Celebrating Legendary Laszlo

by Woody

 My new memoir WOODEN & ME is available here at Amazon

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Celebrating a Race, and Life, Well Run

An old Irish proverb came to mind last Sunday afternoon in a ballroom at the Hyatt Westlake Plaza:

’Tis better to buy a small bouquet / And give to your friend this very day,

Than a bushel of roses white and red / To lay on his coffin after he’s dead.

My son, Greg, with his beloved USC distance track coach, Laszlo Tabori.

My son, Greg, with his beloved USC distance track coach, Laszlo Tabori, at the 60th anniversary party of his sub-4-minute mile.

Nearly 200 people traveled near and far, not with bushels of roses but rather to give small bouquets, in a manner, to their friend, Laszlo Tabori, who at age 83 is very much alive and well.

Specifically, they came to celebrate with him the 60th anniversary of the very day – May 28, 1955 – when the Hungarian-born Tabori became the world’s third person to run a sub-4-minute mile.

His official time was 3 minutes 59 seconds flat, four-tenths faster than Roger Bannister’s historic first the previous May. Tabori’s feat is proudly recorded on his personalized license plates: 359IN55.

In ’56, at the Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Tabori – then the world-record holder at 1,500 meters (3:40.8) – finished fourth in the 1,500 and sixth in the 5,000 despite losing training time because of the tumultuous Soviet invasion of Hungary.

Directly after the Closing Ceremonies, Tabori defected to America and settled in Southern California. He remained a star on the world running stage, yet could not compete in the 1960 Rome Olympics because he was a man without a country as his U.S. citizenship had not yet come through.

Tabori unlaced his racing spikes in 1962 and quickly became a world-renowned coach, employing his diabolical interval workouts to train a handful of Olympians, two Boston Marathon champions, and myriad collegians at L.A. Valley College and USC. Too, the longtime Oak Park resident created the San Fernando Valley Track Club where he still coaches men and women runners of non-elite abilities.

Now. Tabori is on his 84th trip around the sun, but it was those four orbits around a cinder track 60 Mays ago that put him in the history books and gave reason for this anniversary party.

And so one by one some of his protégés took the microphone and shared stories about how their lives were impacted by this demanding old-school coach with an accent thicker than his new autobiography, “Laszlo Tabori: The Legendary Story of the Great Hungarian Runner.”

They talked about his legendary toughness, but also his tenderness. Through laughter they teased him and through tears they called him their hero, cheerleader, mentor and friend.

Laszlo Tabori, No. 9, running his 3:59.0 mile in 1955.

Laszlo breaking the tape and the 4-minute mile barrier.

Midway through the celebration, the ballroom lights went down and a video went up on a big screen. Instantly it was 1955 again, May 28 again, and Laszlo Tabori was 23 again. He did not need a cane due to a hip replacement and his now-white hair was dark and thick and curly. His face was chiseled, his legs sinewy and powerful, and in the grainy black-and-white film footage he was flying around the chalk-lined oval inside London’s White City Stadium.

His stride was as graceful as poetry as he roared through the backstretch of the fourth-and-final lap in third place on the outside shoulders of Britons Chris Chataway and Brian Hewson.

Suddenly, Tabori did precisely what he would tell my son and all the other runners he has coached over the past half-century to do during workouts and races – “Put the guts to it!” – and the kid with No. 9 pinned to his racing singlet overtook Chataway, and then Hewson, too, and pulled away to win by five meters. 359IN55.

The ballroom erupted in cheers as if the feat just happened live.

“That race was a lifetime ago, but I still remember it like yesterday,” Tabori later told me in a private moment as I thanked him for the important role he has played in my son’s life. He added with a twinkle: “I’m happy I’m still around.”

After the video ended and the lights came back on and it was 2015 again, the former fastest man in the world slowly made his way to the front of the room and emotionally thanked everyone for showing up.

Truth is everyone was there to thank Laszlo Tabori for showing up in their lives.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Column: A Few Things I Know

by Woody

My new memoir WOODEN & ME is available here at Amazon

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A Few Things I Now Know

After blowing out enough birthday candles to grill dinner over earlier this week, here are a few things I have come to know . . .

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1-MurFace

Like most dogs, Murray is nothing less than magnificent!

Despite all the great things said about them, dogs are still underrated.

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Chocolate is overrated. Just kidding.

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Don’t save the good china for special occasions only.

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People, not things, matter.

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Batteries in a smoke detector only get low enough to cause ear-piercing warning BEEPS! in the middle of the night, never during the day.

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The final 25 percent of power in a cell phone battery goes faster than the first 75 percent.

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Never pass up a chance to look at the ocean, a sunrise or sunset, stars on a clear night or a masterpiece painting such as Starry Night.

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Breaking bread together really does help break down barriers.

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You will pretty much never regret spending money to travel – even a “bad” trip will give you some good memories to last a lifetime.

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Robert Frost was right: take the road less traveled by.

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The hassles of air travel – security lines, flight delays, lack of leg room, etc. – are greatly overemphasized when you consider how miraculous it is that you can pretty much decide on a destination in the morning and be anywhere in America by this evening or in the world by tomorrow.

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Travel by Clipper ship, Conestoga wagon or even a Model T, now those had hassles.

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Who you travel with is far more important than where you travel.

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Spend as much time as you can with people who lift you up and as little as possible with those who pull you down.

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Double-knot your shoelaces.

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Procrastination isn’t one of the seven deadly sins so don’t beat yourself up over it – at least not until tomorrow.

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Maya Angelou was right: when you leave home, you take home with you. Also, try to be the rainbow in somebody’s cloud.

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Batman is the greatest superhero ever – well, behind moms.

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Call me old-fashioned, but I think guys shouldn’t wear hats indoors and should open doors for women.

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James M. Barrie, author of “Peter Pan”, was right: “Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves.”

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Roller coasters and high diving boards are more thrilling when you are a kid – but just barely.

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A lot of movies are longer than they should be and most hugs are too short.

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The experts who say you can’t be your kid’s friend, even when they are young, are dead wrong. That’s my experience anyway.

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If you can choose one thing to be world class at, make it the fine art of friendship.

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The African proverb is right: “There are two lasting gifts you can give your child: one is roots, the other is wings.”

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Writing a thank-you note is always a few minutes well spent.

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Kindness is more powerful than penicillin.

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It’s not really a favor if you make the recipient feel like you are doing a favor.

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My friend Wayne Bryan is right: “If you don’t make an effort to help others less fortunate than you, then you’re just wasting your time on Earth.”

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A positive attitude will positively carry you a long way.

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It takes worn out running shoes to finish a marathon; worn out brushes before you can paint a masterpiece; and well-worn pots and pans to create a seasoned chef.

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“Like” is, um, like, an overworked word; “love” an underused one.

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Gratitude is an underworked emotion.

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John Wooden was right about most things, including: Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out; Study and work hard, but make time for play too; and, Make today your masterpiece.

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We should all make a wish and blow out a candle 365 times a year because every day is a once-in-a-lifetime experience to be celebrated.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

 

 

Column: Masterpiece Grads

by Woody

New Grads, Create A Masterpiece Day (And Repeat)

Dear Class of 2015, I am honored to have been invited (albeit by myself) to address you here today.

Michelangelo, when asked how he had created one of his masterpiece sculptures, replied simply: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”1angel

Creating your own masterpiece life, dear graduates, as you journey forward requires a similar process: You must see the angel – your passion – and then set it free.

For Michelangelo, this meant chipping away the pieces of marble that did not look like the angel or the horse or David. In our lives, this means chipping away the distractions and challenges and even the negative people who are preventing us from achieving our dreams.

In addition to being sculptors, you are also painters who create your masterpiece by adding brushstokes of color to the canvas. In other words, by adding determination and patience and love, to name just three key hues.

For good reason my dear mentor John Wooden advised focusing on creating your masterpiece day and not your masterpiece life. A masterpiece sculpture is created one chisel strike at a time; a masterpiece painting one brushstroke at a time; a masterpiece novel one keystroke at a time. So is a masterpiece life – private and professional – created one masterful day at a time, one after another, until they add up to masterpiece weeks, months, years.

To focus on a masterpiece life, or even a masterpiece year, is too daunting. Better to keep in mind this additional wisdom from Coach Wooden: “Little things add up to big things.”

A parable about a starfish emphasizes the big power of little acts. It was a beautiful Southern California morning and a beachcomber was walking along the sand that was littered with kelp and driftwood from a violent storm the night before. In the distance he noticed a man bend down to pick something up and then toss it into the ocean.

Every few steps, the man repeated this calisthenic: stop, bend, stand, toss. But what was he throwing, the beachcomber wondered: Driftwood sticks? Broken seashells? Skipping stones?

As the two morning walkers neared each other, the beachcomber finally realized the man was picking up starfish that, by the hundreds, had been washed ashore by the violent storm’s high surf and left stranded.

The beachcomber could not help but laugh at the other man’s futile efforts. “You’re just wasting your time,” he said. “There are too far many starfish for you to make a difference before they die.”1gradpic

“Maybe,” the man replied as he gently tossed another starfish into the waves. “But to this one I’m making a world of difference.”

As you venture out into the world, Class of 2015, keep an eye out for “starfish” who need your help.

Before closing, I would like to share a passage near the end of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel, Fahrenheit 451: “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.”

These words remind me of a poem by my grandfather Ansel, handwritten on the title page of his medical college textbook Modern Surgery and dated Oct. 1, 1919, less than a year before Bradbury was born:

“The worker dies, but the work lives on / Whether a picture, a book, or a clock

“Ticking the minutes of life away / For another worker in metal or rock

“My work is with children and women and men / Not iron, not brass, not wood

“And I hope when I lay my stethoscope down / That my Chief will call it good.”

By finding your passion and work that you want to live on, dear graduates, and by creating your masterpiece day, over and again, in the end your Chief will call it good.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Column: Messing With Hangers

by Woody

My new memoir WOODEN & ME is available here at Amazon

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Clothes On Floor Is Hanging Offense

How many times has your mother, wife or significant other, asked (pronounced “told”) you, “Will you please hang up your clothes!”?

Personally, I lost count at about six – age 6, that is.

Had I a quarter for every time I have heard that exasperated complaint I could hire a butler to pick up after me.1hangers

To be honest, I’m not all that bad at putting clothes away in dresser drawers.

And I’m flat out good at putting my clothes away on chairs. I can drape, layer and stockpile clothes enough for a week on a single chair and another week’s worth on the seat and handlebars of an exercise bike. A circus performer spinning plates on sticks should have such a gift of balance.

But I have yet to master the art of using clothes hangers. I haven’t checked my symptoms on Web M.D. but I think I might be afflicted with “hangerphobia” or perhaps even “hangerexia nervosa.”

Males are especially susceptible to both Oscar Madison-like maladies, although females are not immune. Teenage girls are proof of this; spiders and snakes frighten many less than handling do hangers.

Let’s face it, hangers can be very scary lurking in dark closets, hanging like one-legged bats with wings spread before attacking unsuspecting hands. Moreover, they often strike in pairs, groups and bunches.

Unlike socks that mysteriously disappear in the dryer, hangers, like rabbits, seemingly multiply overnight. Two explanations for this phenomenon are that hangers are reincarnated lost socks or perhaps hangers simply have no natural predators to thin the herd.

Well, they now have one – me!

Just once I would like to reach into my bedroom closet and grab a single hanger and pull it out without 13 cousin hangers clamping onto my wrist like a school of hungry piranha.

Hangers apparently thought Ben Franklin was talking about them when he said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Separating the wire pretzels, which always seem in the midst of a spirited game of Twister, is no simple task. Rubik’s Cube is far easier to solve. Nerves of steel alone won’t suffice. Patience and reason are all but useless.

A short temper, however, helps. Brute force is what hangers most respect. A wild, shaking motion – similar to the one used to dislodge a piece of gum from your fingertip – is the most effective method for separating clustered hangers.

After you finish playing 52-hanger pickup, you must select the right hanger for the specific job. This is no small task as the variety of hanger designs is matched only by the curses they invoke.

Heavy and sturdy. Thin and frail. Metal, wood, plastic and composites of the three. Some swivel, some don’t. But all raise one’s blood pressure, especially the thief-proof hotel hangers.

Thin wire hangers are ill-suited for anything, sans perhaps T-shirts – and who hangs up a T-shirt? Drape a pair of jeans on one of these wimps and the sucker will bend and sag in the middle.

However, if you have locked your keys in the car, thin is in and this is your best choice for breaking in.

Plastic hangers are fine for most things except men’s jeans, but are also more expensive and, in my experience, prone to being hogged by one’s wife.

Chin-up bar gauged metal hangers rate 5 Stars for everyday use. In fact, three out of four dry cleaners recommend these.

Tailors, on the other hand, endorse the use of wooden hangers for sports coats and dress pants.

Another choice to prevent leaving a crease across pant legs is a hanger with a cardboard tube along the bottom. Unfortunately, the cardboard invariably bends or detaches, causing the pants to fall to the floor and get numerous creases.

My advice is to avoid these fragile hangers and skip the problem altogether by tossing your clothes directly onto the floor yourself.

Indeed, I find these hangers, actually all hangers, annoying – even more so than being asked (told), “Will you please hang up your clothes!”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

Column: Offering My 2 Cents

by Woody

My new memoir WOODEN & ME is available here at Amazon

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Nobody Asked, But Here’s My 2 Cents

Prince William and Kate didn’t ask me, but while Charlotte Elizabeth Diana is a lovely name, they missed a royal opportunity – all the more so with the planned release this year of the new movie “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” – by not naming their daughter Princess Leia.

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The late Huell Howser is still "California's Gold."

The late Huell Howser is still “California’s Gold.”

Nobody asked me, but watching reruns of the late and beloved Huell Howser’s “California’s Gold” makes me both sad and happy. He was an a-MAZE-ing talent.

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Those “Watch Your Speed” radar signs along some roads are a good idea except when there are two lanes each direction, often with cars traveling different speeds, because there is no way to know which car the radar is flashing a speed for.

Caltrans didn’t ask me, but it needs to paint a marker on the road to show where the radar is focused.

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Does anyone else find it silly when TV news reporters appear to be going though some kind of fraternity hazing by reporting in (pick one: a snow bank, sideways driving rainstorm, high surf crashing over a sea wall, hurricane winds)?

And how about the crazies who “photo-bomb” in the background during these live TV weatherperson initiations?

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Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev admitted guilt in the courtroom before his trial started so does anyone agree with Woody The Dunce that it seemed like a waste of money and time, such as sending the jurors on a field trip to the boat he was hiding in when shot and captured, to drag the proceedings out for weeks – and now doing similarly with the penalty phase?

The judge didn’t ask me, but if the U.S. Supreme Court hears about an hour of testimony for a case, I say this trial and penalty determination should have been limited to the four hours it takes many runners to complete the Boston Marathon.

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Christmas arrived in May for me when I received the kindest email from Paul Olmsted saying my annual “Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive” inspired him to personally give new tennis rackets to the first 50 kids ages 10 and under who sign-up for the upcoming USTA youth lessons program at Buena High School running from June 22 to July 13.

(To register a youth ages 6 to 17, or for more information, call 805-630-9269 or email olmstedp2001@yahoo.com.)

Olmstead, who played at Arizona State and is a former president of the Ventura Tennis Club and assistant coach at Ventura High, says he simply wants to help more kids take up the great sport.

Nobody asked me, but for $10 you can sponsor the signup fee for a kid in need and for and $25 you can also buy an extra gift racket. Checks made out to Ventura Tennis Club can be sent to Ventura Tennis Club, P.O. Box 3005, Ventura, CA 93006.

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The National PTA and National Education Association didn’t ask me, but it says here that Teacher Appreciation Week should have been a full seven days instead of limited to this past Monday through Friday – after all, most teachers spend part of their weekend grading papers and making lesson plans.

Therefore, I encourage everyone to extend the celebration a couple days by sending a letter or email to a teacher who encouraged you; inspired you; helped you turn your life around; in short, who made a life-changing difference in who you are today.

Another great way to say thanks is to make a donation – such as by going to donorschoose.org and searching by ZIP Code – and support a classroom in Ventura County.

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Here is a great thing about being an “adult” (my wife claims I am unqualified to know since I generally behave like I’m 12) – having a generous slice of leftover pumpkin pie for breakfast.

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A handwritten message on a Post-it Note that has been up for a full school year on an otherwise bare refrigerator in the apartment of four grad students I know always makes me smile when I visit: “Don’t forget to smile!”

Nobody asked me, but that’s good advice always.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”