Author Archives: Woody

Column: Readers & Trees

by Woody

Readers Branch Off With Tree Memories

 

A great many readers responded to my recent column about a majestic old tree I saw get cut down, including Jim O’Grady quoting my great predecessor in this space:

 

“In 2006 Chuck Thomas wrote a column titled: ‘County’s most endangered
species’ bemoaning the replacement of so many trees for condos,” O’Grady wrote. “He ends his piece with the following parody of Joyce Kilmer’s poem ‘Trees’:

 

I think that we shall never see, / A condo as lovely as a tree; / And when each orchard is a mall, / We may never see a tree at all.

 

Figures Chuck would outshine my 700 words in just one stanza.

 

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“I think ‘Trees’ should be required reading for everyone,” echoed Virginia Scotland. “At breakfast I asked my adult son did he remember a favorite tree?

 

“He said when he was a small lad he remembered an almond tree we had in our back yard when we were living in Lindsey, Calif. and all the orange trees surrounding us and walking on all the fallen blossoms like walking in the snow.

 

“I am 86 years old and I still remember climbing up pepper trees so full of ants and think this is where the term ‘ants in your pants’ started.”

 

Scotland concluded, and so very rightly: “We are so fortunate to live in Ventura, a little slice of heaven with ocean and agriculture on all sides and plenty of trees.”

 

 *

 

 

Ed Campbell of Ventura also had a grove of tree memories to share:

 

“I recall all the many, many trees that have influenced my life. The first tree that comes to mind is a Jacaranda. A young boy in 1946, age 7, fell from this tree, then about 20-feet tall, now some 70 years later 35-plus-feet tall, and very much alive. I ended up with a neck injury and now fused vertebrae – and a broken bit of pride as when I fell, I hit my wagon wheel below and broke it off.

 

“Most memorable tree during my youth was a five-crown walnut tree in our back yard. It so loved me when I climbed on its long flexible braches and shook of the ripe walnuts in the fall.”

 

Campbell’s love of trees continued into adulthood.

 

“Around 1985 I planted two white pine trees on our side yard in CT with my two little girls,” he shared. “When I last ‘Goggled’ the old homestead they were about 30-feet, and doing fine, and I am sure home to may birds.”

 

             More recently, he planted a pair of Red Leaf Forest Phoebes at his Ventura home. “Some 10 years later and about 20-feet tall, they are the pride of the block,” he says. “They are an eastern tree, therefore the leaves turn brown from blood red in the fall; come mid-February, tiny pink flowers pop open, to be followed by tiny heart shape leaves of red, the full glory by May 1, with lots of shade.”

 

*

 

            “Your column about the ancient tree that was felled brought back many
happy memories, including camping in the Redwoods as a child with my family,” wrote Joy Hamlat of Camarillo.

 

“My mother will turn 100 soon. I am in the process of going through things
at what has been the Oxnard family home since 1954. In the yard at the old family home is a large Jacaranda tree with a rugged trunk that I couldn’t begin to reach around. I have a photo of my younger brother, Jeff, and me beside the tree almost 60 years ago when the tree was only a skinny twig!

 

“Each morning, I deliver breakfast to many hungry sparrows and doves who

 

flock to the bird feeder hanging from the tree.”

 

            Joy concluded with a story about a different tree – her Family Tree. Last month she celebrated the addition of two new branches: the birth of a grandson to her daughter and a grandson to her son.

 

“It amazes me,” Joy writes, “that almost exactly a century spans the difference
in age between my mom, born June 12, 1913, and the two new little ones in May 2013.”

 

            Talk about a beautiful growing tree.

* 

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Woody’s new book, WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” is available at: www.WoodyWoodburn.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Column: Dads, Sons and Daughters

by Woody

Ignorance, Bliss, Dads, Sons and Daughters

 

Father’s Day arrives tomorrow, so it seems apropos to begin today with a hallmark quote from yesteryear. Actually nearly 140 yesteryears ago when Mark Twain famously observed: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”

 

Charles Wadworth expanded on Twain’s thought, noting: “By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.”

Dallas and Greg, who make being a dad so great!

Dallas and Greg, who make being a dad so great!

 

Clarence Budington Kelland, a 20th century novelist who once described himself as “the best second-rate writer in America,” made a first-rate compliment about his own father: “He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.”

 

Similarly, from Mario Cuomo: “I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example.”

 

From attribution unknown comes this eloquent pearl: “One night a father overheard his son pray: ‘Dear God, Make me the kind of man my Daddy is.’ Later that night, the Father prayed, ‘Dear God, Make me the kind of man my son wants me to be.’ ”

 

The rock band Yellowcard offers this lovely lyric about the power of a dad as a role model: “Father I will always be / that same boy who stood by the sea / and watched you tower over me / now I’m older I wanna be the same as you.”

 

PBS book talk show host Barry Kibrick told me of raising his two sons: “I never worried about over-praising them and building up their self-esteem too much because there are plenty of people in the world who will try to tear them down.”

 

Author Jan Hutchins had a similarly wise dad, sharing: “When I was a kid, my father told me every day, ‘You’re the most wonderful boy in the world, and you can do anything you want to.’ ”

 

Or, as my good friend, author and coach Wayne Bryan advises parents: “Shout your praise to the rooftops and if you must criticize, drop it like a dandelion. On second thought, don’t criticize at all.”

 

Hall of Fame baseball player Harmon Killebrew apparently had a Hall of Fame Dad, the son recalling this: “My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, ‘You’re tearing up the grass.’

 

“ ‘We’re not raising grass,’ Dad would reply. ‘We’re raising boys.’ ”

 

A great attitude for dads of daughters, too.

 

Speaking of girls, John Mayer strikes the right chord with these lines of song: “Fathers, be good to your daughters. You are the god and the weight of her world.”

 

            As for fathers and sons, 19th century French poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore asked rhetorically: “Are we not like two volumes of one book?” German poet Johann Schiller knew these two “volumes” need not share similar DNA, noting: “It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.”

 

Getting further to the heart of the matter, John Wooden, who believed “love” is the most important word in the English language, said: “The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”

 

Another basketball coach, Jim Valvano, shared one of the secrets to his success when he noted: “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person – he believed in me.”

 

On the topic of “gifts,” a Jewish Proverb states: “When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.”

 

Here’s some good advice from Bill Cosby when it comes time to open a gift Sunday: “Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.”

 

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Woody’s new book, WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” is available for pre-order at: www.WoodyWoodburn.com

 

 

 

Column: Grand Grad Advice

by Woody

Peer Muses Share Graduation Wisdom

 

            Art Linkletter, who had a teaching degree but left the classroom to make his career as a comedian on radio and later a newfangled invention called television, was perhaps at his best when interviewing children on “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”

 

            In truth, the show could have been called “Kids Say the Funniest Things.”

 

            This grainy black-and-white flashback came to mind the other day when, while researching something I cannot even now recall, I by chance – more specifically by wonderful, happy, serendipitous chance – happened across a website filled with insight and beauty and sage truth. Gradpic1

 

            The web page could be called “Kids Say the Wisest Things.” Instead, it is more appropriately and elegantly titled “Calliopeia” in honor of Calliope – the “Fair Voiced” or “Beautiful Voiced” muse of epic poetry in Greek mythology.

 

The daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, Calliope is believed to have been Homer’s muse and the inspiration for the Odyssey and the Iliad, no less. Her lofty pedestal rose into the ozone.

 

Thanks to “Calliopeia” and its posted epigrams – “a pithy saying or remark expressing an idea in a clever, memorable and amusing way” – written by high school senior English students for their teacher “Bobbi,” Calliope today serves also as the muse for graduation wisdom. This is all the more fitting since Calliope is generally depicted holding a writing tablet or a book, or both, and wearing a crown of gold. In other words, she seems dressed to give a high school commencement address.

 

Here, then, is some advice for a dear friend of mine who graduates from a local high school next week – and indeed for the members of every high school and college and middle school and elementary school Class of 2013.

 

Ashley, with the first clarion call:

 

“Love is the purest bliss and the most agonizing heartache. A life without love is not lived, only endured.”

 

How can an 18-year-old be such a wise old soul?

 

The genius of Aubrey’s imagery and insight:

 

“Friendship is the jelly on the toast of life. Love is the blanket that keeps your heart from growing cold.”

 

Comfort food and warmth goes a long way, especially when shared with a friend.

 

Lorianne is undoubtedly another kind, warm friend:

 

“Friends are like the ties in a quilt. The more you tie, the better the quilt stays together.”

 

Robert Fulghum doesn’t say it any prettier in his essay “These are the things I learned (in Kindergarten)” with the line, “When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.”

 

Derek, humble and noble:

 

“Love is the word we use to encompass all of the good feelings that we can’t describe.”

 

That extremely aptly describes the indescribable.

 

And Kerrie equally describes love as attentively, and as purely, as any poet: “Love is what helps you notice the stars and forget about the darkness of the night.”

 

Hilary’s empathy is a lesson for us all:

 

“If I cannot mold myself to how I wish to be, how can I expect others to be entirely to my liking?”

 

I, for one, wish to be more like her.

 

The sage perception of Jared the cultivator:

 

“People do not nearly esteem highly enough the dirt that makes the flowers beautiful.”

 

Shakespeare’s prose, “The earth gas music for those who listen,” could sing a duet with the high school bard’s astute thought.

 

Jenny’s words similarly cause me pause: “A rose looks beautiful in a vase but lives in a garden.” This contemplation, like the emotions of a graduation ceremony, brings me near tears and nearer to enlightenment.

 

And lastly, Marissa, the old soul, reminds us: “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the weak voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’  ”

 

            At the end of the day, thanks to these poetic students who are also great teachers – and, in truth, thanks to all the courageous young people in all the Classes of 2013 – I know our tomorrows will be in good hands. The fair-voiced Calliope would be pleased.

 

 

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Woody Woodburn’s new book, WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” is available for pre-order at: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1138392258/wooden-and-me-book-and-e-book

 

            Woody writes a weekly column for the Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com

 

 

 

Column: Legacy Left in Artwork

by Woody

 

A Legacy Left in Indelible Ink (and Paint) 
“The happiest paintbrushes are the worn-through ones.”

 

These are the words of a young man who, long before earning a university minor in Painting, took a summer art class at age 12 from Chris Martinez.

 

Teaching my son drawing skills, and more importantly doing so in an encouraging manner, was not the first time Chris entered my life.

 

That moment occurred in a previous writing life for me, so long ago The Star was still The Star-Free Press and I was in the sports department. It was 1987 and as a staff rookie I was taking a beating in the letters to the editor from Ventura High fans claiming my columns were pro-Buena; and Bulldog backers complaining I favored the Cougars.

 

Into the newsroom one day walked a visitor, a bearded stranger to me but wearing the warm smile of an old friend. It was, as you have guessed, Chris. For no reason other than because he was such a kind man, he gave me the most heartfelt gift an artist can bestow: one of his artworks.

 

It was a 12-by-15-inch black ink drawing, featuring a caricature of me wearing a Los Angeles Rams jersey, a Dodgers cap, and baggy Lakers shorts. A hockey puck is balanced on my right shoulder pad and my hockey-gloved right hand grips a hockey stick. On my left hand I am spinning a basketball, a feat all the more impressive considering the baseball mitt. Scattered around my sneakered feet are a soccer ball, volleyball, bowling ball, baseball, softball, football, tennis ball and two golf balls.

 

Also, an angry-looking Buena Bulldog looks up at me, as does Ventura High’s Cougar mascot.

 

A handwritten inscription on the masterpiece reads: “Woody – Sticking your neck out and taking chances are prerequisites for creativity . . . Keep up the good work. – Chris Martinez.”

 

How dearly did I appreciate Chris’ creativity and skill – his talent was so great he was at one time a Disney illustrator – and above all, kindness? The cherished drawing hangs on a wall by my writing desk alongside a “Pyramid of Success” signed to me by Coach John Wooden.

 

On a nearby bookshelf is another personal reminder of Chris’s artistic virtuosity: He did the illustrations for the book “Raising Your Child to be a Champion in Athletics, Arts, and Academics” that I co-authored with Wayne Bryan in 2004. To this day, Wayne uses the biography caricature Chris drew of him using a tennis racket as a guitar for his sign-off signature in e-mails.

 

Three weeks ago today, the music died. So did the artwork. Chris passed away, and far too soon; he would have turned but 67 in July.

 

Chris made his mark in Ventura in indelible ink. It would surely be quicker to take a roll call of Venturans who do not own a personal caricature drawn by Chris than those who do.

 

He also made his mark in paint.

 

As iconic landmarks go, Ventura is blessed with a handful: the Pier and Two Trees and the Mission, to name three.

 

Here are three more: the portrait of Bob Tuttle that graces Ventura High’s gym named in the legendary coach’s honor; the Dragon mascot mural at Foothill Technology High School; and the huge mural of the school mascot Lion holding a poinsettia on the front of Poinsettia Elementary. All three created by Chris.

 

There are numerous other Martinez Murals across the county, landmarks each that make locals smile daily.

 

Yes, Ventura was Chris’s canvas – his canvas just happened quite often to be the outdoor stucco walls of schools. And the smooth walls inside gymnasiums. And basketball hardwood center courts where he painted school logos. Also, each holiday season, dozens of storefront windows were his canvas as well.

 

Too, his canvas included the students he instructed, the young sports writer he encouraged, the countless others who enjoyed the beauty of his artwork.

 

Indeed, it is fair to say that the legacy Chris Martinez leaves behind includes the happiest one possible for an artist: a myriad worn-through paintbrushes.

 

 

 

 

 

– Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star. You can contact Woody at WoodyWriter@gmail.com or www.WoodyWoodburn.com

 

 

 

Column: FB rides to boy’s rescue

by Woody

 

Facebook rides to boy’s rescue

           This is a love story.

It stars a boy and his grandfather, a thief and a school principal, Facebook and a village of caring people.

           Tony, a fourth-grader at Mound Elementary in Ventura, had his bike stolen after leaving it at school overnight.

Happy Tony with his bike and Mound Principal Todd Tyner.

His misfortune mounted. Riding double on the crossbar of his grandfather’s bike for the two-mile trip home from school shortly thereafter, Tony’s foot caught in the spokes and he flew head over handlebars.

           Todd Tyner, Mound’s principal, had not known about the bike theft or the dangerous double-rides to and from school. When Tony showed up on crutches the next day, Tyner asked and learned and cared.

“I knew we needed to get Tony a replacement bike as soon as he was well enough to ride again,” Tyner recalls thinking.

At 11:18 a.m. that very day, Tyner posted on his Facebook page a brief summary of Tony’s predicament. Shining the Bat-Signal above Gotham City’s night skyline could not have elicited a speedier response of help.

Indeed, a mere two minutes later at 11:20 a.m. – sent from a mobile phone because the Good Samaritan did not want to delay until getting home – came this on-line reply: “I have a bike he can have. He can choose from 4 cuz my kids never ride them.”

Another offer came at 11:36 a.m. – “he can have my beach cruiser. it needs fresh tires but that should be easy to take care of.”

And another and another . . .

12:15 p.m. – “I got $10. If we all chip in we can buy a nice new one.”

12:21 p.m. – “I have a specialized BMX I could part with! Needs a new pedal.”

12:24 p.m. – “I have 2 new bikes in my garage. Need air in tires.”

2:24 p.m. – “We have a brand new boys bike that he can have.”

3:15 p.m. – “I want to help. Can I drop some money off at school?”

And on and on, more than 30 offers for bikes, helmets, locks and cash in a few hours. The problem of no bike turned into one of too many bikes. A nice problem to have. Tyner actually had to turn off the Bat-Signal.

Sitting in his office recalling the “It’s A Wonderful Life”-like event, Tyner is asked if he was surprised by the kind outpouring?

“No, not really,” he answers. “The Internet is a wonderful way to reach out to the community. I knew if I let people know about the need, someone would have an extra bike. This is a very caring community. I see it a lot.”

This time it was a bike, but other days Tyner has seen backpacks and school supplies donated to kids who are without.

And this past December some Mound teachers collected two large bags of clothes and shoes for a couple students in need. They asked Tyner to surreptitiously drop them off at the boys’ home before Christmas, which he did.

“We see them wearing the clothes,” Tyner shares. “That is a rewarding feeling.”

So, too, was the feeling of summoning Tony into the Principal’s Office after the boy was finally off crutches three weeks later.

“I said, ‘I know you need a bike,’ ” Tyner retells. “I told him about Facebook and that more than 40 people had offered to help him out. Tony thought it was pretty exciting that there were people out there who cared enough to give him a bike.”

Along with a new safety helmet and lock (care of Rob and Karri Button), Tony was given his choice of the two bikes that were ultimately donated – the other is being kept for a similar exigency down the road. He selected a shiny red BMX, good as new after Tyner cleaned it a little and pumped up the tires.

“Tony had a big smile when he rode home that day,” Tyner says, beaming at the recent memory he will surely carry into his old age – as will Tony.

As I said at the start, this is a love story. The name of the bike benefactor is Danielle Love. How perfect is that?

 

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– Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star. You can contact Woody at WoodyWriter@gmail.com or www.WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Column: The Cancer Bell Tolls

by Woody

For Whom the Cancer Bell Tolls

 

            While the order of stanzas often changes, the message in a poem by Martin Niemöller, a prominent Protestant pastor who spent seven years in Nazi concentration camps, remains constant and tragic:

 

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out –

Because I was not a Socialist.

 

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out –

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

 

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –

Because I was not a Jew.

 

Then they came for me –

And there was no one left to speak for me.

 

Eight decades after Niemöller penned these powerful words they have taken on new meaning to me. Personal meaning. About another heinous killer.

 

First cancer came for my young children’s beloved daycare provider, Jeannie.

 

Then cancer came for my dearest friend, Karen.

 

Then cancer came for Eric. And Louise. And Keith.

 

After gallant battles by each, and despite everything modern medicine could throw at it, this Gestapo of a disease unmercifully claimed all of their lives.

 

Then cancer came yet again and again, for my dad just over a year ago and two months later for my eldest brother. Surgery and radiation and chemotherapy – and let’s be honest, luck and god’s grace, too – saved their lives.

 

Then cancer came for me. Last Dec. 17, my wonderful dermatologist, Dr. Jill Mines, took a biopsy from a crack in my lip that stubbornly wouldn’t heal. The lab results came back positive for squamous cell carcinoma in situ: skin cancer.

 

A few weeks later Dr. Arthur Flynn, a talented plastic surgeon, sliced a wedge out of my right lower lip. For a while I looked like a bass that lost a battle with a barbed fishing lure. But the painful pout was a small price to pay because the new biopsy margins came back clear. Translation: The doc got it all.

 

Cancer is not only frightening, it is frighteningly common. To give you an idea, two out of five Californians will be diagnosed with some form of the disease in their lifetime. In other words, the cancer club is about as exclusive as Sam’s Club.

 

The good news is the American Cancer Society is making an impact through groundbreaking research to prevent, diagnose, treat and cure cancer. In fact, its annual Relays For Life raise funds that help save 400 birthdays each day.

 

The Relay For Life of Ventura will be held next Saturday (May 18) beginning at 10 a.m. and feature a festival of food trucks so even if you are not participating directly, you should drop by.

 

(Other upcoming local Relays For Life include: Ojai’s Nordhoff High, June 1; Westlake’s Oaks Christian School, June 8; Hueneme High, June 22; Fillmore’s Harmony Community Center, July 12; and Carpinteria’s Linden Field, July 20.)

 

After long successful runs at Ventura High and then Buena High’s football stadiums, this year’s Ventura event – under the guidance of new tireless chairperson Patty Abou-Samra – is moving to the San Buenaventura State Beach. It is difficult to imagine a more beautiful setting.

 

Actually, in a manner, this coastal site will become even more breathtaking with the sight of 1,500 members on 65 relay teams as they walk for 24 hours around the clock and around a circular 400-meter path outlined in chalk on the grass field. Their shared purpose is to raise funds, raise awareness, raise hope.

 

Raising more goose bumps than a Pacific sunset does will be the nighttime Luminaria Ceremony where hundreds of candles outlining the walking path’s perimeter will be lit, each flame representing a loved one’s life prematurely extinguished by cancer.

 

John Donne, a 17 th century English poet, wrote these immortal words that inspired no less than Ernest Hemingway: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

 

When I look in the bathroom mirror a slight scar on my lip reminds me for whom cancer’s bell tolls; it may toll for thou, too; or surely for someone thou’st knows or loves.

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

 

Column: “Poem” is now Wood Chips

by Woody

From Lovely “Poem” to Wood Chips

One hundred years ago, Joyce Kilmer penned “Trees” with one of the most widely familiar opening couplets in American poetry:

I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree.

The other morning I looked out my window and across the street as a lovely “poem” got sawed down, cut up, turned into wood chips and trucked away.

It was like seeing a theatrical street version of Shel Silverstein’s classic children’s book “The Giving Tree” starring two workmen in white hard hats and optic-yellow vests.

Actually, this story was even sadder for this tree’s limbs were not used to build a house for the grown boy; its trunk not crafted into a boat to sail the seas. When the workmen’s work was finished, there was not even a stump left to sit and rest upon.

An arborist could tell you what type of tree this was, but I cannot. Were I to venture a guess, wise readers would surely point out my ignorance. No matter. What is important is it was majestic, perhaps 70 feet tall and leafy with a trunk I could not reach my arms around.

Something else important: the tree had become a botanical Leaning Tower of Pisa, cracking and raising a section of sidewalk. And if it toppled, it would fall across a busy street. Too large to be braced or straightened, the tree was a danger that surely needed to come down.

And so at 9 a.m., a whining chain saw turned an overcast morning tenfold gloomier. Standing in the basket of a gargantuan cherry-picker, a workman cut off the large branches one by one by one as he hydraulically rose higher and higher and higher.

Far below, the felled branches were cut into manageable lengths and fed into a wood chipper that roared like a jet engine. Lines of a “poem” went in, mulch came out.

And then the tall, barren trunk came down, made not into lumber for a home or boat, but into short logs to be burned in fireplaces. This was not a heartwarming thought.

From start to finish, what took decades and decades to become living poetry was eliminated in less than four hours. It was tree-mendously sad.

It was not my tree, not in my yard, and yet it was mine and yours because trees are for all of us to enjoy. Trees are one of nature’s Hallmark cards — an ironic thought since some trees literally become greeting cards. Or, more irony here, newsprint.

Kilmer again: A tree that may in summer wear / A nest of robins in her hair.

No more birds will nest in the lovely tree I used to see out my kitchen window looking east, the sun rising above it in the late spring mornings.

The melancholy event gave me pause to think about a handful of memorable trees in my life: The evergreen beside the driveway of my first boyhood home that my two older brothers and I attempted blind shots over during games of H-O-R-S-E. The sturdy buckeye near a swimming hole that we swung from on a rope. The apple tree I picked snacks off on a shortcut home from school. The orange tree my two then-young kids and I planted. The giant redwoods we saw, in awe, as a family. And on and on.

I think “poems” fill all our lives more than we generally realize. We draw trees in kindergarten and climb trees as older kids and hopefully at least once plant a tree, for as the Greek proverb states: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

Kilmer once more:

Afterward, this columnist fool walked over to determine how old the tree had been by counting its rings, but the stump was cut off below the ground and covered with dirt.

I may be overestimating by half, but I like to think this tree had sprouted in 1913, the same year as “Trees” came into being.

*
(Published 5-4-13 in Ventura County Star)

Book Review: “Sweet Thursday”

by Woody

“SWEET THURSDAY” by John Steinbeck (288 pages). FLASH REVIEW: How in the world did this novel, that was almost titled “The Bear Flag,” escape my reading eyes until now? My past loss is my current gain for while Steinbeck has written numerous novels that are more acclaimed, and rightly so, I dare say this could be the Master Storyteller’s most “enjoyable” piece. The wordsmith-ing is, of course, as close to perfect as possible; the characters ring true, the dialogue is spot on; and the plot is woven together elegantly. In a word, this love story is indeed “sweet” (yet gritty, too) and I can see why many consider this their favorite Steinbeck work. Something else struck me: though originally published nearly 60 years ago, some of Steinbeck’s insights on humanity and political thoughts expressed in the pages seem prescient, as powerfully appropriate today as when written. Rating: 4.5 STARS out of 5.

 

Book Review: “The Ghost Runner”

by Woody

“THE GHOST RUNNER: The Tragedy of the Man They Couldn’t Stop” by Bill Jones (352 paperback.) FLASH REVIEW: I think non-runners will appreciate the tragic life story of John Tarrant, who had a boardinghouse childhood more grim than Dickens would dream up and made all the worse in his teens by the death of his mother shortly after WWII. I KNOW that runners, especially marathoners, will have a hard time putting this book down (though reading while simultaneously shaking one’s head in sympathetic anger can be a challenge). This is the journey of a steel-legged and iron-willed English runner sentenced to fight amateur athletic brass for decades. As a result he must illegally race in the shadows without a bib number all because he earned a few pounds in his hardscrabble youth as a boxer and thus was deemed a “professional” in running. Denied any chance at his Olympic dreams, The Ghost Runner, as he becomes famously known in the newspapers and sporting world, wears disguises before jumping into marathons and 24-hour ultras at the last second last at the starting lines. In the process he becomes an inspiring legend through victory and heartbreaking defeat, the latter often due to his stubbornness and refusal to pace himself rather than always bolting to the lead from the start. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the entire tale is that it has taken so long to be told. RATING: 4 Stars out of 5 for marathoners; 3 Stars for non-runners.