Category Archives: Columns

Water Bottles Filled With Kindness

by Woody

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

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Imagine being on the last day of a busy business trip. You again rose at the crack of dawn, began work at 8 o’clock, and spent the next 12 hours on your feet with rarely a break. At long last your long workday is over, although you still face a mile trek by foot back to your hotel.

Surely, as soon as possible, you would want to find some dinner. Even more surely, with your feet sore as a soldier’s after a blistering march, you would not want to instead spend the next two hours walking and stooping, walking and bending down, walking and picking up debris.

And yet that is what Robert Stratton did recently, not as punishment but on his own accord, after refereeing a gargantuan invitational volleyball tournament in Las Vegas. In the City of Sin, this Good Samaritan shone bright as a neon sign, a 25-year-old inspiration for young people and older ones alike.

Robert, a former boys’ varsity volleyball coach at Nordhoff High, admires Coach John Wooden and often recites Wooden-ism maxims, such as: “You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

On this occasion, Robert lived a perfect day by what he did at night for myriad someone elses. After working his last match of the long day, which was also the ending match of the entire tournament, as players and coaches and spectators were emptying out of the cavernous Convention Center, Robert began filling two large heavy-duty trash bags.

To do so, he canvassed all 80 courts, head down like a beachcomber on a shore of hardwood instead of sand, searching not for seashells or sea glass but for reusable aluminum water bottles and other expensive hydration flasks left behind by players.

The first time Robert performed a similar scavenger hunt at a smaller tournament, he gathered about 50 flasks; he doubled that the next time; and his most recent effort resulted in a whopping total north of 200.

What does Robert do with his hauls? He hauls them home to Seattle – in checked bags and carry-on luggage this last time, no small feat in itself with close to 100 bulky pounds of empty bottles – where he is in the University of Washington’s Doctor of Physical Therapy program. After washing thoroughly, he fills them with fresh water and personally hands them out, along with kits he prepares containing toothbrushes, toothpaste, granola bars and other goodies, to unhoused individuals.

“A lightning bolt hit me,” Robert recalls of the inspiration to round up abandoned bottles. “I realized that all these lost hydro flasks were going to wind up in a landfill. And if I give out one-time-use plastic bottles of water, they’ll also go to the landfill. But I can give new life to an expensive flask and keep two bottles out of the landfill.”

In addition to being ecologically good, it is good for the soul.

“A quality reusable bottle tops a disposable bottle in showing the recipient that someone cares,” Robert allows, explaining he keeps a small supply of filled flasks and care kits in his car. Whenever he sees a person in need, he stops and gives and takes a step toward living another perfect day.

“Spreading kindness takes so little effort,” Robert goes on, modestly understating the great effort his mission of goodwill requires. “But I think it can have big rewards – I certainly feel rewarded.”

Robert Stratton stands 6-foot-4, my height, yet I still look up to him as a role model of kindness.

This Rom-Com Stands Test of Time

by Woody

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

For Valentine’s Day today, here is a love story from Woody’s column archives from four years ago…

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Upon meeting a married couple, from newlyweds to having celebrated their diamond anniversary, I love to ask how they met. Blind date or meet cute or online app match, they always light up in the retelling – as do I in the listening.

In the hopes that you feel likewise, let me share a synopsis of my in-progress screenplay with the working title, “When Woody Met Lisa.” Instead of starring dark-haired Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan with sunshine curls, the leading characters will be played by shaggy ginger-blond Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams as a brunette.

Our very first date at UCSB…

The movie opens on the campus of UC Santa Barbara, in a dining hall, at dinnertime. There are three hot-food lines and Woody intentionally chooses the longest one. When he finally reaches the front we see why: the server, even with cascading locks tucked up in a hair net, is the prettiest girl he has ever seen.

“Lasagna and tater tots, please,” the freshman boy says, swallowing any attempt to flirt because the sophomore beauty is out of his league. A short montage follows showing him going through her line the entire school year without even learning her name.

Fast-forward two years to a Christmas party at the off-campus apartment of two of Woody’s wild-and-crazy former freshman dorm mates. Across the crowded room, Woody notices a girl who makes his heart play a faster drumbeat. She is wearing a light-blue sweater, and no hair net, but no sooner does he finally try to strike up a conversation than the keg runs dry and the party breaks up and everyone decides to go to another friend’s bash.

Everyone, that is, except Lisa, who has promised a different friend she would drop by her party and heads off alone in the opposite direction.

…and still feel like were dating all these years later!

“Wait up. I’ll walk you there,” Woody quickly, and wisely, blurts out and the Nora Ephron-like fun begins. At one point, Woody gets Lisa a beer while she goes to the restroom – when she reappears he has cleverly positioned himself underneath a hanging sprig of mistletoe. Lisa accepts the red Solo Cup with one hand and with the other leads Woody onto the dance floor, thwarting his kissing bandit gambit.

All is not lost, however, as Woody steals a kiss later that night – with no assist from mistletoe – and the two go on a dinner date the following evening and promptly fall in love.

As in all good rom-coms, just when things are going perfectly a break-up strikes like a lightning bolt. Both start dating others and at this low point, with Woody KO’d by the flu, Lisa brings him an Easter basket filled with a chocolate bunny and other candy, his favorite fresh bagels and cream cheese, and an array of cold and cough medicines. Woody’s fever instantly soars even higher with lovesickness and to this day he counts his lucky stars he fell ill.

Also to this day, by the way, Lisa insists she never noticed the mistletoe the night of their meet cute.

Flash forward four decades, to upcoming September 4th, when the two lovebirds will celebrate their 43rd wedding anniversary: Woody raises a glass and offers a toast at dinner, quoting a line in a novel by one of his favorite authors, Brian Doyle, where the narrator, recalling his first kiss with his future wife many, many years earlier, says: “How can you not stay in love with the girl who was with you the very moment you were introduced to true happiness.”

Our movie ends, naturally, with a kiss beneath a sprig of mistletoe.

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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.

‘The Child is father of the Man’

by Woody

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

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Once upon a time, an 8-year-old boy and his father hiked to the summit of Yosemite Falls, the fifth-highest waterfall on the planet and record holder in North America with a total drop of 2,245 feet.

Afterwards, as he was being tucked into bed that night, the weary-but-proud boy smiled like it was his birthday and Christmas and the first day of summer all wrapped into one, and told his climbing companion: “This was the best day of my life.”

There is, of course, no single “best” day; no day that is the ultimate masterpiece above all others. Rather, there are days so perfect and special and memorable that they merit a hue in The Best Days Ever Rainbow.

This day had been a radiant shade of orange, the boy’s favorite color; or perhaps the brilliant blue of the cloud-dotted sky that afternoon; better yet, it was red like the cherry Squeezit the boy drank in celebration at the summit as if it were champagne on New Year’s Eve at midnight.

A quarter of a century later, precisely and recently, the boy and the father returned to Yosemite Falls to try and relive that Squeezit red red-letter day. En route, poet William Wordsworth’s worthy words came to mind: “The Child is father of the Man.”

In echo, Joe-El, father of Superman, says of his only child: “The son becomes the father, and the father the son.” So it was on this mountainside.

The first time they had climbed up, Up, UP the steep and rugged four-mile trail that would challenge a sure-hoofed Bighorn sheep, the father carried a backpack stuffed heavy with provisions for them both.

This time it was the boy, now a man of 6-foot-3 with broad and strong shoulders, who carried the full load of drinks and food. Time stutters and yesterday is today, and today is tomorrow, and in my eyes my son came into simultaneous focus as a small boy and a grown adult.

The Child further became father of this Man by leading our way on the trail. When a rising step was extra high, or the footing precarious, it was now the son who held his father’s hand to provide steadying balance and safety. Too, it was the son who made sure the father took consistent breaks to stay hydrated.

“The journey,” wrote another poet, Miguel de Cervantes, “is better than the inn.” Indeed, the ascending journey – and descending – was the best part of the day: talking one-on-one for seven hours, for a hundred switchbacks up and a hundred more down, all with no cell phones, no distractions, nobody but us, Child and Man.

Yet, with apologies to Cervantes, the inn – the summit – shared top billing. As with the first time we reached the picturesque peak, the son and father again enjoyed a picnic lunch of leftover pepperoni pizza, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and a cherry Squeezit for the boy and a Guinness for the father – and, this time, an extra Irish pint for the grown son.

Twenty-five years ago, I wrote a column about climbing Yosemite Falls with this prescient passage: “In thirty years, or perhaps forty, would these two come back here, this time with The Mountain Boy’s hand doing the holding and the steadying and the helping as the grown son and his aging father rise up the mountain again? As Hemingway’s closing words in The Sun Also Rises beautifully put it: ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’ ”

It was more than pretty. It was beautiful. Perfect. A bookend cherry Squeezit red masterpiece day.

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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.

Rose Rises From Fire’s Ashes

by Woody

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

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From Woody’s column archives, April of 2018, the feelings relevant anew following the devastating wildfires in Southern California…

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On its homeward voyage, the Apollo 11 capsule – like all spacecraft returning from a lunar visit – crossed an ethereal Rubicon where the moon’s gravitational attraction yielded imperceptibly to the faint pull of Earth’s gravity.

It seems to me there is a similar invisible line where the gravity of grief and loss is overcome by the growing pull of healing and happiness. The aftermath of the Thomas Fire, a heinous monster that claimed two lives and more than 700 homes and also turned a million collective photographs into ash, has reinforced this thought.

For some property victims, this Rubicon of Healing was crossed the moment they safely escaped the fire’s destructive path. For others, it came when they returned to their ruins and uncovered a keepsake piece of jewelry or a treasured heirloom miraculously intact among cinders.

Our Audrey Rose blooming…

For many, however, the Rubicon of Healing remains a point far off in the distance of their journey back from the dark side of the moon.

The Thomas Fire razed my childhood home in the small hours of December 5.  Come dawn, however, I honestly felt I had bypassed the gravitational pull of overwhelming loss because all that truly mattered was that my 93-year-old father, who had lived in the house for 44 years, fled harm’s way.

I was, it now seems fairly obvious, in denial. More than being my dad’s house, it was my late mom’s dream home. She died 26 autumns past, come October, yet inside the front door the overpowering aura and warmth was still of her.

The living room, decorated in her favored sky blue, was of her. The kitchen, where she rolled out pasta by hand, was of her. The dining room, with her cherished Wedgewood china displayed in a hutch, was of her. Her piano, her books, her presence in every room.

Every room gone now, burned, cinders and soot.

Because I have the memories, I did not want to see the ashes. Alone among my siblings, I chose not to go see our home that was no longer there.

I made a similar choice half a century ago. At age seven, at my first funeral, I refused to join the procession of mourners walking by my paternal grandfather Ansel’s open casket because I wanted to remember beloved Grandpa as I had always seen him, alive not dead.

Similarly it was with my childhood home and I stayed away.

But the gravitational pull of loss did not stay away. Finally, the day after Easter, I returned. I drove high into the foothills of Ondulando, turned into a familiar cul-de-sac I no longer recognized, walked up a short driveway leading to where a two-story white house once stood proudly.

Now, nothing. A moonscape. The basketball pole and hoop, gone. Chimney, gone. Even the cement foundation has been removed.

Actually, next to the “nothing” there is something. At the left side of the backyard, near where a hot tub had been, a round fire pit made of red brick remains.

In truth, it ceased being a fire pit a quarter-century back. The first spring following my mom’s death, my dad filled it with potting soil and planted a rose bush. Specifically, a light pink hybrid tea variety named after actress Audrey Hepburn and commonly called simply the “Audrey Rose.”

My mom’s name was Audrey.

In the fire pit-turned-planter on the day following Easter, in a vision filled with symbolism and metaphor, there it was rising from the ashes quite literally: our Audrey Rose bush in full bloom.

The gravitational pull of healing took full hold.

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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.

Heroes Glow Brighter Than Wildfire

by Woody

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

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From Woody’s column archives, December of 2017, the sentiments ever as true now during the devastating wildfires in Southern California…

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When the Thomas Fire burned my father’s home down to the ground, my boyhood bedroom went up in flames.

Lost, among more valuable heirlooms, were posters of Jerry West and John Havlicek, Arthur Ashe and Bjorn Borg, Bart Starr and Leroy Kelly, and other heroes from my youth.

After the apocalyptic air cleared of smoke and ash, this clarity came: How misguided to consider someone a hero because he can hit a jump shot in the clutch, zip a backhand passing shot, throw a touchdown spiral.

Today, the poster I would want to hang up is an enlargement of a photograph I saw from the atrocious Thomas Fire. It is picture of a true hero. A firefighter.

Striding boldly through dense smoke filled with floating embers aglow, he is faceless behind a helmeted oxygen mask. His firesuit resembles an astronaut’s lunar spacesuit, except instead of pristine white it is soot-smudged tan with neon-green-and-silver reflective stripes.

The firefighter clutches a crowbar in one black-gloved fist, a red-bladed axe in the other. Deacon Jones, from another boyhood poster turned to charred dust, never looked more fearsome. The firefighter is ready for real battle, not the gridiron kind.

Hercules’ second labor was to defeat Hydra, a monster so devilish that every time the mythical Greek god chopped off one head, two would grow back. The Thomas Fire mercilessly seemed to multiply similarly.

Thousands of real-not-mythical heroes have been laboring to defeat this Pyra beast. Heroes from throughout California and also Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, and Washington.

Not only do firefighters, and other first responders, put their lives on the line – and frontline – helping others, but something that often goes underappreciated is they are thus absent from their own loved ones during times of calamity.

Another poster-worthy photograph taken during this Cal-amity features the black silhouette of a lone firefighter against an orange inferno backdrop, heading towards the flames because that is what these brave heroes do.

If the world were fair and just, firefighters – not superstar athletes – would be on bedroom posters and have multimillion-dollar salaries. Like pro athletes, firefighters too often wind up with prematurely broken bodies; often scarred lungs as well.

Firefighters should wear capes, like Superman or Batman, for they are real-life superheroes. I did not know it at the time, but I was boyhood friends with two such future superheroes and manhood friends with a third firefighter.

Thinking of Don and James and Hall, and their brave brethren, I am reminded of a parable about a man tossing starfish, one by one by one, back into the ocean after hundreds had been washed ashore by a fierce storm.

A second beachcomber walks up and says dismissively, “You’re wasting your time. There are too far many beached starfish for you to make a difference.”

Likewise, there have been far too many threatened homes and buildings for firefighters to possibly save them all, yet they battle on as indefatigably as the tide. If asked why, I imagine their answer would be the same that the first man on the beach gave while tossing a single starfish into the water: “I cannot save them all, but to this one I’m making a world of difference.”

One more photo: a small girl, wearing a disposable respiratory mask, stands in front of her family’s front door on which she has written, in neat block letters, in chalk of pink and orange and blue and yellow, with an added red heart: “Dear Firefighters, Thank You For Saving Our Home.”

I wish every fire station had a poster of 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

Lost In A Grocery Store Maze

by Woody

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

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“Oh, you poor ol’ soul. Who let you out of the house alone and unsupervised?”

That was what the look conveyed, a tight-lipped smile of pity and eyes filled with warmheartedness, from a woman young enough to be my daughter upon seeing me standing in a stupor in the middle of Trader Joe’s.

Like Moses wandering the desert for 40 years, I had been roaming the aisles for the better part of 40 long minutes searching for a short shopping list of items still needed for a holiday dinner feast. Finally, my scavenger hunt was down to one thing: bottled Smartwater, which only made me feel dumber by the minute as I retraced my steps, lap after lap, through the store as hopelessly as someone looking for misplaced car keys in the same places again and again.

My befuddlement was largely my lovely wife’s fault. Because I really, really, really do not like to go shopping, a dislike bordering on phobia – bookshops and running shoe stores being exceptions – she has long enabled me by cheerfully handling this chore. As a result, on the rare occasions I pinch-hit grocery shopping, I am like a lab rat trying to navigate a difficult maze for the first time.

It is said that a blind squirrel can sometimes find an acorn, but when I finally located the cashews, hidden behind a tower of bread waiting to be shelved, I became paralyzed by the myriad choices: raw, roasted; unsalted, lightly salted, salted; whole, halved, diced. Not surprisingly, I chose the wrong ones. I do this routinely.

My aversion to grocery shopping is absolutely irrational, especially when I tell you that one of the funnest (not a widely accepted word, but should be) jobs I ever had was two summers in my teens as a box boy at the now long-defunct Noren’s Market.

An example of the fun: more than once after closing, and after the floors had been mopped and the shelves all restocked, a few of us – including the store owner’s adult son, whose idea it was – turned the cereal aisle into a bowling alley by using a sliding frozen turkey to knock down 10 metal canisters of whipped cream. Our ringleader laughingly confessed he once used quarts of milk as the pins, but that resulted in a “Mop-up on aisle 4!” mess. The bowling winner, as I recall, took home the bruised butterball.

Now. With my ego bruised by embarrassment, I thanked the helpful woman after she pointed out, almost apologetically, an expansive display of bottled waters that was in as plain sight as Mr. Poe’s purloined letter on a tabletop. In my defense, the stacked reservoir was beyond the checkout stations at the very front, not in the shopping aisles proper.

As a saving grace, I remembered to bring reusable grocery bags, sturdy ones that stand up and hold their shape like paper sacks of yore, and when a box boy/young man offered to help, I politely said, “I’ve got it.”

With the juggling drink-mixing flair of Brian Flanagan, the bartender character played by Tom Cruise in the movie “Cocktail,” I plucked the items off the conveyor belt with my right hand, flipped each airborne towards the open bags where my left hand caught-and-guided them into place, doing so with Tetris precision, filling them not too heavily nor too lightly, the dormant skill coming back to me as surely as riding a bike with nary a wobble.

“You’ve done this before,” the box boy/young man said with admiration, turning my frustrating excursion into a nostalgically happy one.

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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.

Belated Resolutions For New Year

by Woody

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

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From Woody’s column archives, late December 2014, slightly revised…

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“New Year’s is a harmless annual institution,” wrote Mark Twain, “of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.”

In addition to wishing you and yours a New Year filled with great joy and health, I thought I would take a moment to make some resolutions for 2025 – humbug and laudable, both. Perhaps you will find some worthy of your own pursuit.

I resolve to…

Keep in mind the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote: “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.”

Own my day.

Try to live up to the wisdom of these lines in Rudyard Kipling’s remarkable poem “If” – “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two imposters just the same.”

Try to treat Fret and Anxiety like the imposters they are.

Unplug, unplug, unplug.

Sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen.

Pass up the nearest open parking spot in order to leave it for someone, perhaps an elderly person, who might find it difficult to walk very far.

Give compliments 100 times more frequently than unsolicited advice.

Listen to more live music, the smaller the venue the better.

Listen to others more – and more closely.

Laugh more – including at myself.

As my hero Coach John Wooden encouraged and practiced, “Make friendship a fine art.”

Heed the wisdom of another hero of mine, Wayne Bryan: “If you don’t make an effort to help others less fortunate than you, then you’re just wasting your time on Earth.”

Try to, as Eleanor Roosevelt advised, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” Or, at least, challenges me.

Heed Samuel Beckett’s wisdom to “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Try to suffer fools more gladly. As my Grandpa Ansel said, “It is good at times to deal with ignorant people because it makes you feel so smart.”

Try not to be an ignorant fool too often myself.

Again from Grandpa Ansel, keep in mind: “The only way to travel life’s road is to cross one bridge at a time.”

Read deeply from good books.

Read shallowly from fun books, too.

Use my car horn as though I have to pay $10 for each honk.

Buy two of anything a kid under age 10 is selling – and give one back to them to enjoy.

Check my email in-box less frequently and write more snail-mail letters.

Less screen time, more face-to-face time.

Shop at local small businesses first, local chains second, and buy on-line as a last resort.

Keep a coffee-chain gift card in my wallet for when I come across someone down-on-their-luck. 

Visit more museums.

Visit the beach more often, too.

Pick up litter and not just on Beach Clean Up days.

Heed John Muir’s call to “Keep close to nature’s heart and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”

Be quicker to forgive.

Be slower to criticize – including of myself.

Stop to smell the roses – and daydream at the clouds and savor sunsets and marvel at starry night skies and appreciate similar works of nature’s art.

Give flowers out of the blue, not just to mark special occasions.

Lastly, again as Coach Wooden advised, I resolve in 2025 to try to “Make each day your masterpiece.”

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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.

Toasting My Favorite Books This Year

by Woody

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

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“Do you want sixteen ounces?” the waitress at a local craft brewery asked. “Or twenty?”

“Sixteen’s good,” I said before Gary Tuttle, my happy hour companion, followed with his ale selection, specifying: “I’ll have the twenty.”

When in Rome – or drinking with a long-distance legend who surely wore Adidas Rom running shoes in the 1960s: “Make mine a twenty, too,” I revised.

“Then I want twenty-four ounces,” Gary interjected playfully…

…and yet, in a nutshell, the humorous interaction unveils the serious competitive spirit that made Ventura’s native son a two-time NCAA steeplechase champion, three-time American record holder, and runner-up finisher in the prestigious Boston Marathon.

A new book that prominently features Gary throughout – “Running Behind The Redwood Curtain” written and compiled by Vince Engel – has a gem of a story that pairs perfectly with our beer orders. It took place Gary’s senior year at Humbolt State and, edited slightly for space, here is how he tells it in the pages:

“At 9:30 p.m., as I was preparing for bed, Vince made an announcement: ‘It’s the end of January and I have been sneaking daily peeks at your (Gary’s) running diary. For the first time in our five years of running together, I have tallied more miles in a month than you. I have one more mile total – I finally beat you in total mileage for the month.’

“I said nothing, but after a glance at the clock I began to put on rain sweats and running shoes. Vince’s smug smile turned to chagrin as he stammered, ‘What are you doing?’ I replied, ‘I’m going for a two-mile run in the rain – January has two and a half hours remaining.’

“Vince, with a worried smile, responded: ‘It’s pointless – I will just run with you, we will get wet and cold for no good reason, and I will still have one more mile than you.’

“I replied, ‘Darn, you’re right. I guess I will run hard for all two hours and thirty minutes left in January. I just need to beat you by over one mile to win the mileage – you are the middle-distance runner, I’m the distance man, so you know I will do it. Be prepared for the toughest run of your life.’

“By now Vince is getting very upset with me. ‘Can’t you just let me win once?’ he said.

“I said, ‘Nope. Are you coming?’ ”

After running the two extra miles needed, alone in the rain, Gary stayed up guarding their front door until midnight to make sure Vince didn’t sneak out to one-up him. Tuff plus mettle equals Tuttle.

While “Running Behind The Redwood Curtain” is not for everyone, hardcore running fans, and especially fans of Gary Tuttle whose storytelling highlights the 459 pages, will definitely enjoy it.

Of the 59 other books I crossed the finish line reading in 2024, here are my top recommendations, beginning with three nonfiction home runs: “Home Waters” by John N. Maclean; “The Bookshop” by Evan Friss; and “Perfect Eloquence: An Appreciation of Vin Scully” edited and compiled by Tom Hoffart, whose own chapter introductions alone are grand slams.

On the fiction bookshelf, shamelessly I shall lead off with my own debut novel, “The Butterfly Tree: An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations,” sharing company alongside “The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World” by Brian Doyle; “Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk” by Kathleen Rooney; and “A Walk in the Sun” by Henry Brown.

Also, “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen; “Horse” by Geraldine Brooks and “The Horse” by Willy Vlautin; “Wandering Stars” by Tommy Orange and “Night Came With Many Stars” by Simon Van Booy; “North Woods” by Daniel Mason and “Kingdom in the Redwoods,” a middle-grade novel by Keven Baxter; and “Kunstlers In Paradise” by Cathleen Shine.

Bookend thin-paged offerings that measure up big are “Until August” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and “Crossing Delancey” by Susan Sandler.

Lastly, let me raise a toast – with 20 ounces, not 16 – to my runner-up and favorite novels I read this year: “James” by Percival Everett and, with understandable bias and unimaginable pride, “Before & After You & Me” by my daughter Dallas Woodburn.

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“Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive” ends soon! New sports balls can be dropped off through Dec. 13, or online orders delivered to, Jensen Design & Survey at 1672 Donlon St. in Ventura, 93003. Please email me about your gifts at woodywriter@gmail.com so I can add your generosity to this year’s tally and acknowledge you in a future column.

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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.

Kind Givers Get Ball Drive Rolling!

by Woody

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

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“Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life,” Mark Twain wrote. And, “It is higher and nobler to be kind.”

Once again, Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive is off to a fast rolling start as Star readers have proved themselves to be noble and kind in making the Christmas season more beautiful for local disadvantaged kids.

In the spirit of The Star’s long-running Bellringer campaign, originated by the late legendary editor Julius Gius, I would like to publicly thank the givers to date here in print:

Susan Sadamich donated nine soccer balls, noting: “Since I have no kids of my own it gives me joy to give to the kids who need a gift.”

Some of the gifts for kids!

Anita and Arthur Pulido gave five each basketballs and footballs.

Gary and Cathy Metelak dished out 10 basketballs with two additional football spirals tossed in.

Mike and Jo Ann Smith gave two each soccer balls and basketballs.

Rebecca Fox kicked in two soccer balls in honor of hers and my shared dear friend Doris Cowart.

Kent Brinkmeyer gave the kids a high-five with five basketballs.

A whopping 48 balls were generously donated by an anonymous Good Samaritan.

Another anonymous kindhearted soul gave a baker’s dozen basketballs “in memory of Tim Fahringer – ‘Ute9’ – a loyal friend and teammate, VHS Class of 1980.”

My loyal friend and longtime teammate in The Star sports department, Jim “Swami” Parker, donated two basketballs.

Judith Smith kicked in two soccer balls.

The Conejo Valley Genealogical Society generously gave five each basketballs, soccer balls, and footballs.

Tom and Jan Lewis donated 10 basketballs “in loving memory of Leonard “PeeWee” Keep, who passed away in May this past year. He was huge part of our lives when our daughters were growing up playing for the Ventura Stars Girls Basketball Club and was a coach of the game and teacher of life lessons.”

Nita and Nick Perkins dished in eight basketballs.

Laura McAvoy and Sol Chooljian donated10 soccer balls and four basketballs.

Indiana University Hoosier alum Tavis Smiley gave, fittingly, 10 basketballs.

An anonymous giver passed in five basketballs in memory of Jim Woodburn III and five soccer balls in memory of Jim Woodburn II.

Brad and Mia Ditto gave a baker’s dozen assorted balls, with Brad noting: “My dad, who was a high school football and baseball coach for many years, would absolutely love what you’re doing for these kids.” Correction: Brad’s dad would love what all you dear readers are doing for the kids!

In the Introduction to a collection of his “Editor’s Notebook” columns published in 1988, Gius wrote: “I have had a rich and rewarding life. Everything has come up roses for me. I count my blessings every day and wish them for everyone.”

If you similarly have been blessed, I encourage you to follow Gius’ example by dropping off new sports balls (no batteries required!) at a Boys & Girls Club, YMCA, Toys For Tots, or similar program. The organizations will see that they wind up in deserving young hands.

Also, through Dec. 13, you can hand off your bouncing gifts at Jensen Design & Survey at 1672 Donlon St. (weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) near Target on Telephone Road in Ventura; or have online orders shipped to the same address; and I will take it from there.

And please email me about your gifts at woodywriter@gmail.com so I can add your generosity to this year’s ball tally as well as acknowledge you, with a dedication to a loved one if desired, in a future column.

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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.

Following in Giant Footsteps

by Woody

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

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From Woody’s column archives, November 27, 2010…

“Seek not to follow in the footsteps of the wise,” advised Japanese poet and philosopher Matsuo Basho. “Seek what they sought.”

Ages later another poet, the journalistic philosopher Chuck Thomas, wrote: “Never write a bad column when you can steal a good one.”

Chuck, who passed away one year ago (now 15) this coming week, wrote wise columns for The Star for more than half a century. The final time I saw him was in the hospital and he joked I should pinch hit for him until he got well. Heartbreakingly, he didn’t and now I feel like George Selkirk, the poor guy who followed in Babe Ruth’s giant footsteps.

Instead of playing right field in pinstripes in Yankee Stadium, I find myself writing in Chuck’s old space. His sacred spot. What an honor. And what pressure. I could use a therapy session with Chuck’s invented column character, “stressologist” Dr. Sigmund Schrink.

Following the master’s lead, I will partially fill this morning’s column with someone else’s words—Chuck’s, from two of the handful of letters he wrote me during my 13 years as a sportswriter for this newspaper.

Let me begin with one dated April 12, 1992, shortly after I confided my growing desire to move on to a major metropolitan newspaper. Using a manual typewriter he thoughtfully said, in part:

“Having been where you are, I can appreciate your frustration. I, too, wanted to prove I could play in the Big Leagues, but wasn’t willing to move to Cleveland or even Oakland to achieve that goal. Eventually, I realized that living in Ventura was more important to me and my family than being perceived as a genuine major leaguer.

“As that line from ‘Mission: Impossible’ goes, your challenge—should you choose to accept it—is just to keep writing great columns, and remember: Success is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy this time in your life, because your old Uncle Chuckles can promise that, someday, you’ll look back on these as good-old days.

“Even though it may seem to you that no one has noticed, I’m one of your fans who knows that you’re writing better now than ever—much better, with more depth, more variety and more class. And you’re writing rings around most of the other guys in the Big Leagues.”

His kind words not only swelled my spirits and buoyed my confidence, they guided me in a difficult decision when I was soon thereafter offered a big-time columnist position in Philadelphia. Realizing that living in Ventura was similarly more important to me and my young family than being perceived as a genuine major leaguer, I turned it down.

How much did I look up to Chuck? Perhaps the best answer is this: his notes and letters have always shared the same wooden box with penned heirlooms from my late mom, my departed grandfathers, and my idols Jim Murray and John Wooden.

Re-reading these missives from Chuck, who uniquely and affectionately often called me “The Wooder,” reminds me of something he said more than once in print: “If there’s someone whose friendship you treasure, be sure to tell them now—without waiting for a memorial service to say it.” I am thankful I listened and did so while Chuck was alive.

As I write my 14th column (now 14 years worth!) in this space, his venerable corner, the opening sentences of a letter dated July 12, 1995, seem eerily prophetic. Chuck, who started his career in sports, began:

“Woody – What happens to old sports columnists? Some of them become old news-page columnists.”

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“Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive” reminder: New sports balls can be dropped off, or online orders delivered to, Jensen Design & Survey at 1672 Donlon St. in Ventura, 93003. Please email me about your gifts at woodywriter@gmail.com so I can add your generosity to this year’s tally and acknowledge you in a future column.

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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 @