Ancient Olympics Site Sparks The Imagination

October 26, 2022 by Woody

Zeus was the God of the Sky in ancient Greek mythology, so it seemed like a smile from the heavens to visit Greece’s Olympia ruins – including the Temple of Zeus – under a cloudless sky as blue as the nearby Ionian Sea.

Adding a divine wink, my wife and I were there on an early September day, the exact time on the calendar the original Olympics were held beginning in 776 B.C. Still, it was difficult to imagine these historic grounds in their former glory because all that remains are toppled stone blocks scattered about like colossal headstones in a cemetery of disrepair.

Among the ancient ruins at Olympia with Lisa.

One area, however, does remain largely as it once was: the track stadium. Visitors today can even use the special entrance, called the Krypte, with its stone archway still intact overhead. To be honest, however, the stadium that awaits across this threshold is underwhelming. Unlike the breathtaking Colosseum in Rome, some 300 miles due south, Olympia’s “stadium” had no seating structure. Instead, two grass slopes rising up gently the full length of the track on both sides provided Standing Room Only for 45,000 spectators.

The dirt track is not an oval but rather a long-and-narrow drag strip measuring just over half the width, and nearly twice the length, of a modern football field. Start and Finish lines of white marble mark off a distance of 192 meters – called a “stade” – with races ranging from a sprint of one length to 24 up-and-backs equaling nearly a three miles.

The “Krypte” entrance used by ancient Olympic athletes.

Before competing in footraces, as well as events later added such as the long jump, javelin, wrestling, and boxing, athletes rubbed olive oil over their bodies and then dirt.

“Other than a dusty sheen,” noted our tour guide, Nicolette, a sandy blonde whose olive skin was undusted, “they competed fully nude.”

A javelin toss from the track’s Krypte was Olympia’s most important building, The Temple of Zeus. Nearly a matching bookend of the Parthenon in Athens, the temple had 38 limestone columns, each 30 feet high, surrounding the perimeter and supporting a marble-tiled roof that shone as white as a full moon. The centerpiece inside was a 40-foot tall statue of Zeus, made of copper and bronze and covered with gold, and considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The statue was stolen in the 5th century and later destroyed in a fire. Seven decades later, the temple was fully razed by a pair of earthquakes. Standing among the present rubble it is again hard to envision the glory that once rose here.

The historic starting line made of marble…

Speaking of glory and imagination, at the track visitor after visitor toed the two-foot-wide, inch-high marble starting line posing in runners’ crouches to have their photographs taken. More than a few let their visions run further, literally, by bolting into sprints as if a starter’s call had just bellowed.

Most of these Olympic daydreamers were men of middle age or older. One even shuffled with a quad cane. Not surprisingly, their initial dashes typically slowed to a jog by the halfway mark and became a walk for the return stade.

Invariably, except for the gentleman with the cane, the competitors resumed a sprint for the final 10 meters or so, always beaming as if the champion’s olive wreath was up for grabs.

Watching them, for I did not join in, I could not help but smile as well – with thanks that they did not take their ancient Olympic daydreams so seriously as to run wearing only olive oil and dust.

To be continued next week with more about olive oil…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Gondolier Lorenzo and ‘Anna Silvia’

October 20, 2022October 21, 2022 by Woody

Head to toe, Lorenzo looked as one imagines a Venetian gondolier should.

His outfit included a flat-brimmed straw boater with a red hatband; loose-fitting, short-sleeved, white-linen shirt over a polo with traditional horizontal stripes of navy and white; black pants and black rubber-soled shoes. Oh, yes, and seemingly a song on his lips.

On the recent Italian afternoon of our 40th wedding anniversary, my wife and I were excited to celebrate with an authentic gondola ride. As we strolled toward a long ticket line, a charismatic gondolier intercepted us and guided us to the nearby dock where his long and narrow boat with high-rising stern and bow was moored.

Celebrating our 40th anniversary in Venice with a gondola ride thanks to Lorenzo.

No sooner did we sit down on a thinly cushioned loveseat bench than I began to wonder if we had been hoodwinked into an unseaworthy vessel for it tilted to the right, and greatly so. A heavy wake from a passing motorboat taxi would surely have us taking on water.

Not to worry. When Lorenzo took his position, standing above and behind us atop the left-hand side of the stern, the boat largely righted itself thanks to his wiry-framed weight. Not only is this imbalance by design in all gondolas, the keels purposely curve slightly to the right because rowing with a single 13-foot-long oar, always mounted on the starboard side, naturally pushes the boat leftward.

Rowing, by the way, is actually a short motion called “stirring”. Thanks to the forearms of a blacksmith, Lorenzo effortlessly stirred the gondola through the “streets” of Venice, as the canals are called. In truth, he only made it look easy.

“I’m 62 and getting too old,” he said at one point as the thermometer’s mercury approached 90 degrees. “It’s a young man’s game. It’s physically taxing and takes more effort that it looks like.”

Lorenzo with his 13-foot-long magic wand of a boat oar.

Lorenzo can still turn back the pages of the calendar. Not only did he turn the oar into a wizard’s wand, he sometimes assisted his steering by dancing on the wall like Fred Astaire in the most memorable scene in “Royal Wedding.” Specifically, Lorenzo would lift and place a foot on the side of a building rising from the water and push off. The gondola, despite measuring 36 feet in length, fishtailed gracefully to turn on a dime around blind corners.

“Gondolas are all handcrafted only in Venice and cost very much money,” said Lorenzo, whose black beauty originally belonged to his father. The floating family heirloom, in accord with the local custom of bestowing gondolas with two female names, was christened “Anna Silvia” after Lorenzo’s mother and sister.

“My dad died much too young at age only 52,” the boatman continued, noting sadly he thus inherited his father’s boat – and job – “at age only 18.”

With more than four decades experience, Lorenzo gave us a masterpiece tour. Here was Casanova’s Palace; there was the home believed to have been the residence of Marco Polo; here was Libreria Acqua Alta, the self-proclaimed “most beautiful bookstore in the world”; there, passing overhead, was the Bridge of Sighs, its name coming from the poet Lord Byron, who wrote: “I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; a palace and a prison on each hand.”

And here, inside the bow of “Anna Silvia”, was another quote, painted in black upon a carved olive wreath of gold, from a poem by Dante: “Lo Bel Pianeta Che Ad Amar Conforta.” Translation: “The beauteous planet, that to love incites.”

Certainly this beauteous city, and our smooth-as-a-magic-carpet ride with Lorenzo, incited anniversary love.

To be continued next week in Olympia, Greece…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

By Any Nickname, Venice Is Lovely

October 12, 2022 by Woody

Our Italian gondolier, Lorenzo, told us Venice has nearly as many nicknames as bridges.

This is an exaggeration, for spans over the canals number nearly 400, but Lorenzo did easily spit out a mouthful of sobriquets: La Serenissima (The Most Serene), Queen of the Adriatic, The Floating City, and The City of (take your pick) Canals / Water / Bridges / Love / Masks, the latter relating to the annual Carnival.

Not to quibble with Lorenzo, who shares his name with Jessica’s lover in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” and whose own family roots reach down through the shallow waters of the canals deep into the earth below, but I always thought Paris owned trademark rights to “The City of Love”.

Lisa and me beginning our trip in beautiful Venice, Italy.

And yet after an hour gliding as serenely as an autumn breeze through a labyrinth of canals, I concluded that all of the nicknames are fitting – most especially, perhaps, The City of Love. After all, my wife and I, seated together on a narrow wooden seat, on a Venetian afternoon as sunny and warm as the Ventura day we exchanged wedding vows exactly 40 years earlier, at one point floated past Casanova’s Palace.

To be sure, there is much to love about this enchanted city. Upon our arrival less than 24 hours before, after checking into our hotel after a long, long, long night, day and evening of travel, we found a nearby trattoria – cozy Italian restaurant. It was well past 9 o’clock when we were seated at a table for two on the patio, under the stars with an orange half-moon rising, the lapping water of the Grand Canal a short stone toss away. The pasta and desserts, all homemade by Maria the owner, were as perfect as the setting.

The following day, our actual anniversary, we visited St. Mark’s Square and the magnificent Basilica di San Marco. Thereupon, we took to heart – and feet – the sage advice a dear friend of mine, a travel writer who has visited the four corners of the globe, always reminds me of before I embark on a trip: “Be sure to turn down a hidden alleyway, or go inside a quiet doorway off the beaten path, because that’s where you’ll find some of the most memorable experiences.”

A view of the Grand Canal from the Ponte di Rialto Bridge.

Venice has pedestrian alleyways off of alleyways off of alleyways. Getting lost in this funhouse-like mirror maze was how we found a quiet doorway to a small shop that was like a museum exhibition of hand-blown glassworks made on nearby Murano island. The breathtaking pieces ranged from elegant goblets and bowls that seemed as delicate as butterfly wings; to graceful butterflies themselves; to a resplendent turtle the size of a couch cushion and an even larger dolphin, both featuring swirling currents of blues and greens within as if filled with colorful seawater.

Less beautifully, the canals are so opaque they seemed filled with wet paint. This filled Lorenzo with great sadness.

“The water was so clean during the worst of the pandemic,” he recalled, referring to the Grand Canal, “we saw dolphins.”

Meanwhile, the inner canals – measuring one to two meters in depth, depending on the tide – were so crystalline that a gondolier peering down from his standing perch could see to the water’s bottom with such clarity as to accurately call a coin heads or tails.

Alas, motorboat traffic has returned fully, and with it the green-sheened murkiness, causing 62-year-old Lorenzo to lament: “Man never learns. Man is a dummy.”

Taking a gondola ride with Lorenzo, however, was a smart decision – to be chronicled further here next week…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Vacation Photos – Less Can Be More

October 6, 2022 by Woody

Third try was indeed the charm.

After twice having a dream vacation canceled by the coronavirus nightmare, my better-half, who is half-Italian, and I finally made it to the land where her family roots reach deep into the fertile soil. Specifically, we sailed fully around the thigh-high boot setting out at Venice, through the narrow Strait of Messina at the toe, up the western coast and over to Barcelona with nine port stops en route.

The starting and ending bookends proved to be our favorites, although perhaps this was partly because we spent extra nights in both and were thus able to explore them a little more fully than the daytime destinations.

The ancient Colosseum in Rome was definitely photograph worthy!

A cruise, in my view, is sort of like speed dating in that you learn who (or where) you want to get to know better. In this case, we didn’t ask Croatia and Albania for their phone numbers. Don’t get me wrong, the former’s Old Town Dubrovnik – with white marble streets and forts of stone so magnificent “Game of Thrones” filmed myriad scenes there – was memorable, yet an afternoon inside these historic walls was plenty. Similarly, a few hours sufficed at the ancient sites of the Olympics in Olympia, Greece, and the Pompeii ruins near Naples, Italy.

Our two ports in France – Villefranche-sur-Mer and Toulon – are both gorgeous coastal locales, but to be honest we much prefer Ventura’s similar charms so feel no strong gravitational pull to return. Rome and Florence, however, like Venice and Barcelona, already beckon us back for longer sojourns.

In the coming weeks, I will share here some snapshots-in-words of my favorite experiences from our two-week trip: from memorable people and meals to the canals of Venice to the Colosseum in Rome to the breathtaking La Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, and more.

Speaking of snapshots, my cell phone camera kept freezing with the command: “Out of Storage. Free Up Space.” Just my luck…

…good luck, that is.

In these old lands I was forced to go old-school. Instead of mindlessly snap-snap-snapping endless digital photos, I was forced to point-and-shoot judiciously. It was like going back in time and using a camera with film that comes in 12, 24 or 36 exposures. Instead of paying to have prints made, I had to spend time deleting files.

So it was I found myself taking in the sites, and sights, in their full grandeur through naked eyes instead of miniaturized on a pixel screen. Thus, I found myself absorbing the scenes and memorizing the moments before selectively choosing the very best ones to photograph.

In this reframed frame of mind, it saddened me to see so many others touring these goosebump-inducing historic places, even a museum filled with Picasso artwork, while largely squinting at their tiny cameras. They seemed more concerned with reliving these experiences in the future rather than living them in the present. One romantic couple we encountered seemed to be experiencing their entire gondola ride through the canals of Venice digitally instead of actually.

Conversely, instead of hundreds of photos, so many as to be overwhelming, I came home with only a few “rolls” of selectively snapped images to be developed at Fotomat, so to speak. This was a silver lining, as mentioned, for it seems to me that too many pictures is like not being able to see the forest for the trees. Indeed, the graceful stone columns in La Sagrada Familia are meant to invoke towering trees, a forest of them, something one might miss if looking through a camera lens.

To be continued next week…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Rants and Raves on This and That

September 29, 2022 by Woody

If you want sugar and pumpkin spice and everything nice, call your grandma on Zoom because I’m in a puppy dog ate my homework kind of mood.

For starters, I was annoyed because what I thought was an extreme case of jetlag after spending 14 hours in the air – with a baby across the aisle from me crying for half of it – instead turned out to be COVID-19…

…but I love that thanks to modern science/medicine and being vaccinated and double-boosted, my symptoms have been akin to a very bad cold.

I get annoyed because I know the same handful of anti-vaxers who routinely gunk up my inbox will do so again now…

…but I love hitting the email “trash” key.

I get annoyed by impatient and rude drivers…

…but I love it when two lanes merge into one in a construction zone and every single driver allows another car in like a clothes zipper merging together perfectly.

I get annoyed when half the sesame seeds on my bagel fall off and make a mess…

…but I love it when a frozen yogurt has a mess of toppings.

I get annoyed by knuckleheads…

…but I love that my daughter calls knuckleheads “yo-yo-heads.”

I get annoyed at myself because I continually underestimate the slow-as-a-doctor’s-waiting-room traffic on the local freeways and wind up late for engagements…

…but I love when I hit a string of green lights in town and wind up arriving ten minutes early – which, as Coach John Wooden said, is actually merely being right on time.

I get annoyed when a doctor’s office is running 30 minutes behind schedule…

…but I love it when a receptionist performs a magic act and squeezes me in the very day I call in with an illness or ailment – which may be why another patient has to wait 30 minutes.

I get annoyed when a quick-service restaurant meal for eating on the premises, not take-out, comes wrapped in two pounds of aluminum foil, cardboard and paper – a lot of waste for 30 seconds of use…

…but I love it when I remember to take reusable bags to the grocery store.

I get annoyed when autocorrect makes me look like a yo-yo-head…

…but I love when my Star editor corrects a typo to keep me from looking like a yo-yo-head.

I get annoyed that school children see a need to send military care packages filled with requested items like cookies, chips, trail mix, jerky, granola bars and candy bars, and gum. If our troops want these items, the military should provide them!…

…but I love when kids send letters, cards and handmade items to our soldiers.

I get annoyed when I read the news crawl across the bottom of the TV screen and then lose track of what the news anchor is saying…

…but I love crawls that show me all the other scores and updates while watching a sporting event.

I get annoyed when dog walkers don’t clean up their pets’ messes…

…and I would love an ordinance that requires these yo-yo-heads to clean the shoe soles for those of us who take a messy misstep.

I get annoyed when I see litter anywhere, most especially on our lovely beaches…

…but I love the enthusiasm of volunteer beach clean-up days.

I get annoyed by the hypocrisy of so many yo-yo-head politicians…

…but I smile recalling my grandpa Ansel’s refrain that sometimes it’s good to deal with dummies because they make you feel so smart.

There, I feel so much better I think I’ll Zoom call my sugar-and-spice granddaughter.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Bookend Poems on Autumn’s Arrival

September 22, 2022September 23, 2022 by Woody

Poems about autumn, which arrived almost unexpectedly yesterday and as silently as if sneaking in on tiptoes for summer still seems in the air, surely outnumber all the leaves of reds and golds and flaming oranges in a forest of maple trees.

Not unexpectedly, one of the best of these poems was written by Emily Dickinson, a short offering published in 1896 and titled “Nature Poem, 28: Autumn.” It reads, in full:

“The morns are meeker than they were, / The nuts are getting brown;

“The berry’s cheek is plumper, / The rose is out of town.

“The maple wears a gayer scarf, / The field a scarlet gown.

“Lest I should be old-fashioned, / I’ll put a trinket on.”

The nuts here on the Golden Coast may not be getting brown, but our mornings certainly are noticeably meeker than before. Too, our evenings now grow darker, earlier. Indeed, it is as if the setting sun is in a race to call it a day a little sooner each evening. Soon, a walk on the beach may require a gayer scarf.

Greeting autumn with a hello embrace means in turn bidding a melancholy adieu to summer. Indeed, I love summer and will miss her dearly. In the heart of my youth, summer was without question my favorite of the four seasons for two reasons: warm weather and no school.

I have since learned that choosing a favorite season is a fool’s errand. It is like asking me to choose between Steinbeck, Hemingway, Twain and Shakespeare. Impossible.

Spring, for starters, is blooming flowers and flying kites and, as Tennyson poetically observed, when young men’s fancies turn to thoughts of love – so what’s not to love about this fair season?

Summer is beach outings and pool parties, fireflies and fireworks, ice cream and vacations – again, what’s not to adore fully?

Winter, meanwhile, is cozy fires and family gatherings, mistletoe and Auld Lang Syne and the New Year’s promise of approaching spring – how can you not love all that?

Thus, my favorite season is whichever one is currently visiting. And right now that is autumn. Many call it “fall”, but I think “autumn” is lovelier. By either name, its arrival brings with it…

…a crispness in the air that is invigorating.

…coffee shops and market shelves offering Pumpkin Spice This, Pumpkin Spice That, Pumpkin Spice Everything!

…corn mazes and hayrides and pumpkin patches and school children spending half an hour to select The Perfect Pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern with all the care of a bride choosing her wedding dress.

…carving jack-o-lanterns, going trick-or-treating, and having an excuse as a grown-up to dress up like a superhero.

…comfort foods such as homemade soups, chili and cornbread, marshmallows toasted over a fire, pumpkin pie/bread/pudding/cookies/coffee.

…football and Thanksgiving.

…fall foliage showing its true colors, not as grandly in Southern California as on the East Coast and Midwest, yet in a way our limited-edition outbursts of Monet-worthy leaves-scapes make them all the more precious and beautiful.

Speaking of leaves, fall’s arrival brings to mind another of my favorite poems, a bookend to Dickinson’s “Autumn.” Titled “Fantastic Fall” it was written by my daughter, Dallas, then in the fourth grade:

“Fall is a great season, here is my reason:

“The leaves on trees turn golden brown,

“Then the leaves fall DOWN, Down, down…

“You rake them into a giant hump,

“Next comes the good part – jump, Jump, JUMP!

“Leaves sail through the crisp autumn air,

“And fall down, Down, DOWN everywhere!”

Yes, right now I love autumn best. Until winter rings my doorbell.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Some Books Merit Special Shelves

September 1, 2022 by Woody

No matter how many books you own, I have a hunch you have one special shelf that holds your most cherished volumes.

For example, I have a lawyer bookcase with glass panels that contains a prized signed statuette of John Wooden, clay hand imprints my son and daughter made in kindergarten, and other such keepsakes. A different shelf within proudly displays 20 moss-green hardcover 1922 editions of Mark Twain’s works and an 1884 printing of “Red-Letter Poems By English Men And Women” with 648 gilt-edged pages featuring a Who’s Who lineup that includes Shakespeare, Byron, Browning (both Robert and Elizabeth), Keats, Donne, Milton, Tennyson and Wordsworth.

Despite their age, none of the above volumes are of great monetary value – yet all 21 are priceless personally because they belonged to my maternal grandfather and are the lone survivors from the inheritance of his vast book collection, the rest having been lost in the Thomas Fire that claimed my father’s home.

Family ties are behind two more special shelves belonging to dear friends of mine.

Kay Giles, easily one of the most well-read people I know, not surprisingly has upwards of 2,000 books in her home – among them 16 volumes that merit their very own top shelf in a prominently displayed bookcase. They are the full collection of Charles Dickens’ works, a special edition circa 1930, handsomely bound in rich walnut-brown leather with gold lettering on the pristine spines.

Most importantly, they belonged to Kay’s paternal grandparents and she calls them her “dearest inheritance.”

“My dad packed them up from his parents’ house in London when he went back there to take care of their affairs after my grandmother died,” Kay remembers, noting she was 16 years old at the time.

Houston Wolf was even younger when his father brought home a set of books that would similarly become dear to him, a 1952 printing of “The Great Books of the Western World”, a whopping 54 volumes that weigh about as much as a grand piano. Humble in appearance with cloth covers in a rainbow of hues – blue, green, red and gold, all faded by time – the books came with an equally modest waist-high wooden bookcase, the middle shelf now sagging slightly under its load.

“I’m so proud to think that I’ve carted these books around with me wherever I’ve moved for nearly forty years,” Houston shares, noting there have been many, many moves. “I’m also proud I never sold them, even in periods of desperation – at least what I considered to be desperation at the time. These books, and the knowledge I knew I’d someday absorb, were my security blanket. As long as I had these books, my life would be okay. I would always have something to live for, if just to protect these books.

“At my very lowest,” he continues, “I was offered $500 for the set. I couldn’t do it. Then the same gentleman then offered me $500 for ONE book from the set – Plotinus, Volume No. 17. I’ll never, ever read Plotinus, probably. I don’t even know who he is. But I couldn’t, wouldn’t, do it to a set of books that deserved to remain intact. So I refused. And I really could have used that $500.”

Here’s the kicker: Houston confesses he hasn’t read any of his beloved books!

“So why do I keep them?” he says. “Pride in having taken care of them all these years. And ambition to someday read them.”

To paraphrase Robert Browning: Ah, a To-Be-Read shelf should exceed one’s grasp, or else what’s a heaven for?

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Intoxicated by Bookstores and Libraries

September 1, 2022 by Woody

If you are at all like me, books never cease to allure you, delight you, amaze and even intoxicate you.

I would rather spend time in a bookstore than a museum, and I dearly love museums, which may explain why I especially adore used-books bookstores – and public libraries, too – because they are like bibliophilic museums, only better, because you are allowed to handle the old artifacts on display.

Yes, some of the best bookstores are second-hand museums, and the best of these remind me of Ventura’s long defunct All Pro Sporting Goods that was owned by legendary Bob Tuttle. It was a hole-in-the wall, barely bigger than a walk-in closet, yet like Mary Poppins’ magical carpetbag anything you were looking for could be found within.

Indeed, in the 1970s you might go into All-Pro to buy basketball sneakers and leave also with a new-but-blemished baseball mitt from the bargain bin in the same manner one might today be interested in a newly released novel at Ventura’s beloved Bank of Books and in addition wind up buying a second-hand copy of a classic.

There is something special about old books and the perfume they release – a trace of mustiness and earthiness, with a hint of vanilla mixed in – when you turn the pages, foxed and yellowing and slightly brittle from age. Used-books bookstores smell sweeter than a nursery greenhouse.

However, I also find delight in new books and independent bookstores where the staff can ask you a few questions and then give you a perfect recommendation that, to borrow from Holden Caulfield in “The Catcher in the Rye”, really knocks you out. Furthermore, indie shops often have reading nooks and dog-eared couches that invite you to pleasantly linger a while. Timbre Books in Ventura and The Bookworm in Camarillo are two of my favorite cozy bookshops.

The breathtaking library at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.

Too, I love libraries. The most beautiful library I have ever been inside is at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, a cathedral of the printed page where the priceless Book of Kells, dating back to 800 A.D., resides. When Jorge Luis Borges said, “I have always imagined Paradise will be a kind of library,” I think he had this Trinity College library in mind.

I think any library is a slice of Paradise. This includes home libraries, whether they contain thousands of volumes or merely a dozen cherished favorites. Growing up, our home library was actually a small bedroom, but very tall, with two opposing walls featuring white-painted pine bookshelves that rose like mountains from the floor to the 12-foot ceiling.

These Twin Peaks were as beautiful as any mosaic in an art museum. Instead of ceramic tiles, or stones, or sea glass, the medium was book spines. Thin spines and thick tomes; tall spines, short ones; spines in rainbow hues and earth tones. Most of the spines were shelved vertically, but some were stacked horizontally. There were leather spines as pristine as shoes polished for church, others dulled by age and creased from use. There were clothbound spines, paperback spines, spines covered by glossy dust jackets. There were new-looking old spines and old-looking new ones. Some spines had fancy gilt lettering while others had titles and authors printed in inks of every color, in myriad fonts.

Twin Peaks had too many books to read in ten lifetimes, but that was fine. As the poet Robert Browning said, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or else what’s a heaven for?”

Next week: Two of my friends and the most cherished books in their home slices of heaven.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

This Rom-Com Stands Test of Time

September 1, 2022 by Woody

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 dating 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 Billy Crystal (dark hair, not the required shaggy ginger-blond) and Meg Ryan (blond, not brunette), the leading characters will be played by Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams.

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 her cascading locks tucked up in a hair net, is the prettiest girl he has ever seen.

Our first date, the very next evening after meeting at a party…

“Lasagna and tater tots, please,” the freshman says, choking on any attempt to flirt because the sophomore beauty is far out of his league. A quick montage follows, showing him in her line all year with similar failed results.

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 sees a girl who makes his heart pick up a faster drumbeat. She is wearing a light-blue sweater, and no hair net, but no sooner does he 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. Alas, their romance seems derailed before it has even begun.

“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 – and when she returns he has slyly maneuvered himself underneath a hanging sprig of mistletoe. Lisa accepts the red Solo Cup and then unexplainably pulls Woody across the room, thwarting his ploy before he can act on it.

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

All is not lost, however, as Woody and Lisa do kiss later that evening – with no assist from mistletoe – and then 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 crushed by the flu, Lisa brings him an Easter basket filled with a chocolate bunny and 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 got sick.

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

In two days – on September 4th – the two lovebirds will celebrate their ruby wedding anniversary of 40 years. Woody already knows the toast he will give her 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

Building Cathedrals Begins Anew

August 25, 2022August 26, 2022 by Woody

Backpacks, notebooks and pencils have been bought, lunches packed, sneakers tied in double-knots, say “cheese” smiles flashed for milestone pictures before heading off to begin a new school year…

…and an old story I read about the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. has come to my mind. Bear with me and I will get around to the connection.

The magnificent cathedral took eight decades to build, 83 years to be precise, from 1907 to 1990, and near the end of construction progress slowed to a crawl because it became harder and harder to find experienced stonecutters with the skill necessary to prepare the stones properly to fit perfectly.

Curious about this nearly lost art, a newspaper writer went to the job site and interviewed two of the remaining master craftsmen who were now well up in age. Specifically, the writer asked the pair to explain what they were doing.

“I’m shaping this stone,” the first stonecutter replied, running a calloused hand over his smooth handiwork before pointing to a section of a rising wall, “so that it fits into that space over there.”

The second stonecutter, making a sweeping gesture towards the sky, had a grander answer: “I am building a cathedral.”

Schoolteachers, it seems to me, are very much like stonecutters, shaping their lessons to fit into the spaces that need to be filled with knowledge so a cathedral – each student – can rise tall and proud. Instead of shaping stones, teachers help shape minds. Joseph Addison, a 17th English century poet, echoed this stonecutter analogy when he wrote: “What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.”

Teachers, thus, help sculpt souls and there can be no higher calling. John Wooden certainly believed so, noting: “I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.”

Master teachers do their stonecutting with lectures and instruction, surely, but also with words of praise and inspiration; with grace and goodness; with humor often and discipline when necessary; and always, always, always the best in the profession perform their magic with encouragement.

Indeed, when my mind races back in time for a stroll through my school hallways and I recall the teachers, one after another, who made the biggest impact on me, it is not the facts and figures and rules of grammar they taught me that I most remember. Rather, it is the way the unforgettable teachers lifted me skyward with their encouragement. I am confident it was the same for you.

As with building a cathedral of bricks or cut stones, a student takes many years, decades even, to rise to full potential. As the adage has it, teachers do not see their individual successes until at least two decades after each student exits their classroom.

Just as it takes many stonecutters to build a cathedral, it takes countless teachers to help a student soar. It is, in fact, a relay effort with each teacher handing the baton to another, year after year, elementary school to middle school to high school and often further onward.

Castles, like cathedrals, require stonecutters. However, “castles in the air” are often interpreted to mean having daydreams that will never become reality. Henry David Thoreau, a daydreamer to be sure, disagreed, writing: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

Teachers, the really good ones, are master stonecutters at helping students put the foundations under their castles in the air.

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WOODY WOODBURN

Writer, "Streaker" & Speaker

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