Category Archives: Columns

“Just the Alternative Facts, Ma’am”

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

“Just the Alternative Facts, Ma’am”

Have you ever felt like kicking yourself when, after the moment has passed, you later come up with a reply or answer you wish you had said?

This happened to me recently when I was interviewed on a book talk show. At the time I felt good about what I offered about my life and my writing, but now I wish I had dished out some more interesting “alternative facts.” Here, belatedly, are some things I wish I had shared . . .1facts

One of my all-time favorite cartoons ran in The New Yorker and shows two couples sitting in a living room and one of the husbands says, “That story reminds me of the time I walked on the moon.” I guess I love this cartoon because it reminds me of my own lunar stroll.

I once defeated Mike and Bob Bryan in doubles. It took me three sets, but that’s only because I played them one-against-two.

Warren Buffet, now and then, asks me for stock tips.

Sometimes doctors, who have been asked by a patient for a second opinion, come to me for my first-rate opinion.

I am so modest to a fault that I keep my Pulitzer Prize tucked out of sight in a drawer. I’m not even sure which drawer, that’s how little I care about awards.

Now that I think about it, I think my Pulitzer might be in my sock drawer – alongside my Olympic silver medal for the marathon. I hate to make excuses, but I would have won the gold if the media’s lead motorcycle hadn’t led me off course causing me to run an extra mile.

I have a sandwich named after me – The DagWoody – but it’s only available on a “secret menu” at a restaurant that remains top secret.

Each morning I wake up and am frustrated to see that my most recent book, “Strawberries in Wintertime,” isn’t on the New York Times Best Sellers List. This isn’t right because I know I’ve signed one million, maybe a million and a half, copies for people.

A lot of people, really smart people who read lots of books, have told me my memoir “Wooden & Me” is better than “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”

Murray, my 10-year-old boxer, won Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show and was also a world Frisbee champion when he was younger.

Basketball’s 3-point line: my idea.

The second time I reached the summit of Mount Everest was not as thrilling as the first time. Both times, of course, I did so without aid of supplemental oxygen.

My wife was not only a senior homecoming princess at Granada High School, she was later Miss America.

Wrestling an alligator may be dangerous, but it isn’t all that challenging in my experience.

In an open-water swim around the Ventura Pier and back to the beach, I beat Michael Phelps by 10 meters.

I celebrated New Year’s Day by performing a Chumash-inspired rain dance. I’m just saying.

If I’m being totally honest, sometimes I egotistically wish Beyonce and Taylor Swift would give me credit for helping them write song lyrics – but mostly I’m just happy to have played an unsung role in helping their careers.

Jack Dorsey, my fellow co-founder of Twitter, won a coin toss and that’s why a Tweet can have 140 characters instead of the 150 maximum that I suggested.

Few will argue that Tom Brady throws a tighter and more-accurate spiral – even with a fully inflated football – ever since I showed him my method for gripping the laces.

I was more than happy to offer Denzel and Viola some acting tips for their roles in “Fences.”

All modesty aside, I think the musical “Hamilton” is as great as it is partly because I helped Lin-Manuel Miranda polish the lyrics.

I can spell the last name of Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski.

And those are, as “Dragnet’s” TV character Sgt. Joe Friday would say, “Just the facts, ma’am – the alternative facts.”

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

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

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Add Circus to Memory Lane

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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Add the Circus to Our Memory Lane

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! BOYS AND GIRLS OF ALL AGES! WELCOME TO TODAY’S ‘GREATEST COLUMN ON EARTH!’ I AM YOUR RINGMASTER, WOODY. LET THE READING BEGIN!”

The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced that, after a 146-year run as “The Greatest Show on Earth,” it is folding up its big-top tents for good in May.

Another piece of Americana bite the sawdust, but the wistful handwriting was on the wall when the pachyderms packed up their trunks a couple years ago and moved off to retirement villages. Some people are angry at animal rights groups for breaking up the band, so to speak, but I applaud the efforts of PETA and others.1elephant

As a wide-eyed young boy going to the circus, I marveled at the trapeze acts and the flying man shot from a canon and the lion tamer, but I was most mesmerized by the elephants. However, as a man taking my own children – once, and only once – I felt deep remorse at the servitude of these grand animals for our amusement.

Without elephants on the marquee, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus pretty much became “The OK-est Show on Earth.” Replacing the majestic march of elephants with sequined performers riding a caravan of camels was like replacing a tour of the Giant Sequoias in Yosemite National Park with a visit to a Christmas tree farm in Somis.

It is joyless to say goodbye after nearly 150 years of memory-making history, and yet it seems well past time to do so. Sure, the trapeze artists can still provide a thrill, but let’s be honest – you can witness more thrilling gravity-defying acts at any local skateboard park or parkour gathering.

Lion tamers? Again, the once death-defying act has lost its adrenaline rush as the big cats have become more lethargic than an aerophobic passenger made calm by Quaaludes. A more energetic example of animal training is to watch dogs in an agility contest where they jump through hoops, walk across seesaws, and zig-zag through slalom poles.

On and on, all the acts of the famous three rings can be found outside the big top – often in even more exciting forms.

As for the clowns, we still have Washington, D.C.

1clownAll that said, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was a national treasure and to have it close shop brings a sense of loss. And if the biggest of the big tops folds up, it is hard to imagine the smaller circus companies surviving much longer either.

This pending extinction of the circus brought to my mind some other heirlooms of my youth that now exist only in memories and attics. It is strange to imagine that the circus joining these artifacts, not to be experienced by future generations. Things like:

Wood baseball bats, wood tennis rackets, wood drivers.

Manual typewriters and the pleasing feeling striking the keys with a little oomph.

Rotary phones. What I most remember is how long it took a “0” to rotate back when you dialed it, and of course a “9” nearly as long, and how frustrating it was when your finger would slip out prematurely when dialing one of these numbers and you had hang up and start anew.

LP records and 45s; 8-tracks and cassettes; movie projectors and VHS tapes.

Filling station attendants who cleaned the windshield and checked the oil.

Glass soda bottles that you could return to the store and get back a 5-cent deposit. And using a “church key” to open a can of pop.

The milkman, who left your regular order in an insulated milk box on your doorstep. And if you wanted something different, you tucked a rolled-up note halfway in the top of an empty milk bottle.

Three TV channels. And the “remote control” was the youngest sibling in the room. And rabbit ears.

Newspapers delivered by boys, and sometimes girls, tossing strikes while riding bikes.

“NOW SAY GOODBYE TO THE CIRCUS, BOYS AND GIRLS! AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, DRIVE HOME SAFELY.”

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

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

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A Few Drive-Thru Lines to Chew On

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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A 700-Word Homework Assignment of Jottings

According to scholars, Emily Dickinson’s poems – she wrote nearly 1,800, although only 10 were published during her lifetime – often began as notes, scribbled in pencil, on scraps of paper she kept in her dress pocket while gardening or running errands.

She would later cull from these jottings when composing formally in ink on stationary late at night in her bedroom.

While I am no poet and certainly no Dickinson, I also make notes while out and about, perhaps waiting in a “drive-thru” window line. However, instead of pencil and paper, I usually send myself a text on my smart phone.

Later, I combine and expand on them, such as for this 700-word homework assignment of random thoughts.

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1TunnelTreeIn 1948, the In-N-Out in Baldwin Park is believed to have become the nation’s first fast-food restaurant to have a “drive-thru” window featuring an intercom for ordering. However, an even more historic “drive-thru” was created seven decades earlier when a tunnel was cut through a giant sequoia in Calaveras Big Trees State Park.

Sadly, this “Drive-Thru Tree” was felled by a storm last Sunday. Like most everyone who ever visited the famous tree, I was spellbound by the experience – and I would happily see every fast-food “drive-thru” window in California permanently closed in exchange to have the tree standing again.

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Add giant “drive-thru” sequoia: To paraphrase Joyce Kilmer – I think that I shall never see, / Even a Dickinson poem lovely as that tree.

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To keep or discard the Electoral College is a legitimate debate, but the argument that if you take away California then Donald Trump would have won the popular vote is as ridiculous as saying that if LeBron James’ points didn’t count then the Golden State Warriors, not the Cleveland Cavaliers, would have won the NBA championship last season.

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Nobody asked me, but I thought Jean Cowden Moore’s article headlined “Do Kids Need Homework?” in the Star last Sunday was terrific and important.

As a Baby Boomer who can’t remember having homework until high school and even then not very much, and as a parent who saw his two children loaded down with homework in middle school and then buried with it in high school, I vote for no homework until high school, and then sparsely.

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Add homework: Mark Twain said, “Don’t let school interfere with your education.” It seems to me traditional homework does precisely this by making youth dislike school rather than fostering a love for learning.

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Gripe No. 37 on homework: High school teachers are not always on the same page and too often many will assign a boatload of homework on the same night resulting in students being up past midnight – and even later if they play a sport, study music, or have an after-school job.

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Four exceptions for “homework” I would applaud being assigned regularly: community service, reading for pleasure, reading for pleasure and reading for pleasure.

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Although I never had him in school, one of my all-time favorite teachers was Chuck Marshall (my sister-in-law’s father) who seemed to make every conversation both fun and educational. Sadly, he passed away last week and in his honor I would like to share some wisdom from another Chuck – Chuck Thomas, the late, great philosopher who wrote so wonderfully in this space before I tried to fill his shoes:

“If there’s someone whose friendship you treasure, be sure to tell them now – without waiting for a memorial service to say it.”

Ditto for a teacher you treasure.

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Coming full circle again to Emily Dickinson: although “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” is perhaps her best-known poem, I am partial to “If I can stop one Heart from breaking”:

“If I can stop one heart from breaking, / I shall not live in vain;

“If I can ease one life the aching, / Or cool one pain,

“Or help one fainting robin / Unto his nest again,

“I shall not live in vain.”

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

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

 

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Friend in Deed to Those in Need

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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Belated Christmas Story to Warm the Heart

In the masterpiece novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Atticus Finch offers this sage advice to his daughter, Scout: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. . . . Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

I have a dear friend whose skin no one would want to climb into, for she has battled an array of skin cancers for two decades. Her health issues have taken a toll, but in return they have given her an understanding of others who are facing their own hardships.

1_feed200I knew my friend had a kind heart, but the depth of her empathy more fully revealed itself this past Christmas when she surprisingly turned down my invitation to join us for dinner. She is a single mom whose college-student son was out of state visiting his girlfriend’s family, and we didn’t want her to be alone.

It turns out she wasn’t. Instead of in my home, she spent Christmas evening outside in the cold with the homeless. I learned of this not from my friend, but from a shared intimate. In fact, my friend seemed embarrassed that I had found out about her charitable excursion because she is not one to seek recognition.

While honoring her privacy, here is her Christmas story that echoes the ideal expressed by Mother Teresa: “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”

My friend did not feed 100 people in need on Christmas night, but she did feed far more than just one.

She began by buying a dozen cheeseburger meals, asking the server to wrap each in an individual bag for dignity’s sake, and added bottles of water. She would later return to buy a dozen more burgers and would have gone back a third time if necessary.

“I hope it’s because the shelters, or family or friends, were taking care of the homeless since it was Christmas,” she explains, “but thankfully there were fewer homeless people out on Christmas than on a typical day.”

It turns out my friend has done this not only on Christmas evenings past, but on many “typical” days and nights in between as well.

Too, I learned, she has for years organized a food drive in her apartment complex, personally knocking door-to-door collecting canned goods, with the donations going to a different shelter each year.

Back to this Christmas. My friend admits that despite staying in well-lit areas, mostly store parking lots where she regularly sees the homeless, she was at times a little fearful for her safety.

“These were places I knew of in my area that I did feel pretty safe to go to, even at night,” she points out. “But honestly, I wouldn’t have gone to someplace like Compton, especially alone, and that makes me sad because the homeless in Compton most likely needed a hamburger and bottle of water more than anyone in Camarillo does.”

She had one hair-raising moment, however, when a man startled her by popping out of the shadows. He angrily confronted her asked what she was doing.

“When I explained I just wanted him to have something to eat, his face lit up,” my friend shares. “His face went from kind of scary to gratitude.”

As Atticus Finch knew, point of view means everything. What from the outside looked like a lonely Christmas evening for my friend, through her eyes had turned out to be a masterpiece.

“If anything,” she explains, “doing this was selfish on my part because I drove around for over an hour and a half and the response I got time and again from a simple cheeseburger meal and a bottle of water was, and in my Christmas memories always will be, priceless.”

When I again praised her for her act of goodwill, my friend humbly responded, “I wish I could do more. There are so many people out there who need help. It breaks my heart.”

Her Christmas story warms my heart.

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

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

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Leave a Ghost Light on for 2016

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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Leave a Ghost Light on for 2016

It is time for the curtain to fall on 2016. And not a moment too soon, some would say, for it has been a surreal year – a Leap Year at that – of tumult and tragedy and tribulation.

But it has also been 366 days of highlights and hopefulness and happiness. And so, as with all years, it is bittersweet to turn out the lights and lower the curtain.

I was reminded of the theater metaphor recently while driving past the old Ventura County Star building on Ralston Street, empty now for a decade and a half since the paper moved to a new cavernous edifice in Camarillo. Seeing the abandoned haunts, I reminisced briefly and could almost hear the echoes of clicking keyboards – a pleasing newsroom symphony to these ears.1ghostlight

In journalism “-30-“ means “the end,” but I like to think “-30-“ has never come for the music inside those old Star walls.

I once mentioned to my friend, Stephenie, that the cacophony of a newsroom is one of my favorite sounds on earth and she replied that she delights in an orchestra tuning up before a performance because it is a prelude of “all the good yet to come!”

What a lovely thought, it seems to me, and so perfectly pertinent on this closing day of December for we are not only saying farewell to the old year, we are greeting the New Year and “all the good yet to come” in the next 12 months.

Thinking of goodbye again brings to mind the old Star building; I hope the last person to leave failed to turn off all the lights. Specifically, I like to think one solitary light was purposely left on, like a ghost light – usually a bare incandescent bulb on a portable light standard – aglow on the stage in a theater.

Superstition demands that a theater should never go completely dark, even when it is unoccupied, and that is a lovely thought for a newsroom, too.

While I have never been a part of the theater, my daughter has been. Not as an actor or stagehand, but as a playwright with her works performed in Los Angeles and New York and, firstly, Ventura.

That debut experience was life-changing. It was in high school and the drama teacher, Dennis Enfield, selected her play as the spring production and asked her to be the assistant director.

“ ‘Mr. E’ was an Irishman with a broad smile and an ever-present twinkle in his eye,” my daughter recalls fondly. She also remembers five months of casting and rehearsals; selecting costumes and music; working with set design and lighting; rewriting scenes and finally the curtain rising for an audience.

“On Opening Night, I had difficulty holding back my tears,” she says, her voice seasoned with emotion a decade later. “Seeing my words brought to life onstage was nothing short of magical.”

Closing Night, my daughter was tearful for a different reason.

“All of us were feeling glum,” she shares. “We had reached the end. Months and months of hard work and this was it – the last performance.”

1_2016Mr. E knew what his troupe was feeling. Before the curtain rose, he called the cast and crew together and told them this: “Theater is ephemeral and fleeting, like a dream. It doesn’t last forever. Each performance is unique and sacred. That is what makes it bittersweet – but that is also what makes it beautiful.”

This is true not only in the theater. Our lives, too, are ephemeral. So are calendar years.

As we step onto the stage of 2017, let us keep this in mind – that each day, like each performance on a theater stage, is unique and sacred. Let us try to make each day a masterpiece, enjoy its beauty, and then move on to the next fleeting performance and to “all the good yet to come!”

But first, as the curtain lowers on another year, let’s leave a ghost light on to illuminate the golden moments of 2016 we want to remember.

 

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Last-Minute Gift List for Santa

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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Last-Minute Gift List for Santa

Dear Santa, you old curmudgeon, put down that spiked eggnog and listen up. Before you finish checking your list twice to see who’s Trump-y and who’s nice, here are a few last-minute gifts to pack in your sleigh tonight.

Give Vin Scully second thoughts about retirement.

Give Dodgers fans the same as above.

1santaGive the world another John Glenn, Prince, David Bowie, Arnold Palmer and Muhammad Ali – well, as near facsimiles as possible – to fill the voids they left behind this year.

Give every school bully a lump of coal.

Give a bagful of rocks to Juan Manuel Cisneros, the local artist whose breathtaking nativity scene built with balanced stones that seem to defy gravity at the beach near the Ventura Pier is such a masterpiece it has been viewed more than 13 million times on social media.

Give teachers some heartfelt notes from former students who are now successful adults, offering thanks for having made a difference in their lives.

Give college students a break in tuition!

Give America a school year without a mass shooting.

Give every person spending the holidays in the hospital a complete cure.

Give my friend Alvin Matthews a miracle that allows him to complete his next marathon on foot instead of in a racing wheelchair.

Instead of a “Fruit of the Month” gift subscription for the year, give California farmers a monthly delivery of a long, soaking rain.

Give every child a rainy day, a book, and no Internet for an entire day.

Give Mike and Bob Bryan one more Wimbledon title in 2017. Heck, since there’s two of them, add the U.S. Open title, too.

Give cyber bullies a ransom computer virus.

Give Russian hackers the same as above.

Give small local businesses a lot more of our business.

Give my author friends one week each on the best-seller’s list in 2017.

Give Ventura’s downtown parking meters the heave-ho-ho-ho.

Give all CEOs the heart and mindset of Yvon Chouinard, who had his company Patagonia donate all of its Black Friday profits – a whopping $10 million! – to environmental groups.

Give the hundreds of thousands of animal species currently on the way to extinction – scientists claim that literally dozens of species are disappearing daily! – a second chance.

Give anyone who is upset about the new law requiring grocery stores to charge 10 cents for a paper bag, a roll of dimes for when they forget their reusable bags.

Give Hillary a dose of serenity she’s surely lacking.

Give Trump a dose of wisdom he’s surely lacking.

Give Ventura County’s homeless year-round access to nightly shelter.

Forgive me, Santa, but give Heather Bresch – the CEO that quadrupled the price of the life-saving EpiPen from $56 per pen to $317 – a severe peanut allergy.

If the Los Angeles Rams are going to keep playing like they did this season, give them back to St. Louis.

Give children fewer critics and more encouragement.

Give protestors of the Dakota Access Pipeline more portable heaters and less tear gas.

Give women equal wages as men as well as equal representation in public office, tech jobs, and CEO positions.

Give all our active soldiers, and veterans, our heartfelt gratitude – and speedier and better healthcare.

Give last-minute Christmas Eve shoppers (pronounced “procrastinators”) the patience of Job to maintain their sanity among the holiday crowds (pronounced “mobs”).

Give the Star’s Julius Gius Bellringer a record total in 2016 along with our sincere gratitude in the memory of the late, great editor and humanitarian Mr. Gius for creating this wonderfully worthy campaign 37 years ago.

Give all the kind-hearted people who donated to the Bellringer or to my annual “Woody’s Holiday Ball Dive” – an avalanche of 386 balls bounced in this year for disadvantaged kids – a big “thank you!” and good karma in 2017.

Give a Merry Christmas, Blessed Chanukah, Wonderful Kwanzaa or simply Happy Holiday to everyone!

Give my loyal readers, all 12 of you, the same as above.

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

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

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Ball Drive is Rolling Along

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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Decking the Halls with Balls of Jolly

Basketballs are bouncing in, footballs are spiraling in, and soccer balls are bending in like Beckham kicked them for my annual Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive.

This year’s running tally has already topped 250 balls, yet that is one less than it should be. In years past, I could always count on Jerry Nelson to donate a top-of-the-line basketball. Always a basketball, which made sense because Jerry was a longtime local referee.

Some of the gifts for kids!

Some of the gift balls for kids this year!

Sadly, I received an email earlier this week with these words from Jerry’s eldest son, Erik: “Dad has blown his last whistle.” Gerald passed away at age 84 on Dec. 6.

Jerry was much more than a referee. He was a dedicated educator, youth coach, Scout leader; avid tennis player with an email address gntennishack; and was involved with numerous service clubs.

After my memoir “Wooden & Me” came out, Jerry sent me a note incorporating one of my favorite Wooden-isms: “I read your book quickly, but not in a hurry.” He signed off, “Your favorite Westpark referee.”

That he was. Jerry will be missed, but his basketball donation this year won’t – I am giving an extra Spalding in his honor.

Another Jerry (Mendelsohn) and his wife, Linda, donated a dozen basketballs and a dozen soccer balls. Importantly, three of the couple’s four grandchildren – Garrick, 6; Dannika, 3; and Parker, 2 – helped with picking out the balls and delivering them.

“The older two remember why we do this every year and Parker got his first taste of what ‘giving’ is all about,” Jerry shared. “Linda and I were beaming with pride at these three and their desire to be of help in making this holiday season brighter for those children in need.”

Tom and Christina McEachern similarly had their grandchildren – Helios, 12; Preston, 5; and Sadie Grace, 2 – in mind while donating two soccer balls and one basketball.

Sandy Aberle started a new tradition by asking the seven children attending her family’s Thanksgiving dinner to each bring a ball to donate.

In memory of her mother Janice Manjoras, Sherrie Basham donated three footballs and four basketballs, noting: “My mom loved Christmas and always donated to a cause for kids.”

Pamela Carter similarly donated a basketball in memoriam: “This is my first Christmas without my Mom. We were blessed to have our parents until they were 97 (Dad) and 96 (Mom). No matter what age they are when they leave, it is not easy.”

Nancy Rickman donated a mix of 25 basketballs, volleyballs and footballs “in memory of my friends Dorothy Jue Lee and Allen W. Jue.”

Donna and Loren Jonkey dedicated a basketball “in honor of our son Jeff (a LBPD officer), who suffered a heart attack in June and was given a second chance at life.”

Andrew Sherman gave “a basketball in memory of Mike Sandoval, who left us way too soon, and a baseball in honor of Richie Rubenstein, who is battling multiple myeloma.”

From Jim Cowan, a veteran: “This year I would like to dedicate the ten basketballs to members of the Armed Forces, both past and present, for their service and sacrifice in preserving our freedoms that are too often taken for granted.”

Kate Larsen donated three soccer balls, sharing: “Thank you for making it easy to pick out just the right thing to get kids off their sofa, turning off their phones, and going outdoors to enjoy running around.”

No, the thanks belong to everyone – too many to mention all in this limited space – who has generously contributed.

There is still time to drop off a new sports ball at any local Boys and Girls Club, YMCA or at Jensen Design & Survey at 1672 Donlon St. (near Target on Telephone Road in Ventura) weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Dec. 21. And please email me at woodywriter@gmail.com so your donation can be added to the final tally.

Let me close with this wisdom from John Greenleaf Whittier: “The joy that you give to others is the joy that comes back to you.”

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Re-reading some old friends in 2016

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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Another Year for the Books

“The worst thing about new books,” said 18th-century French essayist Joseph Joubert, “is that they keep us from reading the old ones.”

Heeding this wisdom, I read quite a few old books in 2016. More accurately, I re-read some old friends. This included “The Known World,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward Jones, which tells a powerful story of slavery and freedom, cruelty and courage, family and much more.

1knownworldThis novel of historical fiction was originally, and enthusiastically, recommended to me when I was browsing the “New Releases” at Barnes & Noble back in 2003 – not by a staff worker, but by a perfect stranger.

Remarkably, it proved every bit as terrific as she promised – then and when I re-read it 13 years later. And so it lands a deserving spot in my seventh annual column of books I recommend.

My goal is to read 52 books each calendar year and with three weeks to go in 2016, I am on pace precisely to hit that mark with 49 books under my belt. However, I must admit this figure is inflated with the inclusion of 20 children’s books: specifically, “The Bedtime Story-Books” series written by Thornton W. Burgess beginning in 1910.

After visiting the Burgess Society Museum in East Sandwich, Mass., late last year, I was inspired to re-re-read these books from my childhood that I last re-read to my two children two decades ago. If you have a young child or grandchild, I recommend these adventures for out-loud reading.

Even subtracting the Burgess library, I believe I set a personal record for re-reading books this year. Robert Fulghum’s “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” led me to also revisit his collection of hilarious essays “What On Earth Have I Done.”

Similarly, after literally laughing out loud for a second time over Bill Bryon’s “A Walk in the Woods” I was inspired to re-read his comical “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid” about growing up in Middle America in the 1950s and “In a Sunburned Country” about his travels in Australia.

At the other end of the emotional spectrum, Mitch Albom’s memoir “Tuesdays With Morrie” once again tugged on my heartstrings and in turn led me to pick up his newest novel, “The Magic Strings of Frankie Pesto.” Imaginatively narrated by the character Music, these pages are as difficult to describe as they are to set down. Simply put, it is the work of a storytelling maestro.

If I could recommend only one book from my 2016 reading list, however, I believe it would be another new offering that landed in my hands quite similarly to how “The Known World” did: by recommendation.

1glorylandMore precisely, a gift copy of “Gloryland,” a novel by Shelton Johnson, came to me in the mail out of the blue and anonymously. I searched the Barnes & Noble box for a clue as to whom to thank, but there was no name on the receipt nor a gift note.

I even reached out on social media to learn my benefactor, again with no luck.

But what good luck to receive this book of historical fiction about the “Gloryland” of Yosemite, as told by buffalo soldier Elijah Yancy through his own life journey.

Yancy is born to sharecropping parents on January 1, 1863 – the day President Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation. Freedom, however, is a long time in arriving in the Reconstructed South and this tale of cruelty and courage and family is heartbreaking – and heartwarming.

You may recognize its author, a real-life ranger at Yosemite, from Ken Burns’ documentary film “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” where he appears on camera numerous times speaking eloquently and passionately about the treasured valley.

Shelton Johnson is also an eloquent wordsmith whose writing is so beautiful I found myself re-reading sentences and passages, as one might behold Half Dome, savoring them before moving forward.

To my Secret Santa who sent me “Gloryland,” I send you a heartfelt thank you. Similar good cheer to the rest of you and happy reading in 2017.

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

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

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Thanksgiving Story in 3 Acts

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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Thanksgiving Comes with Baggage

Act I: Two days before this Thanksgiving past.

The woman standing alone beside the luggage carousel at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport catches my eye. She is dressed nattily, formally, the way people used to dress when they flew on jetliners half a century ago.

Specifically, she is wearing a lovely black-brown-and-gold printed scarf, double-breasted black overcoat, charcoal fedora. Close-cropped gray curls peek out below the hat; a smile peeks from her Maybelline-red lips. Her eyes are chocolate and grandmotherly.

1alicenola

Alice’s smile brightened my Thanksgiving.

She reminds me, instantly, of my mom – in appearance, in proud posture, and in age were Mom alive today. And so, two days before my 24th Thanksgiving without my mom, I do what she taught me to do: help others.

The woman has a luggage cart so I assume she might welcome a helping hand. I offer and she accepts, beaming.

As we wait at the suitcase merry-go-round, she describes her bag as “kind of a leopard print, but not really.” It proves to be a perfectly apt description because as soon as I see the black-and-burnt-orange suitcase with a geometric design rather than spots, I correctly guess it is hers.

Loading it onto her luggage cart is small favor, yet she thanks me with a big hug. Then we go our separate ways into the Big Easy.

But this is not the end of the story.

***

Act II: Thanksgiving Evening.

During dinner at The Italian Barrel in the French Quarter, the first Thanksgiving meal of my life in a restaurant, we go around the table giving reasons why we are thankful.

After my wife, son, daughter and son-in-law share, I take my turn. I conclude my gratitude list by telling them about the graceful stranger I met at the airport baggage claim; her smile that warmed me; her hug that made me smile.

Again, this is not the end of the story.

***

Act III: Two days after Thanksgiving.

My wife and I are 30,000 feet in the sky headed home to Ventura.

It is a long flight, and I am 6-foot-4, so despite having an aisle seat I get up to stretch my legs. I walk to the back of the plane to stand for a while.

My back is turned when a voice says, “Hello.” I turn and, surprise of surprises, it is the woman in the charcoal fedora.

“I saw you walk down the aisle and I couldn’t believe it,” she says, again dressed elegantly as if for church. “I just had to come say thank you again. I told my family all about you at Thanksgiving dinner.”

Alice – we introduce ourselves properly this time – gives me another hug and then returns to her seat, but not before I promise to help her at the baggage carousel after we land.

We rendezvous as planned and as we visit I am in no hurry for the heavy “kind of a leopard print, but not really” suitcase to materialize.

I learn that Alice grew up in McComb, Mississippi, with 10 siblings, but –

widowed young – has no children of her own.

I learn that she has lived in Los Angeles for 34 years and has been retired for 19 years after a career with the Community Redevelopment Agency.

And I learn that Alice enjoyed fried turkey, seafood casserole, and all the trimmings for Thanksgiving dinner.

As we wait for her suitcase, Alice says I remind her of a quote: “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.”

I tell her that was one of Coach John Wooden’s favorite maxims and serendipity knocks once more: Alice met Wooden, two decades ago, and afterward wrote his “7-Point Creed” in her Bible.

I carry a copy of his “7-Point Creed” in my wallet, and smile because one of its points is why Alice and I met: “Help others.”

Another point is: “Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible.” Apropos, Alice invites me to join her some day at her church, Trinity Baptist.

I will be thankful to do so.

* * *

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

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

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My 2 Cents on This and That

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

 * * *

Serving Up Some Leftover Notes and Quotes

Before I resume taking down some pumpkin pie and turkey leftovers, here are some leftover notes, quotes and observations I have been saving in Tupperware for today’s column . . .

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My two cents on the flap, by some, over being charged 10 cents for a paper bag at grocery stores: quit forgetting your reusable bags and quit complaining. It’s that simple.

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Add bags: No stores asked me, but it might be good public relations to take the “Leave a Penny, Take a Penny” dish to the next level and have a rack where customers can borrow a reusable bag if they forget one – and then return it the next time they come in.

I think people are generally so honest it would actually work.

*

There is no shortage of rude drivers on the road, especially during the gridlocked holiday season, which makes it all the more remarkable when a freeway lane is closed and the cars in it are allowed to seamlessly merge into the next lane, cars politely and perfectly alternating and coming together like teeth on a zipper.

Well, until some selfish jerk snags the zipper by squeezing in when it’s not his turn or cutting off someone when it’s her turn.

*

A wise thought for today – or any day – from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

Enthusiasm alone, of course, doesn’t guarantee success. As author Alex Franzen advises: “Be patient with your dreams. Everybody wants to be an overnight success. Nobody ever is. Keep working steadily.”

*

Considering how amazingly sharp the video shot on any cell phone or nanny cam is, how come the surveillance video – and, hence, still photos – from convenience stores and banks that are shared with the public after a robbery always seems more grainy and out of focus than the Loch Ness Monster?

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Regarding the kerfuffle which had parents filing a complaint seeking a temporary restraining order against a local AYSO league due to a 10-and-under team’s disqualification from the playoffs: how about a permament restraining order against all adults having any invovlment in youth sports and just let the kids run things?

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“We choose the kind of life we lead one choice at a time,” advises one of my role models, who also happens to be my son, Greg. “Choose wisely.”

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“The best way to overcome our fears is to embrace them,” says my wise daughter, Dallas, echoing Eleanor Roosevelt’s wisdom: “Do one thing every day that scares you.”

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Speaking of Mrs. Roosevelt, I know many will disagree but my personal opinion is she now has company as the co-Best FLOTUS (First Lady Of The United States) Ever in Michelle Obama.

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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts,” wrote Mark Twain. “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Perhaps all Americans need to travel our own country more.

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I not only remember rotary telephones and 8-track tapes, and was thus excited when newfangled push-button phones and cassettes came along, but I also recall when boys were named Mike and Jim and Bob and Bill and were embarrassed to be called formally Michael, James, Robert and William.

Now, for anyone under age 30, the reverse seems true.

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Today is “Small Business Saturday” where we are all urged to celebrate and support local small businesses with our patronage.

Small business owners didn’t ask me, but how about if Ventura County residents go a step further and shop small and locally every day through Christmas?

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While we’re at it, “Giving Tuesday” is next week with the goal of increasing support for nonprofit and charitable organizations. In other words, it is the perfect day to make a contribution to The Star’s annual Julius Gius Bellringer campaign in partnership with the Salvation Army.

* * *

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

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

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