Is your Club or Group looking for an inspiring guest speaker or do you want to host a book signing? . . . Contact Woody today!
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For a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” mail a check for $25 to:
Woody Woodburn
400 Roosevelt Court
Ventura, CA 93003
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Nobody Asked Me, But Here Goes Anyway
Loyal readers of this space well know that I love libraries.
Along with the breathtaking New York Public Library and the Boston Athenaeum, both of which I wrote about recently, and the Library of Trinity College Dublin that left me awestruck a few years ago, I have another new favorite: our local Ocean View Junior High library.
Although it is far more modest than the three cathedrals of books mentioned above, it is nonetheless special as evidenced by its librarian Maria Tapia being honored in Washington, D.C. with a national Inspiring School Employees Award.
How inspiring is Tapia? Students routinely pack the library from before school until after the final bell, including about 100 kids coming in during lunch period.
I wish Tapia could speak to all bureaucrats nationwide when they are tempted to cut library funding at any school.
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I have been thinking about my vintage typewriter-collecting friend, Michael Mariani, who points out that some older models do not have an exclamation point key. Instead, one must take the time and effort to type a single quote mark, backspace, and a period to create an exclamation mark.
Nobody asked me, but I think all computer and smartphone keyboards should delete their exclamation marks and similarly force people to fashion them. This would end the epidemic of people using one, two and even three exclamation marks in a row – !!! – in texts, emails and Tweets.
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Speaking of Tweets, I think most people – especially celebrities and politicians – need a personal social media editor to check their Twitter postings for general ugliness, meanness and worse before being sent out. It would save everyone a lot of pain.
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Nobody asked me, but my five favorite fruits, in order, are: strawberries, raspberries, apples, bananas, and oranges.
However, if I could only choose one fruit, it would be apples!!!
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High school kids look up to professional athletes as role models, but more and more often I believe the reverse should be true.
Case in point occurred recently in Minnesota when Totino-Grace High School pitcher Ty Koehn struck out Mounds View High’s Jack Kocon to end a big playoff game.
As his teammates rushed to the mound to celebrate the victory sending them to the state championships, Koehn – in a video that has gone viral – sidestepped them all and ran to home plate to console Kocon, who has been his friend since childhood.
Koehn told reporters: “Our friendship is more important than just the silly outcome of a game. I had to make sure he knew that.”
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It is said that no one stands taller than when he or she bends down to help a child.
Conversely, no nation shrinks smaller than when it separates infants and young children from their mothers and fathers.
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A kind and anonymous Good Samaritan recently left a smooth beach stone – hand-painted in purple, green, pink and orange and bearing the words “hope will come” – on the brick steps that remain curbside at my dad’s home that burned to the ground in the Thomas Fire.
What a lovely, and powerful, thought: “hope will come.” I wish somehow those three words could have been said to – and, importantly, truly felt and taken to heart by – celebrities Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, as well as every military veteran and teenager and grownup who is currently suffering and contemplating taking their own life.
With that in mind, let me close with this, the Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255. If you or someone you know is hurting, please call and maybe “hope will come.”