Sweet Thank You For Heroes

May 16, 2020 by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

Sweet Thank You

For Frontline Heroes

A cupcake is a small thing.

One thousand cupcakes is quite another.

Stephanie Nelson had the very big idea of honoring frontline heroes at Ventura County Medical Center with gourmet cupcakes. She selected National Nurses Day on May 6 for the confectionary celebration.

Because National Doctors Day passed two months earlier without any festivities due to the urgency of COVID-19 preparations, docs were also mixed into the new cupcake batter. In fact, because every worker in the medical profession is indispensible, it was decided that each and every member of the VCMC staff would be thanked with a fancy cupcake.

This was no small undertaking for Nelson, Director of Volunteer Services at the hospital, and her helpers. To deliver successfully required the harmony of an ICU team during a Code Blue situation. Call this a Code Red Velvet.

The baking angels were called upon at “Heavenly Cakes & More” in Oxnard to create a variety of gorgeous offerings in chocolate, vanilla, lemon and, of course, red velvet. The frosted artworks featured swirls, sprinkles and powdered dustings.

On the morning of Nurses Day, Nelson and two fellow cupcake crusaders – Mary McCarthy, a member of the VCMC Auxiliary; and Patient Advocate Marie Castaneda – picked up the baked bounty.

In a bakery’s version of Tetris, they puzzle-pieced 84 pink and white cardboard boxes, each holding a dozen delicacies, into their three cars and rushed them – “Stat!” – to VCMC.

“It took quite a while to load the cars and then unload them,” McCarthy shared in apparent understatement, for the boxes naturally had to be handled and stacked with care.

After the cupcakes were set out in various break rooms throughout the hospital, Nelson sent out word about the goodies to department managers. During brief reprieves from caring for patients, their work seemingly more nonstop than ever during this coronavirus era, staff members snuck away to savor a little taste of Heavenly.

Despite a sweet discount by Heavenly Cakes and a kind Samaritan stepping forward to pick up the tab for 100 of the cupcakes, dough was still needed to pay the balance. In stepped the Auxiliary with funds it raises from sales in the hospital gift shop.

The Auxiliary itself is a collection of hero volunteers. It routinely buys toys, books and games for young patients in the Pediatric and NICU wards and also stages holiday parties for the kids.

“It’s tough for them to be there, especially at holiday times,” McCarthy says of the hospitalized children. She further notes that because of COVID-19, the volunteers currently cannot visit the kids but instead must drop gifts off at the nursing stations.

As grand as the cupcake party was, here is something even more beautiful than a red velvet with a swirl of white frosting: for each of the 1,000 smiles delivered to VCMC there surely has been a similar deed of coronavirus-related kindness in Ventura County these past few stay-and-shelter months.

The cupcakes, however, seem a perfect metaphor for these times – and for a hospital. Unlike a giant-sized fancy cake where the cut slices touch one another, cupcakes are individually wrapped in paper liners – like tiny Personal Protective Equipment. Boxed together, or arranged on a table, they are the equal of any whole cake.

“I know it’s a small gesture,” McCarthy shares, “but I am so grateful to all those on the frontlines. The hospital is under enormous pressure. Hopefully the cupcakes provided a bit of cheer. Never underestimate cupcake power.”

Asked if all 1,000 cupcakes made it to the staff lips, Mary offered a confession: “I had a red velvet one – heaven!”

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Woody Woodburn 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 books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Highlights During Low Times

May 2, 2020 by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

High Moments During

These Low Times

With facemasks the new normal during these coronavirus times, seeing a smile can seem as rare as a bluebird sighting. Here are some bluebirds…

Josh, a young man I know who faces food and shelter insecurity, recently went to the grocery store for a friend and received a tiny tap on his shoulder.

“Behind me was a sweet middle-aged woman with a gentle voice,” Josh retells. “She mumbled, ‘Can… can … you help me with some food?’

“My heart sank because I could tell she was in great need, but then my spirit reminded me that in this moment I could do something. We walked over to the deli and I was able to buy her lunch. I don’t have much; I often don’t know where my meals may come from; but this shared experience gives me great compassion and understanding for those less fortunate and in need.

“Her heart and words flowed with gratitude. I was able to put some of my own worries aside and focus on where I could give some love. It was a beautiful experience to be a part of!”

The owner of a small commercial building in downtown Santa Rosa phoned his 60-year-old son, who manages the property, and instructed him to cut the tenants’ rents in half for April.

Shortly thereafter, according to The Santa Rosa Democrat newspaper, he called his son back: “No, tell them there will be no rent for April.”

A longtime customer at a donut shop in Upper Arlington, Ohio – where, coincidentally, I grew up – purchased a single custard donut for a whopping $1,000.

The generous Samaritan, who has been going to Tremont Goodie Shop for nearly half a century, explained he wanted to help the store stay in business.

The kind act proved contagious after word spread, including a $100 tip by another customer.

“Look For The Helpers” began a post on social media along with a photograph of a girl inside her home, paper and pencil in hand, looking outside at a man kneeling on the front walkway.

“A 12-year-old girl was having difficulty with her math homework during the lockdown. So she emailed her teacher for help. He came over, brought his whiteboard, and taught her through the window.”

Another helper is Nemat Azizi, who came to America as a refugee from Afghanistan.

“He got married, had a family, and started a business,” read a Facebook post. “When COVID-19 hit, he knew he wanted to help. He’s now paid for the groceries of more than 300-plus families in Nebraska.”

An 8-year-old boy in Australia has been bullied because of his name: Corona De Vries.

The boy wrote a letter to actor Tom Hanks, who spent two weeks in quarantine Down Under after testing positive for COVID-19, saying: “I heard on the news you and your wife had caught the coronavirus. Are you OK?”

He further mentioned that kids at school called him “Coronavirus” which makes him “sad and angry.”

Hanks, who collects typewriters, composed a reply on a Corona portable model and then mailed both the letter and the pristine machine to the boy.

“Your letter made my wife and I feel so wonderful!” Hanks typed. “You know, you are the only person I’ve ever known to have the name Corona – like the ring around the sun, a crown. I thought this typewriter would suit you. Ask a grown up how it works. And use it to write me back.”

In his own writing hand the two-time Academy Award winner added: “P.S. You got a friend in ME!”

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Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Mrs. Figs’ “Storytime” is Magical

April 18, 2020 by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

“Storytime With Mrs. Figs”

Offers Magical Healing

It is said that reading aloud to young children fosters a love for books and literature that lasts a lifetime. Connie Halpern, however, pays lip service to this noble notion.

Literally.

Four weeks past, in an effort to make these shelter-in-place days and nights a little less confining for children, Connie started a not-for-profit channel on YouTube.com entitled “Storytime with Mrs. Figs.” She believes even coronavirus cannot quarantine a child’s imagination.

You may well recognize Connie’s pseudonym because for the past decade, before recently selling her independent bookstore, Connie was the effervescent shopkeeper of “Mrs. Figs Bookworm” in Camarillo.

“I believe strongly in the healing qualities of stories,” Connie says in explanation of why she created “Storytime.”

Down the road, again literally, Connie plans to travel by motor home and read to children all across America. For now, she is spreading the healing qualities of stories online.

Connie Halpern, aka the marvelous “Mrs. Figs.”

To date, Mrs. Figs has posted eight fireside Storytimes, including: “The Day the Crayons Quit” by Drew Daywalt and its bestselling sequel, “The Day the Crayons Came Home”; “Wild About Books” by Judy Sierra; “After the Fall” by Dan Santat; and “All in a Day” by Cynthia Rylant. More stories promise to be added as she receives copyright permission from publishers and authors.

Previously, the favorite fireplace I had ever seen was in Mark Twain’s home in Hartford, Conn., in his library to be specific.

Making it special is the elaborately carved oak mantelpiece that came from Ayton Castle in Scotland. Displayed upon it, from left to right, are a painted round vase; large seashell; marble figure of a woman; tall blue vase; silver serving platter; framed painting of a woman wearing a red winter coat and black hat; bronze tile of Twain’s profile; matching tall blue vase; white pottery water jar; small blue vase; a typing paper-sized painting of a cat’s face surround by ruffles; and a tiny bronze harp figurine.

I detail the items because each evening the master storywriter became an oral storyteller by making up a new tale for his young daughters in which he incorporated the entire ensemble, always beginning with the “Cat in a Ruff” painting. To imagine Twain performing one of his off-the-cuff stories is to imagine magic.

Connie’s “Storytime” is surely similar magic brought to life. She even reads while sitting beside an elegant fireplace, flames flickering as warmly as her voice, the handsome wooden mantle filled fully from left to right with books. It is my new favorite fireplace.

To say Mrs. Figs reads aloud is not quite accurate. Rather, she performs, the words seemingly memorized as she displays the illustrations to the listener/viewer. Additionally, she offers introductory thoughts about each book and other wisdoms.

“The only thing that you absolutely have to know,” Albert Einstein said, “is the location of the library.” During stay-and-shelter with children, knowing the location of “Storytime With Mrs. Figs” on YouTube is an absolute must.

Reading a book has been called a time machine. Mrs. Figs further proves that for adults, listening to a children’s book can magically transport us back to kindergarten naptime or even younger while being tucked into bed as our mother read us to sleep.

“Now you get to close your eyes,” Connie even coos after finishing one performance.

“It is my prayer that stories will be one small way that we can ‘stay-connected-while-sheltered’ during ‘stay-and-shelter,’ ” Connie allows, her words echoing the spiritual origins of Mrs. FIGs: Faith In God.

“Until next time, much love to you,” Connie signs off each episode. All that is missing is a kiss on the forehead.

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Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Linked Hands In A Wheat Field

April 4, 2020April 4, 2020 by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

Our Hands Linked,

Even If Only Virtually

Ventura County is rightly renowned for its strawberry fields. But my hometown also makes me think of wheat—specifically, a wheat field in a tiny farm town in Ohio.

The story goes like this:

A young girl wandered from home and became lost in the family’s wheat field that had grown taller than she. Her parents called out her name repeatedly, searched frantically, but could not find her.

Soon her three siblings, then neighbors as well, joined the hunt. But as daylight dimmed and disappeared, the little girl still had not been found.

By now seemingly half the townspeople were hectically racing through the wheat field trying to find the little girl, but with no success. The wheat field was simply too vast.

“Wheat Field With Crows” by Vincent van Gogh.

Night fell and with it the temperature. If the little girl was not found soon, she would surely perish from hypothermia. At long last, her father called everyone in from the wheat field.

No, he had not given up on finding his dear daughter. Rather, he had an idea. He gathered all the volunteers together and had them join hands to form a long human chain. More accurately, they formed a human comb.

They then walked together, side by side by side, combing through the tall amber waves of grain. In this manner they did not miss a single area as had happened when they randomly searched separately.

Within ten minutes, the search party of more than one hundred individuals – now united as one – found the little girl curled up on the ground …

… shivering and trying to stay warm, but still alive.

In a grander sense, it seems to me, the wheat field represents Ventura County – and even the world – most especially during challenging times like these COVID-19 “stay-at-home” days and nights.

All of us figuratively get lost at times and need the help of others. Our local healthcare professionals, restaurant staffs providing takeout meals, pharmacy and grocery workers, Instacart shoppers and retirement home caregivers, and so many more are now linking hands on the front lines, so to speak, to help the rest of us.

The rest of us, in turn, by “sheltering-in-place” as asked are figuratively linking hands to help keep our most vulnerable citizens – those over age 65, those with compromised immune systems, those with asthma – as safe from coronavirus as possible. Additionally, many in our “human comb” are further helping our small businesses by ordering takeout meals or having other products delivered to our homes.

Here is what else I see in our “wheat field.” I see people “social distancing” as advised, yet still “connecting” with others with a smile and a wave outside from safely afar or though a window; with phone calls, emails and video chats; with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

With our hands linked, virtually, we will eventually emerge from this current wheat field challenge. Perhaps we will be shivering, as though having stayed in the ocean too long; but, as if wrapped in a beach towel, we will quickly warm up again.

When this frightening moment in history passes and the warmth of normal returns, and with it the warmth of real hugs replacing virtual ones, I hope we will be better because it.

Correction. I am convinced we will be better because if it.

Already, I believe, we are seeing one another – from doctors and nurses to grocery workers and pizza delivery drivers, from co-workers and neighbors to the elderly and shut-ins – with a new appreciation.

Yes, when I think of the wheat field story, the new soundtrack is by Beatles: “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

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Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Being Good Neighbors Vital Now

March 21, 2020 by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

Being Good Neighbors

Is Vital Now

Freshman year in college, to fill an English requirement I got stuck in a class I had no desire to take. What a lucky break.

“The Poetry of Robert Frost” proved to be my favorite class of all four years. Partly it was the professor; largely it was the wordsmithery of the four-time Pulitzer Prize winner.

I recently retrieved Frost’s complete and unabridged works from my bookcase because, probably like you, I have extra time on my hands during these COVID-19 days and nights of self-isolation.

While “The Road Not Taken” remains my favorite Frost masterpiece, the poem I had foremost in mind to reread was “Mending Wall” with the closing line: “Good fences make good neighbors.”

One interpretation of the poem is that a wall, or stone fence between farms, is good because it separates people and livestock.

The following lines, however, offer a wink towards an opposite interpretation as the narrator notes of his neighbor beyond the hill: “He is all pine and I am apple orchard. / My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.”

Frost is playfully observing that apple and pine trees do not need a wall to keep them apart.

Shortly thereafter, the narrator continues: “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out, / And to whom I was like to give offense.”

Here especially “Mending Wall” seems powerfully pertinent today. Through social distancing and self-isolation we are all being asked to build fences between ourselves and fellow citizens.

A week ago, not greeting a neighbor or friend with a handshake or hug felt rude because they were “like to give offense.” Similarly, by self-quarantining were we walling coronavirus out or walling ourselves in?

The important truth, we now know, is that we are using a metaphoric wall to “flatten the curve” of infections in an attempt to prevent our healthcare system from being overwhelmed.

Some people, for the good of all, must breach the wall – healthcare professionals, truckers, grocery and pharmacy workers, for example. Others need to go over the shelter-in-place wall to seek medical care, buy food, help at-risk neighbors.

It makes the news and goes viral on social media when selfish boors hoard toilet paper and fight over hand sanitizer, but I remain convinced most people share, give, help.

My friend Dave told me a story that I like to think is the Dog-Bites-Man non-headline norm. An elderly couple in their 80s sat in their car in a supermarket parking lot for 45 minutes, afraid to go inside and risk getting COVID-19.

Finally, they worked up the courage to ask a stranger to do their shopping. A young woman passerby gladly took their grocery list and money. She returned and set down the bags – and change – outside their car.

This suggests to me a new 2020 interpretation for “Mending Wall” with the narrator being a young, healthy farmer while his neighbor is in a vulnerable group – perhaps over age 65, or has a compromised immune system, or has asthma.

For the neighbor, balancing the “boulders that have fallen to each / And some are loaves and some so nearly balls” back in place on the wall is potentially life-saving.

If we view the mended wall as a metaphor for serious social distancing, it is indeed true that “Good fences make good neighbors” – at least for now.

The day will eventually return when it is more neighborly to shake hands across the fence. Or, better yet, hop over it and embrace.

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Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

WOODY WOODBURN

Writer, "Streaker" & Speaker

Tag Archives: COVID-19

Sweet Thank You For Heroes

Highlights During Low Times

Mrs. Figs’ “Storytime” is Magical

Linked Hands In A Wheat Field

Being Good Neighbors Vital Now