Tag Archives: dallas woodburn

‘Friends’ Theme In 2025 Reading List

by Woody

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

*

To commemorate Emily Dickinson’s 195th birthday on December 10, after having visited her home in Amherst, Massachusetts, earlier this year, I recently read – and now recommend – “The Essential Emily Dickinson Poems: selected and with an introduction by Joyce Carol Oates.”

Fredrik Backman’s storytelling borders on poetry, and his newest novel “My Friends” is no exception. My friends is actually a minor theme running through my 2025 list of books read that, if I finish three more volumes, will reach my annual goal of 52. Below are the rest of my top recommendations…

To begin, three varied-but-terrific books written by author friends of mine: “Trigger Warning,” a heavyhearted and powerful novel of literary fiction that had me lingering over countless sentences and passages in order to savor Jacinda Townsend’s beautiful wordsmith skills; “When We Were Monsters,” a thriller/mystery taking place in an elite boarding school, by YA superstar Jennifer Niven; and “A Letter A Week During The School Year: Unplug. Reach Out. Discover the Power of the Handwritten Letter” – the title says it all! – by Julie Merrick.

By the way, “The Correspondent” by Virginia Evans, about a letter-writer over the course of her life, is a lovely novel I highly recommended to Julie – and now to you.

It is a rare year I do not read (or reread) something by Brian Doyle, my favorite under-known writer who feels like a friend because his essays are so personal. This year it was, for the first time, “Children and Other Wild Animals.”

Another lesser-know writer I enjoy greatly, and consistently, is Willy Vlautin. This year I could not put down two of his gritty novels, both featuring flawed and down-and-out characters one cannot help but root for: “Lean on Pete” and “The Night Always Comes.”

“The Names” by Florence Knapp has an intriguing premise, accomplished well, of three wildly divergent storylines for a baby boy (and his family) depending on three different names he is given at birth.

Two more page-turning novels, each featuring two separate timelines, are “Fun for the Whole Family” by Jennifer E. Smith and “Typewriter Beach” by Meg Waite Clayton.

From the nonfiction shelves, as someone who barely knows which end of a hammer to hold, I thoroughly enjoyed “Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman” by Patrick Hutchinson; “Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller” by Oliver Darkshire; and, despite having no musical talent myself, I was captivated by “A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano” by Katie Hafner – which pairs nicely with the fictional “The Instrumentalist” by Harriet Constable about a violin prodigy.

A handful of short novellas long on enjoyment and intrigue: “Cold Enough For Snow” (95 pages) by Jessica Au; “the all of it” (145 pages) by Jeannette Haien; and “Who Will Run The Frog Hospital” (148 pages) by Lorrie Moore that is as wonderfully peculiar as its title.

The shortest novella I read, “The English Understand Wool” by Helen DeWitt, at just 70 pages is my runner-up for favorite book of any length all year. It is an odd little gem, quirky and quiet, slow and funny, and impossible to summarize. While not for everyone, some will absolutely adore it.

And – drum roll, please – my co-favorite offerings from my 2025 reading list are children’s books: “Kid Scientists at the Beach” by my daughter, Dallas Woodburn; and by another of my friends, Drew Daywalt, “Freddie Two Pants” that makes my three granddaughters laugh their heads off every time I read it to them and my giggles always explode too!

* * *

Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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

*

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.

Lesson From A Rocking Chair

by Woody

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

*

A big-time New York City sportswriter once said, long ago, that his best pieces were when he quoted at length from columns by press-box legend Red Smith. Chuck Thomas, my esteemed predecessor in this space, humorously echoed: “Never write a bad column when you can steal a good one.”

Thusly inspired, I have stolen a new essay from award-winning novelist Dallas Woodburn, who will be a headliner at the “Books, Butterflies & Botanical Gardens” fundraiser benefiting the Ventura County Library Foundation on Oct. 15. (Tickets are available online at: vclibraryfoundation.org/events/ )

My daughter shares wisely…

*

Yesterday, I sold the rocker from our nursery.

It was time. My younger daughter is two-and-a-half and was excited about putting up a “reading tent” in her room, in the space where the rocker used to be.

The woman who bought the rocker was delighted. It was for her pregnant daughter and it warmed my heart to imagine another family getting to use this item we had loved so much.

Yet still, watching the woman drive away with our rocker in the bed of her truck made unexpected tears spring to my eyes and a big lump rise to my throat.

It was a blinking neon-sign reminder that time is passing. So, so quickly.

I vividly remember when we bought that rocker, when I was pregnant with my older daughter seven summers ago, back when we were living in a small rental house. I remember setting up the nursery in what once had been my home office, a mix of excitement and nerves giving me giddy butterflies.

My baby daughter and I spent countless hours rocking in that chair. We rocked to calm her. We rocked her to sleep. In the early, early days, I nursed her in that rocking chair, listening to audiobooks and feeling like the two of us were the only ones awake in the entire world.

In those newborn days of early motherhood, time was molasses. I rocked her and rocked her, back and forth, back and forth, her head heavy in the crook of my elbow, praying for her to fall asleep – and stay asleep. It felt like she would always be tiny and I would always be rocking her.

Four years later, my husband and I were setting up the same rocker in a different house, in a different nursery, for our second precious rainbow baby.

Our younger daughter arrived and didn’t like to be rocked as much as her big sister. She preferred the standing-dancing-bouncing method. Still, she and I spent a lot of time, especially reading, in that rocking chair.

Why am I telling you all about this rocking chair? Because time is passing quickly. Children are growing up. Parents are aging. We all are aging.

And if we aren’t careful – if we aren’t intentional and purposeful and brave – time can be a cruel thief, slipping by like a cat burglar, stealing away our biggest dreams.

What were you dreaming about seven years ago? Do you hold a big dream in your heart that is older than my rocking chair? Are you still trying to “make time” for that dream? Do you tell yourself that you’ll make time to pursue it later; next season; next year; when life calms down and things are less busy?

The next piece of furniture we will likely offer away is my younger daughter’s crib, now converted into a toddler bed. I’m guessing we’ll get another two years out of it before she graduates to a full-on “big-girl bed.”

Two years from now, will your big-life dream be growing true?

* * *

Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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

*

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.

Breaking My Own Column Rule

by Woody

My great friend Dan had a basement that was a boyhood wonderland with a pinball machine, Ping-Pong table, slot-car racetrack, dartboard, Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, board games and more.

Dan not only knew how to expertly shake the pinball machine without a “tilt” registering, he also had a habit of tilting other games in his direction. That is to say he playfully cheated.

“My house, my rules,” Dan would announce and claim a do-over when his HO-scale Corvette went around a curve too speedily and flew off the track; when his dart wildly missed its mark and ricocheted off the cinder-block wall; when he jiggled the pinball machine a little too vigorously and the flippers did freeze.

Similarly, a high-stakes roll in Monopoly sometimes required having both dice coming to rest on the game board, not the table; but other times vice-versa. “Doesn’t count. Roll again,” he would cackle if he didn’t like the outcome. “My house, my rules.”

Naturally, the rules tilted in my favor when we played H-O-R-S-E or checkers at my house.

I bring this up today because I have long had an unwritten rule of not writing about local authors and their books in this space. It seems more prudent to say “no” to all requests, being as numerous as they are, than risk this becoming a weekly book review column.

Alas, loyal readers of this space with good memories will instantly recognize my hypocrisy because back in February I wrote about the novel “Thanks, Carissa, For Ruining My Life” (Immortal Works Publishing). The setting features a fictional beach town named Buena Vista that is clearly – from Main Street to the foothills to a familiar taco shack – Buenaventura.

That author, a former prestigious John Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing, has a new book that just came out last week: a collection of short stories titled, “How to Make Paper When the World is Ending” (Koehler Books). It is terrific. Indeed, no less than ten of the 15 offerings have previously appeared in literary magazines and journals.

Just as Mr. Steinbeck time and again wrote about the Salinas Valley in his fiction, Dallas Woodburn over and again writes about her hometown – including the pier, beach, and promenade – in the pages of “Paper.” One of my favorite stories here is titled “How My Parents Fell In Love” which begins:

“My mother walked out of the grocery store. She wore a red dress, her hair was permed the way it looks in photo albums. My father drove up in a car, a fast car, silver, a car that goes vroom vroom. He did not know her yet. She looked pretty in that red dress with the ruffles at the hem. He rolled down the window, leaned out, and smiled, and said, ‘Hubba, hubba!’ They fell in love and lived happily ever after.”

Four similar vignettes follow, each growing longer and written more maturely than the previous, each storyline slightly changed yet each ending exactly the same: “They fell in love and lived happily every after.”

The sixth and final version, however, rings most true and scraps the fairy-tale ending: “Later that night they kissed under the mistletoe. The fell in love. And they lived, happily. Also angrily, naughtily, hopelessly, hungrily. Messily. Ever after. Like saints and martyrs and lovers and children. They lived, and they live. Together still.”

Am I guilty of hypocrisy and nepotism with today’s subject? Yes, most assuredly. Also unashamedly, happily, unapologetically, proudly with my buttons popping off.

“My column, my rules.” I hope you understand and will forgive me.

 *   *   *

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

Thanks, ‘Carissa’, for the Ventura Shout-out

by Woody

I remember watching “Little Miss Sunshine” in a downtown Ventura movie theater a number of years ago and the audience erupted with applause and cheers at the dramatic pageant arrival scene when Steve Carell’s dad character, driving the family in a bright yellow VW Microbus, misses the freeway exit and has to take an overpass to turn around…

…and the brief on-screen “star” is our 101 California Street exit – only four blocks away from the movie theater we were watching in – with the high-rise Crowne Plaza beach hotel in the background.

If you are at all like me you feel a similar thrill whenever you see Ventura in a Hollywood role. For example, our downtown in “Swordfish” or several local spots in “Two Jakes” or our beloved pier in “God Bless America” to name three more.

I imagine it’s how Monterey’s “Cannery Row” neighborhood must have felt to be immortalized in John Steinbeck’s novel of the same name. Less famously, the fictional coastal town of Cabrillo hints strongly of Ventura – and the old Star-Free Press – in my predecessor Chuck Thomas’ novel “Getting Off The Map.”

Well, a new book has me smiling and cheering for featuring Ventura in its pages. Actually, the fictional beach town is named Buena Vista, but make no mistake it is Buenaventura. From the beach and pier to Main Street and the foothills, its author – Dallas Woodburn – pays homage to her dear hometown through and through.

My daughter’s second novel, “Thanks, Carissa, For Ruining My Life” from Immortal Works, has just been published and – Boasting Dad Warning – instantly soared to No. 1 on Amazon’s list of Young Adult New Releases.

The story centers around two teenagers, Rose and Brad, who travel parallel journeys of self-discovery, empowerment, and acceptance after popular “queen bee” Carissa tears apart their lives. In Hollywood parlance, it’s “Brittany Runs a Marathon” meets “Some Kind of Wonderful.”

A wonderful kind of thing some writers like to do is scatter “Easter eggs” that only certain readers will find and recognize. “Carissa” has a basketful of such hidden treasures. For example, Tony’s Taco Shop is obviously Snapper Jack’s; Nature’s Grill makes a cameo as Nature’s Café; and in a role encompassing its own storyline is the Buena Vista radio station WAVE-104.3 that is, clear as a Santa Ana wind-blown summer day, Ventura’s KVTA-1590 where Dallas has been a guest on esteemed radio personality Tom Spence’s morning show. The observant reader will find more brightly dyed local gems.

Books are time machines and while “Carissa” will surely transport most readers back to high school, it carries me to when Dallas was only 6 or 7 and already dreaming of becoming an author. In my mind’s eye I can still see her, sitting tall on her knees, in a chair at the kitchen table and typing on her great-grandfather’s restored Underwood No. 5 typewriter. Punching the QWERTY keys, firmly with only her right index finger, she let her imagination soar.

There was modern magic in that 1911 heirloom: in second grade, Dallas had a poem – “Peanut Butter Surprise” about a PB&J sandwich made with a jellyfish because the grape jelly ran out – published in The Star’s “Kids Corner” feature and in fifth grade self-published a book of short stories and poems that sold 2,000 copies.

The little girl’s big dreams kept coming true with a play produced off-Broadway, a John Steinbeck Creative Writing Fellowship, and a handful of awards for her debut novel “The Best Week That Never Happened” two years ago.

Thanks to “Carissa” her writing life remains charmed, not ruined.

 *   *   *

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

 

Story From An Enchanted Keyboard

by Woody

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life,” Oscar Wilde famously wrote, but sometimes it is indeed the latter.

For example, my novel in progress features an enchanted typewriter upon which things that are typed magically come true. To illustrate how this imitates life, let me share something I typed three decades ago:

“The storm clouds are clearing. From here on out it is going to be rainbows for Dallas. Life will be an endless string of tap-ins for birdie, 40-serving-loves, proms and roses and four-leaf clovers.”

The computer keyboard I wrote that column on proved enchanted. Sure, there have been some stepped-on thorns and stepped-in cow pies in her field of four-leaf clovers – but mostly it has been a Rose Parade and Disneyland and a sunset beach walk for my daughter who was born three months prematurely weighing 2 pounds, 6 ounces.

My little preemie Dallas and and her daughter Maya.

She came into the world by an emergency Cesarean section because my wife’s preeclampsia, a life-threatening collection of syllables for both mother and fetus, spiked rapidly out of control. Santa Maria did not have a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit so a four-person team of specialists flew from Fresno to perform the dicey delivery and – if prayers were answered – take the newborn back with them.

Lisa pleaded for anesthesia as she did not want to be awake and NOT hear a newborn’s cry, but because she recently ate before the abrupt turn of events this was not possible. Holding her new daughter also proved not possible because mother and child both required continued emergency care.

All the while, my hours passed like days before a doctor finally came out to tell me I had a daughter. “She’s a real fighter,” he added and she would need to be.

While Lisa remained in the Operating Room, an NICU incubator-on-wheels was rushed to the ambulance bay for a siren-fast ride to the airport and a flight to Fresno. En route, however, the four superheroes in scrubs stopped briefly in the hospital’s hallway.

In one of the kindest acts I have ever experienced, and surely ever will, a surgical nurse opened one of the round portals and told me to place my hand on Dallas’ tiny, delicate, skinny torso. In the coming days and weeks, I would have to scrub my hands with disinfecting medical soap for a full three minutes before visiting Dallas in the NICU in Fresno, but presently there was no time for that.

The angelic nurse explained, calmly but quickly, that Dallas had not yet felt skin-to-skin contact because Lisa had been unable to and the medical team of course wore surgical gloves. The nurse emphasized that such real touch is vital.

Her grave tone and penetrating eyes delivered an unspoken cold truth as well: “This might be the only opportunity your daughter will ever have to feel skin-to-skin touch.”

Thermal air rose out from the open portal as I timidly reached into the high-tech Plexiglas womb, carefully avoiding numerous wires and monitors, and ever so gently placed my hand on Dallas’ stomach. Her skin was warm and supremely soft and wondrous. It remains, to this day, arguably the most magical moment of my life.

That 15-1/2-inch baby girl now stands 5-foot-10 and has no heart or lung ailments as “extreme preemies” often do in adulthood. Indeed, she ran track and cross country through high school.

Too, Dallas has enjoyed proms and roses and four-leaf clovers; her own book signings and wedding day and motherhood; and today, May 29, a healthy and happy 34th birthday.

Yes, my enchanted keyboard worked some real magic.

 *   *   *

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 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

Amber Rubarth is in the House

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

*

Small Audience,

Big Enchantment

            Picking up where I departed last week, serendipity smiled and Amber Rubarth sang and my daughter and I had a strawberries-in-wintertime “Daddy date” in August.

My travel writer friend Ken likes to remind me, “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.”

Heeding this sage advice, my daughter-who-now-has-a-daughter and I drove down a main thoroughfare in Fremont to a series of smaller and smaller streets with slower and slower speed limits, and eventually turned into a hidden neighborhood. After parking, we strolled in search of an address and at last went inside a quiet doorway.

It was not pure serendipity that guided us off the beaten path. My son had learned of a “house concert” featuring Amber Rubarth. Knowing how dearly his sister delights in Amber’s music, he bought two tickets with one stipulation: I must keep the destination a surprise.

Amber and Dallas after the “house concert.”

Mission accomplished. Not until she stepped inside the front door and was greeted by a host – and a table stacked with CDs and vinyl LPs – did my daughter realize she was about to see Rubarth in a private concert.

In my quarter-century as a sports columnist, I sat courtside at Lakers games and saw Pete Sampras from the first row; I stood on the field a yard behind the end zone for an entire 49ers-Rams playoff game and walked inside the ropes following Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods; and on and on, but I have never been closer to the action than at this concert.

My daughter and I sat left of the stage in the front row – which was also the back row. Well, if there had been a stage. Rubarth, an award-winning singer-songwriter, occupied a card table-sized patch of hardwood floor. If I straightened my legs, I literally ran the risk of tripping Amber if she took two steps in our direction.

It bears mentioning that everyone had amazing seats as there were by actual count only 23 people in attendance. Inside a lovely living room with a vaulted ceiling and a grand piano in one corner, the gathering sat on a couch, a love seat, kitchen and dining room chairs, and in the center back row – which was the third row – high-backed barstools.

With no mic and amplifier required, Amber’s voice seemed impossibly twice as pleasant as on recordings and three times more so than in a large venue. It was wondrous to close one’s eyes and get lost in her singing and guitar playing. But it was even more mesmerizing to watch her at her craft; to see her graceful fingers flex and dance; see the currents of emotions flow across her face with the changing notes; have her warm gaze catch yours and hold it, all from a few feet away.

Before songs, Amber shared their meanings and peeled open her life at the times she wrote them. After songs, she asked audience members about themselves. It wasn’t a concert so much as an intimate party.

Often ignoring her play sheet that rested on the piano, Amber frequently opened the floor for requests. Near evening’s end, my daughter asked for “Song to Thank the Stars” which she danced to at her wedding three years ago. Amber said it was one of her favorites as well and began to strum and sing.

One lyric: “I need a song to thank the stars / That you are mine.”

My feelings precisely as I enjoyed an enchanted summertime “Daddy date” with my grown-up little girl.

*

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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” …