Tag Archives: graduates

Dear New Graduates, Be ‘Stonecatchers’

by Woody

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

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With graduation season upon us, I would like to share with the Classes of 2025 an excerpt from my novel “The Butterfly Tree.”

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“Where’re we going, Grandpa?”

“It’s a surprise,” Tavis told his nine-old twin grandsons riding in the backseat.

“Give us a hint,” Moswen pleaded.

“What’re we gonna do when we get there?” Lemuel joined in.

“Catch stones,” Tavis said, sunshine in his voice. “You’re gonna be Stonecatchers.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Lem said warily.

“And fun!” Mos animatedly added.

Tavis glanced in the rearview mirror at the boys; their smiles contagiously jumped to his lips.

“Grandpa, are you a Stonecatcher?”

“I try to be,” Tavis said.

“Do you catch the stones with a baseball mitt?”

“We didn’t bring our mitts.”

“You won’t need your baseball gloves,” Tavis assured.

“Who throws the stones?”

“Do they throw ’em hard?”

“Are the rocks big?”

The questions came like pitches in an automated batting cage with too little time between for answers.

“Time out, time out!” Tavis interrupted. “Listen up and I’ll tell you all about the mysteries of being a Stonecatcher.”

Mos and Lem leaned forward against the restraint of seatbelts, eager to hear a magical tale.

“Stonecatchers don’t actually catch stones,” their grandpa began. “Well, I suppose a long, long time ago they did and that’s where the name comes from. When someone hurled a stone at a person who was unable to defend him or herself, the Stonecatcher jumped in and caught the flying rock.

“But nowadays a Stonecatcher is someone who helps another person who is defenseless or in need – like protecting them from a bully, or buying a homeless person a meal, or donating blood to save someone who’s ill. You can think of a Stonecatcher as a Good Samaritan.

“Lem – Mos – you boys come from a long proud heritage of Stonecatchers.”

“We do?” they said in stereo.

“Oh, yes,” Tavis resumed. “Your many greats-great-grandfather, Dr. Lemuel Jamison, was a Stonecatcher who adopted identical twins when they lost their mother and father. He had actually saved the twins’ lives when they were born and thus they were named Jamis and Lemuel – your namesake, Lem – in his honor.

“Those twins’ real father, Tamás – that’s where your middle name comes from, Mos – was a Stonecatcher by helping your five-times-great-grandfather, Sawney Jordan, escape from slavery on the Underground Railroad. Sawney, in turn, was a fearless Stonecatcher because he swam into bullet fire trying to rescue Tamás who had been shot.

“Yes, the Jamisons and Jordans have been filled with Stonecatchers. Your Grandpa Flynn was a Stonecatcher for America in the Vietnam War. And Grandma Love was a Stonecatcher for your daddy when he was young and lost and needed a roof over his head – and, most of all, needed some love.

“I’m definitely proud of the Stonecatchers your parents are. They’re always helping others in big ways and little ways – sometimes it’s the small acts that turn out to be the biggest ones.

“For example, it’s hard to imagine a simple Hello, how’re you doing today? being important. But to someone who’s having a bad day, that small gesture can mean the world.

“I read a story about a boy who was planning to run away from home because he had no friends. That very day at school, during lunch, a classmate saw him sitting off by himself and went over and ate with him. They had a nice conversation and the dejected boy changed his mind because he no longer felt so lonesome. You see, being a Stonecatcher doesn’t always require bravery – sometimes kindness is all that’s needed.

“Mos – Lem – I expect you boys to be Stonecatchers. I want you to go sit with the person who’s all alone. I want you to cheer for the teammate who rarely gets off the bench. I want you to stand up to the bully who picks on others.

“And right now, I want you to help me paint the kitchen for a lovely elderly lady. Her name is Jewell. That’s how we’ll be Stonecatchers today.”

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Dear newly minted graduates, as you venture out into the world and pursue your dreams, please be Stonecatchers along the way.

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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.

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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.

2021 Commencement Address

by Woody

“Ladies and gentlemen of the class of (2021): Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.”(1)

“The best advice I can give anybody about going out into the world is this: Don’t do it. I have been out there. It is a mess.”(2) “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go for it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”(3)

“Find your Passion with a capital P!”(4) “The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match. Each one of you is a fuse.”(5) “You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world’s happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.”(6)

“Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves.”(7) “Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.”(8) “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”(9)

“Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.”(10) “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”(11) “Always, always, always, always, always, always, always do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.”(12) “Fortune befriends the bold.”(13)

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”(14) “You can’t achieve mountaintop dreams with downhill effort.”(15) “And will you succeed? Yes! You will indeed! 98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.”(16)

“Make today your masterpiece.”(17) “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”(18) “You can’t do anything about yesterday, and the only way to improve tomorrow is by what you do right now.”(19)

“Do not judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”(20) “The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”(21)

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”(22) “Learn as if you were to live forever; live as if you were to die tomorrow.”(23) “When you get, give; when you learn, teach.”(24)

“Wise are those who learn that the bottom line doesn’t always have to be their top priority.”(25) “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.”(26) “If you don’t make an effort to help others less fortunate than you, then you’re just wasting your time on Earth.”(27)

“There is a good reason they call these ceremonies ‘commencement exercises’ – graduation is not the end, it’s the beginning.”(28) “When you leave here, don’t forget why you came.”(29) “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”(30)

“When you leave home, you take home with you.”(31)

(1-Mary Schmich. 2-Russell Baker. 3-Howard Thurman. 4-Wayne Bryan. 5-Eward Koch. 6-Dale Carnegie. 7-James M. Barrie. 8-Anthony J. D’Angelo. 9-Ralph Waldo Emerson 10-Ray Bradbury. 11-e.e. cummings. 12-Emerson. 13-Emily Dickinson. 14-Edmund Hillary. 15-Woody Woodburn. 16-Dr. Seuss. 17-John Wooden. 18-Mark Twain. 19-Wooden. 20-Robert Louis Stevenson. 21-Nelson Henderson. 22-Henry David Thoreau. 23-Wooden. 24-Maya Angelou. 25-William Arthur Ward. 26-Winston Churchill. 27-Wayne Bryan. 28-Orrin Hatch. 29-Adlai E. Stevenson. 30-Dr. Seuss. 31-Angelou.)

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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 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

 

Column: Masterpiece Grads

by Woody

New Grads, Create A Masterpiece Day (And Repeat)

Dear Class of 2015, I am honored to have been invited (albeit by myself) to address you here today.

Michelangelo, when asked how he had created one of his masterpiece sculptures, replied simply: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”1angel

Creating your own masterpiece life, dear graduates, as you journey forward requires a similar process: You must see the angel – your passion – and then set it free.

For Michelangelo, this meant chipping away the pieces of marble that did not look like the angel or the horse or David. In our lives, this means chipping away the distractions and challenges and even the negative people who are preventing us from achieving our dreams.

In addition to being sculptors, you are also painters who create your masterpiece by adding brushstokes of color to the canvas. In other words, by adding determination and patience and love, to name just three key hues.

For good reason my dear mentor John Wooden advised focusing on creating your masterpiece day and not your masterpiece life. A masterpiece sculpture is created one chisel strike at a time; a masterpiece painting one brushstroke at a time; a masterpiece novel one keystroke at a time. So is a masterpiece life – private and professional – created one masterful day at a time, one after another, until they add up to masterpiece weeks, months, years.

To focus on a masterpiece life, or even a masterpiece year, is too daunting. Better to keep in mind this additional wisdom from Coach Wooden: “Little things add up to big things.”

A parable about a starfish emphasizes the big power of little acts. It was a beautiful Southern California morning and a beachcomber was walking along the sand that was littered with kelp and driftwood from a violent storm the night before. In the distance he noticed a man bend down to pick something up and then toss it into the ocean.

Every few steps, the man repeated this calisthenic: stop, bend, stand, toss. But what was he throwing, the beachcomber wondered: Driftwood sticks? Broken seashells? Skipping stones?

As the two morning walkers neared each other, the beachcomber finally realized the man was picking up starfish that, by the hundreds, had been washed ashore by the violent storm’s high surf and left stranded.

The beachcomber could not help but laugh at the other man’s futile efforts. “You’re just wasting your time,” he said. “There are too far many starfish for you to make a difference before they die.”1gradpic

“Maybe,” the man replied as he gently tossed another starfish into the waves. “But to this one I’m making a world of difference.”

As you venture out into the world, Class of 2015, keep an eye out for “starfish” who need your help.

Before closing, I would like to share a passage near the end of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel, Fahrenheit 451: “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.”

These words remind me of a poem by my grandfather Ansel, handwritten on the title page of his medical college textbook Modern Surgery and dated Oct. 1, 1919, less than a year before Bradbury was born:

“The worker dies, but the work lives on / Whether a picture, a book, or a clock

“Ticking the minutes of life away / For another worker in metal or rock

“My work is with children and women and men / Not iron, not brass, not wood

“And I hope when I lay my stethoscope down / That my Chief will call it good.”

By finding your passion and work that you want to live on, dear graduates, and by creating your masterpiece day, over and again, in the end your Chief will call it good.

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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-mock-upCheck 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”