Tag Archives: Woodburn

Laughing Through Mourning Tears

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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“Tonight’s the night we make Greg shoot milk out his nose,” the 10-year-old oldest of three brothers whispered conspiratorially to the middle sibling, two years his junior, as the youngest boy and victim, age 5, sat across the dinner table totally unaware.

For nearly six decades I have remained in the dark that one of the most memorable meals in our family lore had been orchestrated, at my expense, by my two big brothers. With the statute of limitations for being grounded having long expired, Doug, the middle brother, recently confessed to the premeditation during a beautiful eulogy for Jim.

Though their plan was hatched hastily, it nonetheless was executed to perfection: when I started drinking greedily like a parched man lost in a desert, a wicked wisecrack was delivered and the resultant burst of laughter turned my nose into an Old Faithful-like geyser of chocolate milk. If you have never had milk spew out your nose, I do not recommend it for it stings so greatly as to make your eyes cry.

Here is something else I want to share from the “Celebration of Life” honoring Jim’s masterpiece span that was cut far too short by cancer (today, September 13, he would have turned 69): Never be so afraid of saying the wrong thing that you fail to say anything to those who are grieving.

Indeed, I have come to realize since Jim’s passing, and my 97-year-old father’s death only a few months prior also to despicable cancer, that any words of condolence are more appreciated than no words.

Even just a couple words can speak volumes and mean the world. When I posted my column about Jim’s death on Facebook, a dear friend posted a comment of exactly two words in full—“Oh, Woody”—that touched my heart deeply and brought to mind a line by Bodil Malmsten, a Swedish poet, who once conceded: “This hurts too much for words.”

When words hurt too much, just the simple expression “I’m sorry” is a welcomed balm for grief. As another friend says to the idea of worrying about saying something awkwardly: “When it is said from the heart, it will be received by the heart.”

Those who shared their own memories of Jim, in person or by note, warmed my heart more than they can know. Donations in his honor, flowers or planting a memorial tree, or dropping off meals were all likewise touching.

At the service, I am not sure which was a more powerful salve for the soul: seeing the familiar faces one knows, without question, would be there—or faces that were wonderfully unexpected. Of the latter was a teacher from my adult kids’ past who, despite it being a school day, hustled nearly a mile on foot to the church during lunch break to express his condolences before the memorial got underway and then raced back to class.

Being in a mourning fog, and also mentally rehearsing the eulogy I would shortly give, I do not recall exactly what our teacher friend said to me. And yet I will not forget that he, and every single person who expressed condolences in any fashion at all, made Maya Angelou’s often-quoted words ring true:

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Doug, meanwhile, made me wonderfully feel 5 years old again with his belated confession. Had I been drinking milk I surely would have snorted it out while once again laughing through my tears.

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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

Writing Streak’s Rhythm Slows by Half

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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I have a thing for streaks.

I have been married to my college crush for 42 years, come next month, “God willing and the creek don’t rise” as the saying goes; have run at least three miles for 7,698 consecutive days and counting; and for 730 weeks in a row, also through kidney stones, Coronavirus and vacations, have written this general interest column for The Star.

Beginning today, it will instead run every other week.

A reader could be forgiven for hoping the cutback will improve the quality. After all, it will allow me to be twice as selective of my topics; to biweekly cull the worst—“least good” would be more charitable—column I would otherwise undertake and simply not write it. And thus tender only the better of the pair.

The fly in the QWERTY alphabet soup is that I possess no such writer’s ESP. Indeed, I am often surprised when a column I consider slightly frivolous strikes a chord with myriad readers who praise it more widely than ones I consider superior.

Compared to producing a fresh 600-word theme weekly, at first blush writing fortnightly seems like easy street, and downhill at that, yet to be honest it spawns more than a little anxiety. For the past 14 years my life has had a familiar rhythm; with the beat slowed by half, will I lose my writing groove?

Moreover, without a weekly deadline will Writer’s Block—something I have never believed in previously, precisely because deadlines are an inoculation against it—come knocking? Or, will I feel pressure to swing for a home run every at-bat and thus strike out more frequently instead of choking up on the bat handle now and again?

In my press box days of yesteryear, for a good while I wrote three columns a week. Then, for a time, it was pared to two and I suddenly felt an extra dose of pressure because each column carried 50 percent more weight. Before, when I wrote a clunker I had a chance to make amends in two days. But with only two columns per week, the next opportunity was three or four days away—and back-to-back foul outs quickly added up to a weeklong slump.

Similarly, now I will have to wait two Fridays instead of just one before I can try to make up for a subpar column. And bookended bungles, a full month of disappointing my readers, is a literary bogeyman peering over my shoulder.

So, then, why cut back? Let me first express gratitude to My Favorite Newspaper for affording me this time-honored soap box, stewarded before me by the esteemed Chuck Thomas and Bob Holt and Joe Paul, for too many newspapers have done away entirely with local columns. Therefore, even appearing in this space only every other week still feels like a sandcastle holding its own against a rising tide.

Again, why now? The recent release of my debut novel “The Butterfly Tree: An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations” has been such a rewarding experience, with readers and reviewers praising it and even a handful of awards already honoring it, I have a growing hunger to write a second novel without delay and hopefully more.

Furthermore, the recent deaths of my father and eldest brother, just four months apart, have been stark reminders not to put off things one wishes to do. Lastly, with my first weekly column appearing July 24, 2010, this past July 19th’s column seemed like serendipitous anniversary timing.

So, see you next week—oops, make that in two weeks.

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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.

Hands of Time Stop, Tears Start

by Woody

The photograph is of two hands, right hands both, one holding the other. More specifically, the hand on top is wrapped around the index and middle fingers of the bottom hand, with the top thumb resting upon – in truth, gently and tirelessly caressing – the metacarpophalangeal knuckles.

Look more closely and you will see that the embraced hand is more aged and that the younger wrist wears two similar bracelets: a sunny yellow “Livestrong” cancer silicon band and a green-and-yellow swirly one.

The joined hands are resting on a red fleece blanket mostly, partially on a blue bedsheet, and if the photo were not cropped so tightly you would see an oxygen breathing tube running across the mattress – and suddenly the yellow bracelet would take on added gravity.

Pop and me…

For 20 years I have worn this Livestrong bracelet in remembrance of friends and family and colleagues, a roll call that has tragically grown far too lengthy, who have died from cancer. The swirly bracelet, meanwhile, is in similar honor of cancer survivors, the green, like spring leaves on a tree, signifying lives still blooming.

Two days ago, on the last day of February if this were not a Leap Year, the bracelet honoring my 97-year-old dad who previously defeated an array of serious skin cancers, and most recently battled bone cancer, switched from green-and-yellow to all yellow. On John Steinbeck’s birthday, just as the Pacific sun was setting on the Channel Islands, a sight my dad dearly loved to watch but for the past few weeks could not, Dr. James Dallas Woodburn II – a formal mouthful of syllables but just “Pop” to me – left our earthly Eden.

The eyes may be windows to the soul – Pop’s were blue and clear until the very end – but it is his hands I wish to focus on here. Those hands had magic in them. I mean that truly. Those hands saved far too many lives to count, and restored the quality of life to endless more, for they were a surgeon’s hands.

During my final visit with my dad…

Amazingly, those hands, quite large and strong, kept their skill and dexterity well into their ninth decade, performing their magic in the Operating Room at Ventura’s Community Memorial Hospital, where he joined the staff in 1972, in mid-career, until three years ago. That’s right, Pop was operating until age 94, albeit in the latter decade only assisting. It may not be a record for surgical longevity, but surely it makes the hall of fame.

Those hands, belonging to the son of a country physician, had the proud joy of performing their magic alongside his two eldest sons, my older brothers, general surgeons both.

“Are Jim and Doug as good as you were?” I asked Pop during our daily evening visits the past few months. With Midwest modesty, for he was born and raised in Ohio, he answered, “You’ll have to ask them,” but his wry smile revealed his true feelings of mastery.

Those hands, as a boy tossed, footballs and baseballs and shot basketballs with his friends and later did so with his three sons.

Those hands, as father of the bride, guided his fourth-and-youngest child down the wedding aisle.

Those hands blessedly held nine grandchildren, “The Grands” he proudly called them, and even more blessedly held “a lucky 13 Greats.”

Those hands did crossword puzzles in a flash, always in ink, up until the final few days when his razor-sharp mind finally became foggy from increased painkillers.

While heinous cancer and toxic chemotherapy, four rounds of three sessions each, a medical torture for a nonagenarian, seemingly stole every ounce sans his skin and bones, those hands amazingly did not become skeletal and knobby. Indeed, caressing the hand in the photo, I marveled at its soft and smooth skin.

Long, long ago on a blind date in college, on a hayride, those hands of a Navy veteran, back home from World War II, bravely held the hand of a beautiful blonde college coed for the first time, and would eventually hold that woman, my mom, through 38 years of marriage before she died three decades ago.

 I like to imagine those hands now gently brushing away the happy tears from the cheeks of my mom upon their reunion.

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Woody’s debut novel “The Butterfly Tree: An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations” will be published in late March.

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.

Part 2: Books That K.O.’d Me In 2022

by Woody

When a book really knocks me out, to paraphrase Holden Caulfield in the knockout novel “The Catcher in the Rye,” I like to pick up another offering by the same author. This habit served me well in 2022 during my annual quest to read at least one book a week for the calendar year.

Paul Gallico originally knocked me out many years ago with “The Snow Goose,” a novella I have reread umpteen times, and this year I visited him anew with “Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris.” This slim book was so thick with fun that I instantly picked up its sequel, “Mrs. Harris Goes to New York,” which was about twice as long and I think I liked it twice as much simply because I had already fallen in love with the feisty and lovely Mrs. Harris.

“84, Charing Cross Road” by Helene Haff is another absolutely charming little book that will be especially loved by those who adore bookstores. This London “Road” led me to Haff’s “Q’s Legacy: A Delightful Account of a Lifelong Love Affair with Books,” a sequel that is actually a prequel. Both are quite enjoyable, but if you only read one of the two go with “84.”

I’m not sure which I favored more from Antoine Laurain – “The Red Notebook,” a mystery and love story kneaded into one, or “French Rhapsody” about the members of a band that missed out on a record label deal because a letter was lost in the mail only to be delivered 33 years later.

Speaking of music, Jennifer E. Smith’s “The Unsinkable Greta James,” about an indie rock star whose star has fallen and who has had a falling out with her widower father and finds herself on an Alaskan cruise ship with him, was in the running for my favorite book of the year. Three more contenders were “The Violin Conspiracy” by Brendan Slocumb; “Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr; and “The River Why” by David James Duncan.

The beautiful writing in “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey” by Walter Mosely led me to his imaginative and powerful short story collection “The Awkward Black Man.” Two more short-stories home runs are “The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories” by Jess Walters and “Liberation Day” by George Saunders.

Six more high-fives: “The Bartender’s Tale” by Ivan Doig; “The Cicada Tree,” a debut novel set in the South by Robert Gwaltney; “The Reading List” by Sara Nisha; “Under the Wave at Waimea” by Paul Theroux; and “Catcher’s Keepers” by J.D. Spero, imagining what if Holden Caufield had met John Lennon’s killer before the assassination happened. Also, with the disclaimer that he’s my second cousin, the novel “Cutter” by J. Woodburn Barney.

“What The Wind Knows” by Amy Harmon is an engaging time-travel story anchored around the Irish Revolution in the early 1900s. Speaking of Ireland, I happened upon Irish writer Claire Keegan’s “Small Things Like These” which led me to her “Foster.” Both novellas are very short, and very good, with hints of “David Copperfield.”

The new novel “Demon Copperhead,” meanwhile, carries more than a mere hint in its 560 pages. Naming a title character so closely to Charles’ Dickens’ famous orphan protagonist, with an echoing theme, sets a high bar but Barbara Kingsolver’s masterful storytelling is tall to the task.

Indeed, excluding my daughter Dallas’s two 2022 releases – the YA novel “Thanks, Carissa, For Ruining My Life” and adult short story collection “How to Make Paper When the World is Ending” – “Demon Copperhead” knocked me out more than any other book in 2022.

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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

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.

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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