Weekly View » CJ Woods III

What? The Fall?

CJ Woods III — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:08:09 +0000

I was looking at the work of an orb-weaver that had crafted a web across a good portion of my kitchen window. I idly noted a curled and yellowed leaf caught in the web. Later that day, I saw the spider. It clung to the threads at the middle of the web, and by the end of the day, it had also bundled up a snack. The snack was in the shape of a stinkbug, and I thought, “Circle of life, man: circle of life.” The next day, both the spider and its snack were gone. From my chair in the living room, I looked out at the tree-limbs, its leaves bright with sun. I smiled at the passage of leaves across the window, and started softly singing “Autumn Leaves.” Then I thought, “Wait: what? Fall? Noooo!”
I had failed to notice that the year had blasted straight through summer and skidded into fall, which means that “The Old Man” — winter — is coming. So now, on my morning walks to the store, I see those yellowed leaves gathered at the edge of the grasses. In the spring, white fluff from some tree had clustered there like dust in the corners of my apartment. Now that the advent of fall has been foreshadowed by the drifting leaves (hang on, leaves! Resistance is not futile!) I am no longer melting in the blazing heat of summer. I am sweating in terror at the thought that temperatures could take an 80 degree plummet, from 90 to 10. I am a proponent of the cycle of “spring, summer, repeat.” Winter follows fall, so I want to eliminate the precursor to the cold, wet, un-wonderland.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: I hate winter. I do not like cold and I don’t like ice; slush gets old and (sorry Seuss) I fell down twice, last year. Or winter. Anyway, snow, ice and cold, while necessary for the balance of Earth’s environments, are not my friends.
I moved from Madera, California (average temperature, warm and cozy) to Clarksville, Indiana (average temperature, not hot) in June of 1978. My bride and I agreed that our daughter needed to be closer to our families, both of which were in Pittsburgh. We did not move east to get closer to nasty weather, so I was surprised when my bride suggested that we go to the recently opened Paoli Peaks ski resort. She thought that we would enjoy skiing. “Wait: skiing. Does that not involve snow, ice and cold? Why would I do that on purpose?”
When I lived in St. Louis, I would take my two young children to Forest Park in the winter. I had been told that they would enjoy sledding down Art Hill, a slope in front of the St. Louis Art Museum. I remember watching as Lauryn walked gingerly down the slope, and seeing her fly into the air when a sledder clipped her heels. And what great joy it was to watch my son on a plastic disc, in uncontrolled flight down that same hill and — Oh! Sweet winter — plow through the hay bales used to contain sledders and into and across the street below, coming to a stop just before he plunged into the frozen pond that had been a serene and scenic summer delight. Bad things happen in winter.
Johnny Mercer’s English translation of a French song became the “Autumn Leaves” we know. When I hear the line, “… but I miss you most of all … when autumn leaves start to fall,” the “you” I miss is summer.

cjon3acd@att.net

Skidding Into Home

CJ Woods III — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 05:08:19 +0000

I was cackling and guffawing with my dear friend as she detailed her experience of shopping with her 16-year-old daughter on what she called “Old Folks Day.” She giggled, “We have to dodge walkers and canes and those motorized carts.” My own laughter skidded to a halt on the friction of a harsh reality: I was the butt of her joke.
I am in need of neither a cane, nor a walker. I get in a moderate amount of ambulation each day, so the motorized cart is also out. But I have ridden across the landscape of my life for more than six decades and though the face I see in the mirror does not resemble the face I imagine, I can prove an entitlement to the “Seniors’ Discount” at businesses that offer such a thing. Despite that, I have taken that discount only once, when I took my grandchildren to see a movie. I had a vaguely guilty sense of having stolen something.
When I was a young man living in Pittsburgh, Penn., I used to listen at night to a jazz station. They often played a song that I thought was called, “I’m Growing Old.” (I have since found that the artist I believed to have been the singer claims not to have sung it. I have yet to find a copy of the song, though I did find the poem and the poet who wrote it: John Godfrey Saxe.) When the song spoke of growing “fonder of the fire, mindful of the cold, and careless in dress,” it did not give me a vision of a life that might be my own. But I am now — ok, I admit it — in the seventh decade of my life, a number unimaginable to the twenty-something who had listened to that song.
On a recent visit to my fun-poking friend, (“dear friend:” an old-folks term) she watched as I tied the laces on my shoes and after noting that I did this each time I moved to another room — I am not a fan of the bare foot, unless it is under sheets, in a shower or buried in sand — she commented that I needed “slip-ons.” I responded to her, “I told Lisa (my eldest daughter) that if she ever saw me reaching for those brown plastic slip-ons that old men scuffle about in, she was to take me out back and shoot me. Just put me down.” I have no slip-ons, no fluffy sweaters that I miss-button, no “putter pants” with elastic waists. (Well, one pair of putter pants, purchased when I was about 10 years younger and did not know what putter pants were.) I am no cliché.
I have been told that I do not “look” my age, nor do I “act” my age. I’m not sure that I know what look I am supposed to have at this age, for I have never been here before. When I am shooting pool in the bar with my team, young people take pleasure in playing songs that they know will cause me to dance. After telling them that I am “107,” I bust a move, “wobble wobble,” or “Gangnam” style. These moves are a source of great embarrassment to my son, although hugely amusing to the bar’s patrons, judging from the lack of gunfire.
I am not going to “go gentle,” but I am “skidding in sideways,” and not by wrestling weights and stunning my feet against pavements. I believe that our inevitable slide into extinction can be “Electric,” and accomplished with grace and style and “The Cupid Shuffle.”

cjon3acd@att.net

Squirrel

CJ Woods III — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 05:08:41 +0000

One of my favorite movies has, as a bit player, a squirrel. In National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, the family cry is “SQUIRREL!” followed by that animal exploding from the interior of a Christmas tree. The squirrels in my old neighborhood displayed antics that amused me in much the same way as the movie squirrel. They were grey squirrels, with bushy tails in good times, and sparse tails in lean times. My apartment building was at the nexus of two “pocket parks” that people frequented; some people made temporary homes in these parks. The squirrels were accustomed to the presence of humans and, while cautious, were not in the least skittish. Not so, the red squirrels in my current micro-hood.
My micro-hood squirrels are a jittery bunch, and have the explosive lift of Olympic triple-jumpers. When I walk past the great tree that dominates the circular driveway, “Red” launches himself onto the grass, skitters across the gravel and vaults onto another tree. On my return, “Red” startles from the grass and clears the gravel driveway in an astounding leap, sticks the landing on a tree and immediately swivels around the tree to hide. The Russian judge would not hesitate to give him a 9. (I say “him,” but I cannot tell the gender of a squirrel. I was able to determine it one magnificently memorable time in my life, but my editor forbade the telling of the story.)
These squirrels live in a city: chances are pretty good that they are going to come into some contact with a bi-ped. A couple of years ago, while “touristing” on the grounds of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. with my grandpups, I acceded to their demands for a snack. At the food truck, a silent gathering of furry beings crept closer to us as we selected some goodies. Sitting on a bench with my two grandglories, I unwrapped the snacks, an act that emboldened the fuzzy snack-snatchers. The squirrels surrounded us, big eyeballs beseeching, demanding. These were gray squirrels, which had apparently grown accustomed to being fed by the patrons of the food trucks. They expected no less from my grandbeauties and me and we happily complied.
As the D.C. snackers snapped up crackers from our shoe tops, I was reminded of when my eldest daughter was very young, and her mother and I took her on a camping trip to Yosemite National Park. There, we stopped to see “The Lone Pine,” which was growing from a granite outcropping. This popular tourist destination had squirrels as an active part of the scenery. I have a picture of my two-year-old sitting on her mother’s lap, a swarm of squirrels surrounding them, looking for goodies. The older of those two humans seems to be the only one happy to see that swarm. (Not sure if a big load of squirrels is called “a swarm.”)
Collisions between man and animal generally resolve themselves in favor of the human; we bring an overwhelming capacity for destruction to the meetings, except in the case of 600-lb. deer and car windshields. Wild animals show an appropriate prudence, for the most part, in avoiding close contact. And while the startled bear, which was merely doing what it does in the woods, terrifies me, the startled city squirrel amuses me. I think, “Dude: I live here. This cannot be the first time that you’ve seen me.”
I see these red rockets on my daily walks and I try to walk softly in their micro-hood, to assure them that I mean no harm. But when they burst into frenzied flight, I cannot help but hear the Griswold family bellowing:
“SQUIRREL!”

cjon3acd@att.net

The Degrees

CJ Woods III — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 05:08:47 +0000

In June of 2020, I saw a post on a social media site that was directed to an arts group that I had joined. Deb S Kent was soliciting participation from the Eastside Arts Collective to help a family repaint their fence. The fence had been “defaced… with hate speech,” presumably because of the message the family had painted on it: “Black Lives Matter.”
I did not know Deb Kent, but the vandalized fence was two blocks North of where I lived on University Drive near Arlington Avenue. I walked up to the home and took pictures of the fence; I emailed Kori Williamson, the homeowner, and she responded that her husband, Brent Williamson, would call me. His call, and my interview with the two of them resulted in “Not On The Fence,” which was published in the Weekly View on June 18th, 2020.
My interactions with Deb Kent, whose clarion call to the Eastside Arts Collective got an answer from me, continued when I started to attend sessions at the Magpie Artspace, a creative space operated by Deb and Jamie Willis on S. Audubon Road in Irvington. I remember being aware of Jamie – a superb artist – as she hovered quietly near me while I sketched a picture of my youngest granddaughter. Sometime in December 2025, I got a notification from Deb about the “Feral Tweens Makers Lab,” a gathering at the Red Barn Arts Collective where those tweens could gather to make art. I contacted Deb, and begged her to allow my granddaughter, 7-year-old Myah, to attend the sessions. (“Tween” is generally defined as a child between the ages of 8 and 12 years.) Deb let the kid in, and Myah has been eagerly attending the sessions and bringing home creative works, including a representation of a graveyard, with moss and plastic skeletons.
In March of this year (2026), Myah wanted to have a lemonade stand, so her mother and her artsy-fartsy grandfather tricked out a table and made a sign: “Myah’s Super Amazing Lemonade,” and set up on the corner of North Hawthorne Lane and E. St. Joseph’s streets. My neighbors pitched in to subsidize Myah’s enterprise, while I scurried about the stand, trying to instill in the kid the need for cleanliness when dealing with public consumption of her product. In April, the Magpie sent out a call for kids to set up lemonade stands in front of the gallery. I responded immediately, and when I sent Deb a picture of Myah’s “Super Amazing” lemonade stand, she responded that she was “not at all surprised” that Myah was “an experienced entrepreneur.”
I have heard of a trivia game that challenges players to “connect any film actor to Kevin Bacon” in as few links as possible. Though I enjoy participating in trivia events, I’ve not played “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” When I ruminate on “degrees of separation” I think of my youth, when I listened to the R&B group, “The Three Degrees,” formed in 1963, and whose 1974 hit “When Will I See You Again,” was a chart-topper.
I learned of Deb Kent when she searched for artists to help the Williamson family (first degree) and established a connection with her when I attended her gathering of creatives. The second degree was when Myah was able to attend her “Feral Tween” sessions, where her creativity was given free reign; the third degree was the lemonade stand. I prefer to think of “the degrees,” not as measures of temperature or separation, but of connection. The three connections noted above make me happy, and I say this:
Hi, Deb.
cjon3acd@att.net

Tales From The Notebook Pile

CJ Woods III — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 05:08:38 +0000

One of my notebooks surfaced from the pile of debris that populates my living quarters. This notebook was notable (see that?) for its age; it dates to 2009. I wrote on the opening pages that the purpose of the book was to “catalogue the words I stumble upon in my reading…” Those words would be ones that I was unsure of the definitions. “Or just fascinate the (stuff) out of me.”
When I was an adult student at Indiana University Southeast, I had art classes and English classes. In one of the English classes, I was introduced to the idea of “the commonplace book,” a notebook used to record anything that I find useful. I bought one, and filled it with a lot of my thoughts, as well as many drawings. I’m not sure where that book is, though I have seen it in my piles of stuff in recent years. But the notebook that inspired this column has my thoughts about a brief interaction that I had with a man in St. Louis Missouri. In my 2011 column, “There’s That,” I wrote of two characters from the movie, “Garden State,” and how the man says to the woman, “I like you. There’s that, and I guess I have that.” (The column was reprinted in the September 12th, 2025, issue of the Weekly View.)
Someone that I met recently asked me a question that I have heard before. “How do you come up with ideas for your columns,” she asked. I always have difficulty explaining how these 600 words come to be, for I have no “tried and true” method for development of something to submit to my editor. I responded to that recent query by saying that my columns grow out of my “small collisions with life.” In another notebook, I wrote, “develop (a column around) Tillie Olsen’s short story.” In “I Stand Here Ironing,” Olsen’s protagonist says that she “(stands) here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron.” I read that story for my English Lit class at IUS in 1981, and in 2016, I wrote “April 1968.”
“I was standing at an ironing board, pressing the white smock I wore as an attendant at a psychiatric institution” when my two friends “came trembling into the doorway.” Gina and Byrd were two women I had met at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, which I attended during the day; they were also neighbors of mine, and on April 4th, 1968, they told me that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been murdered. “I paused for a second, looked down, and continued my ironing.” My recounting of that “small collision with life” was accepted by the editor of this publication. “April 1968” was reprinted in the Weekly View on April 9th, 2021, close to the 53rd anniversary of Dr. King’s death.
My friend Mary Hanna Wilson and I attend DJ Trivia at Mikie’s Pub in Beech Grove, and at one recent visit, I told her what I knew of the origin of the one-finger salute. Mary told me to “develop a column” about that, and I dragged out my current notebook, and dutifully wrote, “develop ‘origins of’ …” The “middle finger” was one of the first things to “develop” on the list.
I found another notebook that had a record of my “collision with life;” I’ll not recount it here, for I want to develop that for another column, but that column will detail my record of a fence (not Pittsburgh’s Hill District playwright August Wilson’s “Fences,”) but an Irvington fence.
Stay tuned.

cjon3acd@att.net

Fringe Fun and Friends Too

CJ Woods III — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 05:08:35 +0000

If you are one of the people in the Indianapolis area who did not go to the 21st year of the IndyFringe Festival, you can talk to another person who did: “It was a superb experience” they will say. The Creative Director of this publication allowed me to accompany her to two — count them, 2 — showings of “Ad Libs: The Show: The Experience!” The second iteration was different from the first, and Weekly View Correspondent Mary Kuhns, Paula, and I sat with one of the players from another show. Skye Webb Walker, from “Female Troubles,” got one of the envelopes passed out to “Ad Libs” attendees, who then present them to the performers to incorporate into their show.
Fringing is a fun time for friends, both old and new. After seeing “PsyWrn Simone’s Black Thread: Songs that Nina Taught Me,” on Friday, August 21st, Paula and I met two Fringers. Cindy and Deborah were from Tampa and Jacksonville Florida, respectively, and seemed to have enjoyed Simone’s concert as much as we had. As we chatted, a young lady handed us a card announcing her show, “Ambiguous.” I asked Tiffany Michelle Foster what her show was about. She told me that the ambiguity revolved around her racial identity. On Saturday, August 22nd, Paula and I saw “Fleet Week,” a rousing presentation by the Indianapolis Men’s Chorus, and “Ready Yet?” by Theo Renee, from Ypsilanti, Michigan.
Paula had arranged to meet Mary Kuhns (her daughter) at the Feast Of Lanterns on Saturday evening, and she graciously allowed me to tag along. Music drifted across the crowd, and as we browsed the “Artist’s Row,” a woman asked me if I was “CJ.” I was delighted to see Mary Ann again. I had written of having spent time “Making Community” (The Weekly View, July 16th, 2026) on my front porch with her and her husband, Steve. I had wanted to see the two of them again, for I wanted to ask how to spell her name. On this day, Mary Ann introduced me to her two sisters, Julie, and Diane. All three were wearing sparkling tiaras, and I serenaded them with a snippet from “Dancing Queen” by the band, ABBA. Mary Kuhns took a picture of her mother and me and my three friends, two of whom were new inductees into the “CJ Friendship Club.” At the time of our meeting, I also did not know that my bit of singing to them would be foreshadowing another IndyFringe performance.
On the next day, Paula and I saw “Queens,” a tale of the head-lopping King Henry VIII, who sits chained on purgatory’s throne as his murderous insults are recounted by a “sinister Fool.” Unlike the three queens I had serenaded at the Feast Of Lanterns, these queens and mistresses were all doomed to die for not having borne the king an heir. We also saw “Ambiguous,” and I got to tell Tiffany about my racially diverse family, and my youngest granddaughter. Born to a bi-racial mother, she has a White grandmother and father, and a Black grandfather, and she is blonde (ish) and blue-eyed. I hope that she will identify — as Tiffany stated in her closing — as “human.”
Attendance at the IndyFringe Festival always presents opportunities to see delightful stories, have fun, and bond with friends. My friend of more than 40 years, Paula Nicewanger (this publication’s Creative Director) got to meet my friend of several months after we had spent several days and evenings sipping from the cups of joy provided by the IndyFringe performers.
Their arts and craft augment the joy of friendship.

cjon3acd@att.net

Singing Again

CJ Woods III — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 05:08:29 +0000

On August 16th of this year, I had the pleasure of accompanying the Creative Director of this publication to an IndyFringe performance in the Arabian Room at the Murat Theatre. When asked to choose from several selections, I told Paula Nicewanger I wanted to see “Ad Libs: The Show: The Experience!” It was not until we arrived at the theater that I told her that my notes on the show indicated that there would be audience participation. As the audience members came into the venue, each one was asked to vote on a name, and were given an envelope with a number. My envelope was prompt number S1. Paula and I entered the theater and sat in the front row.
Unlike my lonely S1, the other envelopes had specific instructions for the performers to work into their routines. We watched other patrons come to the stage, where they were asked their names and presented their envelopes with the prompts for the performers. Hilarity ensued as the performers created unlikely and humorous scenes using the written prompts. The last three prompts were S1, S2 and S3, and those three audience members were invited to sit in chairs near the stage. S1 was asked to decide which member of the troupe should be eliminated from the final scenes, and ham that I am, I pointed to a performer and remembered the opening word to Natalie Cole’s song, “I Wish You Love.” I waved to the cast member and sang out, “Goodbye…”
I have written before of my joy in singing. I recently came upon a neighbor as she left her house, headed toward her car. I sang a bit of song to her and received an unexpected hug. I sing Lionel Richie’s “Hello” to the staff when I enter the cidery I frequent and sing again when I leave: “Goodbye; No use leading with our chins. This is where our story ends; never lovers, ever friends…” For the last couple of years, I have been a member of a choral group called Harmony Collected, which is organized and directed by Dr. Webb Parker. I sing my heart out and am appreciative of the opportunity to make community with like-minded singers. The group is at present on a break, but will reconvene on September 1st, 2026, with a season preview party — an Open Gathering — and the first rehearsal on September 8th. The first concert is scheduled for December 13th, and some members will be traveling to London in June of 2027, to deliver the UK premier of Kyle Pederson’s “A Vision Unfolding.”
It is not too late to join Harmony Collected, to sing and make community with people who like to sing and make community. We used to sing under the auspices of the Irvington Arts Collective, but we have been rebranded as Open Circle Arts. And our circle is open: All are welcome. You do not need to audition, nor do you need to be able to read music. Just show up and sing, as I do. I am a tenor, and I cannot read music. In practices and performances, I will stand next to another tenor, and sing the notes they sing. And we are given “practice tracks,” a recorded breakdown of the individual alto, soprano, tenor, and bass parts of the songs. Come on and sing with me.
As for my impromptu demonstration of song, “Ad Libs: The Show: The Experience!” can be seen on August 21st, at 9:30 pm, and August 22nd, at 6:30 pm. Maybe you’ll get an envelope and an opportunity to sing.

cjon3acd@att.net

The Use of Language

CJ Woods III — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 05:08:16 +0000

A woman called the office I managed in Culver City California, and I answered the phone; she asked for me and I replied, “This is he.” She then exclaimed, “Your mother taught you well!” Her comment about my reply was perhaps because I did not respond with “This is him.” But it was not my mother who “taught me well” in the use of the language, but my abusive father.
I’ve written before of the beatings and burnings administered to his family by my father, but one of the demands that he made of his children was that they speak the language “properly.” Autocrat that he was, he also required his first three children to write their full and complete names on their school papers. Not, “Jon Woods,” (me) or “Jerri Woods” (my brother) or “Jaci Woods,” (my sister.) Each school day, we brought home papers inscribed, “Clement Jon Woods, III,” and “Charl Jerrom Woods,” and “Caryn Jacquelyn Woods.” And on the weekend, we fled to the Carnegie Library in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh, where, as my mother noted many years later, we read to “escape.”
A prominent politician had a way of speaking where he would pause, inserting “err,” or “um.” I learned that this was a “speech disfluency,” which is “any of various breaks, irregularities, or non-lexical vocables which occur within the flow of otherwise fluent speech.” Some mean-spirited writers, eager to degrade the politician, would pounce on those pauses as evidence of a lack of critical thinking. Smarter writers gave me the definition of speech disfluencies, and why we use them, and it is often a pause to think. But there are a lot of speech peccadillos in the vocal world.
On one of the seven thousand judge shows that I watch, a litigant was testifying and kept tagging each sentence with, “You know what I’m sayin’?” Sometimes the sentences were not completed before he asked if the judge knew what he was saying. Another litigant on another show asked of the judges, “Do you feel me?” I think that phrase is asking if “you” understand, and/or agree with whatever situation is being discussed. You know? As I have written before, those kinds of statements make me grind my back teeth to powder. And what about “real quick?” I have heard one person tell another to “come here, real quick,” or “can I (do something) real quick.” But when someone says, “Just a second,” it is never a “second” that is needed. And why is it that we always either “jump” or “hop” into the shower. With all the modern, low entry shower stalls, why can we not just, like, “step” into the shower?
I used to gallop to the convenience store to get the Sunday edition of The New York Times, so that I could read a column about writing. A few years ago, I learned that the author of that column was an ardent segregationist who had written a “deeply disturbing essay” titled “The Hell He Is Equal,” positing that people who share my African background should not be granted equal rights. I don’t think his column is still being published (and that screed was rejected by The Saturday Evening Post), but he gave me some sound advice on the art of writing, the principles of which I apply to my speech.
Another little tooth-grinder for me is when people meander about a conversation, ostensibly making a case for something, then pause to ask the listener, “Does that make sense?” I always want to respond with “NO!”
Nor do I know what you’re saying.

cjon3acd@att.net

Let There Be Music

CJ Woods III — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 05:08:51 +0000

A friend from a social media site sent me a message, inviting me to attend a concert at the Jazz Kitchen in Indianapolis, on August 1st. She included information about the headliner, Clint Breeze, who was to be joined by Louisville Kentucky Hammond organist Kendal “Keys” Carter, and Indianapolis saxophonist Brandon Douthitt. Mary Lou’s message said that she had an extra ticket, and I hesitated about 1/10th of a second before I said that I would love to attend. I remembered having seen Carrington Clinton — Clint Breeze — when he played with jazz guitarist Charlie Ballantine at the Jazz Kitchen, and I do like jazz, so there was that.
On Sunday, July 25th, I had traveled to Greenfield Indiana with another friend to see bands play bluegrass and roots music. I sing with Tim’s wife in the Harmony Collected chorus (soon to be called Open Circle Chorus) and I rode with him to Greenfield to enjoy an evening of entertaining music. Tim’s invitation and my acceptance of it were perhaps, the inspiration for my acceptance of Mary Lou’s subsequent invitation; as the O’Jays sang in 1975, “I love music.”
Mary Lou pulled up to the house that I rent at about 4:50 p.m. on Saturday; a slight rain was falling, and I had armed myself with a small, green umbrella, which I did not use when I darted out to her car. I climbed into the front seat, and Mary Lou introduced me to her two sisters, who were seated in the rear. I chatted with Katie and Beth as Mary Lou navigated the broken, blasted, and flooded streets on the way to the Jazz Kitchen on N. College Avenue. Once there, Mary Lou let the sisters out of the car with me and went to find parking. When she rejoined us, we four were shown to a table near the front of the stage, sitting at stage right. We were given dinner menus, and I chose what I thought was a modest salad, but we all received our meals in great white bowls that seemed large enough in which to swim.
As we ate and chatted, Katie and Beth told me of their sojourns in North Carolina and Portland Oregon. I told Katie that I have family in NC, and that we called the state, “North Cackalacka.” Once the musicians took the stage, conversation was limited to excited exclamations as Clint Breeze worked his “kit,” (assemblage of drums, cymbals, and metal hardware) Brandon Douthitt made his alto sax squeal and Kendal Carter, in the tradition of Johnny “Hammond” Smith, a jazz organist who was also from Louisville, created soulful sounds on his own Hammond organ.
We four, in appreciation for the showmanship and musicianship shown by the three on the stage, had our own joyous outbursts and exclamations. Katie and I were more animated; Mary Lou and Beth were more restrained. At the end of the evening, we climbed into Mary Lou’s car, and headed home. When Mary Lou pulled up to my door, I remembered what Beth had told me about having seen a young woman working on my lawn, who gave her the gift of a dandelion “ripping-out” device. I told her that was probably my daughter. As I exited the car, I sang parts of the song that my mother always asked me to sing: “Thanks, for the time that you’ve given me…” I pointed to each of the three women in the car, and said, “You’re once, twice, three times a lady…”
I hope they knew how much I loved that musical experience with them.

cjon3acd@att.net

Black Men Can’t Swim

CJ Woods III — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 05:08:05 +0000

In a conversation with an Indianapolis Indiana native, I noted that the high school that I attended in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania had a swimming pool in the basement. That person was surprised, saying that her high school did not have a pool. I told her that I was on the school’s swim team, an activity for which I had earned an athletic “letter.” I thought of that conversation when Paula Nicewanger, the Creative Director of this publication, and I had an opportunity to attend Indy Shorts 2026, presented by Heartland Film. Two of the films dealt with Black men trying to learn to swim.
On Wednesday, July 22nd, the Living Room Theaters hosted a series of short films under the designation of “On A Mission.” Those five films included one that resonated with me. “Can’t Float” is about “(a) 30-something Black man (who) confronts his lifelong fear of the water, and the weight of U.S. historical stereotypes about Black people and swimming, as he commits to finally learning how to swim.” At the end of the five films, there was a question and answer (Q & A) session with filmmakers. When the opportunity arose to ask questions of the writer/director of “Can’t Float,” I raised my hand. I told Dave Schilling that I saw another Indy Shorts film that dealt with a similar subject. “Yeah; we hate each other,” was his humorous reply. I asked if his film was reinforcing the stereotype that Black people cannot swim. (I had not read the promotional information that I quoted above.) Schilling said that his film was a depiction of his efforts to “get past boundaries” and overcome stereotypes. His family is multi-racial, and at the end of the film, his character, having failed to learn to float, is joined by his hugely pregnant, white wife.
Schilling told me that one of his motivations to learn to swim was to be able to safeguard his son around water. (His son is now 9-years old and is one of the children in the movie.) “Can’t Float” shows Schilling’s character joining the only available swim class; he is the lone adult among many children. Schilling also told me that learning to swim, for Black people, is also about access to facilities. When Paula and I spoke to Schilling, she laughed about the irony that she cannot swim, and I can. “And I’m white!” she giggled, pointing out the obvious. But for me, access to pools was not a problem, though I grew up in the 1960s, when segregation was the norm. The exception was my high school; Schenley was built to be inclusive. Schilling asked me where I grew up, and when I told him the Hill District in Pittsburgh, he said, “August Wilson.” (I told him that my sister’s boyfriend, Sala Udin, was Wilson’s best friend.)
“Sea Star” was another Indy Shorts film that, in general, addressed the issue of Black people not being able to swim. I found it ironic that those two films, one about “Breaking Through,” the other about being “On A Mission,” would have the same stereotype as a basis. But, as Paula accurately noted, I did not have the limitations that many other Black people have faced, regarding swimming. Not only did my high school have a pool, but my grade school did, as well. And in the Lower Hill District of Pittsburgh, there was Ammons Pool, where all the Black people went to swim.
“Can’t Float” is Dave Schilling’s record of his journey to swimming, but Dave: I can swim, as can all my children, two of whom are multiracial.

cjon3acd@att.net