Weekly View » CJ Woods III

Fashion Fails

CJ Woods III — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 05:08:24 +0000

As I dressed for my singing date with the Harmony Collected community choir, I hesitated, briefly, as I buckled a black belt on my tan pants. I have been a fan of a “black and tan” beer — the layering of a stout beer over a pale ale — but in the fashion world in which I had been immersed for more than 30 years, a black belt with tan pants is an unforgivable fashion faux pas. Though I have graduated from the fashion scrutiny business, I still have the habits and instincts that were ingrained in me. And some days, getting dressed has unnecessary challenges.
Six pairs of shoes huddle on the floor in front of my bedroom closet; inside, there are 12 more pairs. A recent discovery in a closet in my hallway revealed another pair, some Penguin boots! I cannot remember the last time those boots were on my feet, but based on the wear shown on the soles and heels, they have not spent much time out of the box. But the companions for those 19 pairs of shoes are about 85 pairs of socks, spread out (or in) three drawers. Only one pair of these has not spent any time on my feet, and I am eager to put those football and beer-themed polyester and cotton fellows into play. But what is the appropriate color scheme to coordinate with tan pants?
And can I wear black shoes? In 2008, when the advertising department of the Famous-Barr department store in St. Louis Missouri was nearing its close, I did a “star turn” as a model for one of the catalogs. I had come to St. Louis from the advertising department of L.S. Ayres in Indianapolis and was an assistant Creative Director, but the end was nigh: The advertising responsibilities were being shifted to Texas. Our budget was strangled, and for the last Father’s Day catalog, I was photographed — along with another employee and a professional model — for the front cover of the catalog. I am wearing a light blue, short-sleeved polo shirt, and double-pleated tan pants, cinched with a brown belt. I have on a light blue baseball cap, and I am holding a golf club; my co-worker is wearing a similar outfit. The pro is posed as if completing a putt. I still have clothes similar to those I wore for that fashion shoot, though the double-pleated pants have long gone out of style.
I’d like to be able to dress without wondering if I am fashionable, but even when I am going to the pool room, I make sure that my clothing choices pass the “fashion” muster. My biggest problem is that I have no brown belts. At least, brown belts that are not braided leather, which are no longer fashionable. My shoes are old, my wardrobe is outdated, and I may be the only one who cares that my shirts are not “slim-fit.” And I do not have trousers that taper down to shoes that are as long as canoes. Nor do I have those “old man” shoes with the giant heels and the white soles. *Sigh*
Don’t judge me, please.

cjon3acd@att.net

The Halloween Time

CJ Woods III — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 05:08:07 +0000

In the town of Irvington, Indiana, October is a special time. As soon as the calendar changes from September 30th to October 1st, the houses and grounds of the town bloom with ghosts and goblins and graves: Oh, my!
My neighbor across the street had work done on her sewer system; the heavy machinery plowed up the dirt in her front yard, and left a small hill. In the spirit of Halloween, plastic skeleton arms, hands, and heads now peek from the dirt pile. South of my residence is a house that will probably get a prize for its ghoulish decorations, which include full-sized skeletons and talking pumpkins. As I wend my way South on Ritter Street, I pass trees festooned with tiny ghosts, giant spiders and enormous webs on the railings leading to a spooky door, a yard full of plastic skeletons, and an enormous black cat blow up. At the corner of Ritter and Michigan there are three giant blow-ups. Frankenstein, a ghost and a witch are all about 15 feet tall.
When I lived in Southern Indiana, I used some ingenuity and musical equipment to create a properly spooky Halloween environment. I taped a microphone and a flashlight to my chest, and stood in the dark entryway to my house with a filmy black sheet draped over my head. When the kids rang the bell, I would turn on the flashlight, activate the reverb, and growl into the microphone. My big Pioneer speakers would howl and the kids would see my face beneath the sheet. They would leap into the air and bolt down the steps and onto the sidewalk. There, they would tell other kids, “You have to go to this house!”
My current residence is more modestly decorated for the spooky time. I have 6 small fabric witches, ghosts and goblins hanging from hooks on the front porch; attached to the walls are spiders and spider webs and a drawing of spiders and webs, by my artistic granddaughter. A one-legged plastic skeleton is poised over the mail slot to greet the mail carrier, and a lighted spider web has a spider in it. (A real spider has set up shop in one corner of the porch, and I wonder what that orb weaver thinks of the competition.) Next to the front steps of the porch, a four-foot high blow-up Casper, when activated, draws a barking comment from Bear, a neighbor’s dog. That neighbor’s porch is covered with lights that outshine the little one that tattoos my house with rotating spooky images.
Irvington has to be the greatest Halloween show on earth, and I have taken the tour bus that visits so many of the decorated houses. I often wonder how much more people pay for electricity in October to light all the decorations. I am also amused to see cars stop and disgorge kids — some of whom just barely qualify — and watch as they work the street until picked up again by their rides. But I am not mad at ‘em. I wish that I could accompany a child as they work their way from house to house, crying out “Trick or treat!” But the candy man has to mind the bowl, rationing the Reese’s, Snickers and M&Ms, cautioning the older kids that they may have only one, until the magic hour when the sanctioned begging must end. And so goes the Halloween Time.

cjon3acd@att.net

History and Mystery

CJ Woods III — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 05:08:50 +0000

I climbed the steps leading away from the light-rail station onto the street above it; a woman bounded up the steps behind me and at the top, asked for directions to a street. I pointed her in the right direction and she startled me by asking, “Do you want to go with me?” This encounter was astonishing to me for two reasons. A white woman, a stranger to me, was inviting me to go with her to the home of Scott Joplin, a place I had never visited in all my years in St. Louis.
I sat in wonder at a recent book signing and listened to Al Hunter — a fellow columnist at the Weekly View — tell visitors of his travels to historic sites. One of his stories (to which his bride Rhonda added rich detail) involved a historic site that none of the “locals” were aware of. That describes me, in St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Pittsburgh. I have stomped in the great footsteps of history and am largely unaware of the significance of the hallowed ground I trod. Had the stranger from the St. Louis Metro asked me for directions to “Scott Joplin’s home” instead of the street it was on, I would have been embarrassed to say, “I dunno.”
When I was traveling to Maryland to visit my sister and dying mother, I told my sister (having been shamed by Al’s multiple visits) that I had never visited Gettysburg. I lived in Pennsylvania for 23 years, and had never visited one of the country’s most hallowed historic sites. “We can go,” she said. “It’s not far from here.” I did not.
My eldest daughter, who lives near Morristown, New Jersey, and who spent some time with her mother in residence at a place called Headquarters Hotel, once asked me if I wanted to see some of the historic sites of Morristown. We finally got to do that this past August, when we visited the home that was General George Washington’s first Revolutionary War headquarters. Which explained to me why so many businesses in Morristown were named “Headquarters.” Of course, every school child in America knows that Morristown was Washington’s first headquarters, right? When my daughter asked about the historic sites, she did so because she knew that I liked to write about stuff; she may not know of my failings in the history department, as I managed to bluff my way through her high school years. I bleed history as if I were a hemophiliac, a “histophiliac”: it won’t stay in me. My feelings are readily available to me, but the facts of history are in books and notes and covered in dust in the remotest corners of my brain. I am a proud citizen of the United States who could not pass the citizenship test if it were administered to me today.
On a “Ghost Tour” with Al, I listened as he extolled the virtues of “Historic Irvington,” and was once again shamed. I do not know why Irvington is “historic.” I know some of its historic sites; I have walked them the last two Octobers of my life. But the greater mystery of its history is still just outside of my understanding.
I have passed a lot of historic markers in my life; some I have recorded (one being “The Old Courthouse” in St. Louis, where the Dred Scott decision was rendered). Some, I have merely noted by nodding. Had I accepted the invitation proffered by the stranger from the Metro in St. Louis, I might have enjoyed a richly rewarding experience.
Or, have been murdered.

cjon3acd@att.net

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