This Little Light of Mine: Addena's Substack

Thanks again for coming to join me. In case you are wondering why this issue is so late, let me tell you that I finished it once and when I went to paste it…poof ! it all disappeared and I had to rewrite the thing over (as best as I could remember because I didn’t save it.

Let me start this Newsletter off on a happy note by shining a little light on Canada’s

Women’s History Month, which is the month of October here in Canada.   

The whole month is meant to celebrate the achievements and contributions of women of all ages and of Canada’s diverse backgrounds.

The purpose of Women’s History Month’s is to look at and share the perspectives, experiences, and challenges, of women. So….  Before the month ends, I’m going to celebrate it here by featuring the photos of some of the amazing, talented, socially conscious, and politically active women, I know.   Maybe you know some of them too.

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Wow, it took a lot of time but was worth it. That was really fun to create! I know a few hundred more Women who should be included as we celebrate and honour women this Women’s History Month. We applaud these Women for their achievements - working on Community and Social Justice issues, and working to support and improve life for their families, their communities, and the world in general. Bravo to all of them!

I’m betting you know many women just like them. Feel free to use your social media platforms, call them, or meet up with them and let them know you see, hear, and appreciate them and the work they do.

Summer has sprinted by. The weather is really changing fast. I woke up this morning and the Dew on the grass was actually… frost.   Holy!  it's Fall. 

This month I found I was watching, reading, and listening to way too much news.   Have you found the same?

 The news makes it clear that we have so many divisions between people.   We have a steady increase of violence, racism, and intolerance in our societies today.  It’s like the clocks are turning backward.  I ask myself, who are people to think they have the right to be intolerant of others?  What makes some people think that they have the right to make decisions about other people’s bodies?  Oher people’s health and life decisions? Decide who people should be? Who people can love? Perhaps being designated the term Human Beings, makes some forget we are just animals that walk upright, and supposedly have the ability to reason.   Maybe it’s the colder days, the darker days, and the rain that’s getting to me.   Maybe I have the blues because its Fall.

Fall 

Fall back

Falling rain

Falling bombs

Our world

is Frantically Twirling

And whirling

And

Falling from Grace.

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I was invited this last week to be a guest on Vancouver’s, World Poetry International’s weekly show: “The World Poetry Café” which airs on Vancouver’s Co-Op Radio 100.5 FM.   The World Poetry Café show has been on the air for over 22 years and now it is broadcast across the world and has listeners in one hundred eighty (180) countries.  The show’s host is Ariadne Sawyer, a Social Justice Peace Activist and Poet, and Victor Schwartzman who is the Technician extraordinaire. 

For this show, I was their main guest and they invited me to tell the listeners about my free monthly Newsletter I produce on Substack. At:  addena.substack.com

Ariadne, the host, said there would be time left at the end of the show for questions from the listeners.,

I started out by telling the listeners that my website designer/producer, Doug Blais, (from the Web Design company, Juggling Reality), advised me that it would be a really great idea for me to write an Email Newsletter.  He said I could produce one weekly, or I could do one monthly, whatever I chose.   He said the reason he advised this, was that people would read my newsletter, and if they liked it then it would encourage them to go look up my website at: www.addenasumterfreitag.com

From my site people can look up more of my writing, reviews, etc. a Newsletter could only be good thing for getting my writing and my print books and eBooks out in the public’s eyes.  Well…. truthfully,  I didn't know what a newsletter was. I never did a Blog or a newsletter so where do I begin? I told them I googled it….

I want on to share that even though you have the desire to write, when the time comes to write, there's a lot of times or you look at the blank page and nothing comes. Countless times you sit there and looking at the blank page for hours and hours, and days and days.  Ideas swirl around in your head, you think of ideas as you're laying in bed all night half-dreaming. Then you’re up, awake,  and you come back to the computer, look at the blank page again and ….nothing!  I told them that conundrum reminds me of one time, when I lived in Vancouver, and I went to a writing class.  It was a small class that was held in a quaint lil café in a back room.  The room was set up and decorated by the instructor and we writers were invited to sit at various small tables around the room.    I told them I wrote a poem about that experience and I like to share it with them.   It’s called Writers Class. 

Writers Class

Our instructor yells, Write!   

My pen doesn’t move

Instead I look around the room

There is a photo on the wall of a waffle

I stare at it

It looks delicious

I pretend that I can smell it

But I can’t

I pretend that I can hear the ghosts

Of the old Blues tunes

Pounded into the soul

Of the ancient piano in the corner

As I gaze at you across the room at you

Your perfect cleavage,

Alabaster smooth

Rising and falling

Like a boats on the rough sea

Diana, who sits nearby me,

Curses

She’s trying to write too

But to no avail

Damn!

This is frustrating.

The walls of the small studio

Seem like they are closing in on me

I feel like I’m suffocating

The same way I feel when I’m in Banff

Squeezed in the centre of the towering mountains

Longing for the flat of the Prairies

Where you can see …forever

Where you can lie down arms and legs outstretched

In a field of Clover

And disappear into its Honey-sweet scent

As it gently folds around you.

Instead, here I am

Surrounded by dead flowers

Disguised as art

To accompany the canvas

You propped up on an easel

In the centre of the room

For inspiration.

©  2010   Addena Sumter-Freitag  

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The host, Ariadne Sawyer asked, what are the Newsletters about? how many Newsletter have you produced so far? I said, so far there were four. My intentions for them is to share some of my ramblings, my writing, my thoughts, and questions and opinions I have about whaagwaan around us. Most importantly to make it fun, I want to include photos, lots of photos. It will be exciting to collaborate with, and include other artists and community activists and shining a little light on them, when those opportunities present themselves. I told them I don’t want it to be all about me, because how interesting am I?

I shared that I was particularly proud and honoured to have had the opportunity to have a conversation (in the third issue) with, Minnijean Brown-Trickey, a Social and Political Activist, Teacher, and Mentor. Minnijean is one of the surviving members of “The Little Rock Nine”. They were the first Black students whose attendance, with armed National Guards to escort them, desegregated Little Rock Arkansas Central High School. Minnijean Brown Trickey was the Keynote Speaker on October 23, at the Junior Black Achievement Awards (JBAA) Ceremony, “Excellence and Elegance: A Black Tie Affair” at the Inlet Theatre in Port Moody. The occasion honoured exceptional youth scholarship winners acknowledging their dedication and hard work in the pursuit of education.

To close out this World Poetry Cafe show, questions were called in from the listeners:

How do I make a career out of writing? What do you enjoy writing more stories or poetry? Why?

I will share those answers in an upcoming Newsletter so please come back.

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Thanks to all of you. It is great that you chose to take time out again and spend it with me. I hope you are enjoying these monthly issues. If you have any feedback I’d be grateful if you would leave comments here or contact me on my Website: www.addenasumterfreitag.com Comments from you is the only way I’ll know if I’m getting this right.

Happy Birthday to Gloria. She’s 95 and is as beautiful as she is amazing. What a Star!