Oh, yeah, and my new wheelchair ♿️ is in progress—I’m looking at you, Anthem HealthKeepers 👀 , and I am going to see Midsommar on the Same Day as the interview, so my heart can’t take the excitement. ❣️❣️❣️
Some books entertain you, some books distract you, and some books, if you are very, very lucky and find them, captivate you, and take your breath away from the very first page. You recognize them–and it almost feels as if they recognize you.
–Carla Hufstedler, episode 26, Pilgrim at Little Piney Creek
The Little Piney River is a 7.6-mile-long tributary of the Piney River in Amherst County in the U.S. state of Virginia. Via the Piney and Tye rivers, it is part of the James River watershed. (Wikipedia)
The Piney River is known around here as the “Big Piney”. Naturally. And notice we are so out in the country that the map just says “2” for “District 2”.
Walden (free in ebook format), by Henry David Thoreau — I once spent the afternoon at Walden Pond, and that place truly has an aura about it. I highly recommend putting it on your bucket list. In the spirit of nature writing, here’s the facts:
Kettle hole formation lake, formed by glaciers retreating 10,000 to 12,000 years ago
Depth: 108 feet (33 m)
Surface area: 2,657,157 sq feet (246,858 m²)
Shore length: 1.70 miles (2.74 km)
Also recommended in the spirit of this book
The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present by Philip Lopate — the personal essay is a window into the private human condition. My best English teachers gave me scores of essays to read, from antiquity to modern American history, and they taught me much about what it is to be human, and to communicate that humanity with emotional power.
my essays shelf:
It is winter proper; the cold weather, such as it is, has come to stay. I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year’s planting…The mountains’ bones poke through, all shoulder and knob and shin. All that summer conceals, winter reveals.
—Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Little Piney River, January 8, 2018, taken by Carla’s husband
It has always been a happy thought that the creek runs on all night now every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.
—-Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Little Piney River, January 8, 2018, taken by Carla’s husband
Putting you in the mood to put pen to paper? Good!
The Writing Life by Annie Dillard herself: Kindle, Audible (also narrated by Tavia Gilbert), paperback
And you’re going to need a paper companion for your initial forage into your environment. I suggest these guided ones, which I plan upon playing with myself, and may discuss my adventures with in a future episode: The Pocket Scavenger and How to Be an Explorer of the World, both by Keri Smith.
And we the people are so vulnerable. Our bodies are shot with mortality. Our legs are fear and our arms are time. These chill humors seep through our capillaries, weighting each cell with an icy dab of nonbeing, and that dab grows and swelss and sucks the cell dry. That is why physical courage is so important–it fills, as it were, the holes–and why it is so invigorating. The least brave act, chance taken and passage won, makes you feel loud as a child.
Perhaps it is all balanced as it should be, perhaps everything is happening exactly as it should. And, to reference the minor prophet Ferris Bueller, if you don’t open our eyes, life goes pretty fast, you’ll miss so very much. You can choose to see pain and horror or beauty and mystery in every process, every moment while still being bluntly honest about what’s happening.
–Carla Hufstedler, episode 26, Pilgrim at Little Piney Creek
This is how long I have been working on this podcast.
Hi, I’m Carla. I’m a 47-year-old disabled writer. I live on a mountain in the Appalachian range, in the section known as the Blue Ridge in the state of Virginia, right on the edge of the George Washington National Forest. The latter makes the Missing 411 phenomenon extra spooky.
The official (read: written by me, I’m the only one here) podcast description for There Might Be Cupcakes gives a lot of information about my shenanigans here:
Carla is: a bookdrunkard, a 40-something with psychology and counseling degrees with post-grad work in grief/loss/trauma, sex crimes, and forensic anthropology.
a former freelance journalist and counselor, who is never bored.
a disabled introvert who sees connections everywhere–like John Nash, only less math-y.
Like one of her heroes, Harriet the Spy, she wants to learn everything and write in all down (more likely than not in her bullet journal).
Join her (and sometimes her friends) in her strange library as she INFJs everything from unused angles.
It’s going to get weird in the best way. Let’s play.
I try to release episodes about once a week; I release right now as my health allows. I post a website entry for each episode, with more information, photographs, and suggested reading for that particular episode, and the available stream and downloadable MP3 for that episode. I will post additional posts from my Instagram, my Pinterest, and from anything topical that catches my interest and I think might interest you throughout each week.
My disabilities are Ehlers-Danlos, Hypermobility Type, POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome), and fibromyalgia. Basically, the collagen in all twelve systems of my body is damaged, everything hurts all the time, and my blood pressure is not stable with a sudden change in posture (hard sneeze, laughing, standing up). My body is my frenemy.
My friend, Greg Behrendt, has a comedy routine about how he would do unpleasant things for cake, and that anywhere you go, there might be cake. Well, cupcakes are all that and more: portable, equal, fancier…and so much more. The title represents sharing, hope, whimsy…and here’s Greg’s routine. Enjoy, and always remember there might be cupcakes.
Sign up for a thirty-day free trial at Audible, the splendiferous audiobook subscription service and store, and receive a free book to keep as your own
And thank you immensely, just for listening and visiting! I love my listeners, every one. Just your lending me your ears every week makes me so very happy, more than I can express
colophon: All content in podcast and on website not held in copyright by others copyright 2017-2019 Carla Pettigrew Hufstedler. All rights reserved.
Quick doodle for fun: my purse as assistive device. ♿️ My @mochigrams Better Together cross-shoulder bag stays balanced when I use my cane, lays flat when still strapped on when I am seated–out of my way & the way of medical professionals trying to do their job. And #whatsinmybag — anything I might need, from my medical log (which includes emergency info, all doctors + all my meds & appointments) to my Kindle, from dry mouth medicated lozenges to my guardian doll 😎, a treasured gift from @anotherjill. And yes, I do keep my extra pain meds in a Freud pillcase.
Throwback Thursday: “You’ll know it is time to turn the page when you hear the chime, like this.” I love this photo for three reasons: the headphones–I look like I’m dropping beats, or working for NASA; I love any picture of my reading as a child; and, the already-visible EDS. You can see the Hypermobility in my oddly-turned ankle and in the unnatural way I am holding the headphones. Also: is that a dress or the tiniest pantsuit ever?
…and a true crime mystery from Carla’s past to solve. Truly!
In which Carla extolls the haunting music of the musician she has been highlighting in episodes, bemoans the dentist appointment that makes this episode short (but 1 of 2 this week!), and reads you a Scottish folktale explaining how evil was loosed unto the world.
Haunted Me:
Bandcamp, where you can purchase his three EPs, Pale One, Pleasure, and Humming Ghost
Ghosts by Hans Holzer — This is a no-joke read, both for time investment and the author’s investment. Holzer was a serious investigator, and can be called the first “ghost hunter”, if one goes for that term. He can be considered the next person after William James to go seek the hauntings themselves in order to learn. I own the paperback, and it is so substantial I cannot lift it on a high-Ehlers-Danlos pain day. I fear I might dislocate a wrist. No kidding, this book might be a go-to weapon in case of a surprise prowler. I have no doubt I could knock out a grown man if I took him by surprise with this book.
and The People in the Attic by Doretta Johnson with Jim Henderson. It’s out of print, but that is to your benefit–gently-used copies start on Amazon at under a dollar. It’s well worth the read.
and fiction:
Of course. the impeccable The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. I am blessed to have befriended several horror writers, and have discussed the perfection of the opening and ending paragraphs of this novel with a few of them. We all heartily agree that these might be the most perfect beginning and endings to an American novel ever, right up there with The Great Gatsby and Lolita. That’s dem fine company, to paraphrase a certain evil wizard-wannabe uncle you might have met along your reading journeys. I recommend the audio version, narrated by the sublime Bernadette Dunne; she truly understands Jackson’s work on a deep level. She also wonderfully narrates Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, another novel about another demented domicile, haunted in quite a different manner from Hill House…and in some ways, the same.
Demented domicile is my pet term for a house that is wrong. It might be haunted, it might be cursed, or built on cursed land. It might even be sentient. The reason may never be known. But no good comes to those who live there. It’s my favorite subgenre of horror.
