Hermits around the web – Hermitary
news, sites, and pages of interest about hermits and solitude
Catholic Review (Baltimore) profiles two recent women canonical hermits: Sister Marie Terese and Sister Maria Veronica, both residents of Maryland. Includes photos.
URL: http://catholicreview.org/article/home/after-final-vows-hermits-lead-lives-of-prayer
ADDENDA (Dec. 6, 2012).
The exhibition “The Artful Recluse” is now at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art through January 20.
URL: http://www.sbma.net/exhibitions/artfulrecluse.web
The Asia Society Museum will present an exhibition titled “The Artful Recluse: Poetry and Politics in 17th century China” in the spring of 2013. From the website, here is a summary of the exhibition organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art:
This is the first exhibition to explore the theme of reclusion in Chinese painting and calligraphy within the broader context of political and social changes during the seventeenth century, a time of rich cultural expression and dramatic political change. The rise of major schools of regional painting as well as the trauma of the Ming dynasty’s collapse in 1644 and the Manchu Qing conquest provided an extraordinary context for the creation of historically conscious, often emotionally charged and deeply personal paintings and works of calligraphy. These images, however varied, share an overarching theme of reclusion, a concept of withdrawal and disengagement that has deep and significant roots in China, and which remains relevant in contemporary Chinese art and culture. The exhibition comprises approximately fifty-five works from public and private collections in the United States and Asia.
In “Life Lessons from Modern Day Hermits,” a Telegraph article by Adam Lusher, the writer discusses his encounters three contemporary hermits:
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/wellbeing/9539104/Life-lessons-from-modern-day-hermits.html
The China Daily reports on a contemporary hermit who lives in a cave.
The caves that pock the mountains of Shanxi province’s Datong were inhabited for millennia until they were cleared out half a century ago – except for one person.
Zhang Dehua is Datong’s last cave dweller.
The 79-year-old was the only resident who didn’t move out of his grotto in Donggetuopu village when the government built a road and new houses for locals in 1952.
“I like my cave home,” Zhang says.
“It’s warm in winter and cool in summer. I don’t have a family. So, when everyone left, I stayed.”
Zhang Dehua, long a widower, was a farmer, whose family discovered the caves as a haven during the Japanese occupation of the 1930s. Zhang Dehua has few possessions, and is helped by a local taxi driver who discovered him and promotes free services to the area’s elderly. But the healthy Zhang Dehua, who now gets regular visitors and tourists dropping in to see his cave, remains content to stay where he is.
URL: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-09/13/content_15754609.htm
The Telegraph (UK) reports on Australian David Glasheen, who has lived alone on Restoration Island for nearly 20 years. He moved to the deserted island after losing his fortune in a stock market crash. But a recent court order threatens to evict him from the island because he was evidently permitted residence contingent on creating a business partnership to develop a resort.
From the article:
Mr. Glasheen, who is now in his late 60s, said he revels in the tranquility and privacy and has called himself as “the luckiest bloke in the world”. He lives off fish and crab and collects bananas, coconuts and native fruit, as well as growing his own vegetables and brewing beer. He has solar-powered internet access and still flutters on the stock market using an online trading account. …
“It is a fabulous place, I am a lucky bloke to be there,” he said. “I have learnt a huge amount. I started to value what is really important. Trust, honesty, respect – simple things. I have learnt that you can do things with very little. You soon learn in the bush to survive. If you don’t you die pretty quickly.”