Category: United States

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Red Pine film

“Dancing with the Dead: Red Pine and the Art of Translation” is an 84 min. film featuring author Bill Porter (“The Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermitss” and other titles on China, poetry, and eremitism). The film is available for ticketed viewing on the site, with a 2 min. trailer. The film was released in Oct. 2024. From the Seatle International Film Festival:

“A master of ancient Chinese poetry and the search for a lost tradition. Bill Porter, who goes by the pen name Red Pine, is recognized as a living gateway to ageless Chinese history and culture. He has published over thirty books, including Road to Heaven, his quest to find hermits in the Zhongnan Mountains that reignited a movement in modern China to seek enlightenment through poetry and mountain solitude.”

URLs: https://redpinemovie.com/; SIFF: https://www.siff.net/cinema/in-theaters/dancing-with-the-dead-red-pine-and-the-art-of-translation; film trailer, 2:24 min.

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Carthusians and Thomas Moore

Several articles on Thomas Moore, founder of the only Carthusian monastery in North America.

Time magazine reproduces a short article from 1950 about Thomas Moore:
“When he was only 13, Thomas Verner Moore knew what he wanted to be—a hermit. The son of a Louisville insurance man, young Tom Moore had had his imagination fired by a book on the so-called Desert Fathers of the Church who retired from the world in the 3rd and 4th Centuries to devote their lives to silent contemplation of God. But Thomas Moore lived a busy life far from the desert; he grew up to be a priest and a physician, prior of a Benedictine monastery, founder of a psychiatric clinic for children, and finally head of the department of psychology and psychiatry at Washington’s Catholic University of America.”

“He retired in 1947, and set out at once to fulfill his early ambition. That year, Father Thomas Moore, almost 70, was accepted as a novice at the Carthusian Monastery of Miraflores in Spain. This week, after three contemplative years, he was busy in the U.S. on a mission to establish the first house of his order in the Western Hemisphere.”

The only Carthusian monastery in North America is in Vermont, established in 1951 through the efforts of Fr. Moore (1877-1969).

URLs: Time article “Carthusian solitude” (https://time.com/archive/6616414/religion-carthusian-solitude/); Patheos article “Thomas Verner Moore and the Carthusians” (https://www.patheos.com/resources/additional-resources/2011/07/thomas-verner-moore-and-the-carthusians-pat-mcnamara-07-26-2011; First Things article “The Carthusians of Vermont ” (https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/05/the-carthusians-of-vermont.

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Three Americana hermits


from Racket, local Minneapolis, MN, news site: “The Hermitage: The Fanciful, Tragic Story of the Lake Minnetonka Hermit Brothers.” Image: George Halstad (d. 1901), resident of the Hermitage.
URL: https://racketmn.com/the-hermitage-the-the-fanciful-tragic-story-of-the-lake-minnetonka-hermit-brothers

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from the Ohio Country Journal: “The Hermit of Mad River.”
Image: David Steinberger (1857-1945), hermit of Mad River, Ohio.
URL: https://ocj.com/2023/02/the-hermit-of-mad-river/

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from the Union Leader (New Hampshire): “A hermit dug his own grave so he’d never have to leave his land.” Image: Perley Swett (1888-1973), the “Hermit of Taylor Pond.”
URL: https://www.unionleader.com/nh/lifestyles/a-hermit-dug-his-own-grave-so-hed-never-have-to-leave-his-land/article_5f96af58-b499-11ee-954b-8b61c084f7e8.html

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