Hermits around the web – Hermitary
news, sites, and pages of interest about hermits and solitude
The SCMP or South Chia Morning Post’s Post Magazine offers an update on Dan Hummel, American veteran who quit the USA during the Vietnam War era and moved to Ireland. Title and byline: “The Ivy League-educated Vietnam veteran Dan Hummel has spent most of the past 46 years alone, having left Nixon’s America in 1969 never to return. He’s divided his time between the windswept wilds of Ireland’s Atlantic coast and the mountaintop delights of Dali, in Yunnan province, southwest China.”
A February 2019 interview of Bill Porter, author of Road to Heaven: Encounters With Chinese Hermits, in Emergence Magazine. The interview is titled “Lone Moon Lights Cold Spring,” with the byline: “In this in-depth interview, Bill Porter, famously known as the translator Red Pine, reflects on his encounters with Chinese hermits and his long history with the great Taoist and Buddhist poets of China.” Among the range of China topics, Porter discusses his favorite hermits Cold Mountain and Stonehouse. Available as audio or transcript.
URL: https://emergencemagazine.org/story/lone-moon-lights-cold-spring/
Atlas Obscura website highlights Thomas Merton’s hermitage. As a Trappist monk in Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky, Merton wrote prolifically about hermits and solitude but was not able to convince his abbot to grant him solitary living quarters until late in his life.
“Merton’s search for solitude resulted in several impromptu hermitages. Initially, he lived periodically in a steel grain cart. Then, a makeshift shack somewhere on the property. In 1965, he was granted permission to build and inhabit an official hermitage on the property. His hermitage continues to be in use by other monks. Merton had essentially reintroduced the idea of eremitic life to his monastic order, and now they accept monks who want to become hermits.”
URL: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/thomas-mertons-hermitage
A lengthy article on the IrishCentral website titled “The American hermit who 50 years ago fled the US for a remote Irish location,” about 78-year old Dan Hummel, who left the United States to become a hermit in West Cork, Ireland, facing the Atlantic Ocean. Hummel is a Vietnam War veteran, who no longer wanted to live in his native country given the politics of the late 1960s. Though a Navy veteran reaching the rank of lieutenant, Hummel opposed the foreign policy and general materialistic culture of the United States. He lived in China and Japan, and eventually ended his travels in Ireland.
URL: https://www.irishcentral.com/travel/moving-to-ireland/dan-hummel-west-cork
The US public radio program “To The Best Of Our Knowledge” (TTBOOK) recently repeated an hour-long segment on silence titled “Taking Comfort in the Sound of Silence.” The program features several segments, the descriptions below are from the program.
These versions of silence are not explicitly eremitic but are certainly interesting applications. Norwegian writer and adventurer Erling Kagge wrote of his South Pole experience in Alone to the South Pole (1993). He has written a 2016 book Silence in the Age of Noise and, most recently, Walking: One Step At A Time, both recommended to Hermitary readers. The role of silence in the works of John Cage have been addressed here: https://www.hermitary.com/solitude/cage.html
The Contemplative Silence of A Long Cold Journey
In 1993, Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge made history by becoming the first person to cross Antarctica alone. He was by himself for fifty days and during his trek, he learned a lot about the power of silence and the importance of making time for it in our noisy, hectic lives.
A Nature Preserve For The Quiet Of Nature
If you’re looking for silence here in the U.S., you might want to visit “One Square Inch of Silence.” It’s a spot inside the Hoh Rain Forest in Washington State’s Olympic National Park. Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton created it, as part of his life mission to record the sound of silence.
The Volume of Absolute Silence
The world is getting noisier and it’s hurting us. When George Mickelson Foy got worried about all of the toxic noise in his life, he set on a quest for absolute silence.
The Tale of A Mute Piano Performance
John Cage’s “4’33” was first performed on August 29th, 1952, by pianist David Tudor. He came out on stage, sat at the piano, and did not play. The audience was not impressed. Kyle Gann tells the story in “No Such Thing as Silence.”
A Silent Soliloquy From The World’s Greatest Mime
For more than 60 years, the great French mime Marcel Marceau dominated stages around the world without ever saying a word. Shawn Wen documents Marceau’s story in a book-length essay called “A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause.”
The Pauses Between Chords of Iconic Rock and Roll
For author Jennifer Egan — whose novel “A Visit From The Goon Squad” documents the inner life of lifelong rock and roll stars—the pauses in rock ballads might say as much or more than the riffs.
URL: https://www.ttbook.org/show/taking-comfort-sound-silence