Connecticut Public Radio’s Colin McEnroe Show pursues the topic of “Solitude and Hermits” in a program featuring Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor, Lucinda Mosher of the Hartford Seminary, and Karen Karper Fredette, author of Consider the Ravens: On Contemporary Hermit Life and co-editor with her husband Paul of Raven’s Bread.
Agostini, New Mexico cave hermit
Smithsonian magazine offers an article titled “The Inspiring Monk Who Lived in a New Mexico Cave,” about Giovanni Maria de Agostini, “a peripatetic Italian monk who was banished from Brazil, reached northern New Mexico on foot in 1863.” The monk spent the rest of his New Mexico life in a mountain that came to be known as Hermit Peak. The hermit monk still attracts members of the Societyof the Hermit, local history buffs, the article describing one family of enthusiasts who make an annual pilgrimage to the mountain and cave.
URL: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/inspiring-monk-lived-new-mexico-cave-180973501/
Millennials as modern hermits?
A clever, informed, and useful piece from Quartzy is titled “Why millennials never want to leave their apartment anymore.” Right up to date as far as the effects of work, technology, money, and post-capitalist society. A related article in the New York Times is titled “Why You Should Find Time to Be Alone With Yourself,” and Japan Today has a similar review of the topic of “living alone.”
URL: https://qz.com/quartzy/1748191/how-millennials-became-a-generation-of-homebodies/; https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/smarter-living/the-benefits-of-being-alone.html; https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/living-alone-becoming-a-way-of-life-for-many-but-that%27s-not-necessarily-for-worse
Dan Hummel, American hermit in Ireland 2
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.”
Bill Porter interview
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/