Mr Lonely 10 Hours

[Vernon]

Alsoin this episode: A frank chat about loneliness and creativity, courtesy of Love Bites Radio. Listen as Loves Bites host Jacqueline Raposo, outgoing executive director of the Heritage Radio Network Erin Fairbanks, writer Jen Doll, and Bloomberg News reported Lindsey Rupp discuss.

Jillian Keenan published her debut memoir, Sex with Shakespeare, earlier this year. In it, she details her coming to terms with her lifelong spanking fetish, a process that was, among other things, lonely making.

These words were written by Kira Asatryan, a certified relationship coach, professional coach, and loneliness expert, and my first guest on this episode. Then I talk to Kat Kinsman, the editor at large at Tasting Table and the founder of Chefs with Issues, a site that helps people in the restaurant industry deal with mental health issues. A lifelong struggle with her anxiety led her to write the book Hi, Anxiety, which will be in stores on November 1. Listen to the full episode below.

In this episode, I talk to Gerardo Gonzalez, the chef at El Rey restaurant in New York City who comes from a family of people who struggle with addiction, Reina Zelonky, a therapist whose work focuses on managing substance abuse and healing relationships, and my mother, Anne Bainbridge, who is three years sober.

The greatest aims of literature were, according to the late David Foster Wallace, to connect, to challenge, and to make us feel less alone. The act of writing, though, is a solitary one; thus a career as a writer involves a lot of time spent alone.

In this episode of The Lonely Hour, I talk to novelist Will Chancellor (pictured), food writer Andrew Friedman, and upcoming memoirist Carolyn Murnick about whether or not those quotes ring true, and what the writing process is like for each of them. Listen below.

In this episode, food writer Jamie Feldmar, who appreciates a restaurant meal with herself, and a videographer who goes by the name Keff, who produced a short film underscoring his concerns about solo dining, present the pros and cons. Then New York chef Amanda Cohen talks about why she not only reserved the bar seats at her Dirt Candy restaurant for solo diners last week, but also created a special tasting menu for them. And finally, I discuss the most private of private dining situations, eating alone at home, with Samantha Rose Widder. She just finished a masters in food studies at New York University, where she completed a project that studied the emotions connected to this kind of solo meal taking.

I first pose this question to Patrick Janelle (pictured), also known as @guynamedpatrick on Instagram. He may have 450 thousand followers on Instagram, but he gets just as lonely as you do. Or as I do. Or as anyone does.

In the more academic turn that this episode takes, Sydney Engelberg, a professor at both the Hebrew University and Ono Academic College in Jerusalem, makes the case that the rise in social media use and the rise in loneliness are directly related. He wrote a three-part series on the loneliness of social media on Psychology Today after this photo of him went viral; listen to hear him connect the dots.

The house started being full; partner home, family visiting, piles of presents, shelves of cards and the occassional bunch of flowers in a vase. The early weeks seemed busy with texts and phone calls, visiting family and friends with new baby, and the constant need for shopping!

An adjustment from woman to mother, and the many smiles used for others. Amongst the hard hours or days were the moments I longed for, looked for to, these were the slightest thing that reminded me of the amazing beauty of the young baby and the awesome feeling of eternal love.

I never expected to feel loneliness in a room of people as I started to go to Mum & Tots. I used to think they all would be the ideal space for new mums, a group of mums to welcome other mums, a place to make new friends, time to relax and enjoy adult company.

t is true -- we could have gotten close to our destination by car -- but the idea of rushing a story about life in the new Big Sur seemed the journalistic equivalent of slamming a fine wine like it's a Jell-O shooter.

But I heard stories: There were mountain lions walking in the middle of empty roads, and longtime recluses sunbathing naked on the highway, and kids hiking miles just to get to school, and I had to see for myself if any of that was true.

The "we" is my friend Gabrielle Gaudet and me. We traveled by foot and by thumb from the site of the ruined Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge in the north to the gigantic Mud Creek landslide just south of the hamlet of Gorda. As we walked and hitchhiked, we met a dozen people who are living on this landlocked island. We also walked long stretches where the only sounds came from the sea crashing against the rocks far below and our shoes hitting the sun-bleached pavement.

Nature has severed the road connecting much of Big Sur to the rest of the world. From the Mud Creek slide to Pfeiffer Canyon the only route out is the winding, steep, slow-moving Nacimiento-Fergusson Road. And continuing trouble at a spot called Paul's Slide has frequently blocked the coast highway -- including last weekend. When that happens, the only way in or out of a 23-mile stretch, home to many Big Sur residents and businesses, is by boat or helicopter.

What we found is that this historic road closure has created a dangerous, beautifully deserted slice of California, filled with spectacular vistas of the mountains walling the Pacific, the landscape eerily vacant of people, as though it has been cleared to film a post-apocalyptic movie.

A mile-long dirt trail, in some places no wider than 2 feet, connects the heart of Big Sur south of the bridge with the outside world to the north. Children use the trail each day to get to the bus that drives another 20-plus miles to school.

On the south side of the canyon, there is a row of cars and trucks. Some of the locals have cars on both sides of the canyon, so they can drive to the pit where the bridge once stood, get out, sprint across the wooden span or hike the gorge, then get in another car and go to town.

That forgetfulness proved fortuitous for Gabrielle and me. Two beekeepers from the New Camaldoli Hermitage who had forgotten the keys (for the second time that week, no less) to their car on the north side of the canyon wound up offering us a ride south as they returned to fetch them.

In our 35-minute drive south to the hermitage -- a Roman Catholic monastery -- we talked to our new friends Rich and Vicky about everything from Big Sur gossip to climate change to future hopes and dreams.

There are only a few businesses open along the highway. One of them is the Big Sur Taphouse, just south of Pfeiffer Canyon, which has become the de facto community center for the people who remain in the area.

"It's not just money," he said. "There are families and workers who have been here for years, you know, like fixtures of the community, and they'll have to leave if something doesn't change soon. There are already several businesses who have basically shut down after Paul's Slide. And everyone's wondering when they'll ever open."

As we approached the slide, we saw gray PVC pipes jutting out of the mountainside, installed to drain groundwater. Clear liquid trickled out of the pipes and pebbles fell continuously from the top of the mountain.

Closer to the slide's center, water streamed from the pipes, while fist-sized rocks bounced off the ground. As the highway narrowed and boulders appeared on the pavement, the water practically gushed onto the roadway.

While Gabrielle wondered what was in the fresh water coming from the mountain, you could see the mountain in the seawater below. Normally, this stretch of the California coast is colored in deep greens or blues, but the earth from Paul's Slide had turned a large swath of the water immediately below us turquoise.

As we walked closer to Limekiln State Park, we saw 13 big vehicles, including bulldozers and dump trucks, parked along the side. In the distance, we saw bicyclists and could hear the faraway laughter of kids echo off the coastal rocks.

On Saturday, about 30 families were camped at Limekiln State Beach. There were still open campsites during what's usually one of the year's busiest weekends. Apparently, getting to this majestically beautiful spot wasn't worth the extra hours of travel over the challenging Nacimiento-Fergusson Road for many of those who made reservations.

After Limekiln, we began a 7-mile hike on the road to Mud Creek. The occasional Audi and BMW, having made it over the mountains, sped past with an abandon usually reserved for splashy car commercials. Gabrielle and I fell into the silence of walking contemplation.

First there was a drought that was good for succulents but turned many creeks in the area into a trickle. The drought was followed by last summer's epic Soberanes Fire, which sent smoke and soot into the sky for months and killed a bulldozer operator. After the fire came this winter's deluge, with more than 100 inches falling on some areas, swelling creeks and rivers and reawakening slides that have sent earth and rocks tumbling onto the roads.

"The joke around here is that the locusts are on their way," said Magnus Toren, the executive director of the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. "Jokes aside, it is very traumatic to have your whole life swept away by water and moving soil. For the people left without a job ... they are being displaced, and I think many, many of them are living with relatives elsewhere. So, Big Sur has been depopulated."

Most of those who work in the resorts and restaurants along this stretch of road have been laid off. Because they often live on-site at their workplaces, they have also lost their housing. For the handful who remain, they have to travel 50 miles over the mountains to the Salinas Valley town of King City to file for unemployment and make follow-up appointments.

Most of these workers don't have cars, meaning those who do file for assistance have to walk and hitchhike to get to their appointments. The manager of a small cafe in Gorda tells me some of her employees went to King City for temporary assistance and never came back. They might have tried to call, she said, but there's been no phone service to Gorda since the Mud Creek slide on May 20.

3a8082e126