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> Framed less generously, you could be reading about a squatter on public land supported by bi-weekly food shipments. You could, but that description sounds mi
by tmnvix 9y ago
> Framed less generously, you could be reading about a squatter on public land supported by bi-weekly food shipments.
You could, but that description sounds misleading enough to be verging on dishonest. He is not simply squatting, but has a role on the island - a role that he filled after the previous caretaker retired.
- deleted_account 9y agoEh, maybe. I'm wary of romanticizing the situation. There's an island, once privately owned but bought back by the Italian government for several million €, which is part of a national park set up to preserve the ecosystem. And by serendipity, we have Morandi, shipwrecked some thirty years ago and with no background in botany or biology, who's set up as steward-for-life on a place any grad student would give their left arm to caretake. The guy lives in a literal (and littoral, ha!) paradise in a situation so bizarrely irreproducible one can only think, "Yeah, must be a nice life..." Would we have the same warm fuzzy — "That guy's got it aaallll figured out" — feeling if NatGeo wrote the article about the once-owner, Michael Harte, bivouacking on his private island?
- tmnvix 9y ago> Would we have the same warm fuzzy — "That guy's got it aaallll figured out" — feeling if NatGeo wrote the article about the once-owner, Michael Harte, bivouacking on his private island? Probably more so, and it would be an even more interesting article in my opinion - 'Multimillionaire Banking Executive Gives It All up for a Solitary Island Life'. The existing article mostly left me thinking "what caused this guy to leave society". That same question of a multimillionaire in that situation could prove enlightening for many.