Orion November / December 2014

TODAY, as we go to press with this issue of Orion, we’re in the gap between yesterday’s People’s Climate March and the United Nations Climate Summit, which begins tomorrow. No one knows yet whether or how the march will influence the summit’s deliberations, which in turn will set the stage for the discussions that will take place at the international climate treaty talks in Paris next year. But we do know what happened at the People’s Climate March. The march, which took place in New York City on September 21, was a spectacularly powerful statement made by hundreds of thousands of people who have grown tired of waiting for the world’s leaders to address climate change in a meaningful way. Organized by over a thousand participating organizations, including 350.org and…

Stephanie Anderson has illustrated three books for children, all published by Simon & Schuster. She received the 2010 Jane Addams Peace Honor, and is working on a fourth book. Wendell Berry is the author of more than fifty books of poetry, fiction, and essays. Tom Pohrt is a self-taught artist living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “To the Unseeable Animal” is excerpted from their book Terrapin, forthcoming from Counter point Press. Allen Braden is the author of the poetry collection’s A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood and Elegy in the Passive Voice. Ian van Coller’s photographs are included in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and the South African National Gallery. Rowan Jacobsen is the author of Fruitless Fall, American Terroir,…

Great examples of the co-operative business model offered by Gar Alperovitz (“The Cooperative Economy,” May/June – July/August 2014) are located nearly everywhere. Most communities have one or more credit unions or co-op banks, and it’s not unusual for one’s home energy to come from an electric co-op. More than 42 million Americans get their electricity from over 800 community-owned cooperatives in 47 states. Need a hammer or lawnmower? Either can be bought at local ACE or True Value hardware stores — they’re both co-ops, comprised of many small business owners working together to compete against big-box stores. Almost every grocery store in the country sells products from farmer coops like Organic Valley, Ocean Spray, Welch’s, Florida’s Natural, and Blue Diamond. Moreover, the grocery store itself might be consumer owned. There…

Orion staff and readers joined over 300,000 others at the People’s Climate March in New York in September; see our photos at www.orionmagazine.org/news. Orion has lost two good friends, Ann Haymond Zwinger and Charles Bowden, who both died on August 30. Ann (mentioned in the Preamble of the previous issue of Orion) was the author of a number of stunning books of nature writing, served on Orion’s inaugural board of directors, and received Orion’s John Hay Award in 1996. Chuck’s book Inferno was a finalist for the Orion Book Award in 2007, and his book Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing won the Orion Book Award in 2010. We are grateful to have known both Chuck and Ann, and we will miss them. From the Department of Corrections: We…

1.Mount Erebus, Antarctica It’s the world’s southernmost active volcano, a hulking ice monster with a beating magmatic heart. Need I say more? Okay, I’ll say more. I was working for the United States Antarctic Program at the time, and my superiors — who were many — told me again and again that I was at The Bottom Of The World to shovel snow, not go on adventures. They explained that should I wander from the station, drawn heavenward by the promise of soul-purifying solitude or “whatever it is dudes like you [me] get o= on,” my contract would be terminated, and I would be sent home. On top of that, they said, I would die. The volcano seemed to confirm this last part. 2.La Plata Peak, Colorado My friend Chris…

Troon Harrison Kawartha Lakes, Ontario, Canada I WAS BORN NEAR THE SEA, and when I became landlocked in Canada’s continental vastness, I felt like storm wrack above the tide line. Then I discovered Ontario’s fresh water. Soon I was paddling my son and dog along placid, tea-colored rivers near a place where birch bark was once crafted into canoes. The name of the place is Kawartha, “land of shining waters” in the Ojibway tongue. In the Kawarthas, water is everywhere: in bog and swamp, lake and river, vernal pool as clear as rain over last summer’s leaves. The water seeps and shimmers south, rushes and roars over the tilting incline of the Canadian Shield. The land still rises after its release from the weight of the last ice sheet twelve…