Orion July / August 2011

A WALK DOWN Main Street in Great Barrington will never be quite the same after taking one with James Howard Kunstler. Kunstler, a critic of urban design and the author of The Geography of Nowhere, recently visited our office and had lunch with the Orion staff. Afterward, he and a few of us headed out for a short tour to see how his ideas about architecture and community design played out in our hometown. We stopped in the center of town, and Kunstler looked around. “As far as Main Streets in this part of the world go,” he announced after a moment, “this is about as good as it gets.” It was unclear how this was supposed to make us feel. He pointed out a number of things that work:…

Sherman Alexie is the author of the poetry collection Face and the poetry and story collection War Dances. He lives with his family in Seattle. Debra Allbery’s first poetry collection, Walking Distance, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and her book Fimbul-Winter was awarded the Grub Street National Book Prize in Poetry. W. S. Di Piero is the author of several books of poetry, essays, and translations, including the forthcoming poetry collection Nitro Nights. Gretel Ehrlich is the author, most recently, of In the Empire of Ice. Her essay in this issue will appear in a different form in the anthology West of 98, forthcoming from the University of Texas Press. Bear Guerra photographs humanitarian, environmental, and social issues in the United States and Latin America. His work has…

Sandra Steingraber’s “Mind Games” (March/April 2011) is a wonderfully researched article interwoven with experiential evidence and is deeply engaging for any parent or educator. I am struck by the significance of the precautionary principle and its applicability to all aspects of our culture. In the welter of onslaughts to our democracy — from corporate hegemony to government complicity with corrupt regimes — adhering to the precautionary principle could clarify many issues and make easier a concerted action for change. Jo HAYWARD-HAINES Ennismore, Ontario, Canada I thought Sandra Steingraber’s piece brought several important issues to light. But one thing the author does not elaborate on is that it is not just our children who are affected by these chemicals — we all are. We have all been affected for countless years,…

Orion has been nominated for the 2011 Utne Independent Press Award in the General Excellence and Environmental Coverage categories. The twenty-fourth annual Wildbranch Writing Workshop was held this June at Sterling College in Vermont. Alison Deming, Sandra Steingraber, and Craig Childs were on this year’s faculty. In May, Orion was a media sponsor of Mountainfilm in Telluride, Colorado. The festival included a screening of the Orion original short film, eel*water*rock*man, made in collaboration with Orion contributor James Prosek. Picture Editor Jason Houston was a featured gallery artist at the festival and exhibited his documentary photography project People of the Forest. Staff members Chip Blake, Madeline Cantwell, and former Executive Editor Hal Clifford also attended. Editor Jennifer Sahn was a panelist at the National Conference for Media Reform in Boston in…

Linda Paul Boise, Idaho I LIVE IN THE EYE of convergence. My home rests on an ancient reclaimed flood plain. Before three dams tamed it, the Boise River ambled over this valley, expanding and contracting in response to the snowpack in mountains that wrinkle northward toward Canada. The river distributed fine grains of sand, silt, and clay in the valley, creating fertile farmland. To the south, high desert sage country stretches toward Nevada, punctuated by streams that dry to a trickle as the summer sun sucks up moisture, and by low bluffs and mineral-filled mountains that continue to lure fortune-seekers. Mostly federally owned, this land is arid and lightly populated. Raptors, small mammals, snakes, lizards, and insects share their home with cattle who shuffle through the sage, seeking forage and…

HISTORY IS FULL of tasks that have been rendered obsolete by technology, but which were in their day so dominant that they left us dozens of metaphors and maxims still in common use. Most Americans, for instance, ride horses rarely, if at all, but we still rein in, spur on, bridle at, saddle up (we may even hold our horses, or get on our high horse, or lead our metaphorical horse to water in the vain hope that she might drink). Sail power, too, left us with all manner of elegant phrases, which we still use even though few of us really know much about their origins. We might try a different tack, or keel over, or batten down the hatches, or learn the ropes. But it’s the old sailor’s…