Orion September / October 2011

TEN YEARS AGO, a weekday that dawned in the usual fashion was quickly eclipsed by the unthinkable. It was a day that no American will ever forget. As disbelief gave way to despondency, we were forced to confront the hard truth of the moment. Nothing would ever be the same for us, or for our country. As horrifying as the attacks were, it is also horrifying to think about how little has been made of the opportunities for change that 9/11 brought. American culture has budged little from the attitudes that fueled the disdain that resulted in the attacks. Today’s politics are governed by more — not less — of the sort of ideology that Dick Cheney represented when he stated that “the American way of life is non-negotiable.” Even…

Rachel Barrett is a fine art and editorial photographer living in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been exhibited nationwide and has appeared in the New York Times, Next American City, and other publications. Blair Braverman is an MFA student at the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program. Her writing has appeared in High Country News, Appalachia, and other journals. Linda Connor, a recipient of National Endowment for the Arts grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship, is the founder of PhotoAlliance. A compendium of her work, Odyssey: The Photographs of Linda Connor, was published in 2008. Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, and the author of ten books, including, most recently, the novel Mink River. Janice N. Harrington is author of Even the Hollow…

Browne Molyneux, one of the people profiled in Diane Meyer’s “Without a Car” (May/June 2011), spelled out a critical reality about going carless in LA: the missing ingredient is social justice. It’s crucial to empower those who don’t have access to decent public transportation, who live in dangerous neighborhoods, or, for whatever other reason, can’t afford the luxury of carlessness. Until we grapple with those challenges, going carless will remain a partial solution limited to those who can afford it. I hope Orion will do more to address this disconnect in a way that reflects all its social, economic, and racial complexity. FLORA BRAINArcata, California Thanks to J.B. MacKinnon for his insight into the vital wisdom held in the memories of elder animals. I’d like to add to it a…

Orion was thrilled to act as a media sponsor at Mountainfilm, a film festival that took place in Telluride, Colorado, in May. An original Orion film, eel•water•rock•man, was screened (you can watch it at Orion’s website), and Editor-in-Chief Chip Blake interviewed Terry Tempest Williams on stage about her work as a writer and activist. We encourage any Orion readers who appreciate the relationship between film and activism to learn more about Mountainfilm (mountainfilm.org), which stages events at different locations around the country throughout the year. In June, Chip and Editor Jennifer Sahn attended the conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment in Bloomington, Indiana. Orion has enjoyed a fruitful relationship with ASLE for many years; the teachers and students who make up the ASLE membership contribute…

Lucinda Faulkner Merritt Rum Island, Florida THE PLACE WHERE I live has a big, well-kept secret — well kept because not that many people who live here even know it, and big because it’s something no other place can claim — the largest concentration of freshwater springs in the world, about nine hundred at last count. The secret, in its own way, is a miracle. Draw lines around the globe at the latitudes of north and south Florida, and most of what you will see between those lines is desert. Yet here in northern Florida, we have water in abundance. Fed by rainfall that percolates for years down through limestone, our springs are then forced up by pressures deep within the aquifer, and emerge sparkling in the sun like watery…

PLATO DECLARED he would ban poets from his ideal Republic. Placing a garland on their heads, he would send them into exile. Storytellers too — with few exceptions — would be barred from his state, and flutes would be illegal. What does it mean to exile the arts? Plato knew, and so does the current British government, ordering the most savage cuts to arts funding in more than a generation. At universities, the arts and humanities will bear the brunt of budget cuts. Public libraries, a priceless commons of knowledge and metaphor, are being closed across the country. With phlegmatic cynicism, Plato based his Republic on the premise that an ideal state will seek expansion, encroaching on neighboring lands and resources, resulting in permanent war. His Republic describes the ideal…