Orion March / April 2011

In a parking lot near the Orion office we found a dead red-bellied woodpecker. It looked disconcertingly out of place, lying there on the asphalt between parked cars with its striking black-and-white stripes and brilliant orangey-red nape. It was unclear why it had died; maybe it had fallen from the grille of a car. One of us picked it up, and we looked at it for a silent moment. Placing it under the bushes of a nearby hedgerow, we were reminded of a passage from Barry Lopez’s story “Apologia”: “Who are these animals, their lights gone out? What journeys have fallen apart here?” Knowing how stressed the planet is, knowing the complexity of the challenges facing the planet and its inhabitants, we wondered if our sadness at the death of…

Matt Black’s photography of rural California has been widely honored. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for reporting on poverty, as well as awards from Pictures of the Year International and the Alexia Foundation. Catherine Carter’s first collection of poetry was The Memory of Gills, and her second, The Swamp Monster at Home, is forthcoming in Spring 2012. Abbot Cutler is the author of 1843–Rebecca–1847 and The Dog Isn’t Going Anywhere. A third poetry collection is due out in 2011. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares and Blue Sofa Review. He lives in Ashfield, Massachusetts. William L. Fox’s essay is adapted from his current book project All Along the Line, which explores how the world’s largest human-made lines both connect and divide us to and from one another and…

Thanks to Terry Tempest Williams for her article “The Gulf Between Us” (November/December 2010) and her e=orts to raise awareness in the Gulf. I believe it is going to take a cooperative movement on all our parts to push these issues to the forefront. Unless one is living in the Gulf region, most Americans are not aware of the extent of the damage. There has been an airtight lid placed on all issues related to the Gulf in the national media, for reasons of “national security.” Only a handful of local television stations are willing to cover stories that contradict what is being disseminated by the state and federal agencies. The statements such agencies purport to be true — that the oil is mostly evaporated, that the oil/dispersant mixture is…

Amy Leach and Lydia Peelle, whose work has appeared in Orion, received 2010 Whiting Writers’ Awards. We also learned that two Orion stories have been reprinted in the newly published Best Spiritual Writing 2011 anthology: “Barley and Yaks” by Edward Hoagland and “The Return” by Rick Bass. In January, Terry Tempest Williams was in Aspen as special guest for a Winter Words event presented by the Aspen Writers’ Foundation and sponsored by Orion. Orion has also been admitted to the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses’ Lit Mag Adoption Program, through which Orion is made available to creative writing classes. Hal Clifford, Orion’s Executive Editor since 2003, has returned to his beloved West (specifically, Boulder, Colorado), where he has founded Drift Storytelling, a multimedia production company. We will miss his…

Susan Starbird Petaluma River, California COME DOWN AND SEE the view from the Petaluma River’s perspective, the duck’s-eye view from a small boat. Drift along with me in the company of an industrial light bulb bearing a little load of algae. If you’re small enough, protozoan-scale, say, you can hitch a ride on a Styrofoam cup, spray can, or plastic bottle going your way: two steps downstream, one step back up with the tide. To see the city from here you must look up. Look up to the underbellies of herons and egrets, the flared orange hull of the pilot boat Drake, the saloon of the elegantly decrepit wooden yacht Wanda, the blue and gray conning tower of the Trig Lind. Up to undercarriages of trucks rumbling across D Street…

WHEN I ACTUALLY saw the setting for December’s big cli mate conference, I wondered if perhaps the UN — bulwark of bureaucratic earnestness — had somehow acquired a sense of irony. If you never made it down for spring break, here’s what Cancún looks like: There’s a lagoon with a narrow strip of barrier beach, all white sand and lined with hotels. Ritzy hotels — the Ritz, for instance, where “A Tranquil Spirit Of Elegance And Enchantment Prevails. Here Guests Can Explore An Underwater Dreamland, Marvel At Nearby Mayan Ruins Or Simply Relax On the hotel’s 1,200 Feet Of White Sand Beachfront. Minutes From The Exciting Nightclubs Of Downtown Cancun, the Resort Features Such Distinctive Touches As A Five-story Atrium With An Impressive Stained-glass Dome, while also reflecting Mexico’s Rich…