Orion November / December 2012

WITH THIS ISSUE OF Orion I will be stepping down as publisher and turning over to others the work I started thirty years ago. My hope from the beginning was for a publication that celebrated the wisdom and beauty of the natural world in the belief that humanity will respect and protect that which it comes to know and love — a publication in which both the literary and visual arts would communicate the conviction that humans are responsible for the world in which we live and that the individual comes to sense this responsibility as he or she develops a personal bond with nature. Since the inaugural issue, Orion has sought to explore how to achieve harmony between nature, which sustains and supports all life on earth, and our…

Jason Anthony is the author of a narrative and culinary history of Antarctica, Hoosh: Roast Penguin, Scurvy Day, and Other Stories of Antarctic Cuisine. He lives with his wife in Bristol, Maine. Madeleine Bair is a print and multimedia journalist focusing on human rights, culture, and globalization. She reported on urban farming in Dakar as a member of the Africa Reporting Project at the University of California’s Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. David Gessner is the author of eight books, including The Tarball Chronicles, which recently won the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Reed Award for best book about the southern environment. He is at work on a novel. Tony Hoagland’s books of poems include What Narcissism Means to Me and Donkey Gospel. A teacher at the University of Houston, his…

As a botanist and lover of succulent plants, I was delighted to see Beth Moon’s beautiful pictures of Socotra’s botanical treasures in the July/August 2012 issue (“Otherworldly Trees”). As with all things wondrous and fragile in our world, the future of these trees is threatened. Recent studies have shown that the dragon’s blood tree is not regenerating on the island; the climate has been getting drier and appears to be too dry for seedlings to establish. It, along with the desert rose and tree cucumber, is also being devoured by increasing numbers of goats. It is foreboding of the potential destructive effects of anthropogenic climate change when arid-adapted plants no longer thrive. JOHN ZABORSKYOregon, Wisconsin While I agree with David Sobel (“Look, Don’t Touch,” July/August 2012) that children need more…

With this issue of Orion, M.G.H. Gilliam — known to most of us as Marion — steps down after thirty years of service to the magazine. With his wife, Olivia, and his colleagues at the Myrin Institute, Marion founded Orion in the belief that there was a need for a magazine about the environment that was grounded in reverence, beauty, and a broader exploration of the place of humans in the world. Marion has been at Orion’s center ever since, working to see that Orion evolved to keep up with changing times and expanded in ways that would support the people on the front lines of conservation and activism. Marion also conceived of or helped organize a number of other Orion initiatives — the Forgotten Language Tour, the John Hay…

Tanja Cilia Valletta, Malta WHERE ARE YOU FROM? I am from sea urchins and anchovies and from Lighthouse Sea Salt and the Mediterranean’s best-kept secret archipelago. I am from the Grand Harbour View flat, cozy, homely, comfortable, an islander who feels as much at home in the water as out of it. I am from the tiger-lily freckles and the honeysuckle tendrils and orange-blossom water used as scent because it smells faintly of 4711 cologne. I am from the lion rampant holding the fleur-de-lis; the stubborn and the witty, the tall and the big-footed. I am from the Paul and the Catherine, but also from Valletta, Vittoriosa, and Zabbar. I am from the parsimonious yet generous, proud yet humble, solitary yet friendly clan. The ones who lisp. From the intelligent…

I’M SURE BY NOW most of us have heard the allegory about how if you put a frog in a pot of water and heat it slowly, the frog won’t jump out. The allegory seems to suggest that beings don’t really respond to dangerous changes so long as those changes happen gradually, and, as a result of failing to respond, they’ll slowly become accustomed to discomfort, then pain, even the agonizing death of being boiled alive. The allegory is harmful for several reasons. The first is that it attempts to explain away passivity in the face of victimization: Look, it’s completely natural to do nothing when someone is torturing you. It’s natural to not even notice. This mindset is used to justify passivity in the face of all sorts of…