Orion May / June 2013

IN THE PROLOGUE TO Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut tells his friend he’s going to write an anti-war book. “You know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing anti-war books?” his friend replies. “I say, Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?” His point is well taken—there have always been wars, and it’s hard to imagine a realistic chance for a future without them. But that doesn’t mean we can’t, like Vonnegut, strive for such a future. Wars, after all, cause incalculable human misery, often to the most innocent among us. They are cripplingly expensive, draining critical funds from education, health care, and other social needs. They generally just beget more wars, inviting more aggression and retaliation, while making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Not surprisingly,…

Jennifer Boyden’s forthcoming poetry collection is The Declarable Future. She is working to create a new writing and arts residency program dedicated to collaboration and ecology on the Oregon coast. Ricardo Cases was born in Spain. He holds a degree from the Universidad del País Vasco, Bilbao, and joined the Blank Paper Photography Collective in 2006. Jody Gladding’s newest book, Translations from Bark Beetle, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. She teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Josie Iselin is the photographer, author, and designer of many books on natural forms, including Beach Stones, Beach: A Book of Treasure, and An Ocean Garden: The Secret Life of Seaweed, which is forthcoming. She lives in California. Teddy Macker’s recent work appears in the Southern Humanities Review, Columbia, and Water~Stone Review.…

Thanks to Rebecca Solnit for her essay in the January/February 2013 issue of Orion (“Cyclopedia of an Expedition Around Svalbard”). I read it under weird circumstances: I was in hospital bedclothes, cold and anxious, waiting for a medical procedure in a room full of other cold and anxious patients. My procedure was delayed, and, luckily, I had Orion with me. Solnit’s description of her Arctic journey was like poetry—I felt I had been given the gift of time to read it in almost one sitting. JANET BEDNARZ Bridgewater, Massachusetts As Heather Millar mentions in “Pandora’s Boxes” (January/February 2013), nanoparticles, by their nature, can enter the body and bypass the blood-brain barrier — and yet industry regularly adds them to food, clothing, and consumer products. Why is it okay for a…

Last winter, Orion readers in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and upstate New York volunteered to host reader meet-ups in their towns, and they gathered at local cafés, farms, and restaurants to meet and mingle. To learn about hosting a reader meet-up call us at 413/528-4422, ext. 31. In April, the Commonwealth Club of California hosts a panel about Thirty-Year Plan with H. Emerson Blake and several of the book’s contributors. See www.orionmagazine.org for more information. Writer and longtime Orion columnist Robert Michael Pyle wrote in with a correction to Bennett Sims’s short story, “Destroy All Monsters” (January/February 2013): moths have four wings, not two. We regret the anatomical miscalculation. It’s the time of year when we announce the 2013 Orion Book Award, which we give annually to a book that addresses the…

1. BLACKSMITHING. To learn how to live in a post-petroleum world, recall the pre-petroleum world where blacksmiths made everything: tools, nails, hinges, lamps, hooks, gates, and railings. Wheels, even! With a barrel and some fire, a blacksmith could turn rusted car panels into cookware. Think of all the scrap metal we’ll have when the oil’s all gone. 2. KNOT TYING. Find a shoelace and a copy of The Shipping News. Knots can weave rugs, fashion snowshoes, repair almost anything. A diamond hitch holds a load on a mule or a sled. A bowline to cinch a tarp, a Prusik to climb a tree. While fighting a forest fire, a friend once fixed a shovel with parachute cord, half-hitches, and pine pitch. And when the parachute cord runs out, there’s plenty…

Amy Brunvand Salt Lake City, Utah FOUR BLOCKS NORTH of my house in Salt Lake City is Liberty Park, one of those great urban places where you might see any manner of strange and wonderful things: a drum circle where people dance with hula hoops and fire; oddball sports like bicycle polo, sword fighting, and Quidditch; a carousel with wooden horses; an Andean condor at the aviary who plays tug-of-war with the zookeeper. Probably the strangest thing I saw at the park was the kidnapped Elizabeth Smart, veiled and submissive, wading barefoot in a fountain. (Of course, I didn’t recognize her until the news reported her abductionby possible polygamists—Utah scandals often veer toward the surreal.) Nicole Branco Prudence Island, Rhode Island The park also has a duck pond, where hidden…