April 30, 2009
Orion articles by Ginger Strand (http://bit.ly/Strand) and Ben Quick (http://bit.ly/BenQuick) have won Pushcart Prizes. We cheer.
posted by Scott Walker
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filed under: Orion magazine notable, Orion noted elsewhere
April 28, 2009
StyleMusicTV made a brief video at the Orion Book Award event in NYC in April… http://bit.ly/IsLzU
posted by Scott Walker
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filed under: Orion magazine notable
April 27, 2009
The East Coast ceremony for Goldman Prize winners was at the Smithsonian, right on the National Mall, and it was a great setting. We feted these heroes of grassroots environmentalism under the looming hulks of right whales and pachyderms. As each winner was presented and accepted their prizes, standing ovations echoed in the main hall. I wonder if the Hope Diamond trembled in its case.
It was great to meet so many of the OGN members that make mountaintop removal activism their life, including of course Maria Gunnoe, and Jack Spadaro, who also appeared in that issue of Orion, plus the mighty corps of Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Save Our Cumberland Mountains, and Coal River Mountain Watch organizers. Antrim Caskey, the photographer whose images graced that Orion issue was also in attendance. These folks made the most of the DC trip with plenty of lobbying and meetings thrown in at Capitol Hill, EPA, etc.
I also took the opportunity to catch up with some Environmental Capacity Builders Network friends, and got them invited to the event. Here we are at the Prize reception: Stacy Baker and Peter Lane of the Institute for Conservation Leadership, myself, and Errol Mazursky of the Environmental Leadership Program.
posted by Erik Hoffner
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filed under: Other Orion Society program news
April 23, 2009
The Orion Grassroots Network nominated one of its own for the Goldman Environmental Prize, Maria Gunnoe, and she was just named as one of six winners worldwide. Maria was honored for her courageous stand against mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR). She is an organizer for Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition in West Virginia, a long-time member group and one that’s been instrumental in this increasingly national debate. Orion included Maria in our January-February 2006 article on MTR, “Moving Mountains,” by Erik Reece. This ‘environmental Nobel’ for Maria is a big signal that the pressure to end MTR is ramping up even higher.
OGN coordinator Erik Hoffner is in Washington this week for the formal Goldman Environmental Prize announcement.
April 23, 2009
We’ve done audio and video extras—and we’re glad our readers appreciate them—but today, with the launch of the May/June 2009 issue on the website, we also launch the first official Orion Podcast. Chip and Jen pause to enjoy and offer an overview of the issue.
posted by Scott Walker
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filed under: Orion magazine notable
April 08, 2009
We’re pleased to see our colleagues at The Georgia Review putting literary excellence to work on the environment.
The Spring 2009 issue, released yesterday, includes work by five environmental writers gathered under the title, “Culture and the Environment: A Conversation in Five Essays.” This special feature’s keynote piece, Scott Russell Sanders’ “Simplicity and Sanity,” puts forward a wide-ranging examination of humankind’s relationship to the natural world and argues for its radical overhaul.
Reg Saner’s “Sweet Reason, Global Swarming” embraces Sanders’ fears for the literal survival of the human race but gives the argument a different center—one that conjures a dark figure from all of our high school history classes, Thomas Malthus, whose lone claim to renown is a theory we have let slip into the background while confronting myriad more immediate-seeming dangers. David Gessner then confronts Sanders with “Against Simplicity: A Few Words for Complexity, Sloppiness and Joy,” claiming that his sometime-mentor/idol may be entering the fray with the wrong weapon in hand. Lauret Edith Savoy, in “Pieces toward a Just Whole,” initially lauds Sanders’ position but concentrates the bulk of her essay on certain racial and economic factors that she believes are being overlooked in virtually all discussions of environmental catastrophe. Alison Hawthorne Deming’s “Culture, Biology, Emergence,” the most sweeping of the five essays in this conjured five-way conversation, moves across eons of time and many disciplines of study to reach a conclusion that is, paradoxically, more desperate and more hopeful than those presented by her four compatriots.
The environmental focus of this issue also includes poetry by Margaret Gibson and Maxine Kumin among others, as well as an essay-review by Jeff Gundy that examines new work by Elizabeth Dodd, Barbara Hurd, and Capbell McGrath.
For more information, go to The Georgia Review’s website.
April 07, 2009
We’re pleased to know that Orion has been nominated in the General Excellence, Best Writing, and Environmental Coverage categories for the 2009 Utne Awards!
See the other nominees here.
posted by Scott Walker
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filed under: Orion magazine notable
April 03, 2009
The Orion Grassroots Network’s job board, The Grassroots Jobsource, is valued not only by thousands of job seekers every day, but it’s also highly recommended by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we learned recently. It’s listed here at the top of Gates’ list of recommended nonprofit sector employment ‘heavies,’ and that’s very nice to see.
The Jobsource has been connecting its nonprofit members and users with great talent for 10 years, getting countless people started down green nonprofit career paths.
posted by Erik Hoffner
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filed under: Nice to hear
April 02, 2009
Orion readers have weighed in, and a winner has emerged from the 2009 Orion Readers’ Choice Award: Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships, a memoir by John T. Price.
For more information about the award and to see a list of other finalists, click here.
posted by Scott Walker
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filed under: Orion magazine notable, What we are reading
