The 2008 season is off to a slow start—not a lot of birds around yet—but it’s been cool and migration seems to be running a little late. We’re counting on it to heat up a bit.

Left to right: Great Barrington resident Elaine Radiss, OGN intern Silas Branson, and Orion development officer Chris Nye on an Orion bird walk, May 1, 2008.

Keith Althaus’s poem ”Rain”
Bill DeBuys, “Errands in the Forest”
Anthony Doerr, ”Window of Possibility”

All three will appear in the forthcoming 2009 anthology, “The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses.” These anthologies, which strive to recognize the outstanding writing published by small presses, literary journals, and magazines, have been published annually since 1976. Read more about Pushcart here.

W.W. Norton editor Alane Salierno Mason and 2008 Orion Book Award winner Diane Ackerman

Selection committee chairperson Kathleen Dean Moore

Ginger Strand and selection committee member David Rothenberg

When loyal butterfly blogger Bob Pyle realized that his butterfly travel plans included a trip to Graceland, leaving a copy of the Orion issue with Rebecca Solnit’s article ”One Nation Under Elvis: An Environmentalism for Us All” at the grave site seemed the proper thing to do. Problem was, the Graceland phone operators are very intent on getting all visitors to take lengthy and pricey tours. Bob, having neither the time or the pocket change for that option, pressed and pressed and finally was told that in fact there are open visitor hours to Elvis’s grave between 7 and 8 a.m. Bob drove all night to get there, and joined a ragtag group of devotees in paying homage to The King. The grounds were otherwise all but empty at that hour, and quite delightful, Bob reports. And though it was too early for butterfly activity, he was able to ask Joseph Whittle, a friendly fellow reveler with a digital camera, to deliver the following photo to us.