On the first day of autumn we celebrated the 30th anniversary of Orion magazine. This fine publication combines exceptional essays, stories and articles about our human relationship with nature. Each issue features art, photography and poetry. At our celebratory event, were heard from Carl Safina, author of Song for the Blue Ocean and The View From Lazy Point. Safina is a contributor to Orion. Local environmentalists read, as did organic farmer and poet Scoot Chaskey and Megan Chaskey a musician and yoga teacher. Readers chose an essay from Orion’s anniversary publication, Thirty-Year Plan: Thirty Writers on What We Need to Build a Better Future. Responses to that question showed an impressive range of vision by a host of the magazine’s contributors.
We’re so impressed with the quality of writing and image in the magazine that we’ve committed to carrying Orion each month. The November/December issue is just out. Its striking cover image, small white bones arranged in a mandala on a black ground is dramatically prescient. Here on the mid-Atlantic coast, we’re still picking up the pieces in the wake of superstorm Sandy. Trebbe Johnson’s essay on gazing at damaged places has special resonance for us as we observe the changes to our coastline, the loss of life, damaged property. Yet, the essay and the magazine itself is hope filled. Life does continue through destruction. Poetry by Pattiann Rogers, Tony Hoagland and others, and photographs by Ami Vitale make this issue one to savor. Pick up your copy, or give one as a gift to the environmentalist on your list. Let’s see Orion through another 30 years!
Archive for the 'Current Events' Category
Orion at Canio’s
Published November 10, 2012 Bookselling in the 21st century , Current Events , Environment , Photography , Poetry , Reading events , Writing Leave a CommentTags: Carl Safina, environment, hurricane Sandy' hope through loss; poetry, Orion Magazine, Trebbe Johnson
Post Sandy: We are open and we are grateful
Published October 31, 2012 Bookselling in the 21st century , Current Events , Uncategorized Leave a CommentWe are very grateful for having weathered the storm safely. Canio’s Books is open for business during our usual hours. Power was restored to Main Street at 3 p.m. Our thoughts and prayers are with those still in need. Stop by to chat, get a great book and enjoy some Halloween treats.
Connecting with Earth and each other
Published July 12, 2012 Community , Current Events , Environment Leave a CommentTags: Aldo Leopold, creating community, Earth consciousness, nature writing; new cosmology, Northwest Earth Institute, Rachel Carson, Thomas Berry
We’re about mid-way through a fascinating and challenging course “Reconnecting with Earth.” Nine of us meet weekly to discuss readings and to speak from experience about how we view our relationship with Earth. Writers like Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Thomas Berry and Kathleen Dean Moore bring us their insights expressed in lyrical language. Physicist Fritjof Capra and Jeanette Armstrng, member of the Okanagan nation, among others help us understand and contemplate our inter-related nature. Our lively group consists of a photographer, two farmers, a Buddhist poet, an eco-feminist Catholic writer, and more — all of us curious and open and eager to explore how we live on Earth, “our island home.” The course is one of eleven offered by the Northwest Earth Institute (see http://www.nwei.org). These community-based courses are so well designed and the readings so good, we have plans to offer more. The courses are a great way to engage the mind, body and spirit. They also help promote community and action. We’ll be having a “celebration” gathering after our last session. We plan to offer another course, “Voluntary Simplicity” later this year. But anyone can organize a course in their neighborhood, workplace, faith place or community center. It’s one wonderful way to help promote awareness of the living world of which we are a part.
Green thumbs up for American Grown
Published July 6, 2012 Books we love , Bookselling in the 21st century , cooking and food , Environment , Gardening , Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: American Grown, community gardens, garden to table recipes, healthy eating, Michelle Obama, organic vegetables, square foot gardening, victory gardens, White House kitchen garden
It could be because we’re grandchildren of immigrants and fondly remember our grandparents’ bountiful backyard vegetable gardens. It could be because we support and advocate for community gardens. This year we’ve created our own front yard raised-bed garden following Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening methods. Or it could be because First Lady Michelle Obama’s first book, American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America is bursting with beautifully photographed fresh produce just plucked from the South Lawn. But American Grown is our current favorite summer read for more reasons than this. It’s about kids and families enjoying healthy food; it’s about the pleasures of planting and caring for the Earth. It includes interesting history, and hope-filled stories about community gardens across the country. Not since Eleanor Roosevelt’s WWII victory garden has food been grown on the White House lawn. Two Thomas Jefferson beds have been planted with seeds collected from his gardens at Monticello. An office building in Texas agreed to create container gardens out on the hot concrete of Houston. Workers on each floor assume responsibility for one container. They’ve got squash and okra and sweet potatoes and tomatoes thriving. Mostly, American Grown shows us how one supremely intelligent and insightful First Lady can share her enthusiasm about vegetables and change a nation one backyard at a time.
Safina suggests a moral imperative
Published March 28, 2011 Current Events , Environment , Reading events , Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: Blue Ocean Institute, Carl Safina, climate change, ecology, nature writing, Sea in Flames, The View From Lazy Point
Carl Safina’s eloquent new book The View From Lazy Point: a Natural Year in an Unnatural World isn’t just a view from that idyllic place on eastern Long Island. It’s a view that takes in the northern Arctic, down to Antarctica and through the tropics. As he told a tightly-packed house Saturday night, you can see the whole world from just one place. But Safina, world-renowned ecologist and founder of the Blue Ocean Institute, actually traveled these places and saw for himself the ice melt, the loss of habitat, the disruption and displacement of climate change. The book is a lyrical report from the field, a lament, but also a paean to this Earth, the one truly sacred place, as Safina describes it. What’s needed to protect and preserve our precious watery home is nothing short of a moral imperative to do so. Our major institutions, economic, religious, Safina said, have become decoupled from reality, from the world as we know it today. Yet perhaps it’s in the fields just outside the walls of these monolithic and crumbling institutions where we might be able to sew not the grapes of wrath, but the seeds of peace.
Mr. Safina promised to return to Canio’s Books later this year to read from his forthcoming Sea in Flames:The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout. From our small corner of the planet, we are honored to host these events while the world is a better place for the work of Dr. Carl Safina.
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