"Terry Tempest Williams' interview with Tim DeChristopher in the current Jan/Feb issue of 'Orion' magazine is a 16 page insert that, for me, is definitely 'a keeper' and well worth the price of the magazine. Tim DeChristopher is currently serving a 2 year sentence in federal prison (the sentence including a $10K fine and 3 additional years of supervised probation). His crime? Out-bidding petroleum companies' bids at a BLM auction in Salt Lake City in December 2008 in an attempt to keep their hands off of Utah's public lands. The passion of the now iconic 'Bidder #70' comes through both in his conversation with Williams as well as in artist Robert Shetterly's (known for his 'Americans Who Tell the Truth' series of portraits) image of DeChristopher on the back cover. The image contains Tim's words:
"Those who write the rules are those who profit from the status quo. If we want to change that status quo we might have to work outside of those rules because the legal pathways available to us have been structured precisely to make sure we don't make any substantial change."
This interview, titled, 'What Love Looks Like' strikes me as brilliantly emblematic of the precarity and potential of this new year. The rest of the issue is worth a look, as well, from the brief essays in 'The Place Where You Live' to Sandra Steingraber's article on subterranean organisms to 'Fallowed Lives', a photo-essay on farmer suicides in India, to the review of musician Bjork's 'Biophilia'."
Orion Magazine is available at every Tattered Cover Newsstand.
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