We Tell Stories
Disasters bring home this truth: we live in place. Precise locations that can flood, burn, shake, and slide (and if you live in Southern California as I do, all four are possible, imminent). Wildfires, for example, can incinerate large swaths of forests, chaparral, or grassland, but their individual burn patterns are site- and vegetation-specific. EarthquakesContinue reading “We Tell Stories”
What-a-Bunch of Creatives
Texans have a lot in common. We love wide open spaces. Bluebonnets. The Spurs. And if you can brag about calling the Lone Star State home, you definitely have a love for Whataburger, which has restaurants all over Texas and the South. People around these parts are as passionate about the fast food chain asContinue reading “What-a-Bunch of Creatives”
Kurt Caswell’s Plea for Walking
My book, Getting to Grey Owl: Journeys on Four Continents, is a collection of travel essays that celebrate a wandering life. While I love being at home, travel is one of my central tenets. When I was a boy, my father’s work with the U.S. Forest Service took our family from one place to anotherContinue reading “Kurt Caswell’s Plea for Walking”
Greetings from San Antonio
Celebrated Texas historian Lewis Fisher has been collecting San Antonio postcards for more than 20 years; his assortment of colorful cards is currently in upwards of 7,000. Taken individually, each shows a different side of the River City beginning in the 1890s, but as a collection they offer a compelling visual narrative of San AntonioContinue reading “Greetings from San Antonio”
Walking in a Pandemic
I walk. A lot. I’ve always done so but now with a different kind of energy, an unsettling drive. Restless. Clocking more miles due to the quarantine, its prohibitions have altered some of my normal routes through Claremont, this college town on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County. No longer possible are morning treksContinue reading “Walking in a Pandemic”
What To Read During a Pandemic
Though it should, it does not dismay me that former students have been e-mailing me to say they are reading (or, for a very, very few) re-reading Defoe’s A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR or Camus’ THE PLAGUE. I have grown accustomed to students making unusual choices. Nevertheless, others have asked me for reading suggestionsContinue reading “What To Read During a Pandemic”
A Grandson’s Hot Butter Rum Toast to Donald Culross Peattie
Donald Culross Peattie and his wife, Louise Redfield Peattie, with their son, Malcolm, uncle of David. I never met my grandfather Donald Culross Peattie. Or if I did, I was too young to remember. He died when I was growing up in Japan, so all the stories I heard, in addition to a few oldContinue reading “A Grandson’s Hot Butter Rum Toast to Donald Culross Peattie”
Athabaskan
A few years ago I took a seventeen-day trip to Alaska, the longest vacation I’ve taken in more than a decade. Throughout the trip I found myself reflecting about my life in the book business. Like many booksellers-turned-publishers, I have always believed passionately in the importance of books to culture, both broadly and personally. OneContinue reading “Athabaskan”
Michael Nye Wins Prestigious National Federation of the Blind Award
The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) has presented $50,000 in cash awards to individuals and organizations that are a positive force in the lives of blind people and whose work advances the goal of helping transform their dreams into reality. The twelfth annual Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards honored five innovators, including San Antonio photographer andContinue reading “Michael Nye Wins Prestigious National Federation of the Blind Award”
Moving the Dream Forward
In 1987, shortly after I decided to leave my husband of twenty years, I started dreaming about making art. My dreams became my nightly compass, my way of listening to my inner authority rather than allowing external events to continually shape my life. As part of the silent and stoic generation of women who cameContinue reading “Moving the Dream Forward”
These Conversations
The book arrived today, a collection of interviews and letters between Gary Snyder and myself. Last week my editor emailed me a FedEx number, and at once Google popped up a link for tracking the book’s journey across the planet. Over the next while I could occasionally check its progress. It traveled from San AntonioContinue reading “These Conversations”
From Houdini to Whodunit: Peter Turchi on “A Muse and a Maze”
Beware of a writer with a neat narrative about how he wrote his book. We tidy things up, we prepare concise answers to expected questions, we don’t mind distorting facts for the sake of a good story. Sometimes we even lie to ourselves. When I started writing what is now A Muse and a Maze,Continue reading “From Houdini to Whodunit: Peter Turchi on “A Muse and a Maze””
ABOUT
Terra Firma is a stage for exploring the relationships between humans and the physical environments they engage. From publishing to a vibrant education and event programs, we work to contribute to meaningful dialogue, advocacy, and conservation focused on; nature, landscape, and wilderness; environmental sustainability and climate change; animals and wildlife; architecture and the built environment; cultural heritage and the importance of place.
