Drought is now a way of life. As a result, argue Patty Limerick and C. J. Alvarez in their recent Washington Post article, people throughout the United States need to start listening to desert dwellers, “the Indigenous people and others who settled in deserts for generations and who view aridity, not moisture, as ‘normal.’”
As we think about our relationships with environment, landscape, and place in the context of drought and urbanization, we must also think about change. The books in this list describe how environmental change affects people with deep roots in New Mexico, Guatemala, Mongolia, and elsewhere around the world.
Northern Chumash artist Leah Mata Fragua wants her art to make you stop and think about how the world is changing around you—for better or worse.
While in residence at SAR, C. J. Alvarez is working on a history of the Chihuahuan Desert that considers this area as an ecosystem rather than a political territory along a border. As we talked, I learned more about his new environmental history of the border region and what he’s gaining from his time in Santa Fe.
On June 1, 2018, the School for Advanced Research and The Nature Conservancy in New Mexico hosted New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert at Santa Fe’s Lensic Performing Arts Center. The event drew a capacity crowd of more than 700. Kolbert presented a 30-minute talk that was followed by an on-stage Q&A by Terry Sullivan, director of The Nature Conservancy NM, and SAR president Michael Brown. This event, the title of which was “The Fate of the Earth,” was presented under the auspices of SAR’s annual President’s Lecture.
