David Yetman retires, more or less

How do you summarize David Yetman? You don't, you just gesture broadly at northwest Mexico and hope for the best. A research social scientist at the Southwest Center since 1992, David arrived with a PhD in philosophy from the University of Arizona (all three of his degrees are from the UA, making him arguably more Wildcat than the actual wildcats) and promptly put it to work not on Kant, but on the peoples, plants, and landscapes of Sonora. The result: a shelf-bending body of scholarship in the form of books that gave voice to communities and ecosystems most academics never got dusty enough to know. If it grows spines, stores water, or lives quietly in the Sierra Madre, David has probably written about it, eaten it, or interviewed its neighbors.

Before all that, David took a detour most professors only theorize about: actual politics. Elected to the Pima County Board of Supervisors in 1977, he spent over a decade using the job the way he uses everything: to protect the desert, preserving public lands in and around Tucson that residents still hike today (that's why every good Tucsonense should hike the trail with his name once in their lifetime). He then ran the Tucson Audubon Society, presumably because the birds asked nicely.

And then there's the David most of the world knows: the guy on television standing cheerfully next to something enormous and botanical. For nine years he hosted the PBS series "The Desert Speaks," and since 2011 he has produced and hosted "In the Americas with David Yetman," hauling viewers from the Amazon to the Arctic and collecting two Emmy Awards along the way. Few scholars can claim their research reached millions of living rooms; fewer still did it with David's trademark grin, hat, and suspicious enthusiasm for standing near volcanoes.
 

The Southwest Center won't be the same without him,  but let's be honest, "retirement" is a word David will keep at arm's length, like a philosopher inspecting a dubious premise. He'll continue producing and starring "In the Americas," and in fact we'll be celebrating the presentation of Season 13 right here in Tucson very soon (details coming shortly, stay tuned). So this isn't goodbye; it's David simply shedding one title while keeping the cameras rolling. The desert and the Americas still speak, and David's still translating.

Hasta luego, doctor!