December 5, 2009
Dear Professor Tuan,
Thank you for writing the ‘Dear Colleague’ letters. I am currently writing my Human Geography Ph.D about tourism development in Japan and have found your arguments on ‘Topophilia’ and ‘Space and Place’ to ground the research that I am working on at Curtin University, Western Australia. It is through your theories that I have had wonderful discussions with former post-graduate colleagues at ANU. I wish you a Happy Birthday from Australia!
Regards,
Lesley Crowe-Delaney
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For Professor Yi-Fu Tuan,
Our birthday greetings!
~ Department of Geography, National Kaohsiung Normal University
Taiwan
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Dear Yi-Fu,
I warmly wish you all the best for your anniversary.
Your ideas, as well as your writings, have influenced me since I discovered them almost 30 years ago when I started to study geography at the University of Costa Rica. I have to tell you that my father also told me about you and he posessed already one of your books in his personal library. He studied geography at the UCLA in the late 60's.
I am a professor in the area of tourism at the Swiss School of Tourism, in Sierre. I very often mention your name and your theoretical ideas, especially the concepts of topophilia and topophobia. I also tell about some of your books which most have impressed me like "Space and Place", "Topophilia", "Dominance and Affection" and "Man and Nature". I wish you all the best.
Sincerely yours,
Rafael Rafael Matos-Wasem
Sion,
Switzerland
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Happy Birthday Yi-Fu Tuan,
Thank you very much for Dear Colleague letters. I enjoy it and makes my feeling of peace. I wish you all the best!
Yukari
From Japan
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Dear Prof. Yi-Fu,
It is nice to greet you on the occasion of your birthday; happy birthday and may you continue to enlighten the world of Geography for many more years. I would like to express myself more intimately. As I have become fifty, and half of my life has been spent as a geographer and a religious person (part of it as a priest); I have recently re-read your Highlighted Conference "A Life of Learning". I wanted to tell you that it was very helpful for me in order to understand this stage of life, since I am also in a sort of late middle age crisis. And I am trying to be coherent. Well, thank you very much again, and merry birthday.
Gabriel F. Bautista, Ph. D.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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Dear Yi-Fu:
I am pleased to be able to offer you birthday greetings. I have recently completed a degree in photography. Your books on place have been fundamental to the successful completion of my degree. Please also accept my thanks and appreciation for renewing my interest in the complexities of geography.
Best regards,
Tony Derwent
Wrexham
Wales, UK
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Dear Dr. Tuan,
Happy Birthday and thank you…
…for populating our minds with insights from a nimble intellect
at home in the less-inhabited middle-ground between human and physical
geography
…for searching both sides of the question, and adding signposts
to the intellectual landscape for those who follow
…for endearing
us to you with gentle humor, and reminding us of the virtue of laughter
…for
creating a beloved place within social science where the words "love" and
"attachment" may
reside
…for being a source of courage in one’s effort to "look
more kindly upon the human species"
…for serving as a mentor to
those you have never formally met
…for, in brief, being human—in the best sense of the word.
We are all the better because of this.
With gratitude,
john davenport
Centenary College of Louisiana
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Professor Tuan, your books, especially Space and Place, keep helping me in teaching. My work in high school has been influenced for this perspective, as well as my work in university, where my students are working on Topophilia's young people at school.
Happy birthday. I hope to see you some day (soon).
Jaime Andrés Parra
Medellín - Colombia
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Thank you for making me breath deeply, think deeply and feel deeply, be happy.
Angelique Harvey
London,
U.K.
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Greetings to you, Yi-fu, from Germany!
Not only is it your birthday, but date nut bread season! I hope, for your sake, that many loaves get made. I have an especially fervent desire that you should get some every year, as one of my original memories of you consists of delivering date nut bread to you. I have an image in my head of a giant office replete with piles of books, and, upon my and my sister's entry (with our little Santa hats), you popped your head around the side of a huge stack and greeted us warmly. We had been nervous, entering the giant university building, and more nervous when we entered this cavernous office (perhaps made more spacious by my memory), but you greeted us with such a gentle smile and probably a laugh, knowing you, so we scuttled in, delivered the bread and my grandfather's well-wishes, and happily went on our way. This is very similar to the way that you share knowledge with others—you wade through the swathes of knowledge available in the world, interpreting and reflecting upon the greater meanings; and, when the opportunity arises to interact with a fresh, young mind, you greet it warmly, hoping to learn as much from them as they will surely learn from you.
Happy birthday, Yi-fu. I look forward to sunshine and breakfast with you in Madison at the next available opportunity.
Hannah Rose Dunham
University of Leipzig
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Dear Yi-fu
Best wishes on your 2009 birthday. I was just this week quoting you from Topophilia in relation to the type of "psychological pole" required to address the 21st century human problem of climate change! There is always some aspect of your writing one can call on to clarify ideas. I look forward to reading your occasional newsletters throughout 2010.
Maggie McCormick
Australia
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Dear Professor Tuan:
Happy Birthday, I’m so glad that you’re still on earth with us.
Last year, I’ve also sent you the birthday greeting and told that I was studying your amazing thoughts for my master's thesis. One year soon pass by and I’m still here studying and sending you birthday greeting. The only consolation maybe that I’ve found some your early theses about the foundation of Humanistic Geography and the idea of Home, which was less mentioned in discussing your thoughts in Taiwan and I almost missed them. I have to say that I’m truly inspired by the idea of Home in Humanistic Geography’s perspective. I’ll try harder to figure it out. To me, this long time study tortures me so much, yet makes me harvest a lot. Thank you a lot for your inspiring thoughts and also for the accidental introducing to Simone Weil.
Ray Tzoe
Ecology Institute of Providence University, Taichung, Taiwan, R.O.C.
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