At our 12th annual Nature’s Inspiration gala this October, we will be celebrating the accomplishments of two icons in California publishing. Through Heyday Books and Bay Nature magazine, Malcolm Margolin and David Loeb have challenged readers to see our landscape and our place in it with a fresh perspective.
While the work of Malcolm and David overlaps, it is only at the margins, and each man expresses a distinct personal vision. Two of our board members, Helen Chapman and Ron Erskine, along with Executive Director Megan Medeiros recently sat down with our honorees to hear their stories.
“I drove to the Bay Area from New York in a VW bus during the summer of love and found a unique community that welcomed and interested me,” said Malcolm, “I settled in Berkeley and never left.”
Malcolm went on to found Heyday Books, an independent nonprofit publisher with an eclectic library of titles, all deeply rooted in the California landscape. He is himself a published author with well-known books like The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area.
At our meeting, David reminded Malcolm of their first encounter when Malcolm interviewed David for an office manager job opening at Heyday. “We both agreed that the job was not right for me.” 
Like Malcolm, David is a transplant from the east coast, drawn to the area by its combination of natural beauty and cultural diversity. David shared his inspiration for Bay Nature magazine, “It’s simple really. I thought the natural landscapes of the Bay Area were incredibly beautiful and wanted to understand them more deeply and share that with others.”
So, David met with Malcolm a second time to propose that they work together to create such a publication. With a generous grant from the Packard Foundation, the first Bay Nature issue was released in 2001. David now serves both as the magazine’s publisher and Executive Director of the Bay Nature Institute. “It is because of David’s intuition about what readers wanted that resulted in Bay Nature’s success for all these years,” says Malcolm.
During our visit, a constant refrain of Malcolm’s and David’s was community; everyone who values local nature has an important role to play. While the day-to-day work of our two honorees is very different from the work we do at Committee for Green Foothills, our goals are very much the same.
Bay Nature magazine and Heyday Books work to inform and inspire all of us to better know and love our unique region. Says David, “If it wasn’t for the advocacy of groups like Committee for Green Foothills, there wouldn’t be anything for Bay Nature to write about.” Each piece is a critical element in the larger community dedicated to safeguarding our open lands and the health and vitality of the Bay Area.
We hope you join us on October 4, 2015 at the Filoli Estate to celebrate as Committee for Green Foothills recognizes the accomplishments of Malcolm Margolin and David Loeb. It will be a day to remember.
Get your early bird ticket today. Price increases September 7.
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