On Natural Beauty Alison Hawthorne Deming
The “Commons” Sense of John Wesley Powell William deBuys
The Life and Death of a Commons Vernita Katchatag Herdman
A Huckleberry Testament Don Snow
“…Here in Sitka we’ve seldom had cause to think much about having enough water. Adequate? It rains 100 inches a year and our reservoirs hold what seems to be an inexhaustible supply. Little cause to worry, or so it seems.
But we’re coming to realize that Sitka has a remarkable resource, a legal right to more than we need–a valuable commodity widely bough and sold in the global marketplace…We find ourselves caught in a thorny question: should water be treated simply as commercial asset or as an inalienable right, essential to life, integral to the commons?
…We are please to offer four essays by the 2008 Symposium faculty to illustrate some of the central issues of the commons. Be they tensions between public and private interests, land issues, or the survival of cultural traditions, the challenges are clear…”