Newsletter

  • Oligarchy: the power of wealth

    “Oligarchy is based on the notion that those who are unequal in one respect are in all respects unequal; being unequal, that is, in property, they suppose themselves to be unequal absolutely.” –Aristotle, Politics, 350 BCE… Read more

  • Repair: of rivers and relationships

    To new subscribers—welcome to On the Commons! To those of you who’ve been around a while, welcome back! I recently wrote an essay for Psyche/Aeon’s “one thing that changed me” series that’s probably the most personal thing… Read more

  • Art harder

    My mother sent me a birthday card years ago that I have put above my desk everywhere I’ve lived since. On the front is a reproduction of a painting by Deborah DeWit Marchant, dated 1994:… Read more

  • Border control

    If you’re new here, welcome to On the Commons! Here, we explore questions as varied as: Why are three little-known 15th-century papal bulls still being weaponized against Indigenous sovereignty today? How is the right to forage for food related… Read more

  • Wealth knows best

    If you’re new here, welcome to On the Commons! Here, we explore questions as varied as: Why are three little-known 15th-century papal bulls still being weaponized against Indigenous sovereignty today? How is the right to forage for food related… Read more

  • There were wolves in the woods – and we both belonged

    Welcome (or welcome back!) to On the Commons. Here, we explore questions as varied (but related) as: Why are 3 little-known 15th-century papal bulls still being weaponized against Indigenous sovereignty today? How is the right to forage for food related… Read more

  • History is won by those who live it

    Over half a lifetime ago, I was walking with some friends along the harbor road of Ephesus, once an embattled, storied, and thriving city of Ionia (and then Greece and then Rome and various lesser-known… Read more

  • The time that is given to us is not for us to choose

    In late 2016, a . . . situation, let’s call it, battered my town. A neo-Nazi site had picked up a disagreement over a local building’s ownership, and the result was months of online and… Read more

  • Trespassing, or air that smells of home

    The following is a reprint of my essay “Trespassing,” published in the Air volume of Elementals, a new anthology from the Center for Humans & Nature. You can read other republished selections from the anthology by Eiren Caffall in Orion,  Andrew… Read more

  • Analog

    After recording the audio version of my most recent piece here, on the 1805 property law case Pierson v. Post, I spent a very frustrating hour trying to get my voice recorder to talk to my laptop.… Read more

Welcome to On the Commons!

This is a mirror of the newsletter I write on Substack, On the Commons. Same writing, different platform!

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