Nancy Lee Wilkinson

Water and the Geographic Imagination

In the Professional Geographer last August, Susan Cutter, Reginald Golledge, and William Graf urged us to shape our collective research agenda around significant questions (Cutter et al. 2002). Some of their Big Questions have special relevance to the study of water re source geography: • What makes places and landscapes different from one an other, and why is this important? • Why do people, resources, and ideas move? • How has the earth been transformed by human action? • What role will virtual systems play in learning about the world?

Report of the Seventy-Fourth Annual Meeting: San Francisco, California September 28-October 1, 2011

The 74th annual meeting of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers was held at the Holiday Inn Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, California, from September 28 to October 1, 2011. The event, hosted by the Department of Geography at San Francisco State University, drew participants from across the United States, Mexico, Canada, and the United Kingdom—in total, nearly 300 people. In addition to San Francisco State University, the University of Arizona, University of Nevada Reno, University of Oregon, Sonoma State University, and Cal State Universities at Chico, Long Beach, and Northridge were particularly well represented. The conference opened with a plenary panel titled “San Francisco: Green Possibilities,” an engaging conversation between author Rebecca Solnit (The Infinite City), Dick Walker (UC Berkeley) and Ruth Askevold (Historical Ecology, San Francisco Estuary Institute) and moderated by Jason Henderson (San Francisco State University). A reception in the hotel mezzanine following the plenary provided a lively opportunity to renew acquaintances and forge new connections. Thursday offered participants a choice of six field trips: a tour exploring coastal hazards in San Francisco and San Mateo Counties, a walking tour of Chinatown with a dim sum lunch, environmental restoration and environmental history tours of San Francisco’s Presidio, a bicycle tour of downtown, and a walk through contested public spaces in the Port of San Francisco. More than ninety participants went on field trips, while others explored The City and its surroundings by themselves or in small groups. The day’s program ended with passed hors d’oeuvres and drinks at The Old Firehouse in historic Fort Mason Center on the Bay shore, and many participants enjoyed a brisk walk back to the conference hotel along San Francisco’s famous waterfront.

Resolutions of the 2006 APCG Meeting, Eugene, Oregon

Whereas, the geography faculty of the University of Oregon has hosted the 69th meeting of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers with great distinction, aplomb, and good humor, and Whereas, we have all benefited from their splendid efforts at arrangements, planning, and hospitality, and Whereas, we particularly want to recognize the efforts of our tireless conference chair, Alexander Murphy; his chief staff lieutenants, Jacob Bartruff and Sandra Knauber; the organization and leadership of our stalwart and able field trip leaders; the rest of the Oregon Geography Department’s faculty and staff; and a large number of friendly, smiling, and invaluable student volunteers, and Whereas, and nonetheless, it has come to the attention of the evervigilant Resolutions Committee that certain occurrences, performances, and actions merit special mention and acknowledgement, to wit, and Whereas, the organizers, in a plot to con APCG by falsely misrepresenting what Oregon weather is truly like, attempted a feeble imitation of Phoenix (site of the previous year’s meeting), and Whereas, in a splendid example of geocaching, our hosts hid the meeting refreshments so well that attendees found it necessary to obtain latitude and longitude coordinates to locate them, and Whereas, meeting organizers, in a misreading of the true powers of the organization’s future president, Kate Berry, scheduled her in two sessions meeting at the same time, and Whereas, with the presidents of both the AAG and APCG present at the President’s Reception it was clear that the APCG is the organization of greater stature, and Whereas, given Alec Murphy’s ability to obtain amnesty for parking violations, members are encouraged to send all future parking tickets to him, in care of the Geography Department, and Whereas, these meetings made clear that APCG needs to attract a more literate audience since so many presenters found it necessary to project their text on a screen and then read it to us, and