"Children are untidy because they usually are doing something' with a purpose....I had my first lesson about tidiness when I was headmaster of a Scottish school. The charwoman came to me in anger. 'How can I clean up the mess these brats make?' 'Leave it I said. They will soon become conscious of the disorder and clean it up themselves...

“Lead” by Mary Oliver Here is a story to break your heart. Are you willing? This winter the loons came to our harbor and died, one by one, of nothing we could see. A friend told me of one on the shore that lifted its head and opened the elegant beak and cried out in the long, sweet savoring of its life which, if you have heard it, you ...

What I was writing seven years ago.... The rise of the “Micro-school” is in the air — see this New Schools Venture Fund Article and this NAIS Independent Ideas Article to start. Micro-schools are also on my mind. Before these small schools were given this nom de guerre and — with it — distinction from other “independent” yet not Indepe...

The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers. -James Baldwin

I and others known and unknown to me, call upon you: to celebrate our joint power to provide all human beings with the food, clothing, and shelter they need to delight in living; to discover, together with us, what we must do to use mankind’s power to create the humanity, the dignity, and the joyfulness of each one of us; to be respons...

Started writing a blog again a few months back — https://thomas.steelemaley.io/fieldnotes — did not really work (ah, blogs, 2007-2011). I will now try this newsletter format for fieldnotes, thoughts, and I hope inspiration for those that read it.

Ran the rocks and roots of oven’s mouth today— so thankful to live in such a beautiful place and to focus. You don’t get too far on a trail like this thinking, planning your day…. You need to focus, every second, every footfall, your breath, your stride; your feet, pure recharge and challenge. The trail opens in one spot and my eyes ca...

Every young and growing people has to meet, at moments, the problem of its destiny.... The fathers are dead, the prophets are silent, the questions are new, and have no answer but in time.... The past gives no clue to the future. The fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever? We are ourselves the fathers! We are o...

“Autocracy fears art.” — Ai Weiwei

1st day of Deutzia Month:16 worshiped at the sacred mountain. In ancient times the mountain’s name was written Niko, Twice Ravaged Mountain, but when Great Master Kukai founded a temple here, he changed the name to Nikko, Light of the Sun. Perhaps he saw a thousand years into the future, for now the radiance of this mountain shines thr...