Helping turn the prow of our entropyship, the Earth, back upstream so that Earth’s evolving consciousness may explore the vast headwaters of the Universe for billions of years to come.
Cairns of H.O.P.E. is a quarterly newsletter I started in 1995. Each issue is a collection of experiences and thoughts from those three months. Most of the articles have to do with (1) thoughts about healing watersheds and our culture, (2) teaching/learning as experienced in my role at Chrysalis, (3) other meaningful experiences I have along my life path. They are all mixed up in Cairns so I am designing my website to make specific articles accessible through the Categories option.
Below are the back issues.
Articles in red are the ones that I think are better.
Cairns # 88 – Lessons from the Fields
Cairns #87 – No issue due to post-election shock.
Cairns #86 – Painting your own classroom, Summer Vacation, Roaming, My Hubris Fence
Cairns #85 – Twofer, Which Way is Our Earth Rotating?, The Hand Game, Big Bend and The Wall
Cairns #84 – Moving a Boulder, Negative Stream Orders, Concerning Charter Schools
Cairns #83 – IMPORTANT – This is the most important issue of Cairns thus far in the sense that here I try to explain in one long piece as many of the deep thoughts I’ve been working with in Cairns.
Cairns #82 – Schooled, Narnia, Finite but Immense
Cairns #81 – Staying Found
Cairns #80 – Teacher leaders, On the Yukon
Cairns #79 – Moment of Glory, Astronomy, Chrysalis note, A Watershed Metaphor
Cairns #78 – Crunching Branches, Why Teacher-led?, The Point, The Difference between “more wealth” and “more wealth than”, Report on solar panels
Cairns #77 – The Self-Organizing Trip
Cairns #76 – Probabilistic Shifts, The Width of Water, Cranes Calling Overhead, Scientific Notation and the Size of the Universe, 8th Grade Analogies
Cairns #75 – Afraid of children walking in the redwoods, A Play, Upward Spirals-TEDx Redding Talk, a story from the What is Possible? class, More vs. More than, Chrysalis Retirement, Reflections on the Man Lying in the Street
Cairns #74 – Paddling into the Wind, Scree
Cairns #73 – Taking students backpacking, Heart, Koans, The Heart of It
Cairns #72 – My mother died this month, Sara’s music, The difference between scouting and leading, Reading the teacher, My scariest animal encounter
Cairns #71 – Chrysalis, Teaching Systems Thinking, Takers, A Pinch of Change
Cairns #70 – Getting Help
Cairns #69 – Backpacking Class, Scientific Method for Kids, Spiralling Mudholes, Ravens and Landshaping, Just Sayin’, Annular Eclipse
Cairns #68 – Chrysalis Notes, Two eyes stories, Ink’s Creek Play, Animal Trails, Internet Cattail Seeds, Customized Bumper Sticker
Cairns #67 – Jets and Eddies, The Best, Bottom-up, Occupy, Credit Default Swaps, How did you find this place?
Cairns #66 – Field Study and Place, A Phenomenal Place
Cairns #65 – Cat Twist-Lead on a Slower Path, An Altar for Gaia
Cairns #64 – Wolf Howls, March 20th Talk, Fallen Leaves, Three Approaches, New e-mail address
Cairns #63 – A New Koan for Me, Seeing Space, Ahjumawi – A Sense of Place, Optimism, Dancing
Cairns #62 – Back from Japan, Wall Street Ronins
Cairns #61 – Ahjumawi, I’m Going to Japan!, Oakland Talk, Exclusive Story, The Play, Chrysalis Graduation
Cairns #60 – Hitchhiking, Global Flattening, The Play, Inflection Points, Why I Go on Rain Walks, Terraces
Cairns #59 – Returning to My Beach, After the ESD Conference
Cairns #58 – Particular Phenomena, Wonderful Experience, Moving Rocks, Maturity, Wrong Goals, Nice Quotation
Cairns #57 – Particulars of Place (A nod to Freeman), Successive Thoughts on Competition and Cooperation, The analogy between water flow and money flow, For Mom, The Fountain, Editorial
Cairns #56 – An eighth grade history lesson you won’t find in a textbook, Election, What Faith Feels Like, Documenting Plays, Sharpen the Saw – for Art and Mickki
Cairns #55 – Leaves; They Go Together; Standards, Frameworks, Textbooks, and Tests; Chrysalis Update; Blue White Giants
Cairns #54 – Healing, Bartering, Follow Through on Skipping, Roaming Nail, Amid the Turning Tide, Anemones, Conversation with Laura, Money as Flow
Cairns #53 – A Watershed Experiment, Becoming Elves, Painting the Blinds Gold, Chrysalis Update, The Shriek Within
Cairns #52 – Changing a Habit, Changing Chrysalis’s money flow, Science article, Kalynn’s Circle, The Upward Spiral available on-line
Cairns #51 – Into the Wild, Chrysalis Update, Green School Summit, Gradient of Wealth and the Invisible Hand, The Year Ahead
Cairns #50 – Three stories with the same point, Bank Cruising, The Day I Almost Missed
Cairns #49 – Cat Story, Easy Credit Cards, Donnella and Daniel
Cairns #48 – Lowering the baseline of winter floods, Chrysalis news, “Beauty is not on the map. Seek and ye shall find”, Moving Upstream, YouTube
Cairns #47 – The Flow of Water and Money, Second Solution Education
Cairns #46 – “So that’s the way…” – long autobiographical story
Cairns #45 – Bone Meal, American Theocracy, Updates
Cairns #44 – The Upward Spiral is Done!, Steep Creep, Chrysalis Facilities Update
Cairns #43 – Ever-widening circles, Katrina, The Realness of the Upward Spiral, Seeing
Cairns #42 – Life as Topography
Cairns #41 – Spirited Teaching (continuing), Chrysalis’s Future, The Second Solution, Gluing Rocks
Cairns #40 (Special Tenth Year Anniversary Edition) – Spirited Teaching (A celebration of teaching at Chrysalis), Using a Trowel, Letter to Students in Two Classes, Florida, The Upward Spiral, Building Chrysalis, Ah the internet
Cairns #39 – The First Winter Rain and Filming Gopher Mounds, Spinning Trances, My Shifting Place
Cairns #38 – Spirited Learning (continued), Administrative Job, Two Tales of Hubris, Closing the Loop, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Wilderness Poem, Looking at the Galaxy
Cairns #37 – Bella, bella Gaia, Complexity and Fascination, “with advantages”, Spirited Learning, Prisoner’s Dilemma yet again, How are big, leveraged to the hilt, real estate developers like the Pope?, Meadow deadline
Cairns #36 – While taking the garbage out on Christmas night, Wings on Point Revisited, Leaves in Drainages, Conversation with the World, KMUD March 5th 7PM, Resisting the Trance, Meadow Reminder
Cairns #35 – The Turning Into Night, Hyporheic, Systems Thinking and Education, Probeware, No Child Left Behind, The New York Times, Meadow Reminder
Cairns #34 – Reflections on Alaska, Receding Glaciers, Getting a Feel for the Land, Teklanika Vigor, Preventative Maintenance
Cairns #33 – My new movie for sale, Growing longer shortily, Wings on point, What do interest rates do to housing prices?, 1984 telescreens, Remembering my dad
Cairns #32 – Leaves catching on stems, Sean discovers drifting silt, Pointing arrows, Land of fountains and chimes, Himalaya and Conflict, Shooting Stars and Economic Ecology
Cairns #31 – Quiet sits, Animal Trails, Threshold, Systems Thinking, Politics, Hospice Options
Cairns #30 – Introduction, My Dad died a few days ago, Sleazy Hoís and Scientific Precision, The Purpose of Debate, Legislation, Steep Redwood Slopes, The Challenge
Cairns #29 – Achieving a Life Goal, Prisoner’s Dilemma, Systems Thinking, Moving Shadows, Seeing Space, Calling all naturalists contest, Bumper Sticker
Cairns #28 – Probabilistic Shifts, Gradient of Erosion, Evolving Topography of a Watershed, Eye Showing, Point of View, Video Reversals – 2nd Law, Zoo Kids vs. Wild Kids, Redwoods and Looping
Cairns #27 – Catching Cottonwood Leaves, Salmon Carcasses, Peeps, Dream of the Tree, Two science stories, Corporate globalization as feedback loop
Cairns #26 – Trimming branches, falling trees, Cantaloupe and Seeing Through the Eyes of Animals, Remembering Badbea, Ecosystems and Student Bodies, From the flanks of Mt. Shasta
Cairns #25 – Donella Meadows, Turning the Statue, Dream Prayer, Hydraulic Mining and Takings, Doubts about Mitigation, Churches, Living in a small house
Cairns #24 – Massage mysteries, Personal Big Ideas, Working with databases, Standardized test scores
Cairns #23 – “Particulars of place”; Running the river; Teaching feedback loops to kids; The Earth, the brain, and the computer; Parable from Martin
Cairns #22 – Patience, The Green Fire, Trail lessons, Drowning in nature, Karma corollary, Just animals, Videos, Swearing
Cairns #21 – Using experiments in teaching, Rates and value judgments, Drawing to an end
Cairns #20 – Difference between a rock and a bush, Steepening the Slope, Personal spiritual journey
Cairns #19 – Quotes from Philip Stewart, Finding oneself on the Lost Coast, Eddies, Cattail convection
Cairns #18 – Excerpt from Seeing Nature descrbing drainage patterns.
Cairns #17 – A reflection upon leadership. Chrysalis teaching experiences.
Cairns #16 – The gift of constraints. Salmon experiment.
Cairns #15 – The Edge. Clean-up. Benediction.
Cairns #14 – The uneasy relationship between religion and science
Cairns #13 – Diverging water with children. Gradient of wealth
Cairns #12 – Balance of nature. Money as symbolic.
Cairns #11 – Give more than you take. Teaching the Big Picture. Values of Wilderness
Cairns #10 – Direction to evolution? Education and the Anglo-Saxon language.
Cairns #9 – Gopher tunnels. Cultural erosion
Cairns #8 – Earth “consciousness”
Cairns #7 – Ecology/Economy interface. Working with stream erosion.
Cairns #6 – Story of “The Upward Angle”
Cairns #5 – Emergent behavior
Cairns #4 – Description of H.O.P.E.
Cairns #3 – The “Prisoner’s Dilemma” and Ecology
Cairns #2 – The challenge that the Second Law of Thermodynamics sets for subsystems
Cairns #1 – Watershed awareness
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