BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//The Open Road: a learning community - ECPv6.15.3//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-WR-CALNAME:The Open Road: a learning community X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://openroadpdx.com X-WR-CALDESC:Events for The Open Road: a learning community REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Los_Angeles BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20260308T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20261101T090000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260101 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20260205 DTSTAMP:20260424T015314 CREATED:20260101T204209Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260101T205613Z UID:5994-1767225600-1770249599@openroadpdx.com SUMMARY:peace\, love\, happiness & understanding 1/1/26 DESCRIPTION:photo by Abe Green \n  \nTHE OPEN ROAD \npeace\, love\, happiness & understanding \n  \nJanuary 1\, 2026 \n  \nthe Dalai Lama has a busy day today \nhe has to remind everybody \nto be kind to each other \n  \nF. O. Matthiessen coined the phrase “American Renaissance” in his 1941 book with that title. He was referring to the period between 1850 and 1855\, which saw the publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Representative Men\, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter\, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick\, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin\, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself. \n  \nI’ve been thinking about the period between 1955 and the present as a “Second American Renaissance.” By an amazing coincidence this period coincides nicely with my own life. I was born in 1951. I’m using the term “renaissance” loosely to mean an exciting time of transformation and new ideas. \n  \nThough Mathiessen’s American Renaissance was short-lived\, like the Italian Renaissance\, it sowed seeds that continued to sprout everywhere. The Italian Renaissance lasted approximately 200 years\, from 1400 to 1600. This Second American Renaissance\, now about 70 years old\, is still going strong. \n  \nWhen I think of the Italian Renaissance\, the first people who come to mind are artists: Michelangelo\, Da Vinci\, Raphael\, Botticelli. But there was more to it than painting. There were the Borgias and Medicis\, Machiavelli\, Petrarch\, Galileo and Columbus. In the same way\, the Second American Renaissance contains all kinds of big ideas and important changes. \n  \nHere are some of the Big Things that have happened: \n  \nCivil Rights Movement\, Environmental Movement\, Peace Movement\, Women’s Liberation\, Gay Liberation\, Humanistic Psychology and the Human Potential Movement\, Eastern Influences: Meditation\, Mindfulness\, Yoga & Zen\, Rock & Roll\, Trip to the Moon\, Whole Earth Catalog\, (return to) Organic Agriculture\, vegan & vegetarian diets\, advances in medical technology\, computers\, cell phones—and a Knowledge Explosion. \n  \nAnd something I’m going to call the “evolution of consciousness.” I am going to put forward the crazy idea that there is even an evolution of love and of peace and of happiness and of wisdom. Sounds New-Agey\, doesn’t it? And the reason is simple: this is a New Age. There was a certain feeling that many of us had between 1968 and 1972 that a Big Change was underway. We were right. \n  \nDuring a “renaissance\,” not everything is groovy. Michelangelo and Da Vinci were rare birds. Not everyone who was living in what we now call “Italy” between 1400 and 1600 were actively remaking the world. The popes and political leaders were horrible people! There was lots of senseless warfare going on—not to mention plagues! So it wasn’t a particularly happy time. But\, as in Periclean Athens\, things were happening in the human imagination that changed the potential of what it means to be a human being. \n  \nThat’s what I mean by the phrase “evolution of consciousness.” In one way\, consciousness\, or awareness never changes. Like Life (with a capital “L”) it just is what it is. But human potential—for understanding and for loving—can change and does change\, both for individuals and for cultures. As Heraclitus and the Buddhists say: everything is always changing. \n  \nEach of our lives is full of possibilities! Let’s make the most of them in the New Year! \n  \n—Johnny Stallings \n* \n  \nDriven to Exclaim \n  \nHow can I be so happy! \nThere’s so much bad news! \nInside\, my heart is crying! But \noutside\, the crows are shouting! \nDon’t they heed bad news—ruffians! \nHard times are coming! Hard times \nare here! Everywhere I look\, pain! \nWhy are leaders such angry children! \nI’m such a child I want to stay up \nlate loving the ruined world! \nEven the crows are shouting \nstrange joy! All I can do is crow! \n  \n—Kim Stafford\, Winter Solstice 2025 \n* \n  \nThe Robin and You \n  \nExtravagant in praise he bows to her. \nTells her she is a falcon-ness\, a phoenix \nand in his quiet moments a swan. \n  \nShe knows she is a plain woods robin \nand what matters is her song. \nEarly before the worms\, she practices her art. \n  \nHer flash of red breast a surprise \nonly to those who have no feel for the natural world. \nWrapped inside themselves\, amidst their suffering \n  \nshe sings for them. \nHer beak is the vessel\, her mate the morning dew. \nHer only audience\, the wise and patient yew. \n  \n—Elizabeth Domike \n* \n  \nThere is still magic in the world\, whether it be natural or man-made. \n  \nAcross the Columbia River from Hood River is White Salmon\, Washington. Every year in early December members of the White Salmon Chamber of Commerce climb in their cherry picker vehicles and head out to Dock Grade\, a half-mile\, one- way road that travels from Highway 14 up the hill to White Salmon. They are laden with close to a thousand Christmas ornaments\, huge ornamental balls and stars to hang in the trees overhanging the road. The ornaments can be 8”-10” in diameter\, and they are suspended 10’ to 30’ up in the bare-limbed trees. You drive up the road and are surrounded by a thousand floating orbs\, spheres\, globes and stars. It feels like you’re floating through space in a spaceship\, with celestial elements surrounding you\, enveloping you. Sunlight shines down and lights each ornament from above. It’s a feeling of magic. The kind of feeling you normally lose as you grow up and become “too old” for magic. \n  \nBut there’s the natural magic—the magic of nature. A terrible wildfire (one of many!) swept through Catherine Creek\, a wildflower lover’s mecca\, and left the entire area blackened\, crushed\, destroyed\, last summer. A friend has been working on restoration there and she told me to head out and take a look—“Just go!” she said. So after the drive up Dock Grade I drove the ten miles out to Catherine Creek and started tromping around: charred\, blackened tree trunks and limbs\, and shrubs nothing more than crusty twigs. Heartbreaking. What am I doing out here??!!? But! I  look down and I  see thousands of tiny blades of green grasses\, and atop many of them\, the soft purple blossoms of the grass widows: the first wildflowers of spring! In bloom! In December!. They hardly ever appear before late February or early March. People make the trek out to Catherine Creek just to see the grass widows in March\, knowing that blossoms mean spring! But here they are\, nodding up at me\, saying\, Yep\, the fires of summer gave us a jumpstart. Thought you’d like that. Like???!!! I love it! The magic of nature. The magic of life. \n  \nAnd this was all in just one day! \n  \n—Jude Russell \n* \n  \n“Know that you are a child of the universe.” \n—Yogi tea bag wisdom \n  \nMusings on a Winter sunny day… \n   \nWhen Winter comes in cold and bright\, after days of rain that have turned Summer’s brown grasses back to green\, I think\, “Oh no\, Spring is coming too soon.” I love the long winter dark\, which is my excuse for reading and being cozy under quilts even in the daytime\, and by the wood stove in the evenings.   \n  \nHere it is New Year’s Eve and Spring is in the air\, coming up all around us in Autumn’s left over leaves—crocuses\, scilla\, hyacinth\, a first pink camellia in bloom\, daphne budding out.  \n  \nThoreau wrote of this wonder in Walden\, about the ponds in Winter\, the first crack of the ice signifying Spring has begun. Frozen ponds are rare in the Northwest\, and snow in the mountains is a month late\, but we have subtle signs. Even in my body that wants to hibernate\, I also want to go out looking for sprouts and buds\, returning birds and bunnies.   \n  \nRecently I read about Thoreau’s extraordinary Kalendar. He had a daily habit of walking and noting what was happening through the season in his Nature neighborhood. His Journal is the record of these practices\, and the Kalendar is their culminating gesture: the final major endeavor of his life.  \n  \nThe charts of general phenomena derived from Thoreau’s long-held sense that ‘our thoughts & sentiments answer to the revolution of the seasons\,’ and his equally long-standing desire to more fully experience and comprehend the complex network of relations—what we would now call the ecosystem—of which he knew himself to be a part. Though Thoreau had for many years been keeping lists and charts of individual observations of the natural world—bird migration times\, the flowering and leafing out of trees—the Kalendar was a discovery: a crystallization of his long-developing ideas about time\, the natural world\, and the nature of perception.” \n  \nReading through this makes me aware of how extraordinary it is to be alive\, to be here at all at such a blip in the planet’s life. I also see this wonder in my puppy’s exploration of Nature. Being a Border Collie\, she is dumbfounded by the squirrels that run up trees\, and by birds and even airplanes in the sky—because these are moving things she cannot herd. She at least has chickens and rabbits and a giant Golden Retriever who visits on weekends. Then there is my granddaughter’s wonder at everything new—mushrooms coming out of the ground in leaves that have turned red!! \n  \nSo\, thank goodness for the seasons that return on their own timeline with no prompting from us. Hopefully we all fall in love with the magic of life and finally save as much as we can for the children and creatures coming along. \n  \nHere is a poem from my friend Barbara\, a gardener and a writer: \n  \nWinter Solstice \n  \nThe long nights recede \nAs the light slowly returns \nAnd my heart lifts up \nStars in the night sky \nYield to an early sunrise\, \nPink and orange sky \nAnd evenings stretch out; \nThe light lingers longer now\, \nWarming the new buds \nI come more alive: \nThe light feeds my hungry soul\, \nStarving for beauty. \nMore revealed each hour\, \nLeaves\, buds\, flowers greet the day \nAs the sun warms them \nWelcome light’s return \nOur gift for surviving the \nDark\, cold winter nights. \n  \n—Barbara Blossom \n  \nSpeaking of watching the wild\, here is a funny aside from Gina Wilson\, who sent this: \n  \nGayle Highpine writes in her book on making friends with wild birds: \n  \n“To survive among us\, they (birds) have to watch what we are doing\, and we are odd and different from the other ground creatures they see. Cows and squirrels and cats and deer are understandable\, and predictable. If you see enough cows\, you have a good idea what to expect from any cow you see. But humans are different. They do different things—sometimes humans do things that nobody’s ever seen. Sometimes a human may change its clothing overnight and yet it is the same human.” \n     \nGina wrote:  Never thought about how we change our “skin”—often numerous times a day! \n  \n—Katie Radditz URL:https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-understanding-1-1-26/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://openroadpdx.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/101338366_114906430247163_4362851216040141752_n-2.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260117T140000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260117T160000 DTSTAMP:20260424T015314 CREATED:20251222T010722Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251222T010953Z UID:5978-1768658400-1768665600@openroadpdx.com SUMMARY:ZEN: History & Essence 1/17/26 DESCRIPTION:  \nZEN:History & Essence \n  \nJohnny Stallings will give an overview of the history of Zen and host a conversation about the meaning of Zen on Saturday\, January 17th\, 2026\, at 2 pm (PST). \nHere’s the Zoom link: \n  \nhttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/88465906598 \n  \n  \n  \n  URL:https://openroadpdx.com/event/zen-history-essence-1-17-26/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://openroadpdx.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/images.jpeg END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR