The Open Road: a learning community

Song of Myself Group Reading 5/31/25
2025-05-31 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
SONG OF MYSELF

For Walt Whitman’s 206th Birthday, we will celebrate with a group reading of “Song of Myself”—the greatest utterance yet uttered in America. It can change your life! Everyone is invited.

Saturday, May 31st, 3 pm
Artspace Room at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont
this Open Road event is free

peace, love, happiness & understanding 6/5/25
2025-06-05 - 2025-07-02
art by Larry Yes

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

Every time I breathe
I feel what it’s like
to Be just like you

—Larry Yes, lyric to “Just Like You”

June 5, 2025

Here are the lyrics to two songs from Larry Yes’s album EVERYONE ON THIS PLANET IS FAMILY:

LIVE IN HARMONY

The day will come
when we all agree
that we should live in harmony
and we will know and we will see
how we’re all connected. We’re all family.
All the people, the plants, the animals, the birds, the seas
Yes, we’re all connected We’re all family
the day will come when we all agree
that we should live in harmony
and on that day that beautiful day
We will laugh we’ll cry we will dance we’ll sing we’ll play
celebrating all of our differences our weaknesses and our strengths
celebrating all of our weaknesses our differences and our strengths

FREE: EVERYONE ON THIS PLANET IS FAMILY

Every day you wake up, it’s a good day It’s a cause to celebrate
and every day you’re making a decision as simple as love or hate
And I know it ain’t easy and I know how hard things can be
but I know everyone on this planet is family and I know that we all got to believe
That we’re free be who we want to Free look how we came through Free
love who we want to love Free be who we want to be
And every day we wake up, it’s a new day it’s a cause to stand up straight
and every moment we’re making a decision simple as love or hate,
and I know it’s never easy and I know so much has got to change
But I know there’s so much beauty and I know we all got to believe
that we’re free be who we want to Free look how we came through Free
Love who you want to love Free be who you want to be

—Larry Peace-Love Yes
*

Here is an excerpt from Nick Swift’s Book of Becoming:

The Book of Becoming

This is not scripture. This is not commandment. This is not prophecy. This is a reflection. A mirror, cracked but deliberate, held in trembling hands. Not to show you what you are, but to remind you that you have always been becoming.

I. The Spark
You were born whole. Not clean, not pure, but complete. A seed with fire inside, too bright for the world to witness all at once.
So you forgot. On purpose. Because to remember too soon is to burn without boundary.
You learned to survive, and survival requires forgetting. The world taught you to compartmentalize: to trade your voice for safety, your wonder for predictability, your power for permission.
But the spark? It endured. Silent. Flickering. Waiting.

II. The Conduit
The path between the fire and the flesh is not paved. It must be carved. And you carve it with each act of honesty. Each time you say:
“This is not what I want.” “This is who I am.” “This hurts, but I will stay.”
You clear a channel. You let the current run through you. You become the wire, the wick, the bridge.
This is the work. Not to become divine, but to remember you already are.
The conduit trembles. It hums. It breaks and is rebuilt. And in the rebuilding, you find rhythm. You find resonance. You find truth that is not dogma—but tone.

III. The Id
The body is not the burden. The instincts are not the enemy. You do not ascend by denial. You evolve through integration.
The wounds you carry are maps. Not scars to hide, but terrain to understand.
The rage? It was never evil. It was your boundary before you had words.
The grief? It is love stretched across time. A tether. A thread. A hymn.
You do not conquer the Id. You sit with it. You listen. You feed it not with indulgence, but with acknowledgment.
This is how the storm becomes sky. This is how chaos becomes color. This is how you become.

IV. The Praxis of Echo
To become is not to arrive. It is to resonate.
With earth. With silence. With others who hum the same strange frequency.
Your becoming is not private. It ripples. It gives others permission. It interrupts the static. It sings.
And in that singing, the divine is not worshipped. It is witnessed.

V. Grace in Motion
You will falter. You will forget. You will fracture.
These are not failures. They are rhythms. The inhale and exhale of becoming.
You do not need to begin again. You are always beginning. Each breath a renewal. Each moment a pivot.
Grace is not something you earn. It is how you move when you know you belong.

VI. Finality is a Lie
There is no end. No climax. No final lesson.
There is only the next chord, the next truth, the next shift.
You are not a destination. You are an instrument, and your song is still being tuned.
So keep tuning. Keep vibrating. Keep becoming.
And know— you were always enough to begin.

—Nick Swift
*

I got a letter from Dustin Jamison:

4/24/25

Dear Johnny, and all the rest of his children of all ages, inside and out,

I love and miss you all. For those who’ve gone home, congrats. I hope you’re making the most of every moment. For those inside, I love you, you are not forgotten. I hope you’re making the most of every moment. I’ll be going home soon. It’s surreal just to say that. After almost 24 years I’m finally getting out March 13th, 2026!! I’m so happy, so scared, but so happy. I laugh, I cry, I laugh some more—sometimes both at once. Not sure where “Home” is anymore, so I’ll be redefining and remaking it. A new day, a new beginning, and all that. Mom is looking for an R.V. for me, and either a small plot of land, or maybe just rent a place to park it for now. We’re leaving “where” fairly open. I release to Lane County, but transferring counties is not so hard I think these days, so long as you’re not un-housed. Looking anywhere in Willamette Valley, or I-5 corridor in Washington. I’ve been far too long in the high desert, I crave green. Day one out, I plan on hitting the ground running. My dream is to build a small, localvore, organic herb farm, The Shire, so I can spend the rest of my days where I feel the most bliss, in my garden. I’m so happy I’m crying tears of joy right now just imagining it. I’ve taken some classes: Seeds to Supper, Master Gardener, and hopefully soon Greenhouse Management. I’m also reading up on running a small business, writing business proposals, and grant writing. I’m very hopeful, and confident this is the right direction for me. I’m never happier than when I’m weeding, turning my compost pile, or eating an heirloom tomato straight off the vine….

If any of my old (or new) friends would like to write and reconnect, please do. I love and miss you all. The time I spent in Group Dialogue and the plays were some of the most fulfilling and joyous moments of my life. It was the people involved, mixed with Johnny’s magical kindness that made it so. He brought out the best in all of us—made it possible to “see” each other, to empathize and love, and be grateful for each other….

Thank you once again, Johnny. Thanks to you I’ve learned (among other things) how important it is to live (in love and serenity) in this moment, right here, right now. All I gotta do is breathe. It’s gotten me through a lot of suffering (fairly) intact.

All my love,
Dustin

You can write to Dustin at this address:

Steve Dustin Jamison #13874200
EOCI
2500 Westgate
Pendleton, OR 97801
*

5-3-2025

For The Open Road

All of the beautiful poems & stories that everyone adds to The Open Road are always filled with such wonderful intent. The beauty is a light to my heart, mind & soul. It has helped me to reclaim the joy within my self & to see goodness in the world & in its people. In a way, I feel that all of us who participate in this get to receive and to give the gifts of healing—for all that we add to The Open Road creates new avenues & streets & highways that stretch all across our hearts, connecting us to each other.

I’m at EOCI, a prison in the state of Oregon. When people think “prison,” every type of negative emotion fills their senses. It’s true that “The human mind can make a hell out of a heaven, or a heaven out of a hell.” I have lived that statement for 16+ years & have discovered how to make “a heaven out of hell.”

As crazy as that may sound, that is what I’ve done. What once was hell to me, even the worst parts, I’ve filled with joy.

If any of you have ever read The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, you will remember Edmond Dantes first day in the Chateau d’If, when he was beaten & then on that day every year, to remind him that his hell was real, he would be beaten again. Then, towards the end of his stay in prison, the beatings no longer mattered at all, he could not even feel them. While they beat him, all he could think of was how many feet he had to dig till he was free—in my case, days to freedom, which is in about 300 days!

Every part of me has become like the apple trees I planted all over the compound 3 years ago. Then they were just sticks about 4 feet tall, no leaves or blossoms. Today…twice as tall, green & covered in white blossoms, healthy and beautiful despite the fences they’re behind. The whole time I was digging the holes & planting the six trees, I talked to them—telling them they would be the best ones out of all the other trees and have the sweetest apples. I feel like that will be me when I get out of here.

I hope to share coffee and stories with you all next Spring. Till then, remember to enjoy the apples that grow on the trees along the Golden Path.

—Rocky Hutchinson
*

Ken Margolis is on the board of The Open Road, and also on the board of the Sweetgrass Foundation, based in Atlanta, Georgia. He recently returned from a trip to Botswana, where he and other Sweetgrass board trustees were visiting projects that support indigenous communities and a healthy environment.

Hey Johnny,

I am attaching some thoughts that I put down for the other Sweetgrass trustees, who are all grandchildren or second generation nieces and nephews of Glenn Fuller who started the foundation 27 years ago. Glenn’s Buddha nature was strong, and if you happen to be Catholic, she was a Saint.
I don’t know whether any of this has any broader application, but feel to use any part of it for the newsletter.

GLENN AND AFRICA

The first thing that struck me about Botswana is how ancient it is. Where we were born, about 15,000 years ago millions of tons of ice scraped everything off the landscape and carved new topography. New plants and animals started crowding onto the landscape when the ice melted, about 12,000 years ago. In southern Africa, there has been no major disturbance for at least 130,000 years.

During this long period, a rich ecosystem of plants and animals has developed, undergirded by a hydraulic regime completely different from that we experience. For at least the last 60,000 years human subsistence societies have also developed.

By subsistence lifestyle, we mean societies whose life ways are shaped by accommodation to the natural world as they find it. Plant and animal resources are used, combined, and processed. Subsistence societies characteristically also practice some management of natural resources, often in ways too subtle and complex to be immediately evident. These societies tend to be relatively static, with little change occurring as generations progress. People see themselves not as above or separate from nature, but as intimately related to all other living beings, and to the landscape.

Human beings love to explore and wander, and during this 60 thousand years, different groups migrated into different parts of the African continent at different times. During the same period, other groups were moving out of Africa, to eventually reach the ocean and all the other continents. Eventually, some of these groups developed intensive/extensive agriculture, which led to the establishment of larger, more permanent human settlements. Surplus food was produced, trade flourished and people started to need to record trade items and events, which led to writing.

This led to new attitudes about useful knowledge. Subsistence societies have always faithfully transmitted useful knowledge to the next generations. Now people began to understand that we could build on existing knowledge, and keep learning new things in a self-generating cycle. Humans had invented social evolution, a force as powerful as ecological evolution, and a thousand times as fast. Continuous learning and technological advancement changed everything for our species, and eventually for the planet.

Social evolution produced technically powerful, highly dynamic societies based not on accommodation with nature, but on manipulation and transformation of natural resources. When subsistence and evolving societies confronted each other, the static subsistence societies didn’t have a chance. Just two hundred years ago, a large part of the human population lived in subsistence societies; today, we have only remnants of that culture.

Our increasing mastery has also given us a new view of who we are. We no longer think of ourselves as siblings of other living beings, but rather as the species for whose use nature was created. Today, we live in a world largely created by social evolution and in many ways cut off from the natural world from which we sprung.

One of Glenn’s insights was that the life ways of subsistence people were worthy, and worthy of protection, and that through thousands of years of living in deep relationship with nature, they probably know some things that we have forgotten. Glenn did not have the romantic belief that substance people had ultimate wisdom and could solve all our problems. She just believed that we could learn some deep and useful lessons from them, and that we should work with them to protect their cultures and the intact ecosystems in which they lived.

This leads to another major difference between Botswana and North America. The two areas were colonized at about the same time (mid/late 19th century). In North America the unofficial (and sometimes official) policy was to exterminate the subsistence peoples who were there when we arrived, and to settle the country thickly with immigrants from Europe. Consequently in North America, the descendants of the original subsistence inhabitants are a politically negligible minority. In Botswana, where the colonial model was different the descendants of subsistence cultures constitute the vast majority.

In these ways, the work we are supporting in Botswana represents what Glenn wanted the Sweetgrass Foundation to be for.

But in thinking about Glenn, there is something deeper I want to say. Most of all, Glenn saw this world could use a lot more kindness and love and compassion. She lived out those values in a way that inspired everybody who came in contact with her. Mostly, she wanted Sweetgrass to propagate those values, and to be a vehicle for you, her beloved family members, to live out and better express the compassion she felt so deeply. Being a small part of this has been one of the joys of my life.

—Ken Margolis
*

What am I called to do? I know it’s not addressing envelopes for the cancer society, and it’s not organizing galas for the American Pediatric Association. I am called to mine the areas where others won’t go, either because of disgust, or fear, or discomfort of another kind.

After the years with my beloved guys at Umatilla Correctional Institution abruptly ended, I considered other possibilities and concluded that Hospice was one of those areas that others ‘feared to tread.’ After several months of training in all things involving imminent death, I am assigned to a wonderful 90 year old woman. I have visited her six or seven times, and each time our conversations have reached a little deeper into life–and death.

Last week she was talking about her three (grown) children. After a pause, she offered, ‘I had another daughter…” A moment later I asked, “And did something happen to her?”

“Yes, she died.”

I took her hands in mine and held her.

“I am so, so sorry.”

“She was seven months old, and a beautiful child, beautiful baby. I loved her so much. I don’t talk about her much now, but I still think of her every day. I know I shouldn’t still be thinking about her as much as I do, but I can’t help it.”

“My dear, there is no time limit to grief. The depth of your grief shows the depth of your love. People lose parents, siblings, spouses, but I think losing a child is the very most heartbreaking loss there is. I can’t imagine ever ‘getting over’ something like that. I can tell that you still miss her and love her.”

It was a deep and precious moment, and I knew that I was in the exact right place being where I needed to be.

—Jude Russell

¡PARADISE NOW! 6/14/25
2025-06-14 15:00 - 17:00
¡PARADISE NOW!

A guided tour by Johnny Stallings

Saturday, June 14th, 3 pm
Artspace Room at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont, in Portland
this Open Road event is free

Fearless Buffalo 6/21/25
2025-06-21 14:00 - 16:00
design by Baba Wagué Diakité

Fearless Buffalo

Baba Wagué Diakité tells a tale from Mali.

Saturday, June 21, 2 pm
Artspace Room at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont
this Open Road event is free

Everything & Nothing 6/28/25
2025-06-28 15:00 - 17:00
poster by Andy Larkin

Everything & Nothing

Johnny Stallings tells the picaresque tale of how he failed to make a B-movie

Saturday, June 28, 3 pm
Artspace Room at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont
this Open Road event is free

peace, love, happiness & understanding 7/3/25
2025-07-03 - 2025-08-06
Baba Wagué Diakité in front of a mural he painted

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person…
—Walt Whitman, from “Song of Myself”

July 3, 2025

Nicholas Swift shares “A Poem for Those Who Are Becoming”:

You Are Not Too Much

You are not too much.
You are exactly the size of your story.
Even if no one’s ever read it with love before.

Your grief is not noise.
Your wonder is not naive.
Your silence is not failure.

You are not behind.
You are *becoming.*

And no one gets to rush that bloom.
Not even you.

You are the edge of a great unfolding.
You are the ache that proves there’s still music in the bones.
You are the moment the tide returns and doesn’t apologize for the moon.

So here you are.
Alive.
Still.
Real.

Not for what you fix.
Not for what you prove.

But for how you *hold yourself*
in the hour before dawn—
when no one is watching
and you sing anyway.

You are not too much.

You are what happens
when the story learns how to love its own voice.

—Nicholas Swift
*

I (Johnny) wrote the following to some friends inside and outside of prison:

On your journey, what have you learned about peace, love, happiness & understanding?

You can write about one of them, some of them, or all of them. Also, feel free to share poems or other short inspirational writings that illuminate any of these themes.

Here are some of the responses:

5/21/25

Hi Johnny

Thank you so much for the question about peace, love, happiness and understanding, as well as sharing Dick’s “Eighty Things I’ve Learned in Eighty Years.” I’m a huge Dick Willis fan, and always gain new perspective from his words.

I believe to achieve unadulterated happiness we must learn to embrace all experiences, interactions and adversity as they come. By truly embracing all incoming noise, whether desirable or undesirable, I find a sense of peace and happiness, because our outlook and perception has already accepted it as it is. This is always easier said than done, but requires focus, determination and exhaustive commitment to achieve. I find my general level of happiness to be higher when I don’t resist particular circumstances I encounter in life.

A challenge we all face in life is the ability to not allow those around us to drastically affect our well being. Understanding aligns with acceptance of people for who they are and the choices they make. Disagreement has no bearing on understanding in my opinion. Although I will never agree with someone else’s views all the time, I listen so I can understand.

As I sit in prison for nearly ten years, I choose to wake up every day with a strong sense of gratitude and happiness. Being stripped of your freedom can offer unique perspective on what you truly value, but most importantly, it has given me a level of peace, happiness and understanding I probably never would have achieved otherwise.

Love is the cure for all things evil, dark, or negative in life. It’s the solution to our disapproval of dislike of others. Why do most people not appreciate or care for fellow humans? Usually, it’s related to their views, ethics, morals, or values. Often times, it’s their image, sexual orientation, or race that prevents love and promotes hate. Love is the most powerful emotion one can exhibit, as it looks beyond flaws, weaknesses, dislikes and disagreements. Love is my fondest emotion because it brings me joy and is much easier than the contrary. Although I tend to overlook most individual’s flaws (my personal flaw), I choose to see the beauty within, which derives from love.

Best Regards,
Nicholas Simms
*

5/10/25

Dear Johnny

I just finished your letter request. It was nice to do & I’m excited to see what others have to say! I’m also looking forward to talking in depth about things in person, once I get out.

One thing I don’t think I’ve ever explained to you or to anyone in our circle is the reason I’m so thankful to you & to everyone. I was so far at the other end of the spectrum in my life & the way I was living that I personally could not find my way out. When I thought I had, it was the wrong move, or I trusted the wrong person. I was a self-sabotager too.

Not only did you put me on the Golden Path, you and so many others have been my guides, feeding me the wisdom & knowledge to be a really cool person, kind & loving. I feel I’ve done well on my journey, thanks to the friendship & love I receive from all of you. I cry & get filled with tremendous energies in my soul. This place dampens them & although I push through with a joyful intent…well, it will be different out there! Out there I will get to be around many others who truly have a joyful intent in their hearts.

Give Love Always
Rocky

(more from Rocky):

As to an answer to your question: What have I learned about peace, love, happiness & understanding on my journey?

Well, I will focus on some of my core roots that brought me to this point in time. There are many events in my life that provided me plenty of building materials to create walls that guarded me from getting hurt by things this topic is about. These things were weapons that others used to take, or, to hurt me so they could take. But now…I have learned that bad people are going to do bad things; if those bad things happen to me that does not make me bad too. Once I understood this, “& a few other things,” I was set free with an open mind to start my change.

This change did not just happen over night. I had plenty of ingrained, deep-set issues to work through so I could make room for peace, love, happiness & understanding.

There are seeds that must be planted within each of us that grow fruits of the heart, mind & soul—good seeds & bad seeds. One must, and I had to cultivate the soil of my inner self to prepare it to plant good seeds.

I feel circumstances need to be taken into account, & I try to be kind and understanding towards everyone, including myself. When things are unclear, we don’t understand why life is the way it is, but once things are made clear then we begin to understand & can offer help, or be helped, or strengthen relationships. Clarity & Understanding also help build trust. At times—all times—we can offer love & forgiveness, which for me was hardest to do to myself.

I used to think peace was so much less than it really is. Now that I have real peace, inner peace, I try to be an example for others so they too can have peace. It was a hard fought battle to have inner, personal peace. It took a lot of Love, Understanding & forgiveness, not only to others but to myself. I had for a long time wanted my suffering & the suffering of others to stop. When I finally got my suffering to stop, peace came washing in like a river washing the pain away. I did not even know it was peace that I was seeking out for so long. Understanding what peace is, now that I have it…no one can take it from me. It is in every moment, in every step, every breath, every heart beat. I have it even in all the chaos that happens around me always. During those times, to offer others peace gives me great joy. It’s disturbing that peace is the opposite of war…yet we still have war, knowing full well what peace is. Those who choose war lack the heart of truth, every fiber of which is made up of peace, love, understanding & lots of happiness & joy.

When I think of love, or feel love, or give love, for me it is pure joy & happiness. I feel it so deeply that for the last 5 or 6 years the opposite of love, which is hate, physically scares me. I don’t believe I’ve told anyone this yet. I can see it & feel it in people, like a demon possessing them, & it scares me. Being where I’m at, I have a gift to give or bring to others, which is a smile to start with, then Understanding & love.

My light shines bright in here & soon will be shining out there. Some people hate my light, but it can’t be put out because others have the same light. It is passed on like a common cold, which is a good thing.

Peace, Love, happiness & understanding all go hand in hand, all links in the chain of who we are supposed to be & how we are intended to live. These are the inherent seeds of good will towards every thing living, everywhere. That’s the meaning of universal truth.

Not everyone is this way, but I am inclined to live my life this way. I know for a fact that living without peace, love, happiness & understanding is hell on earth!

I feel blessed every day to know what these good things are in life & to help others along the path to find it too. Each day my understanding grows stronger, which helps me grow as a person. It’s not always easy, but it’s not getting harder any more!

—Rocky Hutchinson
*

“Remember the day you prayed for the things you have now.” Somebody mentioned this quote and said they’d seen it all over social media, but I sure hadn’t. It’s new to me, and boy did it ring a lot of bells.

Decades ago I prayed for life without chaos. I prayed for days without fear, without shame, without hope constantly being shattered. I prayed for a life of peace, of health, of joy, and love. Decades ago I lived with a man who called from the police station at 3 a.m.(multiple times) where he’d been arrested for DUI; I went to an event with a heavily, but poorly covered black eye; I weakly and unsuccessfully tried to explain one morning to my young daughter’s girlfriend why this man was lying passed out in our driveway; I gave up and was simply speechless with shame when our electricity was turned off during my book group meeting due to multiple unpaid bills. And that is just the tip of the iceberg, as they say.

Today, blessed today, I have this life of peace and love and health and stability. Looking back on what was then, I will never give up the blessings of now.

—Jude Russell
*

Hi Johnny,

Thanks for the invitation to share something for the upcoming issue on Peace, Love and Understanding. I was inspired years ago by a certain passage from Chuang Tzu about the importance of uselessness in a world driven by pragmatism and problem solving. I wrote this poem years later upon seeing a tree that was “beyond utility.” I always feel a sense of peace in knowing that presence in itself is of value. Thanks again for putting this out Johnny and everything else you do in keepin’ it real in the hood.

Much appreciated.
Will

On Uselessness

It was an ancient tree
Gnarled trunk, thick bark
Unappealing to carpenters
Impervious to flame, resistant to axes
Utterly useless, and thereby allowed to stand
A monument to ice storms and lightning strikes
A rookery for ill-behaved crows.
Its branches twisted up and out wildly
Arching skyward in a dozen different directions then down
Turning earthward to become a broad canopy of leaf and branch
A shelter to legions of buzzing, burrowing, flying, clawed creatures
Its stout, rough arms adorned with garlands of moss
Its countless crooks and crannies draped in fern and lichen
Where wind-blown soil gathered.
Countless children climbed into its welcoming arms
Lovers lay in its dappled shade
The old ones felt at peace in the presence of this elder
And poets wrote verses inspired by this gnarled root
Utterly useless to the world
And valuable beyond measure.

—Will Hornyak, from This Altar of Earth and Sky
*

May 15th, 2025

Dear Johnny and the Open Road

You asked me for my thoughts on Peace, Love, Happiness and Understanding. What I have learned is:

Peace has to be created.
Love has to be nourished.
Happiness has to be sought.
Understanding takes time.
When one learns how to create peace and nourish the love they have, it makes people want to seek happiness, and in time we come to understand each other.

At this point in my life, I think Understanding is the hardest for me. Understanding takes time of interacting with someone in an open, loving, peace-filled way. I think it is one of the least exercised by people in general. If everyone was able to put first Peace, Love, Happiness and Understanding we would not have the divisions we see today. The answers to fixing our community today are known, it just takes work.

Thank you Johnny.
—Wyatt DeRemer
*

5-16-25

Hi Johnny,

OK, I’ve been enjoying everyone else’s submissions for a long time, so I guess it’s time I offered a contribution as well. Especially as the subject matter brings to mind what I feel has probably been my most significant personal growth since coming to prison 23 years ago.

All my…peace, love, happiness and understanding
Dustin

(more from Dustin):

Peace, Love, Happiness, Understanding?

The first thing that comes to mind after writing that question is how closely they are related. They seem to me like a four part chicken-or-the-egg question. Gotta have one to get the others, and vice versa. Immediately I thought, love. Must have love to achieve the others. Then I thought: how can you have love without understanding the object of that love? I’ve recently listened to “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers” on P.B.S. One of the many things that stood out for me was (heavily paraphrased from memory, by no means a quote, forgive me Joseph):

*regarding the recurring theme of God as man, and our own possible personal divinity (throughout history), we can’t love/worship something/God/the divine if it’s foreign to us. If it’s completely “Other,” it would remain completely alien and impossible for us to understand, therefore impossible for us to love. But if God is become man, or a bit of God is within us, then we can relate/love. Just as the Yin Yang symbol has in the eye of each “fish” the color of its counterpart. They may be complete opposites, and yet they share a bit of each other, they are a bit of the “same.” In short, we can’t love what we can’t understand, what isn’t “us.”*

So yeah, the chicken or the egg. I find love to be the more all encompassing. I suppose because I feel capable of so much more love than understanding. I feel I probably substitute acceptance (peace) and love to fill in shortcomings of my understanding, and thereby can find happiness in the presence of what I may not fully understand. These are just thoughts that floated up as I meditated on these words: Peace, love, happiness and understanding. They (my thoughts) may not be coherent to anyone but me, but nevertheless I’m grateful to have been prompted to consider them.

As far as what I’ve learned about them on my journey?

Love, for me love is all. I didn’t really love myself. In fact, I kinda hated myself and everyone else. I hadn’t even realized this about myself. I decided I wanted to love myself…and everyone else. Then I learned I couldn’t love myself till I forgave myself and misdeeds, and quit blaming myself for things not my fault. (In fact, I learned that blame only ever causes more suffering.) But this too felt like the chicken or the egg question; I couldn’t love myself till I forgave myself, but how could I forgive without love in my heart? So slowly, over time, I built them both up together, love and forgiveness. In forgiving myself, I learned that I could forgive others and quit blaming them for their faults and misdeeds. They too, I’m sure, suffered greatly to get where they are. And for this I can have empathy. Sometimes this was very difficult. I had to re-forgive myself and re-forgive my fathers many, many times. But once I did (forgive myself and others) loving myself and everyone else was easy. I believe we are all “one” anyway, all from the same “source,” same “energy,” Love. The Bible says “God is love.” It is my favorite sentence in that book. Jesus said not to look outward for the Kingdom of Heaven, it is within you. And that our hearts are the home of God. In Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein said we are all God, and we are all one. I know we could never intentionally harm or hate what we truly love. So I choose to live in love. I love you. All of you. And I always will.

Do you grok?

Peace, Love, Happiness and Understanding,
—Dustin Jamison
*

Johnny,

Thank you for the invitation to contribute. I have been thinking of late of what Jesus said to Paul in 2 Corinthians, Chapter 12: “Power is perfected in weakness. When you are weak you are strong.”

This paradox makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve had four spine surgeries, and struggle to carry even very light objects. Quite weak. And so a sentence like “Power is Perfected in Weakness” resonates deeply.

But of course—like most things—there’s deeper meaning. When I came to prison, my soul fractured. Of course my material life ended, but it also broke my spirit. But the paradox that I can have power in such weakness was a wonderful concept. It gives me comfort.

On another note, I was heartened to see that the new Pope was a missionary for twenty years in Peru. What a wonderful human being someone must be to do something like that.

Finally, I’m not sure if anyone told you of the passing of Todd Stafney from cancer. He and I both joined Group Dialogue in your last few months of coming to TRCI. Todd was a wonderful friend of mine. He had a positive impact on my life. And in the end, isn’t that what it’s all about: having a positive impact?

I remember one medical lecture that I went to. The doctor had developed a procedure to close fistulas (abnormal openings)…well, I’ll spare you the technical details. But he ended his lecture with these words: “Of everything I’ve done in life, developing this procedure has allowed me to decrease the sum total of human suffering in the world.” I’ve never forgotten those words two decades later. I try and live my life by that same adage.

—Thomas Bray
*

If you would like to make a submission to next month’s peace, love, happiness & understanding, the writing prompt is:

What books have changed the way you see, experience, or understand the world?

(Don’t just list the titles of books, say something about the change.)

peace & love
Johnny

Yeelen: film screening benefit for Ko-Falen 7/15/25
2025-07-15 19:00 - 20:00

peace, love, happiness & understanding 8/7/25: Tributes to Jerry Smith
2025-08-06 - 2025-09-03
Jerry & Donna Smith

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

August 7, 2025

In honor of Jerry, I will speak his name aloud to the trees and creatures of the earth, and tell them of his beautiful heart.

—Abe Green
*

Our dear friend Jerry Smith died peacefully at his home on July 8th. Without Jerry, there would have been no prison dialogues or plays, no “A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison” film, no Open Hearts Open Minds, no Open Road. His love and generosity changed many many lives, including mine.
*

Donna Smith dictated these words:

Jerry and I met when we were 18 years old and got married when we were 20. We had big dreams of doing great things in the world. And in our 74 years together I believe we made a contribution.

Jerry was generous. He was always willing to help people no matter what they needed. When he met a young girl with a broken bike, he bought her a new one. He bought a lot of bikes. He helped bicyclists with their flat tires. He met a woman whose son needed heart surgery. He helped with that. There are many stories like this.

Now that he’s gone, every room feels different. He was the love of my life.

—Donna
*

Here’s a Father’s Day letter from his daughter Marsha:

Dear Dad,

A very “Happy Father’s Day” to you. Want to thank you for being a great Dad. For being the kind of person who doesn’t ask for or want their children to adjust their lives/schedules/political thinking/voting/child-raising philosophy/(insert anything here) to match what you think. I cannot ask for a better gift in life from a parent than this freedom.

Our brunch discussions from our time at Waverley have had such a lasting impact on me. I only wish that I was less dogmatic in my own ideas than I am today and more like you are, and were, when trying to help your children’s thinking through issues such as abortion, the death penalty, taxation, etc.

I thank you so much for that time and for continuing throughout your life with this willingness to see situations through the eyes of the other person.

I love you very much.

Your daughter, Marsha
*

Jerry’s daughter Chris wrote this:

Hey Dad,

I’m so glad you knew how much I loved you and how thankful I am for all you’ve done for the whole family. You were an amazing dad, and I just wanted to say thank you for everything.

You protected me, when I was young, and always made sure I was safe.

You guided me, so that I would know right from wrong and counseled me, when I clearly… “should have known better.”

You gave me a childhood, that most people can only dream of.

You taught me not to judge people too harshly.… “You never really know what someone is going through,” you would say.

You treated me with compassion, when it wasn’t deserved.

You never told me what to think or believe, but instead, you gave me some really thought-provoking ideas.

You taught me how to laugh at myself. You said it was important because, well, we’re all just humans, with our flaws and all, trying to figure out how to make the most of life.

You made my son the most important person in your world. Thank you for that. He’s an amazing man!

Thanks so much for always putting the family’s best interests first. And thank you for being such a great listener.

I know this might sound a bit biased, but I honestly believe you’re the best dad I’ve ever had, and you’re my hero!

I’ll always be so grateful for you.

I miss you a ton,

—Chris
*

Jerry’s grandson Jordan wrote this:

Growing up, I used to feel a bit left out when conversations turned to dads. I didn’t have one around, and it stung. But with time, I realized something important—not everyone gets the incredible gift of having a grandfather like I did.

Most people knew him as Jerry. I had the exclusive honor of calling him Grandpa. He wasn’t just a grandparent—he was a father figure, a mentor, and a best friend. He taught me how to shoot a gun, how to pitch a tent, and how to drive a one-ton truck with a manual transmission. In every meaningful way, I really did have a dad.

He was generous and attentive, always willing to listen. He made people laugh, not with flashy jokes, but with genuine humor and a warm wit that stayed with you. His success in life wasn’t measured by titles or wealth, but by the community he built around him—one rooted in kindness, loyalty, and love. Until the very end, he was surrounded by friends and family who adored him.

As I write this, I’m not only honoring my grandfather, but also speaking to anyone who ever shared a good laugh with him. Anyone who’s ever made someone else smile because of something Jerry once said and those who have changed their lives for the better. Anyone who carries forward a bit of his spirit—his joy, his wisdom, his way of ending conversations with a clever remark.

If you’ve changed for the better after knowing him—if he made you a little happier, a little kinder—then I know he’s smiling. And I know he’s proud of you.

—Jordan
*

Nicholas Swift spoke at the Celebration of Life for Jerry. This is what he said:

Good afternoon.

My name is Nicholas Swift.
And I am one of the living testaments to what happens
when someone chooses to believe in transformation—
not as a theory, but as a practice.

When I was incarcerated, I, like most in that environment, focused simply on surviving it.
I had no roadmap.
No vision of a life worth reaching for—only the instinct to endure.
And I don’t know if I can describe what life looks like when you’ve never seen what possibilities it might hold—
only the realities you were born into.

But then something unexpected took root.
Not because the walls changed—but because someone chose to plant sanctuary in the most unlikely of places.

That sanctuary was a theater program.
Not just as performance,
but as a form of communal remembering—
a chance to become human again in the eyes of others,
to remember that emotion and authenticity still had a place in our lives,
to bear witness to others as they walked towards that same realization,
to watch a rising tide lift all ships,
and see people I never would have thought it possible of
to become more genuine, insightful, authentic versions of themselves.

The theater program gave me more than a stage.
It gave me back my imagination.

It showed me, through the presence of others—
through the quiet, powerful seeing of people who believed in it—
that living wasn’t just something you did once you got out.
It was something you could begin right there.

Each man who stepped into that space became,
knowingly or not,
an ambassador of possibility.
A quiet signpost in the dark that said:
“It doesn’t have to end like this.”

And for every person who walks through that system unconcerned with change,
there was someone else—
someone like me—
holding a hope they didn’t yet have words for.

There was a quiet aspiration towards something we had no words for, no way to describe beyond a felt sense of hope.
Theater gave that hope language.
It gave it form.
And most of all, it gave me a future I hadn’t dared to picture.

Not just a release date.
Not just a plan.
But a life.

Since then, I’ve built a business, become a Mentor, and started working towards my own nonprofit.
I want to offer to others what Jerry, and his family, through Johnny, once offered to me and those like me—
a glimpse beyond survival, toward something more true, more free, towards possibility.

And none of that would have been possible
without the person we’re here to honor—
and the family who trusted him, who trusted us,
enough to let the work speak for itself.

So I speak today
not just for myself,
but for every quiet spark that took flame
because someone believed we were worth the match.

Thank you.
For believing in what we might become.
For giving us a reason to try.

—Nicholas Swift
*

Denise Bare also spoke at the Celebration of Life for Jerry:

Jerry Smith’s Thread That Reached Me

I never imagined I’d be standing here, speaking at Jerry’s memorial.

Not as someone who spent time in prison. Not as someone who once thought her life was beyond repair.

But here I am—because Jerry believed in someone else.

He believed in his friend Johnny Stallings. He believed in Johnny’s wild idea that theater and art could belong in prison. That something sacred could happen when people on the inside were invited to sit in circle and talk about their lives.

Jerry backed that vision before it had a name. Before there were programs or grants or success stories. He believed in Johnny—and because of that belief, he ended up touching my life in ways I still can’t fully explain. He started bringing art into Two Rivers, to Columbia River and finally to Coffee Creek, where I was. Johnny had Carla Grant and Don Kern come and bring in theater and it changed my life.

I joined a theater circle while I was inside. Just a few hours a week. At first I thought it was a distraction. But it became a lifeline. A space where I could be human again. And behind that circle—behind the exercises, the plays, the visiting artists—was Jerry.

He didn’t know me. But he believed in the people who believed in me. And sometimes, that’s all it takes to change a life.

Jerry’s belief in how art can heal, restore, and reconnect helped me find my voice. His giving created a ripple that reached me. And now I get to be part of that ripple for others.

Thank you, Jerry, for trusting your friend and for never underestimating the power of a story shared.

I’m one of many you’ll never meet, but whose life you helped rebuild. My love and gratitude to Jerry’s wife Donna, daughters Christine, Marsha, and grandson Jordan. Your family is special and amazing, and your Jerry has touched my life, and I will forever be grateful.

All my love & gratitude,
Denise Bare
*

Here are some tributes to Jerry that people sent in:

Dear Donna Smith and Smith family,

Early on I was involved in Johnny’s work at Two Rivers Prison and became the first Board president. I watched plays, helped behind the scenes, and marveled at the amazing event of Shakespeare being performed by men who were new to his work, new to theater, new to finding their own deeper voices.

Later I became one of the dialogue group leaders, going out once a month, often with Bushra Azzouz. And like so many in Open Hearts Open Minds. I participated in the work and delight of finishing Bushra’s film Midsummer’s Night’s Dream in Prison and presenting the wonderful premier in Portland.

So much of what happened over the years at Two Rivers and then in other facilities in Oregon is the result of the interest and generosity of Jerry and Donna and the continuing support of all the family through the foundation. I feel grateful not just to have witnessed and participated in the OHOM’s programs but to have seen and benefited from the care of your entire family.

This support did not end with OHOM, in fact it continues, but has also been a motive force behind Open Road. Johnny has stimulated discussions, education and performances with Open Road, taking it beyond prison walls into everyday lives.

I am writing to acknowledge all of this in honor of Jerry’s memory and in respect for all of you. Thank you so very much. So many lives have been changed by your generosity.

With deep regards,
Deborah Buchanan
*

Dear Johnny,

I’m sorry to hear about the passing of your friend, Jerry Smith. I know what a significant person he was in your life.

Over the years I had a few conversations with him at the hotel where we stayed when we went to the plays. In one that particularly impressed me, he spoke about his concern for you in a way that I could only describe as parental. It was clear to me that although he valued the work you were doing, his deeper interest was in you personally, and in your full flowering as a human being.

We often talk about how lucky we have been in life, especially in the friendships we have enjoyed. You were particularly lucky in your relationship with Jerry, and he was equally lucky to have passed some of his time with you.

—Howard Thoresen
*

Dear Donna, Christine, Marsha & Jordon,

I won’t try to speak to your loss, our whole community’s loss, except to lovingly wish you well as you live the coming days of grief and love. But I would like to say a bit about the gifts to the world that Jerry’s and all of your insightful generosity have made possible. I was able to attend several of the plays at Two Rivers as well as the movie of Midsummer Night’s Dream and the short one made by Prabu, and gladly receive news of how Open Hearts Open Minds and The Open Road continue to touch lives as well as Johnny’s monthly “peace, love, happiness and understanding” newsletter. Each of these love-offerings has and continues to remind all who witness and participate of the transformative power of creativity and love of all kinds: power to heal deep wounds and uplift spirits. From the inspired vision vast enough to be a container for all these possibilities and more, to the fragile precious moments of hope: what a wonderful legacy!

With Love and Gratitude,
Nancy Yeilding
*

Johnny, you were blessed by the patronage of Jerry Smith, which allowed you to manifest some of your dreams.

What a legacy he has left. The ripple of his loyalty, love and support will last for generations.

He believed in you!

So do we.

Warm hugs
Brenda Erickson
*

I’ve said it a million times: “You all helped me and saved my life!” Living in a world full of love, wonder and beauty is what you gave me—and Jerry helped make that possible. I see what you all have done…so many of us now live in a world of Joy…

My name is Rocky Delos Hutchinson and although we have only met a few times, the abilities that you all gave to others have been the seeds that were planted in my heart, mind and soul, which provided me with a new life—one I will soon be able to live outside the walls of prison.

I only met Jerry one or two times, and his heart, his infectious smile and his tears of joy will forever be framed in the mosaic of images that make up my soul. I’m blessed to have that be a part of me.

His gift of love and a world full of new and wonderful people who showed me how to be open to everything life is, and how to be human again, gave me a second chance at a life…one I plan to fill full of kindness and beauty. This man provided me with life by his actions. I cry tears of love and joy now.

I cannot imagine the loss you feel. His love has helped all of us to grow. Through him, my tears of all things good cleansed my soul, and gave me a chance to live in love.

with all my heart, thank you
Rocky Hutchinson
*

Dear Donna, Christine, Marsha & Jordan,

I am so sorry for your loss. I remember meeting you, Donna, and Jerry once. I believe at one of the open performances of Hamlet at Two Rivers. I can’t over state my gratitude for the opportunities that your foundation made possible through supporting Open Hearts Open Minds. I saw the peace those programs brought to the participants first hand. Personally, being a part of OHOM completely altered my life trajectory. I learned so much about myself and the world during my time with the folks at TRCI and CRCI. I would not be who I am today without those experiences. So thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Jerry and you all have helped make the world a significantly better place.

With all my love
Victoria Spencer
*

Donna, Christine, Marsha, and Jordan;

I was so sad to hear about Jerry’s passing. There have been few times in my life that I’ve been lucky enough to share space with such a compassionate, kind, human. I was happy for every second I got. For a few years, I was a volunteer through and also a board member of Open Hearts and Open Minds. I directed three shows at Two Rivers Correctional and also helped facilitate a weekly dialogue group at Columbia River Correctional. These experiences changed my life. Because of the generosity of Jerry and your family I was able to see theater as a tool to do good in the world, not just as passive entertainment. That has guided my life ever since. After OHOM, I toured plays to culturally underserved, including incarcerated, audiences across the PNW and the USA. I’ve also recently started my own prison theater program on the medium side of Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, OR. The same magic that existed at TRCI is in full-force at CCCF. I like to think that Jerry and the rest of your family is part of that magic that I’ve taken with me on my life’s journey that is now in full blossom at Coffee Creek. Thank you for everything and please know I’ll always keep Jerry in my heart.

All my love,
Patrick Walsh
*

Dear Donna, Christine, Marsha & Jordon

Since meeting Jerry Smith I’ve cried a million tears. I’m crying now, as I write this. Going to prison broke my heart over and over again. A broken heart works better than a well-protected one, because feelings can get in and out more easily.

Yesterday morning, Carl Alsup called me from prison, and was talking about the time he played Marc Antony. He was having a hard time performing the role, because when he was rehearsing the funeral oration—“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now…”—he couldn’t help crying. Jack Poole, who was playing (the murdered) Julius Caesar complained that Carl was getting his costume wet.

I remember the day in the dialogue group when Carl told me that he found himself crying all the time. It was embarrassing, and he didn’t know what to do about it. Coming to prison at the age of seventeen with a life sentence, he had worked hard to maintain a tough guy persona. Now that was out the window. I wasn’t much help. He knew—all the men knew—that by the end of every performance my cheeks would be wet and my shirt tails soaked with tears. Of happiness!

What does all this have to do with Jerry Smith? Everything! Without Jerry, there would have been no prison dialogues or plays. From the time we first met, we liked each other. Over the years, our love for each other deepened. I miss him!

The love and support of all of you has changed my life. And Nancy’s life. And, thanks to what we like to call “the ripple effect,” it has changed and continues to change the lives of many many people.

It’s some kind of Love Revolution! My gratitude to all of you knows no bounds.

—Johnny Stallings
*

Dear Donna, Christine, Marsha & Jordon,

My name is Alex Tretbar, and while I didn’t know Jerry, his work has meant a great deal to me.

I was incarcerated in Oregon from 2017 to 2022, and during that time I met a number of incarcerated people who were involved with Open Hearts Open Minds, and whose experiences with the Shakespeare plays were transformative. Through them I came to know Johnny Stallings, who has also had a huge impact on my life. We struck up a correspondence while I was inside and that continues to this day. Much of my success and happiness since being released from prison can be traced directly back to Jerry.

I offer you my heartfelt condolences in what I know is a difficult time for you.

Best wishes from Kansas City,
Alex Tretbar
*

Dear Donna, Christine, Marsha and Jordan –

We are so sorry you have lost Jerry. Helping to bring A Midsummer Night’s Dream In Prison to completion and dissemination has been one of the most rewarding experiences of our respective careers. Jerry’s presence on stage at the Cinema 21 film premiere was a joyful moment that will always be remembered by us and the hundreds gathered. Jerry’s passion and support for bringing Bushra, Johnny and the Actor’s vision to life was clearly present in a warm and deeply human way. Along with yours, his love of and belief in this project (and many others) has already brought joy, tears and the potential for growth to several thousand people, with more to come. With the OHOM team, we will continue to help his legacy live on.

We wish you peace and healing.

Ellen Thomas (producer) and Enie Vaisburd (co-director, editor)
*

Dear Jerry and Donna Smith Family,

I am deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Jerry Smith. Please accept my heartfelt condolences during this difficult time.

Mr. Smith was more than just a generous supporter — he was a true believer in the work Open Hearts Open Minds does and the lives they touch. That was evident in his desire to watch the theatre productions at Two Rivers Correctional in Umatilla Oregon through the years. I had the privilege of performing for him during many productions in Umatilla, so I was personally impacted by his generosity in supporting Open Hearts Open Minds and other art programs inside prisons. His compassion and commitment made a meaningful impact, and his legacy will continue to live on through the causes the family foundation champions and supports.

Please know that my thoughts are with the Smith family, friends, and all who were fortunate to know him. May his memory be a blessing and may the work he did through his foundation serve as a tribute to his enduring spirit.

With sympathy and respect,
Josh Underhill
OHOM Theatre participant at Two Rivers Correctional Facility
President of the Board, Open Hearts Open Minds
*

Smith Family,

We at Open Hearts Open Minds feel deeply honored and truly blessed to have known and been supported by Jerry Smith throughout the years.

Every so often, the world is graced by someone whose generosity and spirit leave a lasting imprint — Jerry was undeniably one of those rare souls. His unwavering kindness, compassion, and commitment to others touched countless lives through his generosity supporting Open Hearts Open Minds. We truly would not be here if it wasn’t for his support from the beginning.

Those who had the privilege of knowing Jerry and whose lives that were uplifted by his generosity stand as a living testament to his remarkable heart and legacy.

May you and your entire family find comfort in the deep gratitude we hold for the incredible person Jerry was, and in the knowledge that his light continues to shine through all the good he helped make possible through Open Hearts Open Minds art programs.

Our deepest condolences,

OHOM Board of Directors
Josh Underhill, Dick Willis, Barbra Chen, Prabu Muruganantham, Lauren Scher, Aaron Gilbert, Messiah Shakur
*

I barely have words to express how my involvement as a Group Dialogue volunteer at Two Rivers Correctional Institution changed my life. I am a more open, loving, compassionate person for sitting in circle with those men, and for learning the way of the “Nonstop Love-In” from Johnny.

I met Jerry a couple times and was touched by his smile, kindness, and generosity. My heart is sad knowing I will not be in his presence again.

Love,
Kristen Sagan
*

Dear Jordan, Christine, Marsha, and Donna,

My heart goes out to you during this time of sweet and tearful transition. Jerry was a beautiful soul and will be greatly missed. His way of being had a truly positive impact on so many lives. What a lovely legacy to leave behind.

I remember the first time I sat down with Jerry. His bright eyes and his smile were so welcoming. Don Kern and I had been facilitating the theater program at Coffee Creek for about a year. We were greatly changed by the experience and wanted to continue the work, but knew we could not afford to do so without financial support. That’s when Johnny Stallings introduced us to Jerry Smith. Jerry leaned in to ask pertinent questions. He was not only kind, but thorough. He was a smart man and wanted to make sure we would be responsible stewards. I loved visiting with Jerry. And not just because he always insisted on dessert.

It’s been 11 years since I first stepped into the rehearsal room at Coffee Creek. I get to witness first hand the effect of arts in the lives of our incarcerated community. My life took a completely different turn after volunteering in prison. I have increased my empathy quotient and have learned to embrace the creative spirit within us all. I would not be the person I am today without Jerry and the family. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Carla D Grant
Executive Director
Open Hearts Open Minds
*

Dear Donna, Christine, Marsha and Jordan,

I want to send my deepest condolences for your loss. Even though I only met Jerry a couple times and didn’t know him personally, his kindness and love has forever changed my life in the most important way.

I became involved with Open Hearts Open Minds in 2009 while incarcerated at TRCI. During one of the darkest periods of my life I was lucky enough to be part of the Dialogue and theatre group there. Without Jerry’s generosity and his willingness to want to help the forgotten ones I shudder to wonder where my life would be today. You see in that little room on all those Wednesday evenings I was able to discover who I am and for the first time find true freedom in my life. The best part of it is that I am not the only one that discovered this. Not only the group of guys I was involved with but also continuing to this day, I can’t imagine how many lives have been impacted by OHOM. I know they have branched out into many institutions and are doing some really life changing work. I know this because I am now a board member and am so excited to see where this goes and continue this amazing work, and do my part in carrying on Jerry’s legacy of kindness love and compassion. It takes more than a community to pull this off it truly takes a family and I am so blessed to be part of the OHOM family. I want to thank you again Jerry for the gift of life and freedom. And thank you to your family.

God bless you all,
—Aaron Gilbert
*

What a great opportunity to share my reflections on past memories of great performances presented by the actors at Two Rivers Correctional Institution for several years. My experience, as well as my sister Andrea’s, left us each with great joy. At each performance we were overwhelmed to be given the opportunity to share the experience with those dedicated men. They were professional in every way possible and outstanding in their individual performances.

When the opportunity would come around every year, for five years, we would make our plans to travel from Salt Lake City to Umatilla and attend every performance. It was the highlight of our lives at that time.

It was always overwhelming for us to meet all the actors and have brief conversations with them. That gave me the opportunity to ask each of them if I could write to him and send him a birthday card. I had a strong desire to communicate with them because so many of them were lost or forgotten souls—alone and needing acceptance by people from outside those prison walls.

It gave me great pleasure to correspond with them, to learn how they were doing, and to allow them to share their thoughts, feelings and the successes they were making.

This all was made possible by the dedicated work of Jerry on behalf of the inmates at Two Rivers who took advantage of that great program.

I am always grateful for the joy and fond memories that fill my heart when I reflect back on those days.

Most sincerely,
Sharon Lemm (Momma Sharon)
*

To all,

The Dialogue and Theater Group was a saving grace in an otherwise dreary place. It inspired hope, purpose, friendship and most of all, love. This program influenced the lives of so many individuals from the players to their families and friends, people who were able to witness and experience the meetings and plays, people whom they then spoke to about their experiences and so on. This experience still influences thoughts and discussions far outside the origination. There are not enough kind and appreciative words to express the feelings about Jerry’s contribution and help in making OHOM a reality. Thank you to him and everyone who supported him in his efforts to help establish and maintain OHOM. He truly changed the lives of countless individuals as a result.

With great thanks and admiration,
Sincerely,
Joseph Opyd
*

I don’t know—-do you think Jerry Smith had any idea how his life—-his generosity, his gentleness, his gentle humor, changed the lives of others? Made others more generous, compassionate, aware, grateful? So many others!

I know he changed my life, gave me the blessing of getting to know and understand and admire scores of incarcerated men at Two Rivers Correctional Institution, for seven years (and still counting). Our dialogue group of fifteen to twenty men laughed, cried; we discussed life, talked about forgiveness, redemption, beauty, joy, shame, love, suffering. I left each Saturday I was there, driving home on Cloud 9, exhilarated and joyful, humbled and blessed. If only everyone could experience days like that they would change their views forever on incarceration.

Yes, Johnny started the program, that and the theater program, and was responsible for running both for years and years, beautifully and meaningfully. But behind everything was Jerry—and the whole Smith family. They all were, and are, caring and compassionate human beings.

—Jude Russell

peace, love, happiness & understanding 9/4/25
2025-09-04 - 2025-10-01
THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding
September 4, 2025

Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits — and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!

—The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald
*

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at…

—Oscar Wilde
*

To create around ourselves the kind of world that we wish to live in—isn’t that the most important project of our lives?

—the Russian clown, Slava Polunin
*

I will not cease from mental strife
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

—William Blake
*

Wandering through Eutopias

On Saturday, September 13th, I’m going to present ¡Eutopias! at Taborspace—the latest in a series of “entertainments.” Ideas of utopias and of paradise have always intrigued me. My original idea was to talk about, and maybe read from, famous utopias like Plato’s Politeia (The Republic), Thomas More’s Utopia and some more recent visions, like Aldous Huxley’s Island and Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia.

As I began my researches, the first thing I discovered was that the topic of “utopia” is vast! It was like going down a rabbit hole, and finding endless tunnels branching off. Easy to get lost.

Let’s start with Webster’s definitions:

utopia (noun)

1. often capitalized: a place of ideal perfection, especially in laws, government, and social conditions
2. an impractical scheme for social improvement
3. an imaginary and indefinitely remote place

Again, according to Webster’s, synonyms include:

paradise, heaven, nirvana, Eden, wonderland, fantasyland, Garden of Eden, Zion, Cockaigne, Sion, promised land, Camelot, Elysium, empyrean, Shangri-la, New Jerusalem, bliss, lotusland, never-never land, joy, fairyland, dreamland, dreamworld, arcadia, blissfulness, euphoria, blessedness, gladness

You can see where this is going… There are countless books and scholarly articles written just about “Arcadia” and the pastoral ideal in literature. The last word on the synonym list, “gladness,” is a synonym for “happiness”—which is another endless topic. Where to begin?

In this essay, I’m going to suggest that the utopian impulse arises from the irresistible idea that “things could be better than they are.” Another idea I want to explore is that “utopia” might be more about the way we see and experience the world than about the way things are—or might be. I want to look at literary utopias, like More’s and Huxley’s, and also utopian experiments in what we like to call “the real world.” Webster’s synonyms for “utopia” suggest imaginary places, but I’m sitting in Eutopia right now—The Tao of Tea. More about this later…

A good starting place for our journey together through utopian realms is with Sir (Saint) Thomas More (1478-1535). He was a critic of capital punishment who had his head chopped off. (His original sentence was to be hanged, drawn and quartered, but Henry VIII commuted it to decapitation.) Thomas More coined the word “utopia” when he wrote a long letter (in Latin) to his friend Erasmus about a fictional traveler who had come upon an island in the New World where the customs were different than in 16th Century England. The two friends liked to joke with each other, and “utopia” could be derived from the Greek outopia, meaning “no place,” or from eutopia, meaning “good place” or “happy place.” In this essay, I am “wandering through Eutopias,” but if I had wandered in More’s Utopia, I would have been arrested and punished for vagrancy. No slackers allowed. In many utopias, like Gerard Winstanley’s, everyone was required to work, unlike Harry McClintock’s Hobo Utopia, “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” where “they hung the jerk that invented work.” But I digress… I can’t help it! I’m in a rabbit warren here! (Note to Reader: this essay may resemble the non-linear way my mind works: “that reminds me of another thing, which reminds me of another thing, which reminds me of another thing…”)

On the positive side of the ledger, in More’s Utopia they had NO MONEY! There was free public education for all—including women! There was freedom of religion—as long as you believed in God. War with other countries was to be avoided, if possible. Capital punishment was reserved only for the most extreme crimes, like murder. In More’s day, you could be hung for picking pockets or for being a “witch.”

The first major literary utopia is Plato’s Republic—two thousand years before Thomas More’s Utopia, although Webster’s synonym “lotusland” suggests that Homer’s Odyssey gives us glimpses of pleasant imaginary realms—the Land of the Lotus Eaters, and Calypso’s island, and the land of the Phaeacians. In the Gilgamesh epic, the hero visits the mortal-turned-immortal Utnapishtim, who lives in a magical realm at the End of the World.

One more thought about Odysseus and utopia. The beautiful Goddess Calypso offers him a life of pleasure and immortality (!), but he wants to go home and live out his last years with his wife Penelope. That’s his utopia!

I wouldn’t want to live in Plato’s ideal city-state—(like Stephen Dedalus, I would get kicked out, anyway)—but I want to give Plato full credit for doing something radical and new—criticizing his own society. Aristophanes does this too, in a comic vein, without presenting serious alternatives. That’s not his job. He’s a comedian.

Plato was the first person to write out a detailed rational alternative to his society. Up until that time, my guess is that people accepted the society that they lived in as “the way things are.” Maybe there was some complaining, and even a few suggestions. Of course, as Heraclitus and the Buddhists say, everything is always changing, and especially in Periclean Athens, where there were major innovations in theater, democracy, philosophy and sculpture.

Unlike Homer’s imaginary Land of the Lotus Eaters, Plato was imagining societal improvements that he hoped would actually come about. Even though Athenians were proud of their city and considered it superior to other cities, Plato believed that there was a lot of room for improvement. He missed some obvious things, like the abolition of slavery and equal rights for women. He outlined five different forms of government, of which he felt rule by a Philosopher-King was the best. Democracy was near the bottom of his list.

The five forms of government that Plato outlined, in ranked order, are: Aristocracy, Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy and Tyranny. We think of “Aristocracy” as meaning rule by an “upper class.” Plato, who coined the word, meant something different. From aristos, “the best,” he meant rule by the wisest and most virtuous people in the polis. Plato, who devoted his life to Philosophy, the “love of wisdom,” wanted to ensure that the ruler of a city state was, by rigorous training, the wisest person. Someone like him. He spent a lot of his life trying to get his philosophy students to go into politics and to get tyrants to become philosophers. That last project didn’t go well for him. He was arrested and sold into slavery by the tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse.

Timocracy was rule by (hopefully) honorable military leaders. Oligarchy is rule by wealthy elites—something we are quite familiar with. There has never been a pure Democracy—not here and not in Periclean Athens. Plato thought that because people were susceptible to demagogues, they might actually elect a tyrant. Fortunately, that could never happen here.

Plato had a special, personal reason for distrusting Democracy. The citizens of Athens had voted to put his beloved teacher Socrates to death.

Tyrannos was once a neutral word that just meant “king.” By Plato’s day, experience with tyrants had given the word a negative connotation. They were more likely to be selfish and cruel than wise and virtuous.

A form of government that Plato doesn’t mention is “Kleptocracy,” rule by thieves and conmen who use their political power to enrich themselves. There are many examples in the modern world, including the Somoza Family in Nicaragua, Putin and the other Russian oligarchs, the Saudi royal family, the Trump family, et cetera. Maybe Plato didn’t need the word “kleptocracy” because it was assumed that kings (tyrants) like Cyrus the Great naturally amassed the most wealth.

Plato’s system was rational—too rational. It highlights some fatal flaws in utopian visions: there is no one right way to live; one person’s utopia is another person’s dystopia; good societies are not created by one person telling everyone else how to live. They evolve out of complex collective changes—for better or worse.

There’s a eutopia inside Plato’s utopia, known as the Allegory of the Cave. According to Plato, our ordinary experience of the world is a play of shadows on the walls of a cave. We can break our chains, make our way to the mouth of the cave, and see the Sun. In India this is known as moksha, “Freedom”; in Buddhism, nirvana, which might be translated as “extinction.” Buddha spoke of it as “waking up.” Plato said that if you try to tell the dreamers in the cave about the indescribable reality you have seen, they will think you are mad.

In the two thousand years between Plato’s vision and More’s, people in Europe weren’t writing about how things could be better here on earth. This was seen as a Fallen World. Hopeless, really. Paradise would come for some after death, in Heaven. Jesus’ death on the cross redeemed humanity from Sin and Death. Unless it didn’t. In Dante’s vision, an eternal Paradise of Light and Love for the fortunate few is balanced with a nightmare vision of eternal punishment, pain, torment and damnation for the majority of “sinful” humans.

An Interlude:

For me, The Library is Eutopia!—Multnomah County Library or my own library. Powell’s Books. Belmont Books, Backstory Books & Yarn! BOOKS!!! Every book, like every person, is a World. Some of my best friends are authors: Walt Whitman, William Shakespeare, Susan Griffin, R. H. Blyth, Thomas Traherne, Harold Bloom, William Blake, J. Krishnamurti, Hafez, Han Shan, Lao Tzu… It’s a list that goes on and on and on.

Moving right along…

Another way of looking at utopias is that every time someone, alone or with others, attempts to make something new, something beautiful, something good, it is a utopian experiment—starting a nonprofit organization (there are millions of them on Planet Earth), opening a new restaurant or a new bookstore, growing a garden, painting a picture, making a movie, putting on a play. Eutopias are everywhere!

It’s important to note that some people’s ideas of a better world are at odds with other people’s ideas. In many imagined utopias wealth is abolished and people share everything. That’s definitely not Ayn Rand’s version. And at the worst, some utopian visions, when put into practice, bring about more suffering than we can even begin to imagine. The visions of Adolf Hitler and Mao Tse-Tung, and the deaths of millions, come to mind. Many attempts to make things better, make them worse. The dream of the Industrial Revolution to free us from toil and solve all our problems had ecological consequences that were not imagined.

In fact, there’s always a Snake in the Garden. No matter how good your idea, there will be problems. Because any imagined world, just like “the real world,” has things in it that “don’t work”—that are unfair, unjust, flawed. No matter how clever we are, we can’t avoid suffering or death.

According to the legend, Prince Gautama was already a grown man with a wife and a son before he had any idea that there were such things as sickness, old age and death. He was so troubled by these things that he left his palace in search of some kind of answer. After years of soul searching, he had an experience of perfect inner peace and freedom. He taught that suffering is caused by craving and that when we wake from our delusions we get off the endless Wheel of Birth and Death—we’re awake, we’ve seen the Sun, we’re free! In later Buddhism, the bodhisattvas decided that they didn’t want to get off that Wheel. They wanted to return again and again to the world of suffering mortals in order to help them.

Back in the Hippie Days, a lot of people started communes, where they could go back to the Land, grow organic fruits and vegetables, and live together in Peace and Harmony. This was not a new idea. In the Nineteenth Century there were all kinds of ideas about, and experiments with, making a better world (for humans), like Brook Farm and Oneida. Two impressive examples are The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and the spiritual vision of Joseph Smith and the founding of the Mormon Church.

some notes:

Every society and every culture, from the first homo sapiens till now, is an experiment, a work in progress, that is always changing—slowly or rapidly. And they are all different. Because they are not all alike (impossible!), you will naturally find that in some places people are relatively friendly and happy, and in other places people, on the whole, might be more angry or unhappy. There are countries where practically every adult is an alcoholic! That can’t be good. In Bali, there’s a special ceremony for children when they reach the age of six months. They touch the earth for the first time! Up until then, they are constantly held by mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors.

This variety is true not just of countries and cultures, but of states and cities and towns and families. By sheer chance, you can be born into a family where you are loved and admired and valued, or one where you get your teeth knocked out.

Now, back to Marx and Engels and the Mormons…

The basic idea of Communism is: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” This doesn’t sound so terrible, does it? In fact this idea is as old as the hills. When people lived in tribes and hunted and gathered food, this was the only possible arrangement. Food was shared with everyone—even those too old or too young to get it for themselves.

On More’s island of Utopia, and in many imagined and actual utopian experiments, sharing was preferred to competition. The words “communism” and “community” are related. The dreams of Marx and Engels didn’t turn out well in places like Russia and China because of ruthless totalitarian ideologues who were happy to murder millions of people in order to pave the road to a “better world.” Maybe “mixed-economies,” like those in Scandinavia, provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

Marx’s vision and Buddha’s and Muhammad’s changed the world. Joseph Smith’s vision changed Utah. Just kidding. But it certainly caught on with a lot of people. According to a statistical report of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, as of December 31, 2024, there were 17,509,781 members worldwide.

Every religion and every country—every town and city!—can be seen as a utopian experiment. They are all flawed. That’s the Snake in the Garden. And the “flaws” are not small. Sometimes they are mind-boggling. Anti-Semitism for the Nazis. Our “Founding Fathers” were in favor of Free Speech and Freedom of Religion. Those are good things. Unfortunately, our utopian experiment was “flawed” by a program of genocide against the people who already lived here, and the most brutal slavery in the history of the world.

And another thing, and another thing…

Our whole civilization is “flawed” by being Patriarchal. The God of Abraham doesn’t have a wife!

Our Scientific-Materialist-Rational-Industrial-Capitalist Civilization is slightly flawed by the fact that in order to make the planet into a theme park for humans, it is bringing about the sixth major “Extinction Event” in the history of the planet. That’s not good.

The world is always everything-at-once. While most people are trying to be helpful, there are always some geniuses that are working on new methods to kill everything that lives. It has been ever thus.

Vladimir Putin could decide—all by himself—to have the Russian military invade Ukraine. The United Nations is the eutopian experiment that’s supposed to prevent that from happening, but, alas!, it’s flawed. Like this essay. Like everything.

On the other hand…

I don’t want to end my essay on eutopias on a gloomy or despairing note. That would be wrong! It is dismaying for those of us with dreams of universal peace and love and happiness to witness seemingly endless examples of violence and greed and fear. It seems to me that the news media and social media relentlessly distort our perception of what is happening. If someone goes into a store or a school or a church and shoots people, it makes the news. If a mother puts her newborn baby to her breast, it’s not news. Is someone grows a carrot, if a doctor in an emergency room saves a life, if a child sings a song, if a poet writes a poem, if people volunteer at a food bank, if a puppy licks your face, it’s not news. You get the idea. I’m pretty sure that what’s happening right now on our beautiful blue planet is that most people are doing good things, things that are useful and helpful—cooking food, teaching school, making love, fixing the plumbing. Mostly people are generous and kind.

Even if some people are trapped in visions of hatred and fear, we can live in love. If hurt people hurt people, we can be part of the healing. We can continue to help co-create a culture that nurtures what is best in everyone. In spite of countervailing forces, we can be kind. We can be good. We don’t have to wait for Eutopia to come “some day.” We can make Eutopia where we are, for ourselves and for others (who aren’t really “other.”)

Spring is expected to come again next year. (A firetruck just drove by and the handsome young firemen waved to the children.) We can write poems, sing, dance, put on plays, meditate, do yoga. We can re-read “Song of Myself.” We can laugh and cry.

If you look for them, you can find eutopias everywhere.

Everything, without exception, is miraculous.

Everyone, without exception, has a radiant beauty at the core of their being.

I’m sorry…

I didn’t get around to talking about Brook Farm, Sankai Juku, Huxley’s Island, Woodstock, Rabelais’ Abbey of Theleme, Gonzalo’s vision in The Tempest, the pastoral eutopias in The Winter’s Tale and As You Like It, Slava Polunin’s Moulin Jaune, Bread & Puppet Theater, The Farm in Tennessee and Plenty, The Big Orange Splot, World Central Kitchen, Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Ko-Falen, Plum Village, Farmers Markets, Homeboy Industries, Shakespeare’s Globe, Elysian Fields, the East Village, Portland, Plato’s Academy, Oregon Country Fair, the Quakers, the Shakers, the writings and projects of Christopher Alexander, pirate utopias, Golgonooza, Shangri-La, Alice’s Wonderland, Transition Towns, Valhalla, Esalen, Las Vegas, Atlantis, The Book of Revelations, Portland’s Japanese Garden…

There are endless tunnels in the rabbit warren. They go on and on…

In Conclusion (for now):

The Multnomah County Library is Eutopia. The Tao of Tea is Eutopia. Thursday morning coffee with my friends is Eutopia. FaceTime conversations with Howard Thoresen in New York and WhatsApp video conversations with Stratis Panourios in Athens are Eutopias. The room where I sit on the couch every morning, across from Nancy, enjoying quiet time and journal writing is Eutopia.

And…

Silence is Eutopia. Samādhi is Eutopia.

There’s a place I like to go every day, a place of deep peace and boundless bliss, a place of miracles everywhere and love without limit. I call it “The Golden World.”

My primary felt sense is that I’m living in Paradise, that Eutopia is my home.

–Johnny Stallings

¡EUTOPIAS! 9/13/25
2025-09-13 14:00 - 16:00
¡EUTOPIAS!

a journey through dreams of better worlds with Johnny Stallings

Saturday, September 13, 2 pm
Artspace Room at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont, in Portland

this Open Road event is free

Guide to the Essential Hippie Library 9/27/25
2025-09-27 14:00 - 16:00
Guide to the Essential Hippie Library

a playful romp through the ideas that shaped the Hippie Worldview
with Katie Radditz & Johnny Stallings

Katie Radditz & Bill Kloster were the genial proprietors of Looking Glass Bookstore, in downtown Portland, from 1970 to 2001. Back in the day, hippies went there to get copies of the Whole Earth Catalog, Be Here Now, Zap Comix and other hippie classics. Johnny was one of their regular customers.

Saturday, September 27th, 2 pm
Artspace Room at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont
this Open Road event is free

peace, love, happiness & understanding 10/2/25
2025-10-01 - 2025-11-05
The Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

October 2, 2025

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.

—from Nature, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
*

The Turn

There are the asters, of course
barnyard hollyhocks, determined
sky blue chicory flowers hanging on
Mostly though it’s the light
filtered through lingering fire haze
sharp and soft all at the same time

Bathe in the light, air freshening
rain, as green turns inward
leaves glisten yellow gold, red

A stoplight of sorts. Time to
get out the big books, deep
reflections, collars up and warm

Against the chill, that is,
surely, on its way.

—Elizabeth Domike, October 2025
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Gail Lester shared this poem:

Gift

A day so happy
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers
There was nothing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

Berkley, 1971

—Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004)
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Someone wrote in the last [August] PLHU that Peace Love Happiness and Understanding are all related, inseparable—and I agree.

My ‘journey’ started with a search for Understanding—learning to understand those different from myself. It led me to five trips to the deep South to learn more about relations between whites and African Americans. Then to work with and mentor rough teenagers. Then to befriend a Native American woman and her family—and remain a friend for eighteen years. To work in the Hispanic community of Hood River as a tutor in English. To tutor severely dyslexic teenagers and adults (a very poignant experience!). To facilitate a discussion group of fifteen to twenty men at Two Rivers Correctional Institution (a life-changing experience!).

And now (since my beloved prison group is no more), I am learning to understand imminent death as a Hospice volunteer. I am a ‘companion’ to two people, a 90 year old woman and (sadly) a 63 year old man. My conversations with the woman are jewel-like; she is a jewel. We have so much in common and we have become very close. My conversations with the man , after the first visit, have been non-existent; he is a paraplegic and bound in a hospital bed in his home, with his dear wife. He didn’t have the strength to talk, so I sit by his side, give him frequent fluids, watch 1980 reruns of Emergency!—- and give his wife the time to take a much-needed nap.

All of these journeys of Understanding result in Love for all those I meet, Peace in my heart that I can feel the love, and Happiness that this life can encompass so much richness.

—Jude Russell
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Rocky is now at Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem, with seven months to “the gate.” Here are excerpts from some of his letters:

8-21-25

When we reach out with our hearts, yearning to become entwined like ivy, spinning, climbing, and gently becoming together as one, like Baucis and Philemon, we show the world what love looks like.

I see it in nature, I see it all around, the way the soil meets the trees. It’s a relationship they share, made out of love—the way the sea is in love with the shore.

If you look closely at all the world and everything around, there’s a relationship that has no bounds. The harmony of love that keeps all things together is plain to see. It’s written in the mountains, rivers, clouds, rocks & upon our very own hearts.

8-22-25

It’s important to me to maintain a good amount of love and joy and acceptance of others & their feelings & emotions. My dream & my outlook is to experience as much wellness, beauty & love as possible with the people in my life. I want to support and love my friends & my new family as much as my being will allow. I would like to have deeply intellectual, witty, kind and smart relationships, to share my heart openly, unafraid of people—just love and be loved.

9-1-25

I remember back then…how badly I wanted forgiveness & did not know how to give it to myself & how you all showed me the way to do it, and how I still fought it, so I could beat myself up for all my wrongs. I can look back & now look at the present & see that if I just live and be love and accept all for what it is & do the best I can in all of it, I’m going to do good for my life & for the lives of others too. I can truly say that I like who I am and what I’ve become. I can’t wait to live a new life with a new me. I’m ready.

9-3-2025

I feel that the simple way of living a day-to-day life is one of the keys to a truly successful utopian society. We all work as one to achieve life…a happy life, full of quality & love. I’ve got ideas of what it should be, part of me thinks it is more of a state of mind. Living from an inner peace, a utopia inside each of us, and if that’s the case it would hopefully spread like fire.

9-13-2025

My first letter from OSCI….

On the way here I could see out of the window of the bus the change of nature. Right by Cascade Locks, the dark deep green of the forest & the fog and mist in the tops of the Douglas Firs were breathtaking. I could feel the mist in my lungs & it made memories of times past flood back into my mind. We have such a beautiful place on Earth. It’s enchanting & fills the soul with beauty….

In my heart of hearts, the want is always growing in my mind’s eye to share moments of joy & love amongst everyone. To have simple conversation that reveal what is deepest in our own beings. Never being held back, but showing our hearts to all who wish to see them. I want to be open to others when I’m no longer in a cage.

A cage I’ve outgrown so long ago.
I want to love what I do
I want to love who I want
and be loved in kind.
I want to see the world in
everyone’s eyes, feel the love
in their hearts, & know the
beauty we have in our minds.
The rain has cleansed the soul.

—Rocky Hutchinson
*

Last Saturday (9/27), Katie Radditz and I invited friends to get together to talk about the Essential Hippie Library. We all talked about where we were and what we were doing between 1968 and 1972. It was fun! This morning (9/29), I sent an email to Katie and Howard Thoresen and Charles Erickson. Here it is:

If you’re going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you’re going to San Francisco
You’re gonna meet some gentle people there

For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
In the streets of San Francisco
Gentle people with flowers in their hair

—“San Francisco,” by John Edmund Andrew Phillips; popularized by Scott McKenzie

dear Howard & Katie & Charles

i had a thought this morning…
a lot was happening between 1968 and 1972
to mention a few things: women’s liberation, black liberation, native american liberation, gay liberation, the vietnam war and the anti-war movement, jimi hendrix, country joe and the fish (etc., etc.), magical mystery tour, marijuana, psychedelics, looking glass bookstore, birth control pills, the first earth day, hermann hesse, carlos castaneda, whole earth catalog (etc., etc.), hitchhiking, communes, crunchy granola, yoga, long hair, vegetarianism…
one thing we all remember were the vibes–they were friendly and laid back and gentle
you were supposed to DO YOUR OWN THING
and we did
thinking back on that time, what influenced me (and many others) most profoundly was THE EAST
the beatles went to india
alan watts and joseph campbell and gary snyder and r. h. blyth and allen ginsberg and richard alpert had all been to the east
and there were all those yogis and zen teachers–shunryu suzuki, krishnamurti, thich nhat hanh, nitya chaitanya yati, yogi bhajan, bhaktivedanta prabhupada, maharishi mahesh yogi, rajneesh, swami satchidananda, sasaki roshi (etc., etc.)
we read the tao te ching and consulted the i ching
it has always seemed incredible to me that there is no word for dhyāna in any of the european languages
we use the english word “meditation,” but it’s original meaning meant something like “to think about,” and dhyāna is about being awake and alert with a quiet mind
anyhow, here’s this morning’s new (to me) idea…
in addition to meditation and yoga, one of the big things we got from THE EAST was the idea of nonviolence—ahimsa
seems incredible, but…the west has always been so warlike
so not only did we not have the idea of sitting in silence, we didn’t have the idea of non-hurting—although there was the occasional oddball vegetarian, like leonardo da vinci and mary & percy bysshe shelley
martin luther king was inspired by gandhi
and his nonviolence helped to inspire the peace movement–the largest one in the history of this country up to that time
gentle people with flowers in their hair
as far as i know, vegetarianism traces its origin to buddha and mahavira–about 500 b.c. in india
it has been a part of buddhist and hindu beliefs ever since
and it changes the way you see the world
it changes the way you feel
i know why i became a vegetarian
it was because i read autobiography of a yogi and yogananda was a vegetarian, and i wanted to be like him!
i’m sure that people have tried to get out of going to war since the beginning of time–even odysseus tried to get out of going to troy by pretending to be insane—
but during the hippie era millions of young men all had the same feeling:
“i don’t want to kill anyone”
and the fact that there were lots of other “gentle people” that didn’t want to do that made it easier to say “no” to war
joan baez and her sisters pauline and mimi had a poster of themselves with the slogan: GIRLS SAY YES to boys who say NO
well, that’s my thought for this morning

peace & love
johnny
*

Johnny put together a gathering of old hippies, whether we identify as that or not, to discuss the books of the Sixties and Seventies that were important to us. We piled our books and comix on the center table like an altar. Some changed our lives and helped us along a new path. Reflecting on our stories made me go back to some origins of non-conformism in literature and the influence in art from those seers and brave souls bearing witness.

I love Thoreau, who influenced me when i took a break my senior year of college and lived in a cabin in the Mt Hood Forest, my own little pond near by Camp Creek.

Thoreau was criticized ferociously by his capitalist, conventional townspeople. They could not fathom the value of taking a retreat to pay close attention to his surroundings, to take a break from some prescribed working path. Out of that experience he wrote the first seminal ecology book and journals used now to study climate changes in agriculture. He was the first person to publish a Buddhist text in America, with the translation help of Elizabeth Peabody. He looked deeply at the consequences of cutting down the forest and shipping trees away on the new railroad lines. He wrote “Civil Disobedience,” which inspired Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Thich Nhat Hanh in changing the world with nonviolent protest of social injustice.

Coming up to the Sixties, there was the confluence of movements that led to a counterculture revolution. There was Women’s Liberation, and books like Sexual Politics. We ate “natural foods.” Food Co-Ops sprung up. Communes developed. There was Mother Earth News, Monday Night Class and Whole Earth Catalog. We protested against the Vietnam War and read Underground Comix—Mr. Natural and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. There were psychedelic posters of rock concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium.

At Looking Glass Bookstore in downtown Portland, we distributed alternative magazines and comix mainly in the Pacific Northwest to record stores and bookstores and Natural Food stores. There was only one news distributor in town then, and every store got whatever the distributor gave them. Mother Earth News was considered “radical”—dangerous to the status quo. Just imagine what people thought of Coevolution Quarterly and Whole Earth Catalog! We broke out of an era of accepted censorship that was not even realized by most people except artists.

There was also the Spiritual Revolution, when Yoga and the yogis came to the West Coast, bringing teachings and books first published in India, and later in the U.S. In Oregon we had our own bright lights: Ursula Le Guin, Gary Snyder, the Staffords, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters—to name some of the game changers.

Music and Theater and Literature made the counterculture a joyful intellectual and soulful revolution—out of the 50’s, into an era of freedoms. The government was so afraid. Feels very familiar to our current situation.

I remember going to college in 1968, and for the first time, girls did not have to wear skirts to school or on campus. We just showed up with jeans and bicycles after a summer of love and enlightenment.

On reflection from our talk Saturday, i realized how the counterculture spread up and down the East and West coasts. But much was not available across the Midwest, which might help to account for the divide we see today. How do we share the beauty of living without such experience to draw on? Art is the most important medium to cross and embrace communities! Censorship is the dark shut down.

At the end of our gathering on Saturday, Andy Larkin consulted the I Ching, asking: How shall we live? The hexagram was number 8, Pi / Holding Together: “What is required is that we unite with others, in order that all may complement and aid one another through holding together.” It also warned of the great danger of having a corrupt leader at the center. Sigh. . .

I look forward to rereading some of the great books of hippie times: Hesse, Le Guin, Susan Griffin. And making bread again from The Tassajara Bread Book! Thank you, Johnny, for holding us together, and taking a long view.

Here is a poem from those days ringing true now.
Gary agrees it’s a good one, and sends his regards.

I Went into the Maverick Bar

I went into the Maverick Bar
In Farmington, New Mexico.
And drank double shots of bourbon
backed with beer.
My long hair was tucked up under a cap
I’d left the earring in the car.
Two cowboys did horseplay
by the pool tables,
A waitress asked us
where are you from?
a country-and-western band began to play
“We don’t smoke Marijuana in Muskokie”
And with the next song,
a couple began to dance.

They held each other like in High School dances
in the fifties;
I recalled when I worked in the woods
and the bars of Madras, Oregon.
That short-haired joy and roughness—
America—your stupidity.
I could almost love you again.

We left—onto the freeway shoulders—
under the tough old stars—
In the shadow of bluffs
I came back to myself,
To the real work, to
“What is to be done.”

—Gary Snyder

—Katie Radditz
*

Kim and Perrin just got back from a trip to Iceland, England & Ireland. Here’s a poem:

The Weather Will Change

Sometimes you stagger with the wind
against your face, rain in a river down
your back, and you begin to wonder
how it’s fair to suffer so. But the weather
will change, sun come your way, and you
will wander easy once again. Sometimes
life is good, it all goes your way, luck
follows luck for days and days. But then
your weather changes, and you will
find it strange to suffer like the others
you passed by. Sometimes your country
falters, leaders lead astray, and all the old
assumptions for the good are gone. But
the weather will change, and we will
find it strange to remember our gloom
while it rained and rained and rained.

—Kim Stafford
*

Kim & Perrin shared this letter that Nick Cave wrote to a friend who had asked: “Where do you stand?”

Dear Alastair,

I acknowledge that this may be, to you and your friends, an unhelpful admission, but I’m not entirely sure where I stand on anything these days. As the ground shifts and slides beneath us, and the world hardens around its particular views, I become increasingly uncertain and less self-assured. I am neither on the left nor on the right, finding both sides, as they mainly present themselves, indefensible and unrecognizable. I am essentially a liberal-leaning, spiritual conservative with a small ‘c’, which, to me, isn’t a political stance, rather it is a matter of temperament. I have a devotional nature, and I see the world as broken but beautiful, believing that it is our urgent and moral duty to repair it where we can and not to cause further harm, or worse, willfully usher in its destruction. I think we consist of more than mere atoms crashing into each other, and that we are, instead, beings of vast potential, placed on this earth for a reason—to magnify, as best we can, that which is beautiful and true. I believe we have an obligation to assist those who are genuinely marginalized, oppressed, or sorrowful in a way that is helpful and constructive and not to exploit their suffering for our own professional advancement or personal survival. I have an acute and well-earned understanding of the nature of loss and know in my bones how easy it is for something to break, and how difficult it is to put it back together. Therefore, I am cautious with the world and try to treat all its inhabitants with care.

I am comfortable with doubt and am constitutionally resistant to moral certainty, herd mentality and dogma. I am disturbed on a fundamental level by the self-serving, toddler politics of some of my counterparts—I do not believe that silence is violence, complicity, or a lack of courage, but rather that silence is often the preferred option when one does not know what they are talking about, or is doubtful, or conflicted—which, for me, is most of the time. I am mainly at ease with not knowing and find this a spiritually and creatively dynamic position. I believe that there are times when it is almost a sacred duty to shut the fuck up.

I’m not particularly concerned about where people stand—I’ve met some of the finest individuals from across the political spectrum. In fact, I take pride and immense pleasure in having friends with divergent views. My life is significantly more interesting and colorful with them in it.

Perhaps this all amounts to very little, but I suppose, in the end, I value deeds over words. I see my own role as a musician, songwriter, and letter writer as actively serving the soul of the world, and I’ve come to understand that this is the position that I must adopt in order to attempt to cultivate genuine change. In fact, I am now beginning to understand where I do stand, Alistair—I stand with the world, in its goodness and beauty. In these hysterical, monochromatic, embattled times, I call to its soul, the way musicians can, to its grieving and broken nature, to its misplaced meaning, to its fragile and flickering spirit. I sing to it, praise it, encourage it, and strive to improve it—in adoration, reconciliation, and leaping faith.

Love, Nick

The Stories We Tell Ourselves: An Inquiry 10/11/25
2025-10-11 14:00 - 16:00
The Stories We Tell Ourselves:
an inquiry

with Johnny Stallings

Saturday, October 11th, 2 pm
Artspace Room at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont

this Open Road event is free

peace, love, happiness & understanding 11/6/25
2025-11-03 - 2025-12-03
The Good Samaritan by Vincent Van Gogh

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

November 6, 2025

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mind, they are nothing…

—Walt Whitman, from “Song of Myself”
*

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson
*

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.

—Buddha, from Dhammapada
*

ethnosphere: “the sum total of all thoughts, beliefs, myths and institutions made manifest today by the myriad cultures of the world.”

–Wade Davis, from Light at the Edge of the World, p. x
*

Mortals suppose that the gods are born, and wear clothes, and have voice and form like themselves.

But if cattle and lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and fashion images, as men do, they would make pictures of their gods in their own likeness; horses would make them like horses, cattle like cattle.

—Xenophanes (570-478 B.C.)
*

I…peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

—Walt Whitman, from “Song of Myself”
*

…this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

—Duke Senior in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Act 2, scene 1
*

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. (Nobel Prize speech, 1964)

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Hate paralyzes life; love releases it. Hate confuses life; love harmonizes it.

I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems.

—Martin Luther King
*

what we think is who we are
as indivduals
and collectively

For more than twenty years, i’ve been turning this phrase over in my mind:

the stories we tell ourselves

I’m fascinated by how each of us constructs an identity and a worldview—stories about who we are and about the world and our relationship to it. Each of the things I’ve chosen for this “peace, love, happiness & understanding” suggests a story—a way of experiencing or understanding our life. My own felt sense of things is that Johnny Stallings is a fictional character, and from moment to moment I’m dreaming the world in which I live.
*

A Story that Could be True

If you were exchanged in the cradle and
your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.
He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by—
you wonder at their calm.
They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
“Who are you really, wanderer?”—
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
“Maybe I’m a king.”

—William Stafford
*
The parable of the good samaritan:

25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?
30 And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,
34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

—Luke 10:25-37 (KJV)
*
Here’s a more recent version of the same story, by E. E. Cummings:

a man who had fallen among thieves
lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas
wearing a round jeer for a hat
fate per a somewhat more than less
emancipated evening
had in return for consciousness
endowed him with a changeless grin
whereon a dozen staunch and leal
citizens did graze at pause
then fired by hypercivic zeal
sought newer pastures or because
swaddled with a frozen brook
of pinkest vomit out of eyes
which noticed nobody he looked
as if he did not care to rise
one hand did nothing on the vest
its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt
while the mute trouserfly confessed
a button solemnly inert
Brushing from whom the stiffened puke
i put him all into my arms
and staggered banged with terror through
a million billion trillion stars

—e. e. cummings
*
This is an old folktale:

The Shirt of a Happy Man

Once there was a king who wanted to be happy. His wise counselors informed him that he needed to acquire the shirt of a happy man. So, he sent his soldiers out in quest of such a shirt. One by one they returned empty-handed. None of them could find a happy man. Finally, the last soldier returned.

The king asked, “Did you find a happy man?”

“Yes,” the soldier said.

“Where’s his shirt?,” asked the king.

“He didn’t have one.”
*

Check out the Playing for Change version of “Peace Train” by Yusuf/Cat Stevens on YouTube!

*
My dad liked this poem:

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:—
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?”—The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blest,
And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

—Leigh Hunt
*

Plato told this story:

Some people are in a cave. They are chained up in such a way that they can’t move, and can’t turn their heads. They are all looking straight ahead.

Behind them are people with torches who are carrying things back and forth and talking to each other. The cave-dwellers see shadows on the wall in front of them—their own shadows and the shadows of the objects that are being carried back and forth. As far as they know, the only reality is these shadows and the conversations that the shadows appear to be having with each other.

One man escapes from his bondage and is able to turn around and see what’s going on in the cave. Then he leaves the cave and sees the sun illuminating an amazing world.

He wants to tell the people in the cave about what he has seen and understood. He goes back down into the cave. When he tries to tell the people what he has seen, they think he is mad.
*

Here’s one from William Blake:

The Garden of Love

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

—William Blake
*

These are a few or my favorite passages from my favorite poem, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself:

20
…Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counseled with doctors and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less…

24
…I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds….

Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy….

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

30
All truths wait in all things…

31
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
And the ant is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a masterpiece for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

44
Immense have been the preparations for me….

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.

Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,
My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.

For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
The long slow strata piled to rest it on,
Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care.

All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

48
…whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud…
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times…
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe….

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is signed by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

—Walt Whitman
*

Thomas Traherne was a Seventeenth Century Christian mystic. I love his ecstatic poems and meditations! In this meditation he is writing about how he experienced the world as a small child:

The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold: the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things. The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling Angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die; But all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places. Eternity was manifest in the Light of the Day, and something infinite behind everything appeared: which talked with my expectation and moved my desire. The city seemed to stand in Eden, or to be built in Heaven. The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the World was mine; and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it. I knew no churlish proprieties, nor bounds, nor divisions: but all proprieties and divisions were mine: all treasures and the possessors of them. So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the dirty devices of this world. Which now I unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child again that I may enter into the Kingdom of God.

—Thomas Traherne, from Centuries of Meditations
*

In Dostoevsky’s great last novel, The Brother’s Karamazov, there is a monk named Father Zossima. When I first read the novel, fifty years ago, I was impressed with the words of Father Zossima, which are of course Dostoevsky’s words:

Brothers, do not be afraid of men’s sin, love man also in his sin, for this likeness of God’s love is the height of love on earth. Love all of God’s creation, both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love animals, love plants, love each thing. If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of God in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin tirelessly to perceive more and more of it every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an entire, universal love….

My friends, ask joy from God. Be joyful as children, as birds in the air….

When you are alone, pray. Love to throw yourself down on the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it, tirelessly, insatiably, love all men, love all things, seek this rapture and ecstasy. Water the earth with the tears of your joy, and love those tears. Do not be ashamed of this ecstasy, treasure it, for it is a gift from God, a great gift, and it is not given to many, but to those who are chosen.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky
*

Here are some recent small poems from my journal:

walking on the earth
every step a prayer
*

raspberries say what i want to say
better than i can
*

how did i get to be old?
i used to be young
what the hell happened?
*

briefly visiting book after book
i’m like a hummingbird going from flower to flower
*

start your day with hummingbirds
not the new york times
*

the problem with being one-with-everything
is all the misery
*

modern farming

get up early
feed the tofurkys
milk the oats
*

it’s the most beautiful day since the world began
a bumblebee is on the lobelia
*

i’m transitioning
from happiness
to bliss
*

Let’s end with a brief passage from the book Peace Is Every Step by the Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Like many of the things here, it’s a story in the sense that it is a way of experiencing and understanding our precious life on this beautiful planet
Here’s a thought:
If you find yourself feeling ungrateful, you might remind yourself that the average surface temperature on the planet Venus is 867 degrees Fahrenheit.

Interbeing

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-“ with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be.

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. Without sunshine, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. The logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.

Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in this sheet of paper too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, it is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. We cannot point out one thing that is not here—time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. “To be” is to inter-be. We cannot just be by ourselves alone. We have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.

—Thich Nhat Hanh, from the book Peace Is Every Step

JOURNEYS: Stories of Immigrants & Refugees
2025-11-15 14:00 - 16:00
JOURNEYS

stories of immigrants & refugees
with Johnny Stallings & friends

Saturday, November 15th, 2 pm
Artspace Room at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont

this Open Road event is free

King Lear
2025-12-04 - 2025-12-07
Our friend Allen Mills is producing this show.

Catch it if you can!

Click here to reserve tickets:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19NeFfGPne/

peace & love

Johnny

peace, love, happiness & understanding 12/4/25
2025-12-04 - 2025-12-31
THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

December 4, 2025

Kim Stafford shared this poem by David Budbill:

Sometimes

Sometimes when day after day we have cloudless blue skies,
warm temperatures, colorful trees and brilliant sun, when
it seems like all this will go on forever,

when I harvest vegetables from the garden all day,
then drink tea and doze in the late afternoon sun,
and in the evening one night make pickled beets
and green tomato chutney, the next red tomato chutney,
and the day after that pick the fruits of my arbor
and make grape jam,

when we walk in the woods every evening over fallen leaves,
through yellow light, when nights are cool, and days warm,

when I am so happy I am afraid I might explode or disappear
or somehow be taken away from all this,

at those times when I feel so happy, so good, so alive, so in love
with the world, with my own sensuous, beautiful life, suddenly

I think about all the suffering and pain in the world, the agony
and dying. I think about all those people being tortured, right now,
in my name. But I still feel happy and good, alive and in love with
the world and with my lucky, guilty, sensuous, beautiful life because,

I know in the next minute or tomorrow all this may be
taken from me, and therefore I’ve got to say, right now,
what I feel and know and see, I’ve got to say, right now,
how beautiful and sweet this world can be.

—David Budbill
*

From “The Marginalian,” an online journal:

Here we are, living these lives bright and perishable as a poppy, hard and shimmering as obsidian. We know that they are entirely improbable, that we bless that bright improbability with each flash of gratitude for it all, that if we pay attention closely and generously enough we are always repaid in gladness, that it is the handle of the door to the world. And yet over and over we choose to live in the cage of complaint, too preoccupied with how the will of life betrayed our wishes, the wanting monster always growling in the other corner of the cage.

Imagine parting the bars and stepping out. Imagine waking up with a rush of gladness at everything we were never promised but got anyway — trees and music, clouds and consciousness, the cobalt eye of the scallop, the golden fan of the gingko, the alabaster chandelier of the ghost pipe.

In our age of competitive prostration, this is a headstand hard to hold for long. But it is trainable. It is possible to become strong enough to be tender, it is.

—Maria Popova, editor of “The Marginalian,” November 23, 2025
*

I’ve been keeping a journal more-or-less daily for 55 years. Sometimes it’s fun to revisit things I’ve written. This is from last Spring:

friday, april 25th, 2025

the conventional way of looking at perfect moments is that they happen once in a while
they’re brief
and then they’re gone
and we’re back to boring everyday humdrum life
but it’s possible to experience perfect moments as having nothing to do with time
they don’t have a beginning or end
you could say they last a lifetime—or that they are a lifetime
the beauty of humans overwhelms me!!!!!!!
it’s getting ridiculous!
i don’t know what to do with it, or how to communicate it

saturday, april 26th, 2025

yesterday, i watched “the accountant 2” at the laurelhurst theater, from 4 to 6
it was a beautiful sunny spring day
after two hours in a dark theater, under the spell of a movie, when you come out and it’s still daytime, the sunshine seems brighter and everything more vivid and somehow more real
you’ve been immersed in an imaginary reality—under its spell—and now you’re in the actual world
as i walked by the crema coffee house and the moon shot tavern, lots of people were outside at picnic tables
it’s friday, they’ve just gotten off work, the sun is shining and they’re in a good mood
a little girl of about 4 or 5 is running down the sidewalk toward me
she’s laughing as she runs
she’s the happiest person on earth
her happiness goes right into me
passing a food cart area, there are lots more people at picnic tables
and the sound they are making together is a joyous one
and i have a feeling which is also a thought that people are so beautiful!
and then the thought that moments don’t have boundaries
although we are accustomed to thinking that they do
and thinking that they are short
and that perfect moments are infrequent, and then quickly gone
but they’re not gone
john keats said
a thing of beauty is a joy for ever
maybe a reason that this quote became famous is because it expresses a deeper truth than mr. gradgrind’s facts:

Chapter 1
The One Thing Needful
‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, Sir!’

—Gradgrind, the schoolmaster, from the opening of Hard Times by Charles Dickens

the way I was seeing and feeling and being when the little girl was laughing and running toward me and people nearby were in a glorious mood—that way of seeing and feeling and being is truer for me than the feeling i have when i’m reading the new york times
in those boundaryless moments i’m alive!

thich nhat hanh says you can spend your whole life in a kind of exile from the present moment and miss your life entirely
if you died and went to the pearly gates, they’d look in the book and see that you haven’t lived yet—and send you back for another try

scientific and rational ways of knowing are not bad
and they leave things out, like imagination, love, beauty and meaning

to see a world in a grain of sand
and a heaven in a wild flower

a thing of beauty is a joy for ever

(maybe those romantic poets gave me a blessing)
(maybe they changed the way i see and feel and experience the world)

if the sight of a tulip or a hummingbird goes into you deeply enough, it does something to you
it changes you

my primary felt experience is that i am living in Paradise

—Johnny Stallings
*

Earth Born Creatures

The gravel parking lot smells
like oil, the trash strewn woods
back up the roadhouse to the creek.

A boxy banana-colored car
rusts there, sags a bit in
changeable late afternoon light.

The long-waisted girl in torn jeans
pauses over her broom. Fantasy
burns through her, leaves a tired ache

for pretty things, clean lines, shine.
She looks at her hands
Her fingers not quite straight

caught that way in the womb
they remind her that she is subject
to time and accidents of fate.

A scrawny tabby steps out of shadow,
primly wraps his tail round his feet.
They stare at each other. The girl blinks

thinks of comfort and laughs.
The cat imagines cornering mice.
An owl awakens hungry back in the trees.

—Elizabeth Domike
*

Here are a couple of excerpts from two of Rocky’s many letters:

November 11, 2025
4 a.m.
Dear Johnny & Nancy

We all got the day off in here due to the holidays. We have a lot of holidays this month. Soon the year will be over, too. I’ve been looking back a little in time & knowing 17 years is quite a long time, it seems like it was…only a few days ago that I came into D.O.C. custody! I think it’s because time, in our minds, moves differently. In our minds we can slow it down, or, speed it up. We could freeze it as well, if we wanted to.

It’s a sad reality to think that I’ve spent ⅓ of the life I’ve been given this time around as a prisoner. I know that I deserved to serve this time. Without my life in here I would not be who I am now. That would not be good, because I would never have met the people in my life that I love & who help make me who I am. I would never have gotten to become the man I am today. That thought just gave me chills. Those seeds of wild emotions—Empathy, Joy, Kindness, Love, Wonder, Humility—that were scattered upon my heart, mind & soul, like someone scattering handfuls of wildflower seeds on a hillside is what grows inside of me. You two had a hand in scattering those seeds. I believe we each, in our own ways, help each other’s hearts to grow & heal in all sorts of ways…..

November 12, 2025
4:27 a.m.
We had a conversation on the phone yesterday afternoon. It was nice to talk about many different things. We had talked a few days before about that! It’s easy to talk about release from prison under the circumstances.

One of the things that stuck out to me was the peace that I get from waking up early in here. It truly is the only quiet time of the day. What I’ve been thinking about is that Kim Stafford does that & his dad did too. The fact to me that really rang a bell was how he came by doing it. He started doing it in a prison camp!

Prison is not a place where most can find or have a second of peace, most are overwhelmed by frustrations, sadness, hopelessness and misery. All those emotions & vibes come off of them & touch and trigger emotions in others, even reaching the staff sometimes. I found that if I start my day as early as I can & meditate in my writing, do my letters to home & do my school work, my days are most of the time started on the Golden Path. Everyone is still sleeping and none of the negativity is in the air. I love starting my days off before the world comes to life….

Always planting good seeds in the World,
Rocky
—Rocky Hutchinson

The Second American Renaissance
2025-12-14 14:00 - 16:00
THE SECOND AMERICAN RENAISSANCE
(1955-2025)

an entertainment by Johnny Stallings
Sunday, December 14th, 2 pm
Library at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont

this Open Road event is free

peace, love, happiness & understanding 1/1/26
2026-01-01 - 2026-02-04
photo by Abe Green

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

January 1, 2026

the Dalai Lama has a busy day today
he has to remind everybody
to be kind to each other

F. 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.

I’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.

Though 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.

When 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.

Here are some of the Big Things that have happened:

Civil 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.

And 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.

During 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.

That’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.

Each of our lives is full of possibilities! Let’s make the most of them in the New Year!

—Johnny Stallings
*

Driven to Exclaim

How can I be so happy!
There’s so much bad news!
Inside, my heart is crying! But
outside, the crows are shouting!
Don’t they heed bad news—ruffians!
Hard times are coming! Hard times
are here! Everywhere I look, pain!
Why are leaders such angry children!
I’m such a child I want to stay up
late loving the ruined world!
Even the crows are shouting
strange joy! All I can do is crow!

—Kim Stafford, Winter Solstice 2025
*

The Robin and You

Extravagant in praise he bows to her.
Tells her she is a falcon-ness, a phoenix
and in his quiet moments a swan.

She knows she is a plain woods robin
and what matters is her song.
Early before the worms, she practices her art.

Her flash of red breast a surprise
only to those who have no feel for the natural world.
Wrapped inside themselves, amidst their suffering

she sings for them.
Her beak is the vessel, her mate the morning dew.
Her only audience, the wise and patient yew.

—Elizabeth Domike
*

There is still magic in the world, whether it be natural or man-made.

Across 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.

But 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.

And this was all in just one day!

—Jude Russell
*

“Know that you are a child of the universe.”
—Yogi tea bag wisdom

Musings on a Winter sunny day…

When 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.

Here 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.

Thoreau 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.

Recently 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.

The 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.”

Reading 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!!

So, 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.

Here is a poem from my friend Barbara, a gardener and a writer:

Winter Solstice

The long nights recede
As the light slowly returns
And my heart lifts up
Stars in the night sky
Yield to an early sunrise,
Pink and orange sky
And evenings stretch out;
The light lingers longer now,
Warming the new buds
I come more alive:
The light feeds my hungry soul,
Starving for beauty.
More revealed each hour,
Leaves, buds, flowers greet the day
As the sun warms them
Welcome light’s return
Our gift for surviving the
Dark, cold winter nights.

—Barbara Blossom

Speaking of watching the wild, here is a funny aside from Gina Wilson, who sent this:

Gayle Highpine writes in her book on making friends with wild birds:

“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.”

Gina wrote: Never thought about how we change our “skin”—often numerous times a day!

—Katie Radditz

ZEN: History & Essence 1/17/26
2026-01-17 14:00 - 16:00
ZEN:History & Essence

Johnny 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).
Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88465906598

An Sceal (The Story) with Will Hornyak
2026-01-22 - 2026-02-01
The Open Road Recommends:

An Sceal (The Story) Will Hornyak joins Portland’s brilliant Corrib Theatre folks to celebrate St. Brigit and Imbolc with dance, drama, singing & storytelling.
Thursday, January 22, 1 pm
Sunday, January 25, 8:30 pm
Thursday, January 29, 1 pm
Sunday, February 1, 8:30 pm
T.C. O’Leary’s Pub, 2926 NE Alberta, in Portland
Tickets & info: https://www.corribtheatre.org/tickets

peace, love, happiness & understanding 2/5/26
2026-02-05 - 2026-03-04
Bodhidharma

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

February 5, 2026

The Infinite a sudden Guest
Has been assumed to be—
But how can that stupendous come
Which never went away?

—Emily Dickinson
*

Beginning My Studies

Beginning my studies the first step pleas’d me so much,
The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,
The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,
The first step I say awed me and pleas’d me so much,
I have hardly gone and hardly wish’d to go any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.

—Walt Whitman
*

Yes

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That’s why we wake
and look out—no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.

—William Stafford
*

“…I believe there is a limit to the number of times a man can profitably inform his neighbor, or be informed by him, that the inexpressible cannot be expressed.”

—Owen Barfield, from the essay “Imagination and Inspiration” in The Rediscovery of Meaning and Other Essays, p. 180
*

A man who encountered the Buddha for the first time was impressed by his radiance.
He asked: “Are you a man or a god?”
Buddha replied: “I’m awake.”
*

some thoughts on Zen

According to legend, one day many people had gathered to hear the Buddha speak. Instead of speaking, he held up a flower. One man, Kasyapa, smiled, and realized enlightenment. Zen Buddhism traces it’s origin to this “Flower Sermon.”

That just about sums it up.

A thousand years later, Bodhidharma traveled from India to China, and sat for nine years facing the wall of a cave. Buddhism had been in China for many centuries by this time, but this emphasis on sitting in silence was what launched the Zen tradition of Buddhism. Bodhidharma is known as the “First Zen Patriarch.”

The Third Zen Patriarch, Seng Ts’an, produced the first Zen text—Hsin Hsin Ming. As an account of what the Zen way of experiencing the world, it is unsurpassed. Here are 28 of the 73 couplets:

the great way (Tao) is not difficult
it has no preferences

make the smallest distinction
and heaven and earth are far apart

conflict between liking and not liking
is the disease of the mind

if its deep meaning is not understood
we strive in vain to quiet the mind

it is perfect like vast space
nothing lacking, nothing left over

don’t get entangled in outer things
or abide in inner emptiness

when the mind is still
all views disappear

trying to quiet the mind
is just more activity

the more talking and thinking
the farther you go from what is

look within for just a moment
and go beyond appearance and emptiness

don’t seek truth
just let go of your views

when the mind is still
the ten thousand things do not offend

without an object of thought, there can be no thinking subject
without a thinker, there are no things

the great way is vast
to live in accord with it is neither easy nor hard

following our nature, we are in harmony with the way
wandering freely, without a care

fixed ideas can’t encompass what is true
they sink into darkness, become unhealthy

if you want to take the one vehicle
don’t reject mental or sensory experience

to accept everything
is to be enlightened

seeking the mind with the mind
isn’t that a big mistake?

profit and loss, right and wrong
get rid of them once and for all

understanding the mystery of one suchness
difficulties are forgotten

no descriptions or analogies are possible
of this state where relations have come to an end

empty, clear, your light shines
without mental effort

thought can’t reach this
beyond knowing, imagining, feeling

in the realm of things as they are
there is no self or other

no here, no there
the whole world right before our eyes

the tiny is as large as the vast
when boundaries are gone

beyond words
no past, no future, no now

Lao Tzu’s advice in the Tao Te Ching to do nothing (wu wei), and the Zen practice of sitting in silence had a big influence on Chinese and Japanese culture, and, more recently, on the lives of many people in the rest of the world.

The idea of sitting in silence seems to many people like a big waste of time. The practice goes back to before the time of the Buddha in India. The Japanese word “zen” is a translation of the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which means “meditation,” or sitting silently. Sometimes, in the quiet, thought and language fall away.

I came upon this idea of blissful silence in Paramahansa Yogananda’s book Autobiography of a Yogi when I was 19 years old. He called it samādhi. I wanted to get that!

The Zen texts which are dearest to my heart, and to which I’ve returned again and again are: the Hsin Hsin Ming of Seng Ts’an, Cold Mountain: 100 Poems of Han Shan, translated by Burton Watson, Unborn: The Life and Teachings of Zen Master Bankei, 1622-1693, translated by Norman Waddell, “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics by R.H. Blyth, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki & the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh.

Han Shan lived in China sometime during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). He spent the last part of his life living the simple life of a hermit in the mountains, writing poems like these:

Among a thousand clouds and ten thousand streams,
Here lives an idle man,
In the daytime wandering over green mountains,
At night coming home to sleep by the cliff.
Swiftly the springs and autumns pass,
But my mind is at peace, free from dust or delusion.
How pleasant, to know I need nothing to lean on,
To be as still as the waters of the autumn river!

The clear water sparkles like crystal,
You can see through it easily, right to the bottom.
Mind free from every thought,
Nothing in the myriad realms can move it.
Since it can not be wantonly roused,
Forever and forever it will stay unchanged.
When you have learned to know in this way,
You will know there is no inside or out!

Bankei gave talks to large groups of people. He said we all have unborn Buddha-mind. He said: “Don’t exchange your unborn Buddha-mind for the mind of a hungry ghost!”

Many of the things Walt Whitman says in “Song of Myself” express what to me is the essence of Zen. Here are a few examples:

This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,
There is no better than it or now.

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

All truths wait in all things.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars…
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

…to glance with an eye, or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times…

Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics is one of my favorite books. I read it slowly. When I get to the end, I start at the beginning again. Blyth explores the Zen way of seeing and being in the world. We come to see beauty and perfection in ordinary things.

For many people of my generation, Shunryu Suzuki served as a contemporary exemplar of the Zen way. He taught us how to sit.

Thich Nhat Hanh is the most congenial Zen teacher to me. I love his friendliness, his gentleness, his sweetness, his joy. He seems to radiate deep peace and love. His book Your True Home has been for me the most useful guide for how to live my human life on Earth. I’ve given away dozens of copies to my friends.

peace & love
Johnny
*

If you want peace love happiness and understanding NOW, RIGHT NOW, all I can say, my friends, is watch (google, facebook, instagram, etc.) the 18 Buddhist monks as they walk for peace. They are walking 2300 (!) miles from their monastery in Fort Worth, Texas to Washington, D.C. They cover approximately 20 miles per day, and have walked between 1900-2000 miles from October 26th when they began.

Their leader is 44 yr old Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara, and he began this journey in an attempt to foster and promote peace in his fellow man, in a troubled world. When they began there were a few curious onlookers—a very few. Most just curious to see these burnt-orange robed men walking, mostly barefoot, (but booted and bundled when heavy snow began to fall), along the roadways, first through Texas, then Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia… Soon, however, there were hundreds, and then thousands, tens of thousands followers, the monks now with multiple police escorts to manage the crowds. Men, women, children all lining the roads, bowing their heads offering prayers and heartfelt thank yous, shedding tears, tears of relief, and peace and joy to witness this moment of beauty, this moment of peace in a fractured world. This respite from pain.

The Venerable Bhikkhu says he has been overwhelmed at the response; he never expected this tremendous show of peace, love, happiness and understanding. Now millions are watching, witnessing their progress towards Washington, DC.

The peace which passeth all understanding. This is it.

—Jude Russell

Humanism 2/14/26
2026-02-14 14:00 - 16:00
HUMANISM

Johnny Stallings will host a dialogue on Humanism on Saturday, February 14th, 2026, at 2 pm (PST).
Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82751789337

peace, love, happiness & understanding 3/5/26
2026-03-05 - 2026-04-01
Primavera by Sandro Botticelli

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

March 5, 2026

some thoughts on Humanism

All deities reside in the human breast….
God only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men.

—William Blake, from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”
*

Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none more wonderful than man.

Sophocles, from “Antigone”
*

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less…

–Walt Whitman, from “Song of Myself”
*

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals…

–William Shakespeare, Hamlet speaking in “Hamlet,” Act Two, scene two
*

Inspired by Sarah Bakewell’s book Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry and Hope, I hosted a Zoom conversation about Humanism on February 14th. I enjoyed reading and thinking about Humanism in preparation for the Zoom event.

Humanism can mean a lot of different things. I think of it as related to the word “humane.” A humanistic attitude is one that considers human beings to be basically good. It tends to be optimistic about human potential, and about education, progress, reason and science. Humanists tend to be against war and against capital punishment. In one way, “humanism” must be as old as humanity.

As a historical movement, Humanism is associated with the Renaissance, and an interest that some writers and artists took in classical Greece and Rome. The poet Petrarch (1304-1374) is often cited as the father of Humanism. For a thousand years in Europe, it was dangerous to espouse “heretical” views. From the beginning until now, humanists have promoted freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. We tend to take these things for granted, but in some countries atheism or homosexuality are punishable by death.

For many many people in the Middle Ages (and many people today) our life on Earth is a kind of prison house or purgatory, which serves only as a misery which we must endure in preparation for a glorious eternal afterlife in Heaven. Humanists are pretty unanimous in their belief that our human life on Earth is to be cherished—and some go as far as to believe that when we die we’re dead.

Modern Humanism includes Feminism and Human Rights. Perhaps the most important modern document which could not have been imagined without centuries of humanist influence is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Here’s a link:

https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-understanding-9-2-21/

The Multnomah County Library is a temple of Humanism. Here’s a poem I wrote recently:

Ode to Humanists

Thank you
brave humanists
for making it possible
for us to read
whatever
we want to read
to think
our own thoughts
to imagine
to dream
to say
whatever
we feel like saying
to write and publish
our ideas and imaginings
to go
where we want
and do
whatever
we feel like doing.

If not for you
we would have
only one book
and the world
would be
flat.

Although some modern humanists are generally hostile to religion, since Humanism is fundamentally open to the free exchange of ideas and beliefs, that includes the right of people to think things and believe things that you don’t. A “Declaration of Modern Humanism” from a General Assembly in Glasgow, United Kingdom in 2022, agreed that “…we are committed to the unfettered expression and exchange of ideas, and seek to cooperate with people of different beliefs…” They also said, “We recognize that we are part of nature and accept our responsibility for the impact we have on the rest of the natural world.”

I’ll conclude these thoughts on Humanism with something that gives the essence of many humanist values. It’s from the Nineteenth Century agnostic who gave the eulogy at Walt Whitman’s grave—Robert G. Ingersoll. The full essay is called “The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child.” Below is an abridged version of “The Liberty of the Child” along with an abridged version of his conclusion to the whole essay:

THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN

If women have been slaves, what shall I say of children?….

I tell you the children have the same rights that we have, and we ought to treat them as though they were human beings. They should be reared with love, with kindness, with tenderness, and not with brutality. That is my idea of children….

When your child commits a wrong, take it in your arms; let it feel your heart beat against its heart; let the child know that you really and truly and sincerely love it….

Do you know that I have seen some people who acted as though they thought that when the Savior said “Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven,” he had a raw-hide under his mantle, and made that remark simply to get the children within striking distance?

Give them a little liberty and love, and you can not drive them out of your house. They will want to stay there. Make home pleasant. Let them play any game they wish….

Let children have some daylight at home if you want to keep them there, and do not commence at the cradle and shout “Don’t!” “Don’t!” “Stop!” That is nearly all that is said to a child from the cradle until he is twenty-one years old, and when he comes of age other people begin saying “Don’t!” And the church says “Don’t!” and the party he belongs to says “Don’t!”

I despise that way of going through this world. Let us have liberty—just a little. Call me infidel, call me atheist, call me what you will, I intend so to treat my children, that they can come to my grave and truthfully say: “He who sleeps here never gave us a moment of pain. From his lips, now dust, never came to us an unkind word.”

People justify all kinds of tyranny toward children upon the ground that they are totally depraved. At the bottom of ages of cruelty lies this infamous doctrine of total depravity. Religion contemplates a child as a living crime—heir to an infinite curse—doomed to eternal fire….

Sabbaths used to be prisons. Every Sunday was a Bastille. Every Christian was a kind of turnkey, and every child was a prisoner,—a convict. In that dungeon, a smile was a crime.

It was thought wrong for a child to laugh upon this holy day. Think of that!

A little child would go out into the garden, and there would be a tree laden with blossoms, and the little fellow would lean against it, and there would be a bird on one of the boughs, singing and swinging, and thinking about four little speckled eggs, warmed by the breast of its mate,—singing and swinging, and the music in happy waves rippling out of its tiny throat, and the flowers blossoming, the air filled with perfume and the great white clouds floating in the sky, and the little boy would lean up against that tree and think about hell and the worm that never dies.

The laugh of a child will make the holiest day-more sacred still….

Do not treat your children like orthodox posts to be set in a row. Treat them like trees that need light and sun and air. Be fair and honest with them; give them a chance. Recollect that their rights are equal to yours. Do not have it in your mind that you must govern them; that they must obey. Throw away forever the idea of master and slave.

In old times they used to make the children go to bed when they were not sleepy, and get up when they were sleepy. I say let them go to bed when they are sleepy, and get up when they are not sleepy….

I believe in allowing the children to think for themselves. I believe in the democracy of the family. If in this world there is anything splendid, it is a home where all are equals.

You will remember that only a few years ago parents would tell their children to “let their victuals stop their mouths.” They used to eat as though it were a religious ceremony—a very solemn thing. Life should not be treated as a solemn matter. I like to see the children at table, and hear each one telling of the wonderful things he has seen and heard. I like to hear the clatter of knives and forks and spoons mingling with their happy voices. I had rather hear it than any opera that was ever put upon the boards. Let the children have liberty. Be honest and fair with them; be just; be tender, and they will make you rich in love and joy….

CONCLUSION.

I have given you my honest thought. Surely investigation is better than unthinking faith. Surely reason is a better guide than fear. This world should be controlled by the living, not by the dead. About this world little is known,—about another world, nothing.

Our fathers were intellectual serfs, and their fathers were slaves. The makers of our creeds were ignorant and brutal. Every dogma that we have, has upon it the mark of whip, the rust of chain, and the ashes of fagot.

Our fathers reasoned with instruments of torture. They believed in the logic of fire and sword. They hated reason. They despised thought. They abhorred liberty.

Superstition is the child of slavery. Free thought will give us truth. When all have the right to think and to express their thoughts, every brain will give to all the best it has. The world will then be filled with intellectual wealth….

As long as woman regards the Bible as the charter of her rights, she will be the slave of man. The Bible was not written by a woman. Within its lids there is nothing but humiliation and shame for her. She is regarded as the property of man. She is made to ask forgiveness for becoming a mother. She is as much below her husband, as her husband is below Christ. She is not allowed to speak. The gospel is too pure to be spoken by her polluted lips. Woman should learn in silence.

In the Bible will be found no description of a civilized home. The free mother surrounded by free and loving children, adored by a free man, her husband, was unknown to the inspired writers of the Bible. They did not believe in the democracy of home—in the republicanism of the fireside.

These inspired gentlemen knew nothing of the rights of children. They were the advocates of brute force—the disciples of the lash. They knew nothing of human rights. Their doctrines have brutalized the homes of millions, and filled the eyes of infancy with tears.

Let us free ourselves from the tyranny of a book, from the slavery of dead ignorance, from the aristocracy of the air.

There has never been upon the earth a generation of free men and women. It is not yet time to write a creed. Wait until the chains are broken—until dungeons are not regarded as temples. Wait until solemnity is not mistaken for wisdom—until mental cowardice ceases to be known as reverence. Wait until the living are considered the equals of the dead—until the cradle takes precedence of the coffin. Wait until what we know can be spoken without regard to what others may believe. Wait until teachers take the place of preachers—until followers become investigators. Wait until the world is free before you write a creed.

In this creed there will be but one word—Liberty.

Oh Liberty, float not forever in the far horizon—remain not forever in the dream of the enthusiast, the philanthropist and poet, but come and make thy home among the children of men!

I know not what discoveries, what inventions, what thoughts may leap from the brain of the world. I know not what garments of glory may be woven by the years to come. I cannot dream of the victories to be won upon the fields of thought; but I do know, that coming from the infinite sea of the future, there will never touch this “bank and shoal of time” a richer gift, a rarer blessing than liberty for man, for woman, and for child.

—Johnny Stallings
*

Speaking of miracles…well, I find the word ‘miracle’ too loaded with religiosity, so I will dub those events as ‘moments of awe,’ both outward(ly) and inward(ly).

Last night the brilliant full moon lit up Mt. Hood like it was the middle of the day. I could see Tie-In Rock, Langille Glacier, Eliot Glacier, Illumination Rock (so aptly named), Barrett Spur—every feature on the northeast side of the mountain, where we are, lit up as bright as day. At ten o’clock at night! Right there, the moon, and the mountain, a moment of awe. And then, then! from 4-5 a.m., I watched the lunar eclipse and watched and felt the shadow of our earth passing between the sun and the moon. Those who got to witness the solar eclipse in 2021 spoke often of having a spiritual experience during the moments of totality. This lunar eclipse brought forth the same kind of feeling in my being. I feel—graced—to witness moments like these.

I mentioned moments of awe both outwardly and inwardly—the ‘inwardly’ part is…the body, the human body. It is…awesome. I tutored a high school student who had cerebral palsy. I helped him study anatomy and physiology because he wanted to be a personal trainer. (Yes.) We studied every system of the human body, the nervous system, skeletal, circulatory, endocrine, digestive, respiratory, etc. You name it, we studied it, and learned it. I was blown away, studying alongside Daniel. Just for one example, the functioning of the liver is so elegant! And complex, that it defies belief! I was constantly shaking my head and laughing at the awesomeness of each part and each function, down to the cellular level. And the whole body is like that!

But you know what? The moon, the mountain, stars, the human body, trees, rocks, grass, light, dark, raindrops, birdsong, bird poop…it’s all damned miracle. An awesome miracle. There, I said it.

—Jude Russell

Hamlet: a reading 3/21/26
2026-03-21 14:00 - 16:00
photo by Corky Miller

Hamlet
a reading

Johnny Stallings reads an abridged version of Hamlet.
Saturday, March 21 at 2 pm
Artspace Room at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont

this Open Road event is free

Jay Bean Performing Live at Hood River Brewing Company 3/21/26
2026-03-21 19:00 - 21:00
Jay Bean Performing Live!

Saturday, March 21st, 7-9 pm
Hood River Brewing Company
101 4th Street, Hood River

peace, love, happiness & understanding 4/2/26
2026-04-02 - 2026-05-06
Rocky & Johnny under the palm trees

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

April 2, 2026

Time is money.

—Benjamin Franklin
*

…time is not money. Time has much more value than money.

—Thich Nhat Hanh
*

I’m excited that Rocky Hutchinson is getting out of prison on April 15th, after 17 years. He’s even more excited than I am! See for yourself:

Rocky’s final letters from prison

March 8, 2026
5:15 a.m.
Dear Johnny & Nancy

Well, it’s a start to another week & as I lay in my bunk last night I felt a memory come over me. It was no normal memory, but one of those that you can feel physically. It was like a wind, a change of season wind that I could feel blow over my soul. It reminded me of times to come & times that have passed. Time changes, but sometimes memories & emotions & a subtle wisp of Nature all mix together, bringing on a feeling so good, when we were so happy, that we can even remember how the wind felt and we can feel the atmosphere in our minds stirring our souls. It’s not any one memory, it’s many I think, or maybe a junction where our heart, mind & soul, our joy & our love all come together with the elements of the world around us giving us a gift.

I often of late have been getting those types of feelings, like something in me is waking up and the feeling is of joy and wonder. The thoughts & feelings are of such beauty that they’re hard to describe. The other morning I was meditating & somehow I was standing on a rocky riverbank & in the wind blew thousands of dandelion wishes. I think my soul is feeling the beauty that is to come soon. It is reaching out and lacing itself to it, my aura is reconnecting to the world.

I understand the gift that I have been able to rebuild within myself & I plan to cherish it & share it with all that I’m close to. It has been difficult…almost damaging to me to be looked upon like I’m weak or crazy when I’ve tried to talk about the deeper beauty of life with others recently.

At first, I felt that if I explained what I meant a little better, others would understand. So I used the example of how a fruit tree and the soil have a relationship, a love, so to speak. The tree cultivates the soil & provides life for all the creatures with which it is involved. The tree’s blood grows leaves & fruit & nuts for us, so we can then live & love.

All things connect in a circle of life, love & joy. Like this one relationship, all relationships are connected in one way, shape or form. It is beautiful to behold how all things work together. In my life before, I never really took the time to be in love—for no other reason than its rightness in the world.

So, getting to be around like-minded people here in the near future is really going to be something wonderful. Everything is going to work out so good. I’m sure that as time passes and I just stay kind & calm, diligent & positive, do the right things that are being asked of me, life will be good. I just need to keep things simple and transparent.

Getting to sit and have good conversations with you two & everyone else—Jude, Dick, Josh, Carla, Kristen—and all the rest of the gang is really going to increase the quality of all of our lives. Mine more than you all know! When I think about that and how soon that will happen I feel my chest swell up and my eyes start to get blurry! All the tears I’ve been holding back are going to finally fall…that will be so cleansing, tears of so many mixed emotions. I should save them in a little vial! Use them to water a bunch of seeds for flowers for everyone as a gift of love & devotion.

In the last few days I’ve lost all desire to participate in anything here but my release classes, writing resumes, letters, and in my journal—staying out of the way, in my cell, and relaxing. This is fine with me & since I’m 30 days to home I’m not required to do anything but finish school!

I’ve been thinking about when I find a place to rent and all of that starts coming together. The first two plants I want to get are: #1) a canna lily and #2) a monstera. Both get large & both are beautiful. An Irish ivy will be nice, too. I plan on having a very green apartment. I’m also planning on eating so healthy…fresh veggies! Different kinds of breads & fruits that have so many amazing tastes. No more crazy processed foods, or being forced to eat things I don’t want to eat, because I have to to live! That will be Amazing, and even more so…to eat with friends! Yes!

My day switched gears & I’m now sitting in class and vibe is good today in here. This is my last book and it was a big one. I finished the written part, so the book is done—now it’s just group work! My seat is right under the skylight and there are geese walking on the skylight!!! Very funny.

Sitting here thinking about what you, Johnny, and I were talking about concerning treatment! I am over that part of my life. I simply have zero want or urges to participate in anything that that life has to offer. I’m so far from it that it never really crosses my mind.

As I sit here & am going through my treatment support people, it’s always the same 6 people: Johnny, Nancy, Shawna, Autumn, Dick, Howard. Seems to be a pattern in my life, and with a few added loved ones like Josh & Jude, these are my loved ones. My dearest friends. The people who took this long 216 month journey with me!

March 10th

Well, I moved cells again—I hope for the last time. Once again it’s with someone I’ve known for years. He is a really mellow guy & a super good artist. Right about the time I release he will be going into the dog program. He will do very well at that.

The new cell I’m in is the coolest one so far! It has an art collage drawn all over in it, complete with a cityscape of Portland & Mt. Hood, along with many other things. It’s cool to have artwork on the walls in the house.

I don’t know what it was about today & our call, but it triggered something in me that put my mind into a whole state of home & this is all already in the past, really in the past. I’ve really been thinking about what it’s going to feel like to walk out this door! I might RUN! What I am going to do is pay close attention to my emotions. I want to feel & remember walking out that door & leaving this place behind. Later in life I want to be able to process at different times these emotions in many ways throughout my life.

March 19, 2026
Dear Johnny

It’s a beautiful morning here & I’m sure it is at your place too. It’s because the world we live in is amazing in every way, all of it.

One of the counselors or officers asked me last night if I was going to go back to a life of crime. The answer came so fast & so natural that it made me…I don’t know—feel normal! It was a big NO! I’m not even of that mind any longer, nor of that world. The thought of it put fear in me, a fear that most people have never felt themselves. A fear of losing “Everything in life” is a fear only those who have really gone through that truly know what horrors come from it. So, no. My life is truly a second chance gift and full of wonder & joy & love! I won’t even be caught J-walking!

I’ve not been writing very much for a little while now. But recently it has come back like a wave, the tide of it is rolling in & soothing me. It takes the moments of stress & restlessness away from me, preoccupying my mind, so that I’m not thinking only about releasing. It’s always been such a good friend to me, like a salve for the soul, bringing a much needed peace to me & to others. My writing is a gift and has gotten me through a lot in life. Having people to write to—like you, Johnny, and others—is a gift.

It is the end of the night now. My little bit of nightly work is finished & I’m settling into my bunk, which is a cozy little place. When my friend went to the Hole on 3-2-26 I got his old pillows! That’s how it goes in here, it’s a normal thing. He had very nice pillows! Now I have them & for my last 25 days I get to have the best pillows in the whole joint!!! One of them is a Sealy Posturepedic—never had one of them before now.

3-23-2026

Well, the weekend went by very fast, which is a good thing. I spent a lot of time with letters & journalling and trying to be…in my cell alone, away from all the needless drama—no distractions, and focusing on home.

I’m so excited about getting to spend time with you & everyone else. I’ve been noticing these…well, mental time jumps. I’ll be home so soon and I catch myself planning out my week-to-week life…then it hits me: *Home*! Where I can walk down the street & see all the cherry trees that are in bloom, smell a million flowers & draw them if I want to. This will happen soon…only a short time after you’ve read this letter, we will be drinking coffee together.

Healthy food has been on my mind, too—fresh food, clean, good food, well-prepared food. I’m so happy to get to share this with you and Nancy and everyone else.

I have gone through a few changes in the last few days…. Pressure from others is heavier than ever before. I’m trying to stay away from everyone and everything.

3-24-26

I’m sitting in class under the skylight. The rain is beating down on the skylight. I’m hoping that the rain does not take all the cherry blossoms from the face of Spring until I can see them this year. There’s so many other beautiful things to see & soon I will love feeling overwhelmed by all of it. I’m really looking forward to taking walks, running, and being in & of nature, and being with the ones I love. This is how I want to be with the opening of my heart in this new world—the beauty pouring into my blooming, opened heart.

I truly want to let all of the wonders of it all soak into me. Truly allow the wind that’s full of the smell of flowers & trees seep into my mind, feel the hugs of my loved ones imprint upon my soul. To feel the touch of another human…will be…strange & wonderful & a little scary! So destructive is the lack of human touch, simple contact, holding hands, a hug, a gentle hand upon the shoulder—these are so needed in life to feel human. How wonderfully overwhelming it all is going to be & amazing—the gift of it from those who truly love me. To have emotions like this fulfilled will be a once-in-a-lifetime gift. We all have the best love for each other…because it’s very real & unconditional. I’m so lucky…we are all so blessed to have this. What an amazing life we have to share with each other!

I’ve been thinking a lot about food! LOL Healthy, clean good food, homemade food, soups & salads, a large variety of veggies, breads, fruits…fish! Healthy foods…I’ll have to be careful at first, so I don’t get sick. I’ve heard that real food will make me sick at first. We will see!

Sitting in a room full of men trying to find a way out, out of addictions of all sorts.
Unpacking all the broken pieces & knowing you can not pick them up at all anymore.
Knowing that to find the golden paths in life we have to leave it behind & walk out the door.
I did not succeed in doing this alone with my life—my friends & family helped me to survive.
So many times sitting in a small empty room, putting broken pieces together with no glue.
Pieces of sadness, shame, sorrow & remorse, of a broken life that I tried to fix from guilt, haunted by ghosts.
Having let it all go & gladly starting all things in life anew is easy knowing now what to do.

….It feels good to have the relationships I have in my life with all of you. They are deep & strong & real & powerful—full of love and goodness, joy and truth. I’m proud of the person I’ve become & know that I’m lucky to have the life I have. Most don’t come back from a level of damage like this. I hope others see it & know that they can overcome the pitfalls of life, too!

Love you & see you later for Coffee too!

—Rocky Hutchinson
*

Elizabeth Domike shared this poem:

Nurture

From a documentary on marsupials I learn
that a pillowcase makes a fine
substitute pouch for an orphaned kangaroo.

I am drawn to such dramas of animal rescue.
They are warm in the throat. I suffer, the critic proclaims,
from an overabundance of maternal genes.

Bring me your fallen fledgling, your bummer lamb,

lead the abused, the starvelings, into my barn.
Advise the hunted deer to leap into my corn.

And had there been a wild child—
filthy and fierce as a ferret, he is called
in one nineteenth-century account—

a wild child to love, it is safe to assume,
given my fireside inked with paw prints,
there would have been room.

Think of the language we two, same and not-same,
might have constructed from sign,
scratch, grimace, grunt, vowel:

Laughter our first noun, and our long verb, howl.

—Maxine Kumin
*

SHEEP

So why would I write about sheep? What do sheep have to do with Peace, Love, Happiness and Understanding? Well, as it turns out—-everything!

We have one hundred and fifty sheep about half a mile down the road from us. I either ride my bike or drive past them every day. Almost always I stop. “Hi sheep!” I call out. Without interrupting their grass munching, they lift their heads and eye me with a mild gaze. They’re used to me by now. I’ve been greeting them this way for as long as they’ve been in the pasture, five or six years? I’ve seen them at every stage: big and white and fluffy, ragged and molting, shorn and pink-skinned.

When I see them my heart is filled with peace. And love. And sheer happiness. And deep understanding that this—-being in the moment with peace, love and happiness is what matters in my life.

—Jude Russell

For Amusement Purposes Only 4/11/26
2026-04-11 14:00 - 16:00
For Amusement Purposes Only

Johnny Stallings attempts to entertain.
Just for fun!
There will be snacks.

Saturday, April 11, at 2 p.m.
Artspace Room at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont

this Open Road Event is free

A Midsummer Night's Dream in Prison: screenings on April 16th & 17th
2026-04-16 - 2026-04-17
This month, there will be two screenings of Bushra Azzouz’s film A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison, in Portland. If you haven’t seen the film, this will be a good opportunity. If you have seen it, maybe you’d like to watch it again. Or tell your friends about it.
Both screenings will be followed by Q & A with actors.
Both are free and open to the public.

Portland State University
Women’s Resource Center & Queer Resource Center
April 16th, 2026 3:30 p.m.
Smith Memorial Union Building
1825 SW Broadway
4th Floor, Room 439

S.M.I.L.E. STATION
Sellwood-Moreland Improvement League Neighborhood Association
April 17th, 2026 5:30 p.m.
8210 SE 13th Ave

peace, love, happiness & understanding 5 9 26
2026-05-09 - 2026-06-03
Julia, Rocky & Jeffrey at Portland Japanese Garden

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

May 9, 2026

THE ROCKY ROAD

First some thoughts from Jude about this new chapter in Rocky’s life. Then, some of Rocky’s impressions of what these last few weeks have been like:

Through the Eyes of Rocky

I have been thinking daily of our dear Rocky Hutchinson. I have been seeing The World through the Eyes of Rocky, and want to appreciate the world as if seeing it for the first time in seventeen years. What would it be like to stand under a flowering pink cherry tree, a pink dogwood tree, a maple tree shaking its leaves open from its small packets? To walk in a forest of dark green firs, to see the sunlight slicing through the quiet, towering trunks. To see the moon, not just a glimpse but waxing and waning from night to night. To sit quietly, happily at a meal—a good meal—-with beloved friends who have become like family. To walk and walk and walk, with no one to stop you, no one to make you stop. To visit with dogs, and cats, and chipmunks, and squirrels and robins and worms and ants.

To savor it all. To love life, the new life Rocky has. A life of peace, love, happiness, and understanding.

—Jude Russell
*

It was an early Spring morning in April. The end of Winter could be felt hanging on the face of Spring. That first day was like a wave of love that came from a warm Spring unending. I was surrounded by all the people that had come into my life to form a beautiful family. As the days went by, each and every one, all the stress and fear of the unknown quickly faded. In its place the tapestry of my life began to unfold, each and every fold came with acceptance, understanding and ease. All of my misconceptions soon faded.

At the same time, the beauty of the world, of nature, of people—the touch of it all so real, so potent, so big, was there. The world and all that it has to offer, all the things I meditated on in my prison cell, were there to never take for granted again. The movement of the city, the smells of food, the passing look of a woman, the ability to give and accept hugs from anyone—with no one there to dehumanize, to ridicule—just the love is there.

The ocean of seasons that we live in our lives changes with the tides, the vast amount of time that I swam to get to this hour is for me the sweetest Spring of my life. So much so that I can give it as a gift to others around me. Such a powerful emotion to feel when others around me can see it, feel it. I can feel it like electricity pulsing within me, the power of love and positivity.

I am grateful to have the room I now call home. It is so close to where I was removed from the world 17.5 years ago. Fate saw fit to place me back where I came from. I am able to see a reflection of my life—a reflection most will never see. The homeless and the addicts are still there. I used to be one of them, and it breaks my heart to see them. It puts a drive in me to never take things in my life for granted, to love the life I have to the fullest. For those who have lived a life full of trips down the wrong roads, there comes a time to choose. If you give in, and dive into the endless void of addiction and abuse, it is a weak and powerless act. Then, there is the other choice—a stance, a life decision that nothing can break through. I have had enough of the past, of the never-ending life of addiction. Getting to have that reflection in my face every day is a blessing. It hurts, too, to see them—not knowing that a change is there for them, and it is as simple as one choice. I have made that definite choice!

I have been out of prison less than a month and am still experiencing the wonders of it all. As I re-acclimatize to all that is life, I notice that all of the good qualities that I instilled within my heart, mind, and soul are strange and growing day by day. It matters the things we do within the walls. Those who tell you otherwise, (and they do and will), are wrong—very very wrong. I imagined the world full of new wonder and amazements and that is just what it is to me. Every walk I take is an adventure, every conversation with friends is deep and meaningful, every song I hear is more pleasant. The elegance of it all is right there in everything. That’s how I choose to live and be in the world. I don’t foresee that changing anytime soon, nor do I want that to change.

This moment in my life, this transition is important to me and I am sure it will be important to others too. Everything is a perspective for all of us. Coming from such confinement, it is easy for me to cut through and avoid snags that can appear in my daily life. For me, it’s all about my point of view on acceptance—there’s no reason to go against the grain. There is only enough time to do so much in a day in life. The ability to make my own choices to do what I know is right is a root of joy, not only for me but for everyone. That is a right of being human, being alive, being a speck of dust in the universe. According to Einstein, particles can change there alignments—and I am living proof. It is all possible. None of us are stuck, but I have had a tremendous amount of help in my life. The help is there for everyone. If anyone is truly trying to change, that will happen. The help will show up. That’s how it works—hands helping hands, love and life, friends and support.

April 29, 2026

Went to the Japanese garden today with some new friends that I met, Jeffrey & Julia. Johnny had brought us together long ago over the phone and through letters from over the years, so I am sure they know my heart. All I can hope for is that all can now see that in me as we become closer in person. As we traversed the paths of peacefulness and the unbelievable beauty the universe gifts to us all, I could feel the wonder of kindness and love that was reciprocating between us and all other living things in our spheres of life. The beauty of people and of myself is now a gift that can be shared between each of us. Being out only 14 days from the walls of confinement and having the chance to partake of such beauty is…something I want to take in and tread upon lightly. I want to leave the lightest of footprints upon it as a delicate gift that I know the meaning of. In my life I have not had the chance to have people whose purpose was to give and share the beauty of life. It feels so strange to just get to be, and to not be guarded. There is nothing I have to protect myself from.

As we took in the beauty offered to us I could not help but slip away in my mind—so much of me wanted to become a permanent part of it all. Knowing that my time here is fleeting is the key to truly seeing it, the beauty. The winding vines of the Japanese maples, the crawling moss, the babbling water whispering secrets that only are understood by my soul. I know that what beauty I understand in my waking mind is just a drop in the pool of endless wonder.

It is an unspoken language between all of us—“indescribable wonder” I think is the best description any of us can utter. We just know it for what it is—BEAUTY & WONDER—to share it with all who can understand it for its truth is a gift all in itself. It’s a simple understanding: we are all parts of it and of each other—all are one.

April 30, 2026
(Day 15)
How amazing it feels to wake up in this new world, one filled with new friends, trees, rivers, options. Part of me feels very lost and bewildered, things are so new. I know this world and I remember what role I had in it before. That is not who I am now. I am new. Things move different—not fast, but in waves. Blessed is the path I am on, a hard-won gift born out of many battles that were fought on every front a person has.

As I walk out of my room every day I remember where I am and what I am thankful for, the joy I have to tread so lightly and take for granted as little as possible. To simply smile to anyone, to a friend, and receive one back is amazing. To talk to others that I have never met or seen is quite a gift too.

Day 15. April 30, 2026 (continued)

We had group today and the wealth of knowledge and love in the group is truly a shining gift. If only that group of people were guiding the course of mankind…

I find myself becoming endeared to each of them as time goes on, and I want to sit with each of them and talk of the human condition and of ages past—to see through their eyes. To me it is like placing bricks on the golden paths we all walk. That is what has been missing in my life for many many years. I find myself not drinking from the fountain, but drowning in it.

I am wondering if there are other groups like that that I can go to as well. It seems to me that I am loving the ability to just talk to people. That is very different to what I used to be like. Before I went into prison, I detested people. That was due to so many social walls and bridges of ruin. All of that seems to have been worked out. As I see the world now, many people are simply beautiful and I can see that in them—a kindness, a glow, a sort of purity that is of the unseen, registering with the mind’s eye and the heart.

I took a walk down to the waterfront tonight and wanted to give an offering. A sort of personal sacrifice of the last of the old me. There are things we all as humans have as traits within us. I have set most of them to rest, but, like everyone, I still battle. What a gift is death when it comes!—a hard reset of oneself to start anew, fresh and clean. If only we could keep some of ourselves! In a way, we do. But all that will come in life’s natural cycle.

It is only 16 days since my release and I am seeing happy couples in their union, and am longing for that in my life. I have been alone long enough. In time I am certain that will change. My soul is just hungry to love and find companionship. Human hands were meant to hold each other, that is why they fit together like they do. It is a sacred bond to have another being to care for and to love. The ground has the sky. The ocean has the shore. The tree has the soil. All things have their duality.

My first room, the Medford Hotel

It is a humble place, one not to forget. Here I take my first steps into a world, and it is now the future. Difficult to explain. At times I find myself feeling like the time traveler from H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. As I stepped out of the machine I was in I see the changes the world has undergone. Just as he did, I, as he, ask questions and people look at me a little strangely. I know that they know something is a little off with me. It is okay because I am kind and friendly, personable. As I sit here in my room I am thankful. Thankful to have just what I need to live and to be me. This is a kindness, a gift of love.

In the corner stands a large wardrobe out of times past, like me. The room is old and that is fine, it is cozy. Small, humble, like me too. I am lucky to have it. Out on the street is the drunk, the junky, the hooker, the hard, sad, lost and broken, the me before I was awoken. A man duct-taping his life together. He needs to run a thousand miles an hour on the streets. He has not yet awoke from his addictions, neither has she. Her beauty screaming out as it is sacrificed by its owner. It hangs from her face. I see what she could be…if only. I know their drive, their hopeless, endless ride in nothing in the end.

In my room I have a bed, a blanket, a pillow, rest. I have so much now. Just beyond the 10 inches of wall…always a wall of separation in my life. Sitting in this room, knowing I never want to forget—here, where I left. Now I am starting, I am going…but never forgetting. I came from here, I was all of them. And now I am me. I made it back and will never go back to the walls that kept me in for so long. And in this room, my first room, I must keep walking the path away from and into the next room that has not yet come. This room will never be forgotten. Nothing will ever be forgotten.

May 8, 2026

Sitting at the Lotus Bean, which has become me favorite morning coffee shop, knowing that it’s a whole new day full of many positive forward possibilities. Josh and I have a show to go to tonight—Puscifer! That is a good show for my first big show since I have been out. I love the Golden Path that I am on. There are a few things that I need to fix about myself, and reel myself back in from the temptations the world is placing in my path.

The day is a beautiful one—gray with the promise of Spring sun. 7:30 a.m. is a wonderful time in the morning to be out in the city. The sidewalks are somewhat clean and the streets seem to be content from the night before—peaceful, and a vibe that feels calm. It will be a good Friday night—my first one where I have plans to do something amazing. Sitting here listening to some Led Zeppelin, knowing that things so far have turned out alright. These little things point the way of my life. It’s a strange thing to have changed so much and to be back where I used—but as a different person. I am thankful for my crazy life.

—Rocky Hutchinson
