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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260726T140000
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SUMMARY:J and the Metaphors: Open Road Benefit Concert
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://openroadpdx.com/event/j-and-the-metaphors-open-road-benefit-concert/
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260806
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SUMMARY:peace\, love\, happiness & understanding  8/6/26
DESCRIPTION:  \nTHE OPEN ROAD \npeace\, love\, happiness & understanding \n  \nAugust 6\, 2026 \n  \nPlumbing Project \n  \nPart One \nWhen the plumber said \n“Probably five to ten grand \nTo reroute the pipe and bypass \nThat leak in your concrete slab” \nThese dangerous \n Oft-spoken  words \nFormed beneath my breath: \n“I could probably do that myself.” \n“That” being moving the water heater\, cutting though three walls\, three cast iron pipes \nRunning fifty feet of new plastic drain line \nDropping at a quarter inch per foot \nInto a main four-inch plumbing stack \nAfter moving the washer and dryer\, office furniture\, bookcases and desks. \n  \nPart Two \nPerhaps it was \n Ralph Waldo Emerson’s \nEssay on Self Reliance \nOr John Dewey’s further championing \nThe theme of “omni-competence” \nThat doomed countless men like myself \nTo years of wandering lumber yards \nAisles of hardware stores \nWearing bruised knuckles and  \nBad backs as badges of honor \nConfident that building\, wiring\, plumbing a house \nFlushing a radiator\, repairing a dishwasher \nOr cooking meat on a grill \nWould assure us a seat \nAt the table of manhood. \nAnd although I am proud \nTo harbor informed opinions on \nCarbide blades\, framing lumber and \nExposed aggregate concrete \nI also wonder how many languages \nI might have learned \nWhat musical instrument I could have mastered \n Had my brain not become  \nA big box store of readily available facts \nOn positive drainage\, adequate clearance and proper ventilation \nAnd to what heights I might have ascended \nHad I not so readily descended \nInto beckoning crawl spaces and drainage ditches. \n  \nPart Three \nWell\, the plumbing is done now \nWater flowing where  \nAnd as it should \nPlus a new laundry sink\, fresh paint  \nOn basement ceiling and floor  \nMany hours remain  \nTo mend the wounds in walls and return \n      Everything to its proper place. \nBut I’m ready now to  \nLearn a new language  \n Pick up a musical instrument \nHowl at the full moon \n(Rising tonight!) \nAnd see if I can’t \nPlumb a few words from  \nA few days of common labor. \n  \nWill Hornyak  \nJuly 2026 \n* \n  \nDazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me\, \nIf I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me. \n  \n—Walt Whitman\, from “Song of Myself” \n  \nWhat 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…” \n  \n—Hamlet speaking\, in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet\, Prince of Denmark \n  \nIf the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is\, infinite. \nFor man has closed himself up\, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern. \n  \n—William Blake\, from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” \n  \n(Speaking of caverns\, you might want to re-visit Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in the January\, 2021 issue of peace\, love\, happiness & understanding: https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-understanding-1-7-21/.) \n  \nFor the past couple years\, I’ve been doing an “entertainment” of some kind more or less every month at Taborspace in Portland\, or online. As a concession to my aging brain\, I’ve been reading things\, rather than trying to memorize them. My entertainments have featured Shakespeare\, Dostoevsky\, Whitman\, Black Elk\, Traherne\, Cabeza de Vaca\, Kalidasa & Stallings; I’ve explored topics like Eutopia\, Zen\, the English Romantic Poets\, Humanism & Paradise Now! This month\, on August 8th\, I’m taking a look at Beauty. \n  \nEssays by Kathleen Raine\, including “The Use of the Beautiful” (1966)\, inspired me to delve into the English Romantic poets\, and now into Beauty. She says that beauty and the arts have been traditionally associated with each other\, but with the advent of modernism—she’s talking mostly about poetry—beauty was no longer fashionable. She asks: “Have we found something better?” In her essay “A Defense of Shelley’s Poetry\,” she makes this bold statement: “It might be said that the arts exist\, finally\, for no other end than the holding before us of images of Paradise.” \n  \nIf you want to inquire into a topic like beauty\, or love\, or happiness\, the first thing you discover is that it is endless. There are all kinds of beauty. The natural world is full of beauty. Human beings make beautiful music\, paintings\, sculptures\, poems. We have beautiful ideas and imaginings. And there is something mysterious\, which we call “inner beauty.” For my event on Saturday\, I don’t want to talk about theories of beauty. Mostly\, I want to give examples of things that I find beautiful—including music\, works of art\, poetry\, pictures of happy children and hummingbirds\, et cetera. Here are three of my favorite poems about beauty that are themselves beautiful: \n  \nPied Beauty \n  \nGlory be to God for dappled things – \n   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; \n      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; \nFresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; \n   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold\, fallow\, and plough; \n      And áll trádes\, their gear and tackle and trim. \n  \nAll things counter\, original\, spare\, strange; \n   Whatever is fickle\, freckled (who knows how?) \n      With swift\, slow; sweet\, sour; adazzle\, dim; \nHe fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: \n                                Praise him. \n  \n—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) \n* \n  \nOde on a Grecian Urn \n  \nThou still unravish’d bride of quietness\, \n       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time\, \nSylvan historian\, who canst thus express \n       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: \nWhat leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape \n       Of deities or mortals\, or of both\, \n               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? \n       What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? \nWhat mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? \n               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? \n  \nHeard melodies are sweet\, but those unheard \n       Are sweeter; therefore\, ye soft pipes\, play on; \nNot to the sensual ear\, but\, more endear’d\, \n       Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: \nFair youth\, beneath the trees\, thou canst not leave \n       Thy song\, nor ever can those trees be bare; \n               Bold Lover\, never\, never canst thou kiss\, \nThough winning near the goal yet\, do not grieve; \n       She cannot fade\, though thou hast not thy bliss\, \n               For ever wilt thou love\, and she be fair! \n  \nAh\, happy\, happy boughs! that cannot shed \n         Your leaves\, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; \nAnd\, happy melodist\, unwearied\, \n         For ever piping songs for ever new; \nMore happy love! more happy\, happy love! \n         For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d\, \n                For ever panting\, and for ever young; \nAll breathing human passion far above\, \n         That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d\, \n                A burning forehead\, and a parching tongue. \n  \nWho are these coming to the sacrifice? \n         To what green altar\, O mysterious priest\, \nLead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies\, \n         And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? \nWhat little town by river or sea shore\, \n         Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel\, \n                Is emptied of this folk\, this pious morn? \nAnd\, little town\, thy streets for evermore \n         Will silent be; and not a soul to tell \n                Why thou art desolate\, can e’er return. \n  \nO Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede \n         Of marble men and maidens overwrought\, \nWith forest branches and the trodden weed; \n         Thou\, silent form\, dost tease us out of thought \nAs doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! \n         When old age shall this generation waste\, \n                Thou shalt remain\, in midst of other woe \nThan ours\, a friend to man\, to whom thou say’st\, \n         “Beauty is truth\, truth beauty\,—that is all \n                Ye know on earth\, and all ye need to know.” \n  \n—John Keats (1795-1821) \n* \n  \nLapis Lazuli \n  \nI have heard that hysterical women say \nThey are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow\, \nOf poets that are always gay\, \nFor everybody knows or else should know \nThat if nothing drastic is done \nAeroplane and Zeppelin will come out\, \nPitch like King Billy bomb-balls in \nUntil the town lie beaten flat. \n  \nAll perform their tragic play\, \nThere struts Hamlet\, there is Lear\, \nThat’s Ophelia\, that Cordelia; \nYet they\, should the last scene be there\, \nThe great stage curtain about to drop\, \nIf worthy their prominent part in the play\, \nDo not break up their lines to weep. \nThey know that Hamlet and Lear are gay; \nGaiety transfiguring all that dread. \nAll men have aimed at\, found and lost; \nBlack out; Heaven blazing into the head: \nTragedy wrought to its uttermost. \nThough Hamlet rambles and Lear rages\, \nAnd all the drop scenes drop at once \nUpon a hundred thousand stages\, \nIt cannot grow by an inch or an ounce. \n  \nOn their own feet they came\, or on shipboard\, \nCamel-back\, horse-back\, ass-back\, mule-back\, \nOld civilisations put to the sword. \nThen they and their wisdom went to rack: \nNo handiwork of Callimachus \nWho handled marble as if it were bronze\, \nMade draperies that seemed to rise \nWhen sea-wind swept the corner\, stands; \nHis long lamp chimney shaped like the stem \nOf a slender palm\, stood but a day; \nAll things fall and are built again \nAnd those that build them again are gay. \n  \nTwo Chinamen\, behind them a third\, \nAre carved in Lapis Lazuli\, \nOver them flies a long-legged bird \nA symbol of longevity; \nThe third\, doubtless a serving-man\, \nCarries a musical instrument. \n  \nEvery discolouration of the stone\, \nEvery accidental crack or dent \nSeems a water-course or an avalanche\, \nOr lofty slope where it still snows \nThough doubtless plum or cherry-branch \nSweetens the little half-way house \nThose Chinamen climb towards\, and I \nDelight to imagine them seated there; \nThere\, on the mountain and the sky\, \nOn all the tragic scene they stare. \nOne asks for mournful melodies; \nAccomplished fingers begin to play. \nTheir eyes mid many wrinkles\, their eyes\, \nTheir ancient\, glittering eyes\, are gay. \n  \n—William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) \n 
URL:https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-understanding-8-6-26/
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260808T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260808T170000
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CREATED:20260624T182831Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260729T183243Z
UID:6341-1786201200-1786208400@openroadpdx.com
SUMMARY:BEAUTY: A Vision  8/8/26
DESCRIPTION:  \nBEAUTY: A Vision  \n  \nJohnny Stallings looks at Beauty \n  \nSaturday\, August 8\, at 3 p.m. \nArtspace Room at Taborspace\, 5441 SE Belmont  \n  \nthis Open Road event is free
URL:https://openroadpdx.com/event/beauty-a-vision-7-18-26/
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260912T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260912T140000
DTSTAMP:20260824T110120
CREATED:20260823T215430Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260823T215430Z
UID:6419-1789214400-1789221600@openroadpdx.com
SUMMARY:Amos Kilbright: his adscititious experiences  9/12/26
DESCRIPTION:  \nAmos Kilbright: his adscititious experiences \n  \nFrank Stockton’s astonishing tale \nread by Johnny Stallings \n  \nSaturday\, September 12th\, at noon \nin the Artspace Room at Taborspace \n5441 SE Belmont Street\, in Portland \n  \nthis Open Road event is free \n  \n 
URL:https://openroadpdx.com/event/amos-kilbright-his-adscititious-experiences-9-12-26/
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