Our Community
Our Mission
The Open Road nurtures inner transformation through education, dialogue, meditation & mindfulness, and the arts, in order to promote peace, love, happiness and understanding.
We welcome everyone, regardless of income, age, or cultural background.
Our Programs
The Open Road supports and encourages lifelong learning for everyone through classes, talks, dialogue groups, study groups, performances, workshops, seminars and retreats.
Group Reading of Song of Myself 5/31/25
Dear Friends of The Open Road
Group reading of Song of Myself on Walt’s birthday, Saturday, May 31st, at 3 pm, at Taborspace. You’re invited!
The May issue of peace, love, happiness & understanding features “Eighty Things I’ve Learned in Eighty Years” by Dick Willis, a letter from Rocky Hutchinson, and “Brushstrokes in the Sky” by Carl Alsup. There is a peace, love, happiness & understanding Archive.
LARRY YES (larryyes.com) has an Art Exhibit at Purple Door gallery from May 2nd through June 8th. At the gallery, you can watch music videos from his latest album: “Everyone on This Planet Is Family.”
Catch The Fabulous DECK BOYS! when you can!
Bibliophiles Unanimous!, the Open Road literary salon, meets one Sunday a month at at 3 p.m. (PDT) on Zoom. On May 18th our topic will be Nonfiction, with Special Guest, author J Kahn.
Get your copy of My Jedi Memoir: A Double Life by James Kahn today!
THANK YOU!!! to donors, teachers, performers, friends–everyone who makes The Open Road thrive!
YOGA with Elizabeth. Elizabeth Domike teaches yoga five mornings a week online. Gentle joint activation movement, with a poem at the end of each practice. Join people from all over the world. To register, contact her at: smallhouse@aol.com.
Check out the Open Road Archive of Classes, Workshops, Performances, et cetera and Past Events.
Check out the Open Road Spring 2025 schedule of Classes, Performances & Readings.
The Open Road published a monthly Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue from September of 2020 through June of 2024. It was mailed to men in prison and emailed to people “on the outside.” There is a complete archive of this journal at: Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue Archive. Also, check out Johnny’s version of the first Zen text: the Hsin Hsin Ming of Seng Ts’an.
There was a reading of OUR HANDS OF RUIN, a play by Casey Wood, at Taborspace on April 12th.
The Open Road has a Walt Whitman Archive: Friends of Walt.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison is a documentary by Bushra Azzouz. The film premiered on August 7, 2022 at Cinema 21, in Portland, Oregon. The Open Road was fiscal sponsor of the the film from April of 2020 to June of 2024.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison was screened at the Hollywood Theatre, as part of the Portland Panorama Film Festival, on Saturday, April 19, 2025.
Open Road Press is a new project of the Open Road, starting in early 2024. Our first publication is The Nonstop Love-In: poems, stories, essays & other writings by Johnny Stallings. Click on the title to learn more about how you can buy a copy or get it from the Multnomah County Library. Makes a great gift!
The Open Road is fiscal sponsor of the Mom Foundation Nepal. Click on Mom Foundation to go to the web page and learn more.
The Village Zendo has online group meditations every day.
You can see and hear Hamilton Cheifetz and Janet Guggenheim play Song of the Birds by Pablo Casals.
May all people be happy.
May we live in peace & love.
–Johnny
