A R C H I V E

My recent column on the potential for a Boulder Renaissance elicited some hesitation: What if that future brings more development, more density, more tourists? And who decides what a post-Renaissance Boulder should look like? 

Henry Ford famously quipped, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Steve Jobs didn’t rely on a focus group to invent the iPhone. Elon Musk didn’t commission a study to build a self-driving electric car.

So what does Boulder want? Do we long for the “good old days” of mining and farming, or are we ready to become a regional hub for knowledge and culture? Do we prefer sprawl or density? Caution or vision?..

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A good holiday season should slow things down, allowing us to reflect on the past and imagine the future. I spent mine quietly—thinking, resting, and counting my blessings.

Before Christmas, Chef Tim Cook ordered a case of plump pomegranates for our winter menu. When power outages forced us to close early, I noticed them sitting untouched in the walk-in cooler. I took a few home.

Peeling one slowly, I was transported back to childhood evenings in Iran—long, cold nights warmed by the hum of an ancient cast-iron oil heater, my mother or grandmother sitting across from me, telling stories while skillfully seeding a pomegranate. The house was vast and frigid, but that room was a warm temple.

They never ate the fruit themselves. They just peeled and spooned the seeds into my mouth as if feeding royalty. Between bites, I’d hear the lullaby of blessings: “May your good deeds outnumber these seeds. May your children and grandchildren multiply like them. May your blood run red with vitality and love.”…

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Founded amid the gold rush of 1859 and officially incorporated in 1871, Boulder has always punched above its weight by attracting the University of Colorado, the Chautauqua Movement, IBM, federal labs, spiritual seekers, world-class athletes, and pioneering entrepreneurs.

Rather than chasing size, Boulder pursued substance. Early founders hired Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. to craft a plan rooted in beauty and restraint. Growth was capped at 1% per year. A greenbelt and a blue line were drawn to prevent urban sprawl. Pearl Street Mall was born—and with it, a reputation as “The Athens of the West.”

Yet Boulder’s arc of progress has never followed a straight line. Like all cities, it has bent to the headwinds of history: recessions, wars, and waves of technological and economic disruption. Today, Boulder finds itself in a down cycle. Sales and property tax revenues are falling. The City faces budget deficits and political discord. Office vacancies approach 38%—including subleases and so-called ghost space. Federal labs are shuttering. Homelessness shadows the creek that gave Boulder its name…

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As we gather with family over the holidays, we share more than just time and space; we share memories, strengthen our bonds, acknowledge our differences, and observe sacred traditions.

It is no accident that nearly every religion celebrates light during the darkest time of the year. Short days, long nights, and winter’s cold are physically and psychologically taxing, urging us to retreat, sleep, and conserve. Instead, we resist. We light candles, decorate trees, exchange gifts, and gather around crowded tables—small acts of defiance against humanity’s oldest struggle: surviving another winter.

Beyond the eccentric uncle with off‑color jokes or the politically obsessed grandmother, the clearest source of family tension is parenting. Few things expose our differences more quickly—or more painfully —than this…

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The Zoroastrians were keepers of fire. The Jews were chosen to carry the light. Light exists to confront darkness, and darkness, in turn, strives to extinguish the light.

On Sunday evening—the first night of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of light celebrated in the darkest week of the year—a jihadist father and son brought unspeakable darkness to a Jewish congregation in Sydney, killing 15 and injuring 40.

That same week, an ISIS militant killed three Americans in Syria. In Germany, five Islamists plotted to attack a Christmas market. In Los Angeles, a man shouting antisemitic slurs fired 20 rounds into a Jewish home. Meanwhile, the FBI foiled a coordinated bombing campaign by a pro-Palestinian cell targeting five locations across Southern California…

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Just 250 years ago, America was a colony ruled by European powers. Since then, it has grown into the world’s dominant superpower—thanks to its natural bounty, Constitution, and industrial might. Over the past century, America fought two bloody world wars and an expensive Cold War to save Europe from itself and from the Russian bear next door.

In return for our efforts, we’ve watched it drift left, slashing defense budgets, importing jihad over integration, and elevating bureaucracy over liberty. England prosecutes speech. France riots over a two-year increase in retirement age. Germany dithers as Russian tanks roll into Ukraine. The EU, once a beacon of unity, has become a labyrinth of regulation that stifles innovation and undermines national sovereignty.

And yet, many Europeans dismiss us as crude capitalists who are heartless, loud, and environmentally unaware. The EU continues to harass American companies like Apple and Google. Greenpeace, recently fined $667 million for sabotaging the Dakota Access Pipeline, now seeks to nullify that U.S. verdict through a Dutch court. This is not just a legal maneuver, but a contempt for our rule of law…

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The “Thucydides Trap” describes a geopolitical inevitability: when a rising power threatens a ruling one, war often follows, not by design, but through a series of logical escalations. Many believe China and the U.S. are already caught in its grip.

The Chinese Communist Party has declared a “People’s War” on America and is acting accordingly. Yet we continue selling them Nvidia chips and buying their toxic trinkets, unaware that while they prepare for war, our defense industrial base slumbers in peace.

Before calling me a warmonger, consider this:

China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have formed a modern Axis to challenge America’s postwar order. Europe, timid and socialist, can barely defend itself. Israel—our only true ally—is scorned by the far Right and demonized by the radical Left…

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It took Moses forty years to lead his people to the Promised Land. It took me forty-seven years to breathe new life into the abandoned Highland School and transform it into a community that could stand on its own.

Recessions, pandemics, floods, fires, windstorms—all took their toll. Each time, we picked up the pieces and carried on. For years, this experiment didn’t pencil out. But we were building for purpose, not profit.

When I share this story, the first reaction is disbelief: Why did it take so long to reach breakeven? The second: What got you through?…

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The 2023 CU football season generated an estimated $113 million for Boulder’s economy across six home games. The 2024 Sundance Film Festival brought $132 million to Utah. South by Southwest poured $377 million into Austin that same year.

These aren’t just statistics; they are proof that cultural capital drives economic capital. When IBM arrived in Boulder in 1965, it transformed the city’s economic base and seeded what would become a high-tech hub. From 1,000 initial hires to more than 4,000 within a few years, IBM didn’t just build a campus—it changed Boulder’s destiny.

Today, Boulder is striving to transition from digital to quantum computing. With CU’s help, Boulder aims to utilize culture as a magnet to attract physicists, mathematicians, engineers, and experts in large language models to shape the next technological frontier…

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Last week’s elections made it clear that our nation is being torn apart by forces on both the far left and far right. What makes this especially troubling is that both extremes are increasingly fueled by antisemitism.

On the left, self-described Democratic Socialists such as Bernie Sanders, Zohram Mamdani, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lead a movement that has grown openly hostile to capitalism and Israel. Their pro-Hamas, anti-Zionist rhetoric hides beneath the language of “social justice” and “equity.”

On the right, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts defends conservative voices, like Tucker Carlson’s, who empower Holocaust deniers and white supremacists such as Nick Fuentes. Conservative institutions once devoted to principle—the Federalist Society, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies—now appear paralyzed by the spread of hate they once sought to contain…

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I recently posted a five-minute AI-generated audio summary of my weekly columns, urging us to look inward for the tools needed to confront our outer crises. I then invoked Joseph Campbell’s call to “joyfully participate in the sorrows of the world.”

A few members asked, “How can we enjoy life with wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East, or take pride in America with Trump as president?”

One need not be a masochist to grasp the irony of the phrase “It hurts so good,” nor a Buddhist monk to understand that “the obstacle is the way.” To live is to struggle, and to struggle consciously is to live fully…

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In astrological terms, an Age lasts roughly 2,160 years—the time it takes the vernal equinox to drift through one sign of the zodiac. The Age of Aries was marked by conquest and command, the rise of patriarchal empires that exalted will and war. The Age of Pisces followed, embodying faith, sacrifice, and redemption through the great spiritual traditions of compassion and belief.

Now, as the Age of Aquarius dawns, the Water Bearer steps forward, pouring new knowledge upon a thirsty world. This is the age of networks and ideas, of technology that can both liberate and enslave, reminding us of what we forgot when we left the garden: that wisdom without love is ruin, and reason unguided by care becomes cruelty…

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I recently found myself reflecting on the mysterious connection between vision and manifestation; how what begins as a dream, spoken aloud with conviction, can take form and structure.

Nearly fifty years into it, the transformation of the abandoned Highland School into the enlightened City Club community feels like a dream realized. Once I learned to align vision with intention, it became natural to manifest the St. Julien Hotel across the street, launch the Highland Institute, help land the Sundance Film Festival, and envision a performing arts center on the grounds of the old library across 9th Street.

The next phase of the Highland Institute will build on the principle that thought, when aligned with language and action, can manifest reality…

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At the turn of this century, I caught the bug to build an institute. 

Having never belonged to one and with no clue how to begin, I studied the concept and concluded there are three possible paths. First, persuade a philanthropic billionaire to write a big check—the downside being that the donor dictates the philosophy. Second, launch one on the fly—the risk being that the new entity spends most of its time with its hand out, raising money. Third, build a self-sustaining organization capable of funding itself—the challenge being that it takes decades to achieve.

Inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s founding of the American Philosophical Society in 1743 to promote “useful knowledge,” we launched City Club in 2005 as a self-sustaining economic entity. With Highland as its home, we formally launched Highland Institute for the Advancement of Humanity in 2020, just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic, with the intention “to make elite knowledge, common knowledge.”…

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The history of man in general, and that of the Middle East in particular, is marked by a series of constant wars. Since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire’s 600-year reign, especially after World War II, the map of the Middle East has resembled a bloody Monopoly board.

Yet, two years after the October 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 Israelis and the taking of 250 hostages by Hamas, a narrow door to peace appears to have opened. Israel and Hamas have begun indirect talks in Egypt on a U.S.-backed plan that links a ceasefire to a phased hostage–prisoner exchange, Hamas’s disarmament, and a new governance arrangement for Gaza. The plan is imperfect and fragile, yet real.

Fighting the longest war in its short history on seven fronts, Israel’s strategic picture has shifted. Hezbollah has suffered heavy losses and leadership decapitation, while Lebanon is haltingly bringing all arms under state control. Syria’s post-Assad transition has weakened Iran’s corridor to the Mediterranean. Peace in Gaza would further blunt Tehran’s “ring of fire” and strengthen Israel both militarily and economically…

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Fasting slows me down and connects me to my inner landscape of sadness and joy, gratitude and struggle. On Yom Kippur, I would rather walk outdoors in God’s garden than sit in a man-made synagogue, however beautiful. Yet I miss the cantor’s voice, so I turn instead to Leonard Cohen.

Some artists dare to go where most of us hesitate to deal with love, lust, betrayal, and death. Poet-musicians like Bob Dylan and Cohen lead us there with tenderness and unflinching honesty. I have long admired Cohen, knowing the demons he wrestled with. Yet, like a fine wine deepening with age, he ripened into something wiser, moving from youthful songs of longing to meditations on mortality.

At my age, Cohen’s last album, You Want It Darker, feels less like a farewell than a hymn for the living. Drawing from the story of Abraham, asked to sacrifice his son, Cohen lifts the words of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, and answers with sacred defiance: Hineni. Hineni. Hineni. Here I am. Here I stand…

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The transition from summer to fall carries a rhythm older than memory. For our farming ancestors, an abundant harvest meant the difference between survival and despair, and the season came to symbolize renewal.

The Jewish High Holidays draw from this cycle. Rosh Hashanah looks forward, celebrating life and possibility. Yom Kippur looks back and is pensive, asking us to take stock of our actions and to seek forgiveness while extending it to those who have wronged us.

Forgiveness sits at the center of every great tradition. On the cross, at what was likely a Yom Kippur meal just hours before, Jesus asked: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” The Buddha offered the same wisdom in different words: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”..

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On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb student, shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie. Called “a shot heard around the world,” that bullet sparked the First World War, leaving as many as 22 million dead.

On September 10, 2025, Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old student, shot and killed Charlie Kirk, founder and CEO of Turning Point USA. That same week, Decarlos Brown Jr., a deranged homeless man, slaughtered Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a train. With Ukraine in flames and Russian drones violating NATO airspace over Poland, Israel continued to prioritize a kinetic war over a PR one, assassinating a trove of Hamas leaders in Qatar, a U.S. “ally.”

Meanwhile, France, England, and Germany—troubled social states—teeter on the edge of civil war. In Britain, three million citizens marched against what they see as the foreign occupation of their homeland while politicians and police stood by…

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There’s an art to aging gracefully in good physical and mental health. My column last week on Sage’ing while Age’ing explored the slow unfolding of life from matter to spirit. Shakespeare paints a more eloquent picture of this arc.

In As You Like It, the melancholy Jaques delivers the famous “Seven Ages of Man” speech, casting life as theater: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

The first age is infancy: helpless, crying, utterly dependent. The second is schoolboy: dragged reluctantly to class, “creeping like a snail,” resisting duty. Then comes the lover—sighing like a furnace, consumed by passion and clumsy verse…

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Just as every horse believes its own pack heaviest, every age imagines itself uniquely burdened. Despite wars, depressions, plagues, and upheavals recurring so regularly, they continue to surprise us. With Trump in office, France and England on the verge of civil war, and Iran, Russia, and China plotting against us, the present may feel apocalyptic, but it is simply our turn in the long cycle of disorder and renewal.

This recognition need not drive us to despair. Even as crises mount, we still eat, sleep, and laugh. We fall in love, raise children, and watch the seasons turn. Life persists with stubborn grace. The question is whether we meet these times awake, or, like a deer in headlights, stand frozen as history barrels forward.

The Stoics urged us to see adversity as an opportunity to learn and grow. Marcus Aurelius called this “the raw material for virtue.” Buddhists remind us that suffering is the very texture of existence, woven from our attachments and expectations. Both traditions reveal the same truth: the root of our suffering is striving to force the world to conform to our desires…

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