A R C H I V E

One needs more than a lifetime to discover Rome, but if one is fortunate enough to have a good guide, the amount one can see and learn in a week is astounding.

City Club member Giulia Bernardini filled that role as she is a native Italian with two master’s degrees in art history and museum studies. Like her dad, who inspired her passion for sharing the city with others, Giulia’s bigger-than-life personality might just as well be the image of a classic Hollywood actress. After many years of teaching art history at the University of Colorado, Giulia now applies her extensive talents to conduct tours of Rome, Paris, Venice, and Naples. Having concluded that my creative batteries were running low, I jumped at the opportunity to join Giulia and seven others for a week-long tour of Rome.

Our deep dive into Rome’s 2600-year recorded history began with a study of archaeology as we encountered massive palazzos built atop churches built on ancient coliseum foundations. With the Tiber River regularly flooding, some of the sidewalks we were standing on were sixty feet above the foundation of the original building…

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It’s a jungle out there. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Kill to eat, or you may wind up as someone’s lunch.

Humans harbor the capacity for unimaginable evil. Read Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. Read Victor Frankel’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Read Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. To this day, children are born, live, and die on the streets of Kolkata (Calcutta). From Stalin to Mao Tse-tung, from Genghis Khan to Hitler, history is full of people believing "one death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."

Knowing this, how can one stay sane and function effectively amongst such cruelty? How did Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and Gandhi do it? What’s the best strategy to survive and thrive in this seemingly unjust, bat-crazy world?

One can study history and become paralyzed by the evil we continue to inflict on each other, our planet, and other species. Today, we are amazed and ashamed that 150 years ago, America, the land of the free, the shiny city on the hill, sanctioned slavery. Seven generations from now, our descendants may be equally amazed and ashamed to learn we factory-farmed other sentient beings to eat and that a Chinese gourmand craze was eating the brains of live monkeys…

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Pogrom is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.” Historically, the term refers to violent attacks by local non-Jewish populations on Jews in the Russian Empire and adjoining countries like Poland and Ukraine.

Although the first such incident labeled a pogrom was the riots in Odessa in 1821, attacks on the Jews go as far back as Egypt’s enslavement of their entire Jewish population, Spain’s deportation of their entire Jewish population, and Germany’s eradication of all Jews as their “Final Solution.”

Before Islam got into the game, Christianity cornered this market with the claim that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus, and the accusation that Jews were performing rituals using the blood of Christian children (a charge known as “blood libel”)…

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After nearly a decade of research and soul-searching, in May 2020, at the outset of the pandemic, City Club officially launched the Highland Institute for the Advancement of Humanity.

Webster defines an Institute as “A society or organization founded for a religious, educational, social, or similar purpose.” My definition of an institute has evolved to include a safe place, or a Securus Locus, to discuss and debate difficult, complex, but important topics that can help pave the way for human evolution.

Last week, City Club member Matt Query and I discussed and analyzed the current Israel and Hamas war, how Hezbollah and Iran fit into this equation, and China and Russia's role. Many of you responded positively and supported our efforts to address this complex situation. However, we did receive an anonymous comment stating my quote of the Koran was not accurate, compelling Matt Query to respond by saying: It is a relatively well-known Hadith, with Al-Bukhari (famous 9th century Hadith scholar) attributing it to Ibn ‘Umar, who was one of Muhammad’s companions. Responding to Matt’s comment, another member offered: “Al-Bukhari is synonymous with Islam. While it’s accurate that the quote is not from the Koran, it is a standard teaching all over the Islamic world.”…

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I decided to take time to cool off and deal with my shock, sadness, and anger before writing about Israel’s October 7th equivalent of Pearl Harbor, 9/11, or the 1973 Yom Kippur War. I strived to explore the root cause of this evil, its potential silver lining, and the outline of a global solution to this problem.

In the first part of the Koran, in Madina, Muhammed sees Islam as the final chapter of the Abrahamic religions, friendly to Jews with Jerusalem as their rightful homeland. In the second part of the Koran, while in Mecca, Muhammed turns on the Jews, making it incumbent upon Muslims to kill Jews.

Muhammed’s passing marked the Islamic split between the Shia and Sunni sects, representing the liberal and conservative sides of Islam depending on which is in power at the time.

In 1979, with the fall of the Shah of Iran, conservative Ayatollahs took over and tried to take back Islam’s mantle of Jihad from Saudi Arabia. Iran declared America the ‘Big Satan’ and Israel the ‘Little Satan,’ took 52 Americans hostage, and strived to establish a global Islamic Caliphate using proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad…

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There is an old adage that says, be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.

Life is full of missed opportunities, losses, and failures. Anyone who has experienced a major setback – launched and lost a significant enterprise; built “it” and they did not come; fallen in love, married, only to divorce – develops a fear of loss and is naturally afraid to go out on a limb. 

A male is focused on food, shelter, security, and sex. A man, then, is the male who can make and keep a commitment and die for a cause he believes in. A superior man, or woman (Narges Mohammadi, the winner of the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize) strives to give more than s/he takes, hoping to make a small dent in the universe to promote the advancement of human evolution.

One of the great benefits of launching our City Club community is the privilege of mentoring some of our members. Whether it’s a member’s 17-year-old son embarking on the dating world and experimenting with alcohol and drugs, a new college graduate striving for that first job, or a late-20s member facing the decision of whether his girlfriend would make a good wife, or the late-30s member struggling to establish a career and purchase a house, everyone is a candidate for solid mentorship…

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They say a man can live a month without food, and a week without water, but not a day without hope. 

We grow up full of hope and idealism, and then slowly start letting go, giving up, and compromising our dreams. In the past, I have written about Viktor Frankl’s three-year survival ordeal in multiple hellish concentration camps; Nelson Mandela, who endured 27 years of imprisonment, much of it in solitary confinement; Moses, who wandered in the Sinai desert for forty years looking for the Promised Land. 

Without tenacity and grit, talent is nothing more than unmet potential. Or, as Thomas Edison put it, genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

As a Stoic, I often think about these and other historical heroes such as the great Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who dealt with a combination of war, famine, and the Antonine Plague; Lincoln and the Civil War he fought to free slaves and keep our country together; and Golda Myer’s founding of the State of Israel, and nearly losing it during the 1973 Yom Kippur war…

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I find it fascinating that two of our Constitution’s biggest First Amendment advocates are foreign-born, self-made American billionaires willing to take considerable risks to protect what most of us take for granted.

Rupert Murdoch, who at age 92 resigned as the Chairman of his two media companies, spent seven decades building a media empire with a significant global impact on public life. Mr. Murdoch’s crowning achievement was the purchase of the Wall Street Journal in 2007 at the then-thought exorbitant price of $5 billion. Many, myself included, had concerns that Mr. Murdoch would commercialize this venerable paper and drain it as a private equity play. Mr. Murdoch, instead, invested heavily in the Journal as he fully embraced the digital revolution and made it into an even better publication.

While I learned to speak English by watching TV for nine months, I learned to write proper English by “studying” the Journal for the past 44 years. Mr. Murdoch believed that “self-serving bureaucracies seek to silence those who would question their provenance and purpose. Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth.” Upon purchasing the Journal, Mr. Murdoch made clear he wanted to hear what his Editors truly thought, not what they thought he wanted to hear…

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Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Elon Musk is all over the news, and many see their reflection in this complex man: wealthy, genius, charming, polarizing, combative, and mercurial. Quoting Shakespeare, Mr. Isaacson sees Musk as a man “molded out of faults.” While Musk’s Asperger syndrome and his “demonic modes” make him hard to deal with, it gives him a voice, which is why he bought Twitter.

In the book, Musk quotes Albert Einstein, who lived during the McCarthy era, as saying that American Democracy seems pretty resilient and has an internal gyroscope that makes it right itself when it looks like it’s about to go off the cliff.

Looking at these gyrations at the global level, we see China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea aligned against America and the West. Domestically, we are at each other’s neck, facing two bad presidential choices in 2024. Locally, our streets are littered with the homeless, many of whom are mentally ill, addicted to drugs, and/or are outright criminals….

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Ernest Hemingway’s description of his main character’s bankruptcy in The Sun Also Rises, “gradually, then suddenly,” is aptly relevant to the aging of the American leadership and its consequences. 

President Biden, who is 80, frail, and accident-prone (both physically and verbally), is running for another term. The 81-year-old Mitch McConnell, the powerful Senate Minority Leader, keeps freezing up like the software glitch in The Matrix. The 83-year-old Nancy Peloci, the powerful 52nd speaker of the House, just announced she wants her old job back. The 77-year-old ex-president Trump oscillates between the prospect of a jail cell and visions of the White House. 

This trend compels one to ask, what is going on? What are the consequences of an aging American leadership as we consider the role of experience and wisdom in the context of the vitality, grit, and tenacity required of a leader in today’s complex world?…

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One need not be a Stoic to realize life is hard, and then we die. In between, there is a lot of pain and suffering due to societal pressures to conform, get an education, get married, raise kids, pay off the mortgage, and save enough to retire. But the Stoics also teach that while pain is the flavor of life, those who thrive in the face of hardship focus on what they can control and, act as if the obstacle is the way.

As such, life is meant to be an active engagement rather than a passive experience; as per Benjamin Franklin’s observation, “Many people die at 25 but are not buried till they are 75.”

Thus, we bear witness to that rebellious minority who buck the system to remind us we want more than just to live, but to feel fully alive. Not just survive, but thrive. In 1969, this was the impetus to gather in Yasgure’s 300-acre farm for Woodstock or, follow Jimmy Buffett to Margaritaville. And, more to the point here, annually gather in one of the most inhospitable deserts in the world to Burn The Man…

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I feel honored to be an American and am fascinated by the diverse reactions to Donald Trump’s mugshot. 

Donald Trump once claimed he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue, shoot somebody, and not lose any voters.” Many Democrats are thus celebrating Trump’s four indictments, 91 criminal charges, and the prospect of him going to jail. Many Republicans believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election and is being wrongly prosecuted to disqualify him from running again as the Republican candidate in 2024. Although I am not in either such camp, I was heartened to see Trump’s mugshot for the following reason:

We live in turbulent times and, as a Middle Eastern-born Jew who has lived through revolutions and upheavals, I am especially sensitive to security as the most important life quality after perhaps food and shelter…

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Great Empires die not by murder but by suicide.  Arnold Toynbee

On a stroll down Pearl Street Mall the night before leaving for Greece to attend a family wedding, I ran into City Club member Brett Berry and casually mentioned that I still did not have “The Book” to take on my trip, so I was planning to read The Fourth Turning Is Here. 

More intellectual and passionate by nature than I am at the top of my game, Brett waxed philosophic at length as to why, instead, I should read End Times by Peter Torchin. 

Having slugged through Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, The Rise and Fall of Great Empires, and The Fourth Turning, which City Club member Steve Smith has reviewed, I was not sure I wanted to spend my vacation reading End Times. Half an hour later, Brett showed up at our house with a new book copy. Case closed; I had my book…

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Are you looking forward to the upcoming 2024 elections?! Me neither.

Birth and death are nature’s way of renewing itself. Creative Destruction is Capitalism’s saving grace. Similarly, our Constitution’s flexibility to form new political parties, watch them grow, die, or morph into new parties is key to the continuing health and longevity of our democratic system.

A good example of this process was the birth of the Know Nothing Party in the mid-1850s. Having started as a nativist political party, it morphed into the Whig Party, the Constitutional Union Party, the North American Party, and eventually today’s Republican Party, which is very different from Lincoln’s Republican Party.

Forced to choose between two geriatric presidential candidates accused of sedition, corruption, and influence peddling, our nation is in the process of reshuffling our political parties to better reflect the Founding Fathers’ vision to continuously reinvent ourselves as we strive to reach the Shining City on the Hill…

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Certain life events may become so deeply etched into our psyche that they can be triggered by sight, sound, or smell, e.g. the first kiss, leaving home, or our first love. Religious rituals and cultural holidays are examples of how such visceral reactions can be integrated into our daily lives.

A personal example was my initial arrival in America, a virtual nightmare with no family, language skills, or cultural familiarity. Contrast that with the euphoria I felt ten years later when I finally received my Green Card and, with it, the certainty of knowing I was here for good as a newly minted American.

This feeling of freedom reemerges every Fourth of July and every election cycle, as I imagine how our Puritan forefathers must have regarded their immigration from England as a re-enactment of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. To them, England was the equivalent of Egypt, the King that of the Pharaoh, the ocean crossed the Red Sea, and America was the new Land of Israel…

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Duality is the nature of the universe. Just as every coin has two sides, there is an inherent attraction and tension between male and female, rich and poor, producers and consumers. 

One need not be an adherent of Ann Rand’s philosophy outlined in Atlas Shrugged to detect the potential tension between the producer and the consumer, capitalist and socialist, the sometimes-flawed producer who pays taxes, versus the sometimes-corrupt power-hungry politician who believes s/he knows better how to spend our hard-earned money. 

When the pendulum swings too far to the right, the capitalist might become a robber baron and monopolist. When the pendulum swings too far to the left, society leans toward socialism featuring holier-than-thou virtue signalers…

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For over forty years, my family has had the good fortune of living a comfortable and fulfilling urban-pedestrian life in a modern house we designed and built in 1984 along the south bank of Boulder Creek. 

Our neighbors include the homeless, the drug addicts, and the mentally ill, who have been known to die from knifing, clubbing, shooting, drug overdose, drowning, or freezing. 

In 1973, psychiatrist Darold Treffert coined the term “dying with their rights on.” This term perfectly describes what we are experiencing in Boulder, San Francisco, LA, Portland, Chicago, and many other urban areas: the laws have gone too far in protecting the rights of individuals at the expense of their safety and well-being…

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As a kid, I struggled with existential questions such as life’s purpose and my place in it. My exposure to many cultures and religions taught me how to think for myself and strive to express myself clearly. This was a real challenge, given that Persian and Hebrew are written from right to left as used in poetry and spirituality, while English is written from left to right for use in science and business. 

I eventually decided to study philosophy and comparative religion. The dictionary defines philosophy as “the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence.” Perhaps a simpler definition of philosophy is the “love of wisdom.” Whether one is a doctor or farmer, lawyer or engineer, one can still become a philosopher through the accumulation of wisdom.

The picture above is a facsimile from the Papyrus Prisse, the oldest book in the world, dating to 2500 B.C. Written by Ptahhatp, the Vizier to the eighth pharaoh of the Old Kingdom’s Fifth Dynasty, many consider “The Teachings of Ptahhotep” as the first book on philosophy as it contains such pearls of wisdom like “As your reputation is immaculate, you need not speak.” Or, “No one will be born wise, so consult with the simple, as much as the educated.”…

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Do you remember the Harry Nilsson song that goes, “Everybody’s talkin’ at me. I don’t hear a word they’re saying. Only the echoes of my mind.”?

Once again our country feels as divided as it was in the 1960s period, characterized by riots and assassinations. Rather than practice the Greek art of dialogue, people tend to shout, point fingers, and argue in what amounts to a dialogue of the deaf. As a result, we end up frustrated when we do not feel heard.

Nearly half of all American marriages end in divorce because we fall in love with our projection of an ideal mate rather than engage in the hard work of getting to know our partner. Employers place ads aiming to attract the ideal candidates for a job opening rather than take the time to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate in the context of the true job requirements…

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Like fish swimming in water, we swim in politics, consciously or not. Politics is all about the way we conduct ourselves at the local level, not something we just do every four years at the national level. Since we live in a participatory democracy, we should either participate or stop complaining about how bad things are. 

No one needs a reminder as to how fortunate we are to live in Boulder, nestled at the base of the great Rocky Mountains. We owe much of this good fortune to our forefathers who had the vision, and the political foresight, to land the University of Colorado, Chautauqua, over thirty national labs like NCAR, NIST, and NOAA, along with the will to establish the Greenbelt, the Blueline, the Pearl Street Mall, and more.

Judging by my 53 years living here, Boulder has never faced more opportunities than we do today. How and the extent to which we take advantage of these opportunities will depend on who we elect to lead us through these exciting and turbulent times, determining whether Boulder has peaked or its best days lie ahead…

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