The Agile Executive

I was on some business trip to the lovely city of Boulder, CO. My gracious host took me to dinner at the Q’s Restaurant in the classic Hotel Boulderado. We talked about our kids, software, soccer and classical music. And we talked about the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, CO.

Q's Restaurant, Hotel Boulderado

According to my host, as part of their orientation, students in Boulder, CO get lectured on the need to abide by the law. He mentioned a student in his class (or maybe it was his son’s class) who got a citation for driving his bicycles on the wrong pavement, or wrong direction or something like that. We laughed heartily about this episode – it seemed so trivial.  And, even such triviality seemed very remote from the bliss of downtown Boulder.

This long-forgotten dinner came back to me this weekend, triggered by the videos from UC Davis. I simply could not believe that in something like ten years from the lovely dinner I had in Boulder we mutated from giving citations to students on bicycles in one gorgeous campus to pepper-spraying students in another. The dissonance between the beauty/tranquility and the brutality overwhelmed me.

As a young man I served in the paratroop corps of the Israeli army and fought in both the ’67 and ’73 wars. I experienced violence and brutality. They are not new to me.

Yet, this weekend I could not help recalling this classic photo of the demonstrations against the Vietnam war – the Kent State shooting:

Kent State Shooting, May 4, 1970

What are we waiting for – a similar photo from a demonstration against Wall Street?!