Macon Cowles – 50th Reunion Essay

Macon Cowles

1726 Mapleton Ave.

Boulder, CO 80304

macon.cowles@gmail.com

303-447-3062

Spouse(s): Regina Cowles (1982)

Education: Univ. of Colo. Law School, JD, 1975

Career: Teacher, cabbie, trucker, sawyer, carpenter, 1969-1972; Steamboat Springs, general law practice, 1975-1983; Personal Injury lawyer, Boulder, 1983-1997; Environmental, toxics, civil rights, western US, 1988-2004; Boulder City Planning Board, 2001-2006; City Council, 2007-2015; Business litigation, Denver, 2010-2014; Hearing Officer, Denver, Board of Health, Excise and Licenses, 2010-present; Counselor at Law, now.

Avocations: Eurovan camping, cycling, reading, the enlightenment, politics, art & architecture

College: Silliman

Leaving a treeless western suburb, I arrived at Yale by car. Mom kissed me at Phelps Gate with a prayer, “Macon, never lose the common touch!”

Yale was the first and only time that I would live in and among buildings that were examples of great civic architecture. It was exciting to learn in this wonderful setting, where each building became a memory palace, and where the street, at least between and after classes, was so interesting because of the chance and surprising encounters one had with other people on the sidewalks.

My whole idea of community and urban life was shaped by this exposure to enduring buildings at Yale. It is such a contrast to what came after: living in places where construction is done for least cost and buildings are not to last for centuries but are meant to be scraped or repurposed every seven years. My appreciation of neighborhoods and fabric architecture would come later. I read The Death and Life of Great American Cities when I was 50; and it made me look back aghast at the opening of the Met in 1966, realizing that hundreds of four-story brick buildings were destroyed by Robert Moses to make way for Lincoln Center.

Yale was the perfect place to be a scholar: deep reading, sharing of eclectic interests, sharpening the mind on the arguments of others. My favorite ritual at Yale: dinner, with long conversations over the evening meal. To this day, I am the last to finish my plate as we share conversation about this day and the next.

I am pretty much the person I would have been had I gone to any urban university, severing the possibility of living a suburban lifestyle. Yale did cause me to reevaluate the things I brought to the table. I thought I was pretty smart in high school. But many of you have a burning brilliance that gave me a new frame of reference.

Continuing along the path of learning and ideas that we all shared at Yale, I am on an Enlightenment jag right now. I had viewed the Enlightenment as a breakaway, like a missile achieving escape velocity never to fall back, where humankind escaped the ravages of religious dogma, superstition, ignorance and despotism. But now the fundamental values established during the Enlightenment appear very fragile indeed. In the last 20 years there have arisen so many challenges to rationality, science and democracy that the durable structure of Western civilization is unraveling. And it is regrettably our age cohort with hands on the levers as this unraveling proceeds.

Here are a few recommendations for swimming against the tide: SamHarris.org podcast “Facing the Crowd” with Yale’s Nicholas Christakis. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great. On the power of networks to propel ideas and action, Niall Ferguson, The Square and the Tower. On long-term thinking, Stewart Brand, The SALT Summaries. And for a fabulous hike, Kev Reynolds, The Tour of Mont Blanc.

Goodbye, friends.