Author: PAUL BATURA
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The upsides to a real estate downturn
The United States continues to be mired in a housing slump, a hangover driven by pandemic-fueled market anomalies and once historically low interest rates now remaining stubbornly elevated in contrast to a few years ago. In shirt-sleeve English, fewer people are moving from one house to another. This might be a challenging reality for those…
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Nonsense, lawlessness, and the need for horse sense | Paul Batura
Sister Maria Martin, my 8th grade math teacher, had a few choice quotes tacked up on the wall behind her desk, including this one: “The least common thing is common sense.” I remember Sr. Maria lashing out at Dennis O’Donnell one day for somehow losing his math test on the way home from school. It was…
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Lost local places – gone but not forgotten
I always get nostalgic this time of year when I see the slopes of Ski Broadmoor, a small local resort on the western slope of Cheyenne Mountain. Opened on New Year’s Eve 1959, the neighborhood destination consisted of just four runs and featured a pioneering snowmaking machine known as the “Phenomenal Snowman.” Loggers and bulldozers…
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Ways to prepare for unknown unknowns in 2026
It was the late Secretary of Defense and presidential advisor Donald Rumsfeld who famously observed, “There are known knowns … there are known unknowns … but there are also unknown unknowns.” Mr. Rumsfeld was addressing the challenges of acquiring military intelligence in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. But that same concept applies to our…
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COLUMN: The best Christmas gifts aren’t under the tree
One of the most memorable and meaningful Christmas Eve’s for me was the year I was abandoned at the public library. It was Monday, December 24, 1979. I was seven. The Baldwin Public Library is in the middle of my small hometown on the south shore of Long Island. One sign of a good town…
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COLUMN: How dogs and questions lead to a fulfilled life
How does a 90-year-old woman in a Colorado Springs retirement community wind up forging a friendship with a former child actor from “Home Alone,” tag along for a ride to a casino in Cripple Creek with a wealthy couple, teach an immigrant from the Balkans to make a Croatian Christmas bread, counsel a vagabond in…
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COLUMN: End of life lessons from one of Colorado Springs’ finest
There have been thousands of Colorado Springs police officers serving since the city since its founding in 1872, but none wore the badge more honorably or proudly than Steve Pugsley. Steve, who passed away last month in Maui after a nearly two-year battle with multi-organ systemic cancer, was 64. We were friends and running buddies…
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COLUMN: Complicated search for symbols of Christmas
It all started with a bedridden 10-year-old boy in Denver at Christmas. The year was 1914. David Jonathan Sturgeon was ailing, confined to his second-floor bed and unable to make it downstairs to enjoy the family’s tree. But he could see a large pine outside his window and asked his electrician father if he might…
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COLUMN: Giving thanks every day is a wise practice
From football to parade floats to delicious feasts and the kickoff of the Yuletide season, Thanksgiving means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Yet, at its core, the annual holiday is a triumph of persistence and a model for how we should live not just on the fourth Thursday of…
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COLUMN: Vape shops don’t belong in residential areas
If Benjamin Franklin was right, that it’s a wise person who is at war with his vices and at peace with his neighbors, then the recent proliferation of smoke and vape shops in Colorado is an ominous and incendiary sign of trouble. In our quiet Mountain Shadows neighborhood on the west side of Colorado Springs,…