James Gimian is one of my idols. As a relatively fatherless individual (my parents separated, call my MI for details…) I don’t throw around that term lightly. As a young punk, I idolized Magic for his baby hook, but mostly his big smile and leadership. I idolized Winfield for the big, timely swing that backed up his cocky swagger and big sideburns.

These days, I look up to folks like Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, Bill McKibben, Yvon Chouinard and yes, Al Gore…folks who, like Churchill or Thoreau in days of yore, saw a truth and worked and succeeded in getting that truth out to thousands, nay millions of folks.

So why do I care about Mr. Gimian? A founder of my first love café, a senior student to Chogyam Trungpa, a husband to Trungpa’s editor Carolyn Gimian and daddy to our intern, Jenny…James has in the past decade worked his butt off to help another one of my mentors, Melvin McLeod, take the excellent journalistic magazines Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma to the next level. Along with Tricycle, these two magazines have the heavy responsibility of not only reporting on but shaping that brand-new thing called American Buddhism. They do so with elegance, integrity, a great staff and great writing. As a newbie magazine publisher myself, believe you me, I regard their ongoing accomplishments with admiration (jealousy).

…But that’s not all! James is also, with charismatic writer Barry Boyce, author of the new Rules of Victory—taking the lessons of that classic among classics, the Art of War, and applying said lessons to what we all need the most help with: that timeless mystery known as daily life.

Meet James this Wednesday, with Robert Thurman and Robert Schmidt et tous les elephants, at the Boulder Theater. Not in Boulder? The video’ll be up soon enough.