The Baby Boomer Generation is a source for trends, research, comment and discussion of and by people born from 1946 - 1964.
Covering issues on the Boomer Generation including original content for Boomers, bulletin boards, user comments, Sixties and Seventies music, Baby Boomer culture, health and coverage of issues for "Aging Hipsters."
June 14, 2009
Pet Rock
I took this video while visiting friends in WV. Try teaching this pet rock to roll over.
"No one in America can know what will happen. No one is in real control. America is having a nervous breakdown ... Therefore there has been great exaltation, despair, prophecy, strain, suicide, secrecy, and public gaiety among the poets of the city."
Being only 8 at the time, I wasn't purchasing Miles Davis' Kind of Blue or worried about Fidel or reading Lady Chatterly's Lover. But the story is an interesting look at a year in the life of our Boomer experience.
The House has passed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act which, besides providing more volunteer opportunities for middle school and high school students, recognizes baby boomers' enormous potential for civic engagement. The bill expands existing services such as AmeriCorps , which will now have money reserved for enrolling adults over 55. It also creates new service corps focused on education, health care, energy and veterans.
Older adults (meaning us) will be encouraged to take both volunteer and paid non-profit positions. The New York Times quotes John Gomperts, president of the nonprofit research group Civic Ventures, "It represents an attitudinal shift in Congress -- an important recognition that national service isn't just for the young." Well, we know that!
The bill includes the following:
Expands Service Opportunities for Older Americans and Public-Private Partnerships
* Creates two new fellowships to engage social entrepreneurs, boomers and retirees, the private sector and Americans from all generations into service. Older Americans will be allowed to transfer their awards to a child, foster child or grandchild to help them pay for college.
1. ServeAmerica Fellowships: ServeAmerica Fellows are individuals who propose their own plans for serving in their communities to address national needs and are matched up with a service sponsor.
2. Silver Scholarships and Encore Fellowships: These programs offer Americans, age 55 or older, post-career service opportunities as well as entrance into new careers in the public or nonprofit sector. Silver Scholars will be able to earn up to $1,000 in exchange for 350 hours of service.
There are many more provisions to encourage boomers to become involved; you can read a more detailed summary of the bill on GovTrak.us
Times have surely changed since I wrote about being the oldest living human on Facebook a few years ago. Not only are the original college-aged kids now out in the real world and using Facebook for both social and business networking, but Boomers have discovered it too. And, like everything else we do, we do it in a big way. These days you'll find everyone from your distant 4th-cousin-once-removed to your BFF from high school. Lev Grossman, on Time.com, has presented the ultimate top 10 reasons for the old fogie invasion.
Lately whenever I look in the mirror or get dressed I think about 3 thing-- looks, money and old age. Remember when you'd run a comb through your hair, dash some lipstick on and you were done? It seems like every year adds another series of maintenance tasks. Now it takes me half an hour just to get to the baseline.
Do you suppose Medicare will include a provision for hair and body maintenance or will those of us unlucky enough to be poor have to look like an Aesop witch with one long hair growing precisely out of the middle of our chins?
Who will do for us when we can't do for ourselves? Without getting into the realm of Too Much Information, think about daily, weekly and monthly maintenance tasks: --shaving, plucking, filing, coloring, bleaching, moisturizing, masking, pumicing, blow-drying -- various body parts. What happens when we can't reach our toenails? Do they grow into curving yellow claws? Can you think of someone who'll take care of them...for free? Maybe some of you lucky enough to have willing & able daughters or...who?
Do we really want to be at the mercy of overly-busy nursing home attendants or a kindly student intern at the senior center? Or maybe we need to make sacred pacts with our closest friends: I'll do that (too-personal-to-mention) task for you if you'll do it for me. Instead of saving for a dream vacation home or a spiffy car, we should be putting money away for a personal assistant, and not a digital one.
We've enjoyed Michael Winerip's Parenting column in the New York Times, mainly because his kids are relatively close in age to ours, so we were sad to see it end.
But wait! He's back! And now he's writing about...well...hmm....baby boomers. The new column is called Generation B, probably because Aging Hipsters was taken. First article talks about talking about Boomers and lists some of us who are particularly impressive. Including our new president, who probably really wishes he weren't one.
With the kids out of the house, it's only natural to turn reflective about age. All those years we had kids at home to keep us feeling young, in touch, and way too busy to think--what a welcome distraction that was. We're looking forward to this addition to boomerography.
For starters, she's middle-aged. For seconders, she's funny. Did I mention she began her career as a comic at age 49? Interesting article from 1981 in the New York Times about creativity in old age. (Not that we're old, of course.) While it has nothing to do with Mrs. Hughes, parenting or comedy, it does offer even more inspiration for us potential second lifers and late bloomers.
How midlife driving differs: I live in a neighborhood of blue-haired drivers, and I'm beginning to understand them. This is both dangerous and frightening. Back in the day, when I found myself going 20 in a 35 mph zone, it was because I had just taken the last puff off a big fatty with my friends in the car, and it never occurred to me that my mental state had been altered in such a way as to emulate the blue-hairs.
Now-a-days, my patience level has replaced the haze of THC in my brain, and I applaud those who take their time on the road. Of course, after living and driving in Manhattan for 12 years, I also appreciate those lunatics who pull out of a strip mall, flying across oncoming traffic to swerve into my lane about 6 inches in front of my car. "Nice NY cabbie move," I say to myself. After being captive in the back seat of many a NY cab, I know that when it's your chance, you must take it, seize the day, make your move and hope for the best.
If you missed this afternoon's Inaugural Celebration--We Are One concert, HBO will be presenting it again this evening. And if you don't subscribe to HBO, get this--they have opened up access to the channel to all of us for this one event. More details at HBO.
Putting aside jaded musical taste, remnants of cynicism, and the football game, this was a wonderful LIVE show: sincere, entertaining and moving at times. Personal fave moments: Soulful Bettye Lavette and just as soulful Jon Bon Jovi; Pete Seeger doing what he's been doing for eons--talking the lyrics a beat ahead so that we can all sing along; Renee Fleming looking ab fab singing the crap out of "You'll Never Walk Alone"; Garth Brooks rousing the audience with--guess....OK, you can't guess-"Shout."
Because of both the place and the date, parallels to the March on Washington were obvious and yet inspiring. Lots of star power speakers made sure we didn't miss that or any other historical significance. And they did a darn fine job.
The presidential family and guests seemed to be having a grand time, although I can't imagine they weren't cold--the girls didn't even have mittens on. My hands got cold just watching.
Like Grant Park, the audience was thrillingly diverse. Where else will you see a balding boomer standing next to young tween black girls and punksters with what looked to be painful piercings and Gen-X parents with kids on their shoulders and they're ALL singing "This Land is Your Land?" and not even ironically.
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and this really struck me:
