Epistle 2 – The 50’s

Prototype Boomers were gangly kids in the 50’s, and we learned current events from Movietone News at the Saturday afternoon serials of Lash LaRue, Roy Rogers and the Durango Kid (my favorite). How current could the Movietone News be, I wonder?

By the time it got produced and distributed, it was downright historic by today’s real time standards. Nevertheless, from that media I learned that Joseph Stalin had died. When I told my mother, she refused to believe me, and she bought a newspaper everyday for a nickel from the neighborhood drug store. I guess by 50’s standards, Movietone was about as current as it got. Or my mother bought really old newspapers at a discount.

The 50’s have always been remembered with disgusting nostalgia, at least by pre-Boomers. But I know the truth because my brother was a leather-jacketed, motorcycle-booted, high school greaser who firmly believed along with his peers that there was no place in civilized society for anyone with good grades. Today, those people wouldn’t miss a class reunion to save their lives. Curious. The 60’s generation of kids can’t even remember where they went to school.

Anyway, back to the 50’s where us grade schoolers were taught to survive a nuclear attack by sitting under our desks. Can you believe it? Granted, desks back then were more substantial pieces of furniture than those plastic tray contraptions kids have today. They were made of steel and you could actually store things in them, everything from Crayolas to Lucky Strike cigarettes, depending on how warped you had become between the second and eighth grades.

The desk tops were made of real wood with ink wells (pits full of black stuff sucked up into pens to make them write) that featured years of carved graffiti, a Rosetta Stone that enlightened our path with the accumulated wisdom of all those who had gone before.

But as marvelous as those desks were, could they really protect us when the Russians dropped an atomic bomb on our school? C’mon, I was born at night but it wasn’t last night. On second thought, maybe they could. The military used to have soldiers observe an atomic blast shielded only by their shirtsleeves and sunglasses. They didn’t even have desks with tops that could tilt up and down. (I liked mine in the middle setting.)

Nobody in our neighborhood could afford an honest-to-God bomb shelter, but I remember someone who buried cases of liquor in a dirt cellar to ride out the holocaust. clearly a brilliant chap who, unfortunately, died before he could prove the wisdom of his plan. Fortunately, another kid and I discovered this treasure during our Saturday part-time jobs to expand the cellar. Thus began my training for staying stoned throughout the 60’s, a daunting responsibility, let me tell you.

God moves in mysterious ways. Real mysterious.

We Will Win

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Do you think that all baby boomers are all alike and created equal?  Baby Boomers are the “Woodstock generation” — In general, baby boomers are associated with a rejection or redefinition of traditional values; however, many commentators have disputed the extent of that rejection, noting the widespread continuity of values with older and younger generations.[1]

Just like everything else, there are many different stereotypes about us Boomers.  Let’s take a look at a few and see if any really add up. Boomers are comprised primarily of active adults, characterized as people who are aged 55 years or older. The active part, well that can be a bit subjective.

Baby Boomers are now middle age and entering senior years and while most Americans say it is more difficult for middle class people to maintain their standard of living than it was five years ago. Baby Boomers are changing their retirement.

Why is that though? Well, it’s not that we were not prepared, or preparing for retirement. Many of us were well set. Unfortunately, with the lack luster economic down turn, or to be more politically correct, the “economic correction of the markets” as so many people call our current state of economy. Most of us Boomers were slapped with this overcorrection, and are beginning to hit the age of retirement as our net worth in real estate and stocks has been wiped out.  This really left many of us with no choice but change or rethink our retirement strategy.

At the same time many Baby Boomers are not ready to stop working. Some have even started to work with children or young entrepreneurs as they have years of knowledge and skills to share, and feel that it’s their way of leaving a lasting mark on the world.

The stereotype that Boomers are technology challenged just perpetuates things.  Surprisingly, more and more Boomers are embracing technology. Everything from the iPhone to social media, we have found our way around and have embraced the changing times.

However, like any other generation, there are some that take longer than others to move towards change. Sometimes change comes so quickly that by the time that ANY generation catches up, someone is on to the next big thing. Take the overhaul of Facebook for example, it wasn’t just Boomers who stood heals dug in unwilling to embrace the home page feed feature, or the vanity name change option, but many of the 50 million Facebook users felt that they liked the old way better.

Sure you may not catch too many Boomers on Hulu.com catching up on past American Idol reruns but in such a fast paced world that we live in, who is?  Boomers, in large numbers are traveling the world using the internet every day. So to say that we are technically challenged is a far cry from the truth. But hey, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Reference URL 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Boomer

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• Integration: The pink elephant in the workplace: Examiner.com Take this test to see which generation you are: Ba.. http://bit.ly/UalRP #
• From Woodstock to Sarah Palin, or Not – Room for Debate Blog …: the idiocy called Woodstock nostolgia is about.. http://bit.ly/SWYOG #
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• Hot Air » Blog Archive » Paglia and the “liberal … servility …: They rushed the bill through Congress because .. http://bit.ly/Pj08y #
• Been Able to Manage My Epilepsy | Netbloggerz.org: People are also much more concerned about having good health .. http://bit.ly/a2Rqd #
• "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life" ~ Confuscious. #
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• Study: Financial windfalls hasten early retirement: The study also could be a barometer for a long-debated quest.. http://bit.ly/11eP5j #
• A Baby Boomer Generation Guide to Fitness by Robert Bresloff: Baby Boomer Generation needs to deal with health i.. http://bit.ly/2Qypwx #
• "Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple." #fb #
• Unexpected inheritances hasten early retirement, shows study: According to Weisbenner, retirement plans in house.. http://bit.ly/2pH6Mk #
• Givers Versus Takers: What's Driving Resistance to Obamacare: This shift has been lurking in the wings for d.. http://bit.ly/3RIHTV #
• Rare nursing surplus fed by recession – Breaking News from The …: "It's extremely temporary," sa.. http://bit.ly/EgzcW #
• Had my best round of golf of the season today. Great time with great friends. Life is good. #
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• Alan Weinkrantz PR Web Log: Recommended Reading – The Whole Foods …: … more in deficits projected over the n.. http://bit.ly/4CTKzU #
• Baby Boomers Face Down Aging: 10 Most Common Medical Challenges: In the year 2030, the youngest members of the b.. http://bit.ly/lJfe9 #
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• Sweat, Think, and Philosophize « The Nalanda Journal: If the projections are accurate, the most menacing culprit.. http://bit.ly/YPnxB #

Epistle 1 – Spam

. Technically, I’m not a Baby Boomer because I was born before the end of WWII. I guess that makes me a Beta Boomer. But the drift of my life has been borne on the high tide of the Boomers (not those old geezers like my brother), and so I cast my lot with theirs.

. The historic events that define the Boomer generation started right after WWII when all the GI’s returned home from the war and behaved like rabbits. A frisky bunch, those people. Good Lord, they kept it up for over 15 years!

. The first important thing I remember about being a Boomer is the public school food. The hallways of my grade school were stacked to the scuppers with army surplus food, particularly something truly evil call Spam. (No, children, spam was not invented to bedevil computer users. It was invented to bedevil Boomers during their tender, formative years, which explains their behavior.) The real Spam, (from Spawn of Ham, an old horror movie), is a ghastly, ghoulish thing crammed into a can and sealed tight for public safety. It can be sliced cold for a sandwich, cooked for a dinner entrée, or just left to squat in the refrigerator, daring you to even touch it, heaven forbid eat it.

. It would still be there except that boomer parents were made of sterner stuff than their offspring. Apparently the war also made them a hell of a lot meaner, too. Can you imagine forcing an innocent child to eat that today? You can’t even spank a kid today without going to jail, let alone poison it. But I read somewhere that native Hawaiians have made Spam their food of choice. Can that really be true? 113,539 Hawaiians can’t be wrong, can they? Maybe it’s the ukuleles.

. But I digress. The point is that the epic events spawned by Boomeritis were due to Spam. Of course, it has morphed into something very different now but it is still evil, and you young people deserve to know the awful truth. It’s not the crushing national debt that your elders have saddled you with for the rest of your life that you should resent to the very core of your being. It’s that they ate Spam. On the other hand, if they survived Spam, maybe you will survive the debt.

God loves little children and old Boomers.

We Will Win

Jonah and the Whale

. I’m a Christian. More specifically, a back-sliding Lutheran. But in a much larger sense, I’m a child of the same God that 3 of the great religions on this earth worship. While I believe in the Bible’s New Testament, I relate more to the rascals, wars and heroes of the Old Testament. The older I get, the less I search for organized religion and the more I search for spirituality. Lord knows the Baby Boomer Generation could use a little spiritual help about now . . . and a little humor wouldn’t hurt either.

. Which somehow brings me to Jonah. I can’t recall ever doing the right thing on the first try. Why is the right thing always the hard thing? God told Jonah to go to Ninevah, but he thought all the Ninevites were dirtballs so he bought a ticket on a cruise ship in the opposite direction. Bad idea. Now God had to whip up a storm and have the crew toss Jonah overboard. Then God had to have a whale, which was just minding his own business eating a plankton sandwich, swallow Jonah whole and take him back to the Middle East. How would you like to be inside that whale while he did whatever whales do?

. Sure enough, the whale spit old Jonah back on shore, probably covered with gooey inside whale stuff, so he would finally get to work on Ninevah. Maybe all Boomers don’t do things this way, but I bet most of us can relate.

Take avocado-green appliances, for instance. God didn’t want avocado-green appliances in your kitchen ruining your appetite. God wanted doctors to wear avocado-green smocks in operating rooms so they could ruin your chances of survival. In either case, if you spit up, nobody would notice.

. The point is that there were Boomers somewhere out there who knew better. Just like there were millions of Boomers who knew better about gas-guzzling cars. But instead of overcoming our addiction to pumping gas, we invented attack vehicles that could intimidate a Sherman tank.

. Up and down, back and forth, finding our way in spite of ourselves. That’s the Boomer legacy. Maybe we aren’t covered with whale goop, but it sure feels like that after the Great Recession of 2008. After a lifetime of this nonsense, I’ve finally lost patience with us. As an early Boomer, I was trusting in the rancid masses to come along behind and drive my property values to outrageous levels so I could spend my golden years in the lap of luxury.

But what did the masses do? They booked a cruise in the opposite direction and ran smack into the worst financial storm since the Great Depression. Instead of minding the store, they did what they have always don (aka whatever the hell they wanted), and the system tanked. My “retirement plan” of mutual funds and Florida real estate, which seemed like a hell of an idea at the time, went south without me.

. Of course, I’m not alone. There are millions of us–bald, fat, middle-aged veterans of more good times than any generation in history, wondering where the whale will spit us up. We could gnash our teeth, but they’re getting pretty worn.

We could pull out our hair, but there’s precious little of that left. So we blamed Wall Street, the government, the banks, the crooks, the Arabs, and everybody else but us. Sadly, it didn’t help. We have met the enemy and it is us. So there is nothing left for us but to go to Ninevah . . . finally.

. Personally, I think the whale should spit me out on the French Riviera. I’m sure God has important work for me there. Boomeritis never dies.

We Will Win

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