Boomer Randomness

Nearly all of us eventually reach those “zero year” milestones of 50 and 60. If it makes you feel old, seeing celebrities age helps prove there is justice in the world. Thanks to Rhea for her monthly reminder of who is next. Singer Irene Cara (who sang the Fame lyric “I’m gonna live forever”), actors Tom Arnold and Aiden Quinn, OJ sidekick and fake celebrity Kato Kaelin, and male model Fabio are all turning 50 this month. Singer Eddie Money, Cars member Ric Ocasek, Dallas star Patrick Duffy and CHIPS star Eric Estrada all hit the 60 mark this month. Talk about March Madness!

No electricity, no running water. Soldiers with weapons drawn patrol the streets in groups of four and see devastation in every direction. Fearful citizens seek reliable information, food, medical care, hope. Stragglers guard their homes from behind broken windows. The stench is unbearable. Military helicopters circle overhead. Authorities search for bodies and looters. War-torn third-world country? No! It’s New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Three weeks later, the flood waters slowly recede, leaving mud and reality. Authorities fight over jurisdiction, emergency funding and logistics, while more citizens leave or die. As the bumbling, disorganized Federal, State and Local Governments dig through policy, procedure and protocol, real people dig through mud, mold and the soggy remains of damaged lives. Youth groups, church groups, retired doctors and caring college students from across the country work side by side with heartbroken-but-stubborn local lifers in the heat and hum...

With age comes confidence. At least that has been my experience. As I grow older I grow more confident in who I am as a person, an employee, a friend. I express my opinion more boldly than in the past and often hear more agreement than expected; and less regret and fear in the face of disagreement. I stand my ground more in my slightly larger leadership role at work and find that others come around to my point of view more often than in the past; and I have received increasingly positive response for my initiatives from managers further up the line. That positive reinforcement adds to my confidence. Aging is a scary thing and our youth-focused American culture doesn’t inspire confidence in growing old. Aging often represents loss … loss of parents, loss of friends, loss of memory, body shape, libido, hair. The only significant loss I’ve experienced on that list is parents and I’ve actually reconnected with many old friends in the past year. I know where my keys are. I’ll comme...

If you’re in your 30s or even 40s and you heard about a concert with the following lineup, what would you think? … Santana, The Who, Crosby Stills and Nash, Joe Cocker, Jefferson Airplane. Must be a classic rock radio station or an iPod playlist, right? You certainly wouldn’t get all of those bands on the same stage at the same concert. If you’re at the mid to upper end of the Baby Boomer range, you already know all of those bands DID play on the same stage at the same event. Woodstock! Here is the part that is really unbelievable: August marks the 40th anniversary of Woodstock.. Forty years! Geez, I’m feeling old at this moment. No, I was not at Woodstock, but I certainly remember hearing about it, then hearing music from the album, then seeing the movie. Although that movie only shows a segment of the population of the time, it is a good representation of the spirit of 1969 and provides a glimpse into a highly visible and influential part of the culture of the era. Some of the o...

Most of us have jobs where good performance is encouraged, expected and often rewarded. On the flip side, if your actions cost the company hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, they fire your butt! Wouldn’t you love to work for an employer just once in your life where you can lose a fortune for the company and its investors and still walk away with millions of dollars in bonuses? Well, there is such a company … AIG. Multi-million dollar bonuses for poor performance, backed by contracts that even the federal government can’t break! I am so there. When can I start?

Busy busy busy. I hate being so busy. Busy busy busy busy. Eat, drive, work, drive, eat, sleep. Busy busy. Next day, eat, drive, work, drive, eat, sleep. Nothing else. Too damn busy. Next day: DDSS. Busy. No time for friends, no time for fun. Just eat, drive, work, drive, eat, sleep. When did our lives get do damn busy? Busy busy busy. And you?

Why do we still change our clocks from Standard time to Daylight Savings time and back again, over and over, twice a year? Why not just keep one? Daylight savings time was first adopted in parts of Europe during World War I in 1916 and eventually in the U.S. in 1918. That is also when time zones were established in the U.S. Changing the clocks twice a year was so unpopular here that the law was repealed after the War, making it a local option. A few states and even a few cities continued the practice, everyone else ignored it. During part of World War II in the 1940s, Daylight Savings Time was adopted year-round, which is how I think it should be now. After that war, it became a local issue again, with a confusing array of options state-to-state and in some cases, county to county. Laws passed in 1966, 1974 and 1986 standardized the clock switching across most, but not all of the country and the start and end dates were changed again in 2005. But it is still confusing! Arizona, f...

I love Discovery Channel. Did you know a grizzly can eat 40,000 moths in a day? Mother Nature is such a tease! Ten degrees Monday night, 73 degrees Saturday afternoon; neither is normal. I don’t understand her any more than I understand any other women I know. A baby boomer remembers when a telephone, a camera, a music player, a computer and a typewriter were all separate devices, each weighing five to thirty pounds and only available at five different stores in a shopping mall. A twenty-five year old has all five of those items in one device the size of a pack of cigarettes and he or she bought it without leaving home. Why are all the female anchors on the Fox New Network buxom blondes? Who decided black is a good color for a car? A black car certainly does look good when it’s clean; but in my experience, that only happens during the first ten minutes after exiting the car wash. I was warned.

My regular grocery store has all live checkers. I went to a different grocery last Saturday and was surprised to find that six of the seven open checkouts were self checkouts. They each had one customer checking out. There were at least eight of us in line at the one checkout with the human checker. We laughed over this as we waited in that slow-moving line. Is there some kind of psychology involved with this? I know I sound old-school even admitting that I hate self-serve checkouts. In most aspects of my life, I’d rather do things myself. But when given the choice, I usually pick the checkout staffed with a person, in part because there is so often a problem requiring human intervention at the self checkouts. The long line today seems to validate my point; or at least it reaffirms my belief that I’m not alone in my dislike for self checkout. Your thoughts?

Rush is not a political leader or expert and more important than that, he doesn’t really care about the issues. If it wasn’t for the First Amendment, his inflammatory bullshit would be silenced. He is an entertainer and his shtick is conservative politics. The crap that spews from his mouth is entertainment, no more, no less. He used to be a DJ. Somewhere along the way, he realized he could get more listener reaction and better ratings by talking. His views probably are genuinely conservative, like approximately half the adult population, but there is no evidence that he really cares about the issues. Conservative indignation happens to be a lot more fun to listen to on the radio than liberal pontification, so his brand of entertainment has a larger and more vocal audience than someone like Randi Rhodes, a liberal talk show host who used to work for the left-leaning Air America network. People talk about Rush. I’m doing it here, although I’d prefer to ignore saying anything abou...

We don't have kids, but we do have three dogs. All are Border Collies, one boy and two girls. Most Baby Boomers I know have children and some even have grandkids; but my sister, two cousins and at least three good boomer-aged friends do not have children. I think we will regret this when we're old.

Snow is predicted for the Washington DC area tonight and tomorrow morning. It’s not the first time we will experience heavy snowfall around here, but the ‘storm warning’ panic has already begun. We laugh at ourselves when snow is in the forecast, in a self-conscious ‘it’s funny but it’s true’ way. The joke is that everyone in the Mid-Atlantic states stocks up on milk, bread and toilet paper when snow is coming. It’s funny. And it’s true. Those items were in my basket yesterday and I doubt anyone would believe that I really was low on all three; my purchase had nothing to do with the weather forecast. Really. If you’re visiting here from Buffalo or Cleveland tonight or tomorrow, you’ll be laughing at another aspect of life in DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia: we forget how to drive in snow until we’re in the middle of the first big storm of the season. So far this winter, we’ve only had two inches of show, so if the current forecast holds true, this is the first big one. Part of...