Boomer Randomness

If you’re Gen X or a millennial you might laugh at some of what I’m about to write. Some things that are normal for you still seem new to us boomers. If you’re a boomer, think back to when you saw some new movies during the first few weeks they were out. Cool Hand Luke, In The Heat Of the Night, the first Star Wars, Grease; even newer movies like Top Gun, Dances With Wolves or the Kristopherson/Streisand version of A Star Is Born. You determined where and when they were showing by checking a newspaper ad or phoning a nearby theater (after looking up the number in a phone book). You stood in line to buy tickets, hoped it wasn’t sold out, paid with cash and maybe got there early enough to pick good seats. On the afternoon I’m writing this I’m going to see the new version of A Star Is Born. This morning I opened my Fandango app and quickly saw a list of show times at theaters near me. I picked a location and show time and saw that I could reserve specific seats. Comfy reclining se...

It is probably a mistake to assume certain age people only like certain music. I’ll explain why in a minute. I am also rethinking another assumption. A radio consultant who helped guide strategies for several radio stations I worked for early in my career said that music people liked at high school age (or similar sounding music) is what they continue to like for the rest of their lives. There is evidence backing up that theory. Just talk with a boomer who thinks no good music has been recorded since (fill in the year of their last year in high school). All of those theories are refuted by what I witnessed at a wedding recently. Bride and groom are both 30 years old, which means they were born in 1988. Their friends are all between 28 and 35. Their parents, aunts and uncles are mostly between 55 and 65. The afore-mentioned theories tell us the bridal party and friends would mostly like music from around the early 2000s. Songs like Smash Mouth “All Star”, Santana with Rob Thomas ...

“Music is all I wanted to do. There was no plan B.”   -Miguel “Don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t do it.”      -Carly Pearce Those are two quotes I heard while watching artist profile fillers during a live stream of the recent iHeart Radio Music Festival Daytime Stage. Miguel and Carly Pearce are two up and coming music artists who each have a strong desire to express themselves through their music in  unique ways that music executives didn’t initially see. Both artists refused to give up and each took risks and never gave up. Now they are rising stars in their respective genres and are living their dreams. What can we boomers learn from that?  I am so lucky that I have spent most of my adult life making a living doing what I love. I say ‘lucky’ but actually my radio dream started before high school. Looking back I realize I started taking steps in this direction that far back. I paid attention to DJ styles, learned about music, listene...

Church attendance in most denominations had been down for a long time in the USA, but according to an article I read a few years ago, we (boomers) are returning to places of worship. Reasons vary, but it seems as we look for meaning in our lives, another boomer trend, we often seek meaningful direction in places of worship. In some ways we also look for a connection to our youth. I grew up Catholic but have not been a practicing Catholic since shortly after college in the 1970s. The rituals and dogma did not seem to resonate with 20th century life and I thought the way one lives and treats others was more important than awkwardly translated bible versus and arbitrary rules (no meat on Friday, for example, or holy days of obligation). In the mid 1990s I ‘discovered’ the Unitarian Universalist denomination, became a charter member of a new local congregation and was an active member for several years. There was some hypocrisy in that group too and I stopped going. To this day, ho...

The brain is an interesting container. A baby’s brain starts to fill from the moment of birth, maybe even before that. He or she learns an incredible amount in just a few short years. An adult brain continues to gain knowledge as long as the synapses keep connecting. Then we die. That brain that’s been collecting information for 80 or 90 years gets buried or burned. That doesn’t seem fair, does it? Or is that really the end of that brain’s life? Maybe reincarnation is real and maybe upon death our brains are transported to another planet and become part of a new life. A baby born on another planet starts life with a brain full of everything his or her brain learned on Earth. That could explain the theory about possible advanced civilizations on other worlds. Those people are merely our people starting over at a higher level on the knowledge scale. That kid designs nuclear reactors for homework in K1 and goes on from there. Some 1st grader on Planet Europa that’s born wi...

“When I was young, my mother and grandmother held prayer meetings in our house. On Wednesdays.” Amanda sits in her wheelchair eating lunch. She’s dressed in white pants, peach shirt and salmon-colored jacket. “They told me I wore this yesterday but I wanted to wear it again because someone special is visiting me today.” She wasn’t sure exactly who was coming, but she knew it was someone special. It was her daughter. And me, the daughter’s boyfriend. We know she has dementia issues. It might be Alzheimer’s but the diagnosis is not definitive. She remembers earlier parts of her 86 years but not many recent parts. That’s typical of Alzheimer’s. However, sometimes she remembers recent stuff better. For example, she’ll struggle to remember the names of her three daughters while talking with them in person, but she’ll almost always remember my name, even though she’s only known me for five years. One of my biggest fears is losing my memory as I age. I remember some things from my ...