Through the Eyes of a Daydreamer's Daughter

Last week--before my inability to access Blogspot to work on this posting threw me into Ludditish panic--there was a lot of news about the impact of the economy on Chicagoland. This week the media has officially transited from woe-is-me over the economy to better-days-are-on-their-way and yet the news reported by the media last week included a sudden flush of layoffs worth consideration and comment. First, a number of Chicago communities announced that they are laying off teachers because the state is not subsidizing school districts as it did in the past. Revenues from income tax are down. The state doesn't have the money to spend on education. The school boards still hope to recall some of the laid-off teachers if funds materialize over the summer, but right now it looks like classroom sizes will go up. Naturally some parents are freaking at the thought of classrooms of thirty children. There were at least thirty children in every Chicago cl...

I will publish this right away without even checking the spelling because I'm having so much trouble getting into Blogspot. I was planning on writing next about some depressing local news--and I will do that after this posting--it is news that disturbs me too much to ignore it--but then I couldn't get into this blog or any other. Either Blogspot had a connection problem--which happened once before in Scandanavia according to the help screens or some addresses have changed and my list of past links is not going to the correct server anymore. But the important thing is that in my house I have no tech support team to call to come fix the problem. I'm lucky that I have some computer skills, albeit not particularly internet oriented skills. I can't afford to call the Geek Squad every time my own fumbling around doesn't solve a problem. And I, for all the limits of my skill set, have a short list of people who call me regularly in a panic over what is happening on...

There is an ad running on television that drives me nuts because a man describes his profits from investing in gold and urges you to buy gold, too. I'm sure that man is telling the truth if he did buy gold five or ten years ago. Anyone who bought gold five or ten years ago when prices were low would now, thanks to the recession, be making a big profit (on paper). However, the truth is that it is probably too late for you to make the same profit buying gold now. Gold always goes up in value when people are panicking about the economy, but it also drops like a rock as soon as the general economy recovers. Anyone who buys gold now, with the price of gold already inflated, is more likely to lose almost every penny of his or her investment (assuming the economy improves) than to make any profit at all. Even if the economy continues to worsen, the price of gold may well have reached its limits. Every word the man on television sa...

The original inspiration for this blog came from discussion of the ideal lifestyle for aging in America. The truth is that anyone who can manage daily life independently doesn't need special accommodations for age. As long as you can walk and drive, if you can hold a job or manage investments, if you can write checks to pay the bills and balance the checkbook at the end of the month, if you can wash the floor and shop at the grocery store, if you remember to take the kettle off the fire before it burns, if you remember to shower and brush your teeth, if you remember to prepare and eat meals, and if you have the energy to mow the lawn or shovel the snow as the season requires--then your age is not important. Anyone who can do all those mundane chores can decide for himself or herself how to live according to personal tastes. There are people in their nineties who can manage all those chores and people in their fifties who can not....

Demographers have official definitions of generations. If you google "generation names," you will probably read that the Silent Generation extends from 1925 to 1945 while Baby Boomers were born between 1946 and 1969. Wikipedia makes more sense to me because it defines Baby Boomers as everyone born from 1939 through the sixties, a definition that groups people by shared experiences. I was born in December of 1943 and have no memories of the war or the Great Depression. My mother was born in 1921. How can I accept a label that comes close to putting me in her generation when we were nothing alike? That makes no sense. In my high school days, social studies teachers lectured that we could expect lives of scarcity because of the sudden burst of too many children already known as Boomers. Overpopulation was predicted to doom the world then as global warming is now. Soon, we were warned, the Baby Boomers would graduate to high school--like a cloud o...

At the end of the sixties, I came back from living abroad to find the entire nation furious at the Weathermen. In Chicago that word alone was enough to elicit a sputtering and incoherent rage from most adults. For weeks I wondered what the meteorologists could have done to deserve to be hated. Finally someone told me some fantastic story about protestors who set off bombs in department stores. I found it hard to believe what I was hearing. I had just returned from living in Israel where tales of bombs in department stores might have sounded unfortunately credible. This was Chicago. Chicago was in America--quiet, safe, secure America--not a place for explosions in public buildings. In the years that followed I sometimes told the story of my confusion to illustrate culture shock. It was a light and easy laugh on me. Lately I've aged into someone who actually is growing to hate the weathermen and this time it is the meteorologists I'm talking about. I'm aging into so...

When I announced this blog to friends and family after writing and publishing the first three posts, I called it my stealth blog. I had two reasons for waiting that long to confess. Although I've never lacked for opinions and have often been told that I analyze everything way too much, I wasn't certain I had enough topics to blog for any length of time. In only a day or two I compiled a long list of topics--more than one index card--more than enough. More important, I wasn't certain how long I would have fun writing these posts. I wasn't willing to commit to doing anything long-term if I wasn't having fun. Life is too short.  I've always had a sense of urgency. I was one of those teens who suffered dramatic angst over the shortness of life and the impossibility of cramming all the adventures I could imagine into only one life. Today I'm even more acutely aware of running out of time than I was as a teen. I calculate that ...

Here's what I've read: * People are social animals by nature. * Infants who are fed but receive no other human contact fail to thrive. Their bodies don't grow; their minds do not develop; they get sick; sometimes they even die for no reason. * A good social life strengthens the immune system. And in addition, I can vouch for the fact that starches eaten with company have less negative impact on blood sugar levels than the same starches eaten alone. So there is scientific evidence that people need companionship. Yet In this age of computers, a healthy adult could go days without any human contact if he telecommutes, shops on the Internet, and uses the self-checkout line at the supermarket. If you exclude electronic communication and limit "companionship" to actual face-to-face contact, modern society is moving more and more rapidly toward isolation. And the older people get, the more isolated they become. Children still gather in schoolrooms and playground...