Through the Eyes of a Daydreamer's Daughter

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...

I am not the only person I know who is thinking about life after sixty. The idea for this Blog came from a brief correspondence with Lyman Orton. Head honcho at the Vermont Country Store, www.vermontcountrystore.com , Mr. Orton has been contemplating the characteristics of "the good life" and he put an editorial about problems in one active senior community in his store's catalog. I noticed the editorial, read it, and sent him my own two cents on the subject. (Hopefully Mr. Orton and any other readers will have two cents to add as they read this blog.) Mr. Orton seemed focused on the big picture--attempting to define the good life as applies to everyone rather than just for himself. I, on the other hand, have been thinking in strictly personal terms. But I have been thinking about aging in America for as long as I can remember. I was raised in a family that believed retirement was deadly. My grandfather had a massive coronary after retiring at forty-eight and moving to ...

If sixty is the new forty, then I assume that I can feel free to have the midlife crises now that I didn't get around to at the appropriate time. In my actual forties, any change I craved was limited to minor tweaks to an all too comfortable lifestyle. Sometimes I talked a good line of discontent, but I had no real desire to make major upheavals in my life--no desire that lasted long enough to actually make any change anyway. I simply wasn't ready for a midlife crises at the proper age. Hitting the sixties, it is clear that life is truly short and time truly fleeting. The economy alone has turned life upside down and inside out for me and for most people I know. All sense of entitlement and any feelings of unlimited options has been wiped out in the economy's tumble. If the sixties are to be the new forties, I'm thinking this would be the appropriate time for me to examine my current lifestyle and see whether I can't come up with something that suits me better or ...