Fall in to the Baby Boomer Blogs

     Our roundup of Baby Boomer blogs offers a sprinkling of advice, in all forms and colors, like leaves falling from the autumnal trees.

     To begin with, SoBabyBoomer says that when Millennials/GenYers started joining the workforce in the early 2000s, managers balked at parents getting involved in their kids' workplace struggles or job searches. That was then. Now, some firms have begun embracing parental involvement and using it to attract and hold onto talent and boost employee morale.

     (But, is what today's young worker wants really so different from what we wanted when we started out? Btw, for future reference, here's a thumbnail run-down of the generations:

     The Greatest Generation, aka The G.I. Generation -- Born before the Depression, they fought in World War II, led post-War prosperity, and produced the Baby Boom. Hello Pres. George H. W. Bush.

     The Silent Generation -- Born 1930 - 1945, they were known, at least superficially, for devotion to career, loyalty to family, belief in traditional morals and values. Hello Mad Men.

     Baby Boomers -- Born 1946 - 1964, they are known for their long hair, idealism, political activism, and later on for "selling out" and moving up. Hello Bill Clinton.

     Generation X -- Born 1965 - 1980. The post-Baby-Boomer crowd is supposed to be selfish and cynical, looking for immediate gratification. Hello Punk Rock.

     Generation Y, aka Millennials - Born 1981 - late 1990s. Supposed to be materialistic, self-involved, technologically adept. Hello Apple.)
    
     Anyway, on to more serious things:  Laura Lee Carter, aka the Midlife Crisis Queen, offers an important life lesson in What You Focus on Does Grow. A propos to that, Laura's favorite quote comes from Gloria Steinem:  "Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else."

     Meanwhile, Karen Austin asks:  Did you know that bone health can be measured in three states? Most know about Normal and Osteoporosis. But in 1992, an in-between state termed osteopenia was identified. Karen at The Generation Above Me recently discovered bone weakening lurking in her own bones (as you can, or can't, see in the picture to the left).

     Amy Blitchok, a writer and researcher specializing in issues involving seniors, aging in place and mobility, says that if you are a Baby Boomer (that's me), the good news is that your generation will enjoy the longest life expectancy in history. (Yay!) The bad news? (Oh, I knew this was coming.) Boomers suffer from chronic diseases at about twice the rate of the previous generation. So what gives? The truth is that more people are relying on medications to treat the symptoms of chronic diseases instead of taking preventative measures. Essentially, we are sacrificing quality of life for longevity. Visit Modern Senior to learn Simple Ways to Live Longer AND Better! 

     (Her post includes a cool chart called "Prevent Disease and Grow Old Gracefully." Anyway, I myself do not suffer from diabetes ... and I plead the 5th on obesity!)

     Finally, on The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, writes about a Boomer survey showing that empty nesters want their adult children to move out and move on.

     (So, what would you do if your grownup kids needed some help? Would you rather give them money, no strings attached, or let them move back in with you? I know which way I'd vote.)

Speeding Toward Oblivion

     Two weekends ago we had dinner with friends, along with a third couple. The man is a lawyer and a father of three boys. He's a nice guy; active in his church; involved in a foundation to raise money to help local kids go to college. He spent a good portion of the evening regaling us with a story of how he got a speeding ticket and is trying to fight it in court, because it's his third ticket and he's worried that he'll lose his license.

     The way he told the story was pretty funny, but my laughter was a little forced. How could this guy -- a lawyer, an officer of the court who should set a good example for the rest of us, not to mention his three boys -- flout the law so brazenly and so publicly?

     I asked him what his hurry always was that he kept getting speeding tickets. He shrugged. He has a 25 minute commute to work every day. If he gets caught in traffic or hits the lights wrong, and it takes him 28 minutes, he says it ruins his entire morning, whereas if he makes the trip in 23 minutes he feels great all day.

     The other friend pointed out that he was spending hours and hours dealing with tickets, which squandered much more time than he saved by speeding to work -- not to mention putting himself and others in danger.

     But he just didn't get it. It's all a game to him. And to tell the truth, I've met many other commuters who share the same point of view.

     We need to remember that, even though traffic fatalities are way down from their peak in the 1970s (due not to better driving, but to seatbelts and airbags), there are still over 30,000 Americans killed in traffic accidents every year. That's more than ten times the number of Americans killed in over ten years of fighting in Afghanistan.

     The research says that speeding is a factor in over one third of fatal accidents. And the faster you go, the more likely you are to die. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "Forces on impact double with every 10 mph increase in speed above 50 mph, and as crash forces increase, so does one's chances of being killed or seriously injured."

     Meanwhile, the other day I was driving along a road near our house, one that goes up to a main east-west artery three or four miles north of us. It's a straight road, but narrow with no shoulder and so the posted speed limit is 30 mph. The road is so straight, it seems like you should be able to go faster. But it's dangerous, because the road is elevated above the fields to both the right and left, as much as eight or ten feet. So, literally, if you go a foot off the road, you will plummet down an embankment eight or ten feet into a tree or a rock, and likely roll over in the process.

     I was driving north, going between 35 and 40 mph. Like I said, 30 mph just seems so slow. Then I looked in my rear-view mirror and I saw an SUV come up behind me. It kept coming and closed the gap and started riding my tail.

     I glimpsed down at my speedometer to make sure I wasn't going to slow. It read between 35 and 40. I went past a sign that posted the 30 mph limit. I thought the car behind me might get off my tail when the driver saw the sign.

     It didn't work. The car kept tailgating me. Now I'll admit that most aggressive drivers -- those who speed, tailgate, weave in and out of lanes -- are male. But this driver was a woman.

     She followed me for a minute or two, which seems like a long time when you're trundling along a narrow road, casting your eyes into the rear-view mirror every few seconds. Then she backed off. I thought maybe she saw another of the speed-limit signs that are posted along the road and just decided to slow down.

     But I was wrong. She'd backed off to give herself room to pass me, because even though the road has a double yellow line, meaning no passing allowed, she gunned her car and zoomed past, up toward the main road ahead of us.

     I continued along, going just under 40, and a minute later arrived at the light. The woman was sitting there, waiting behind one other car at the red light. I pulled up behind her and stopped, and when the light turned green, she turned right, and I turned left, never to see her again.

     Maybe this woman was from out of town, and just didn't know the road and how dangerous it is. Or maybe she thinks the state should do something to improve the road, and she's simply not going to let the state's neglect slow her down. But you can't blame the state too much. It's a difficult stretch, and not a major thoroughfare.

     But what I know, and what she should know, is that since I moved up here in 2007, three people have died on that length of road. In each case they wandered off the pavement by a few inches; their wheels caught in the grass, and they rolled over into a tree.

     And as one expert said about speeding in general: "In most cases these accidents could have been avoided or made less severe if the vehicles had obeyed the speed limit."

    

The First Pictures . . .

     B and I went on a long weekend, and I thought I'd use our getaway as an opportunity to try out the camera on my new smartphone. I took about a hundred photos. To be honest, many were close-ups of the street or the grass. I got a few good pictures of my foot. But along the way I did see this sign in front of a bar in Pennsylvania, and so I had to stop and take a snapshot. How can you not like a saloon keeper with this dry sense of humor?

Better than the other way around?

     Anyway, we went to Philadelphia for the Chestnut Hill Fall for the Arts Festival, held every year in October. (This the first time we've gone.) Now, some of you might think that the cheesesteak capital of the world is an old rundown industrial city that has seen better days, and that it is no place to take a minivacation.

The restaurant was empty Sunday morning, but packed on Saturday night when we ate there

     In fact, Philly probably has seen better days, but it is still the fifth or sixth largest city in the country, depending on how you're counting -- bigger than Washington, D.C., Miami, Atlanta, and San Francisco. And there are still many good things about the city -- the music, the art museums, the historic sites, several top colleges and many other schools of various forms and functions. And there are some nice neighborhoods, too.

The band kept everyone hopping

 
     Chestnut Hill is considered by many to be the nicest neighborhood in this city of neighborhoods. But actually, Money Magazine recently selected its next-door neighbor Mount Airy as one of the top urban neighborhoods in the country -- while Rittenhouse Square is a place where you can buy a $1 million condominium, the nearby Fitler neighborhood is an up-and-coming area, and Manayunk, a little farther up the Schuylkill River, is where the 20-something hipsters live.

The garden store was decked out for fall

 
     But I don't pretend to be any sort of expert on Philadelphia. I was just there with B to enjoy the arts fair, which featured around 150 tents and kiosks where artists, craftsmen and others plied their wares.

Something for the kids

     We arrived in Chestnut Hill on Saturday evening, and it was plenty warm enough to dine al fresco and watch the crowds walk by. But the real crowds arrived Sunday morning, and stayed all day.

Yes, it was crowded.

     There was music, and rides for the kids and all kinds of food. The weather was perfect -- partly cloudy and warm enough to walk around without a jacket. And best of all, we stayed another night so we didn't have to fight traffic getting home on Sunday evening.

Mistake? No way ... this is art!

     We had a lot of fun . . . but to be perfectly honest, I have a lot more learning and a lot more practice to do before I can rightly say that I know how to use the camera on my new smartphone.

A Dummy Gets a Smartphone

     I purchased my first smartphone the other day. You might think I'm behind the times. (Well, maybe you don't, but my children sure do!). But actually the latest figures I found, as of July 2013, say that approximately 30 percent of Baby Boomers use smartphones (as opposed to about 50 percent of the overall population.) So I'm not that far behind the times.

     When I finally made the decision to make the purchase, and came away from Best Buy with a hot little phone in my hand, I felt that I had joined some kind of exclusive club. I felt that, finally, I was . . . smart.

     But now I'll tell you the real reason why I got a smartphone. I lost my digital camera. I was going to buy a new camera -- my Canon Powerpoint was four or five years old, and even though I liked my camera a lot, I wasn't too upset because I figured they've improved the technology by now. But then I started to do some research, and I reached the conclusion that a smartphone will take a photo just as well as any mid-range digital camera. And you get a phone in the bargain.

     I actually talked to the salesperson at the camera counter at Best Buy. I was playing dumb (not hard for me to do) and asked him about various cameras, and I told him how I'd lost my old camera, and I was in the store to buy a smartphone. The camera salesman told me that the new smartphones take just as good a picture as all but the very best of the cameras . . . and you don't have to lug around a big heavy device.

     He pulled out his Samsung Galaxy S4, and showed me the pictures he had taken the other day at the zoo. He explained how he had gone to the zoo with his girlfriend, and after he parked, he opened the back door to the car, intending to get his Nikon from the backseat. Then he stopped and thought, do I really want to have that heavy camera dangling from my neck all day? So he left the camera in the car, and used his smartphone to take pictures.

     He showed me the photos, and they were bright and clear and in focus. He did point out one photo of some kind of lizard. I took this one indoors, he told me, and it's not really that good. That's one thing the Nikon will do better -- take photos in low light. But otherwise, he said, I'm completely happy with the pictures I got from my cellphone.

     Ultimately, I bought the Samsung smartphone, partly because it got good reviews online (yes, I know the i-phone also gets top reviews, but I didn't want to pay the extra money.) Also, as the camera salesman pointed out, the camera offers 13 mp, instead of 8 mp on the other phones, which should give me photos comparable to my old Canon, or even better; plus it has more battery life as well as some other features that he explained but that I didn't understand.

     So now I'm making phone calls, and accessing the internet and trying to get used to the camera, and researching all the apps I'm going to get. But there is one more reason why I got a smartphone. Text messaging. Now, I know you don't need a smartphone to text; but it does make it a lot easier. And the fact of the matter is, my two kids, like most 20-somethings, never answer the phone anymore. They only text. And I want to be able to communicate with my kids.

     My first text was to my son. He never answers his phone. But he texted me back, literally, within 30 seconds: "Whhoooaaa ... never thought I'd get a text from this number!"

     Then I texted my daughter. She never answered, either, when I tried to call her on my regular cellphone. But now she answered right away, and proving that sarcasm can be conveyed in a text, she said: "Wow, Dad, welcome to the 2000s!" 

Remember Him?

     He made his debut 51 years ago tonight, and became a touchstone in many of our lives for the next 30 years. Such was his influence that when in 1973 he made an offhanded joke about an alleged shortage of toilet paper, American consumers panicked and wiped out all the toilet paper from supermarket shelves, leading to a real shortage. For several weeks both paper manufacturers and grocery stores had to ration supplies, until the panic was relieved.

     He was born on Oct. 23, 1925, and grew up in Iowa and Nebraska. When he was a kid he found a book on magic, and started performing at local picnics and country fairs, for $3 an appearance.

     He joined the Navy in 1943, received officer training and was commissioned an ensign. He shipped out to the Pacific on the USS Pennsylvania, where he took a turn as an amateur boxer and posted a record of 10-0. He was en route to a combat zone, aboard a troop ship, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan. So he was able to finish out his service as a communications officer, then go home to attend the University of Nebraska. He graduated in 1949 with a major in radio and speech, and a minor in physics.

     He got a job on a local radio station, then was tapped to host a local morning TV program called The Squirrel's Nest. He did a comedy bit involving pigeons reporting on political corruption; and he also supplemented his income by serving as master of ceremonies at local functions -- where the very politicians he'd been mocking would likely turn up.

     He headed to California in 1951, looking for work, and talked his way into hosting a local sketch comedy show. He was spotted by funnyman Red Skelton, and eventually asked to join his show as a writer. One evening in 1954, so the story goes, Red Skelton knocked himself out during rehearsal and needed a substitute for the night. The former sailor filled in and was judged a complete success.

     The next year brought him to the Jack Benny Program, and before long he found himself hosting nationwide game shows, until he moved to New York and became a regular on Who Do You Trust? He spent five years on the successful game show, interviewing guests and throwing out one-liners, and also meeting future sidekick Ed McMahon.

     His success on Who Do You Trust? led NBC to put him -- and surely, by now, you know our special guest today is Johnny Carson -- in the running as host of The Tonight Show. The fledgling late-night show had originated in 1954 starring Steven Allen. In 1957, Jack Paar took over the show, but the acerbic comedian was not a particularly good match for the late-night audience. NBC asked Jackie Gleason to replace Paar. Gleason refused. NBC turned to Groucho Marx, Bob Newhart, and Joey Bishop. After they all turned down the opportunity, NBC went to Johnny Carson, who took the job, and first opened the curtain on Oct. 1, 1962.

     Pop star Paul Anka wrote the lead-in music for the show, and Ed McMahon soon joined Carson as his second banana. The formula was an instant hit, attracting top talent from New York and Hollywood. In 1972 Carson moved the show to Los Angeles -- or, "beautiful downtown Burbank," as he often joked -- and continued there until he retired in 1992, at age 66, and was replaced by Jay Leno.

     During his 30 years on The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson created many characters, from Art Fern, the Tea Time movie announcer, to Carnac the Magnificant, the psychic who could answer a question before it was asked. He was given credit for launching the careers of many young comedians, including Joan Rivers, Steve Martin, Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, Ellen DeGeneres, David Letterman -- and David Brenner, who appeared on the show more than any other guest. But Carson also destroyed his competition, including Dick Cavett, Alan Thicke, Pat Sajak, Chevy Chase and a host of others including Joan Rivers, who claimed that Carson never spoke to her again after she went into competition with him.

     Johnny Carson did occasionally get in trouble when he made fun of other celebrities, including Las Vegas performer Wayne Newton and corpulent TV detective Raymond Burr. But for the most part Carson projected an amiable personality, refusing to discuss politics, for example, insisting that his personal views didn't matter and besides they would only serve to alienate a portion of his audience.

     Carson was married four times -- explaining the many alimony jokes on his program -- and had three sons from his first marriage. Off camera he was notoriously shy, and after he retired in 1992 he studiously avoided the limelight, although according to the New York Times he did occasionally send jokes to David Letterman to use on the air.

     Carson, a long-time smoker, suffered a heart attack in 1999, and in 2002 was diagnosed with emphysema. By the time he died, in January 2005, he had been awarded virtually every honor in American comedy. And in 2012 he was the subject of a PBS documentary, King of Late Night, as part of the American Masters series, narrated by Kevin Spacey.

     Here's a funny bit Carson did in 1968 with Jack Webb, who'd played the detective from the old TV series Dragnet.