Archives for March 2019

Not talking golf or sex. It’s almost too easy to miss the forest for the trees, but baby boomers are now part of 4 distinct generations in the workplace. If you are still working, it’s most likely alongside GenXers (1965-1980), GenYers (Millennials-1980-1996) and GenZers (1996-present).

This is a rare circumstance made stranger by the fact that it mixes digital immigrants (that would be us boomers) with digital natives  (that would be millennials and GenZers who have been shaped by technology since birth).

The mixture of work traits is fascinating. Boomers can act as mentors which is something that millennials tend to want (praise and reassurance were hallmarks of helicopter parenting). On the downside, boomers may find it hard to keep up with the technology and there’s those pesky health-wellness issues. Younger workers tend to have greater respect for hierarchy and authority thanks to social media peer pressure (how many Facebook friends one has or how many likes your Instagram post gets has left an indelible impression on them). On the downside however, they can be prone to ghosting (i.e. just disappearing from the workplace rather than giving notice), which is something absolutely foreign to mature workers.

Younger workers exhibit more impatience and shorter attention spans. Technology has inured them to receive instant gratification and the workplace often cannot respond well to that.

For employers, the trick is to meld the 4 generations and tap into each’s strengths and skills. It sounds like it could be a 4-ring circus, but for those employers that get it right, they could have an incredibly productive multi-generational workforce that can best the competition.

You could worry about this and lose sleep over it, but the bigger concern is the wave of robots that’s going to replace old and young alike. By 2030, some 800 million workers worldwide are projected to have been replaced by artificial intelligence and robots. In other words, take the Alfred E. Neuman approach. What me worry?

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

“Strawberry — Naturally Flavored with Other Natural Flavors.” (Lifted from a cereal box.1) It’s hard to find a better bit of obfuscation out there, meaning Legal went above and beyond in making Marketing toe the line of provable claims.

Just what does “Naturally Flavored with Other Natural Flavors” actually mean? Does it mean natural strawberry flavor, along with other natural flavors? Does it mean the cereal is naturally flavored with other natural flavors (just not necessarily strawberry)? And why not make it more direct with “naturally flavored with natural flavors”, or even “naturally flavored”?2 Heck, a comma would end the confusion.

The ingredient list revealed not one mention of strawberry, unless it was hiding among the scientific poly-syllabic chemical names at the bottom of the listed contents. Natural flavor shows up- as just that- without further explanation.

Taste-testing revealed that not only are there no dehydrated chunks of strawberry present, the flavor is anything but strawberry-like. Maybe there was an astringent element, but that could have been the age of the soy milk3 used to accompany it.

So what might the flavor actually be? I suppose one could add a tablespoon of dirt and call it a natural flavor, but not for lubricants along the production line. Perhaps they hang a pint of strawberries over the bagging machine and hope occasional molecules of strawberry essence drift to the cereal below. It is truly a mystery. But this doesn’t have to be a single rant; there are three other such “flavors” to try.

1. We live in litigious times so I‘m hesitant to expose the maker or the cereal in question.
2. Honestly, the less ambiguous you make it, the more open you leave yourself to an irate retiree with too much unplanned time on his hands trying to generate interest in a class action.
3. Oops, I may have stumbled into another food borne controversy. If there is no actual milk in soy milk, can it still be called soy milk? See also: almond milk.

Garth Fromme bears no actual malice toward the Quaker Oats Company, but he does get miffed at chicanery no matter its source. He is in his fourth life, still struggling to deal with this unnatural state called “retirement.” www.gnfimages.com

“So, what would you like? Candy, liquid, smoke? What variety? What strength?”

I never thought about any of this in the 60s. I simply took what was handed to me, rolled it in special papers, licked the seam, and lit a match. But now marijuana is legal. At least in Colorado, where my husband and I stopped on a road trip between Utah and Nebraska.

Ah, Colorado! Signing in at the motel, the tourist brochures in the foyer were full of pamphlets for where to buy your grass. It wasn’t something we had planned on, but there were so many pamphlets! So we turned to the clerk, and jokingly asked, “Where is the nearest place to buy marijuana?”

She looked at us and sighed. More marijuana tourists. Another elderly couple out for the adventure of their lifetime. Sure. “When you leave the parking lot, turn right. Drive 100 yards, and look to the left. You’ll see many cars in front of ‘The Emerald Isle.’ Pull in there.”

It sounded too easy, and so mundane. Like telling us where we could get a Coke, or a loaf of bread.

We unpacked and headed for The Emerald Isle. The parking lot must have had 50 cars in it. Certainly not a hole in the wall—a hidden gem, a secret stash for the cognoscenti! It was no speakeasy. It was more like a convenience store.

Around the perimeter were glass sales cases, like in a jewelry store. Circulating between them were at least a dozen salespeople, like in an Apple Store, in matching t-shirts with iPads in hand. We were approached by a handsome young man who consulted with us as if we were connoisseurs and knew what we were doing.

“I haven’t bought grass in 40 years,” I admitted. “I was usually just given it!”

“Things have changed,” he said encouragingly.

For $5 each, we got two pieces of candy that looked like caramels, and we were instructed to eat them after dinner tonight in our hotel room. Unfortunately, that evening my husband didn’t feel well, so we decided to risk taking two little caramels with us out of Colorado. But when we packed up the next day, we forgot all about it. We didn’t remember our candies until the next evening in Nebraska. And we couldn’t find them. Where had we put them? Had we left them in the hotel room in Colorado? Did the housekeeping crew get a bonus tip?

So much for our walk on the wild side.

Bonnie Collins lives in Ocean View, New Jersey where it doesn’t get all that wild.

 

Here’s the latest from the Not-So-Good-News Department: baby boomers are in for a death boom. Not surprising, but still. There was quite the boom when we came into this world so it stands to reason there’s going to be quite a boom in our demisals (did I just make up that word?).

We’ve gotten used to demographers and media people talking about 10,000 new retirees per day as boomers hit their late 60s and 70s. How are we going to feel when they start counting or estimating how many baby boomers can expect to die in a year, a month or a day?

Boomers are living longer thanks to better health habits and exercise (along with gritty determination) but all the same, we can’t opt out when the call comes. On the bright side (if there is one), there will be lots of expanded opportunities for hospices, funeral planners and grief counselors.

I don’t know why this news about a death boom should surprise any of us boomers, as our numbers have been thinning for a while now. Not a week goes by without us hearing about a classmate, colleague or neighbor who has crossed the great divide. Just in passing (ha…death sarcasm) there is a surprisingly large catalog of euphemisms for dying. Passed, slipped away, gave up the ghost, kicked the bucket, called to a better place, called home, permanent vacation, cashed in your chips, pushing up daisies, met the grim reaper, joined the choir, packed it in, bought the farm or just plain departed. Perhaps the most annoying one is “lost,” as in she lost her husband. He’s not lost because we know where he is, but we’re just skittish about saying he’s dead.

Well now, this has been an uplifting discussion of the impending death boom, and for that I’m truly sorry. But the good news is that you are reading this, so you have not yet “succumbed.” Good on you.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

I’m a little embarrassed to say it, I’m a Dodgers fan. I grew up in NYC and loved my Yankees as a kid. I hated the Dodgers so much in those days that, as a 9 year old, I booed a blind retired Dodger as he took a bow with his white cane at an old timer’s game. Equal opportunity indeed. When I transplanted to Los Angeles in 1965, I was hooked by everything West Coast and that included the Dodgers, much to my own surprise.

But one of my favorite moments as a Dodger fan came during a heartbreaking loss to the Philadelphia Phillies. Back in the 1990’s, the Dodgers were beating up the Phillies by a score of 8-0 in the second inning. Vin Scully was announcing the game and shining his special light on it. At this point, I need to admit that some of the details of the game I’m about to describe may not be entirely accurate because, at the time, I didn’t recognize their importance. Essentially, it goes like this: Jim Fregosi was managing the Phillies that day and, despite the lop-sided score, he remained steady and applied his strategies with care and focus. It was, after all, only the second inning. His boys began chipping away at the Dodger’s lead and, by the fourth inning, it was 8-3. That’s still a pretty big mountain to climb in major league baseball but Fregosi remained so meticulous as he strategized that Scully said, “Fregosi’s managing this as though he’s got a chance to win it.” The Phillies kept coming on, scoring a run here and a run there and by the eighth inning it was 8-7. Sure enough, they tied us in the ninth and won it in the eleventh.

Now Vin Scully wasn’t perfect. In fact, he made the same grammatical error night after night when he’d confuse “less” with “fewer” but his greatness was displayed by the indescribable warmth of his voice, his humility, his grace of character, his sense of perspective, his love for and knowledge of the game. Scully could point out the undeniable parallels when life imitates the action of the field. And the guy could read lips.

We all know what it’s like to start a day badly and how tempting it is to say, “well this day is already in the dumpster.” And on days when we feel like that, we can remember Scully’s words when Fregosi’s Phillies were down 8-3 in the third inning: “he’s managing like he’s got a chance to win this.” And that’s just one more reason Vin Scully is in the Hall of Fame.

Rick Smith is a musician and harp player (that’s a harmonica folks) from Helendale, California.

When Donald Trump said he was serious about getting his face carved into Mt. Rushmore, I figured we’d better see that famous monument while it was still how we imagined it. So my wife and I hit the road from Madison, Wisconsin, for the 800-mile drive to Keystone, South Dakota, to the gleaming granite faces of four past presidents—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

We split the distance in half, spending Friday night in Sioux Falls and continuing on in the morning. The forecast was perfect— glorious sunshine, and temperatures to reach into the 50s.

Neglecting to consider the Mountain Time Zone, we reached Rapid City an hour earlier than expected. It was two p.m., and Mt. Rushmore, just 30 minutes away, closed at five. The temperature was now 55, the sky postcard blue, so we dropped our bags at our motel and headed south on Route 16—Mt. Rushmore Road—twisting upward through the pine forests and granite cliffs of the Black Hills. Keystone (pop. 370), the official home of Mt. Rushmore, was disappointing, a kitschy cowboy town, but we soon left it behind.

Next came our first tantalizing glimpse of Washington’s head above the pines. Then we pulled into the grounds. The parking facility, with a smattering of cars from dozens of states and Canada, had been cleared of overnight snow. That snow, in turn, had closed the Presidential Trail that leads from the Grand View Terrace to the granite escarpment beneath the carved faces. But it didn’t matter—the presidents were in full view along the Avenue of Flags between the parking area and the monument, and with the proud emblems of each state snapping in the breeze, we walked the avenue among a mélange of accents and languages.

The overnight snow had also closed the Greek-style amphitheater beneath the terrace, but again, it didn’t matter—Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln now loomed above us in startling 3-D.

While my wife wandered off to take photographs, I lifted my binoculars and made an amusing discovery. A small pine had rooted itself in the granite detritus below the chin of Roosevelt. According to Rushmore’s information director, there’s no more space for additional carving on the monument, so Donald Trump’s face will never appear there. But I think that, one day, that rogue pine will tickle Teddy’s nose.

Claude Clayton Smith is the author of eight books, plus a variety of short fiction, poetry, essays, and plays, and blogger from Madison, Wisconsin.

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