BoomSpeak

  • ESSAY
  • FICTION
  • TRAVEL
  • ARTS
  • About Us

Archives for November 2019

See Me

November 21, 2019 By admin

You might as well yell SEE ME! a little louder, because the fact is that the advertising world ignores us. We should be an easy bullseye for marketers but in reality, not so much. A third of the U.S. population is over 50, but when it comes to media images (talking TV and print) we only garner 15 percent according to research done by AARP. It was based on a random sample of more than 1,000 images published or posted by popular brands and organizations.

Face it. We’re caricatured in marking images as looking old and out of it and heading fast for the dustbin. Despite the fact that more than 53 million people over 50 are still working as one third of the U.S. labor force, only 13 percent of the images showed these older individuals at work. Instead, they were often shown at home or with a health care provider. Younger workers, on the other hand, were shown with their also young co-workers, and often with technology products. Only 5 percent of the images showed older workers using technology, despite the fact that 69 percent of people between 55 and 73 own a smartphone. You can bet those same people own computers and are online much of the time.

A big part of the problem is that most workers in the advertising and marketing industries are young themselves. Their natural inclination is to use images of people who look like them. Ageism is the norm in the advertising world so it’s no surprise that boomers are either invisible or shown in ways that distort who we are and the contribution we are still making to the economy. Even worse, we are often portrayed as clueless and out of touch, just foils for younger people to dismiss as “practically dead.”

The good news is that AARP did something about this trend. They teamed up with Getty Stock images to introduce a collection of 1,400 images showing older people doing what we do…running businesses, participating in sports or active pursuits and interacting with younger generations in ways that are far from insulting.

So the problem is not solved but things are looking up. Searches for “seniors” on Getty have increased 151 percent from a year ago. The most popular image now is one of women in t-shirts doing yoga. A decade ago, the best-selling photo was an older couple in sweaters on the beach.

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.

Filed Under: ESSAY

I WIN!

November 21, 2019 By admin

It seems to me there’s a bias for work, as though work is inherently better than leisure, and unless we figure out some sort of livelihood after we retire, we’re headed toward doom and demise. The headlines are all about having no time to retire or reinventing oneself for your next act. I’ve used some of those words in the past. But now I think it’s more complicated than that and have been thinking about different type of people and their relationship to work as they age.

True Believers – They love their jobs and can’t wait to tell you about it.

Worker Bees – People who simply want to work, even at what many of us would call crappy jobs, but they are still jobs that matter, and these dedicated souls are proud to do them without much fanfare.

The Walking Wounded – Maybe they like their jobs OK, but maybe they don’t. Either way, they aren’t particularly happy or unhappy, but they can’t quite let go. What else is there? They will be there to turn off the lights.

Endurance Athletes – Those who keep working partially because their careers are gratifying but partly because they don’t have the financial resources to survive without a job. They do what they have to do.

Happy Retirees – We left the workforce hopefully on our terms and hopefully with enough money to make it to the end. Some of us will find other work because we want to or because we need supplemental income, but some of us are done with paying gigs.

While these archetypes are just simple generalizations, and I don’t claim to have captured everyone’s relationship to work, there’s a broad spectrum of people getting older and thinking about retirement. We all have different resources, different expectations and different personal demands. There’s no magic bullet.

And that is my long way of saying how much it annoys me when people proselytize about working or staying busy or whatever it is they think we need to do with our time.

Busy is not the gold standard of retirement happiness. As an official ambassador for the Happy Retirees, I enjoy a peaceful pace of life that engages my brain and body without a boatload of stress.

I win! No reinvention required.

Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.

 

Filed Under: ESSAY

Rest Stop

November 21, 2019 By admin

My wife, Penney, and I were returning from an outing to the Antler’s Bar and Grill on a bitter winter night. But, wouldn’t you know it, on the road home my car stuttered, yammered and then stalled next to a snowbank.

Now what? I thought. Penney simply stared straight ahead as if waiting for me to tear open the hood and fiddle and poke till the only thing I got going was a bad case of the chilblains. And I just knew that when I got back in the car she would calmly say, “Why don’t we just let it rest.” But not this time. I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction.

She always says that. When the toaster doesn’t toast. ‘Let it rest.’ When the garbage disposal seizes up—‘let it rest.’ Penney doesn’t know from thermal relays and reset buttons. But every time I start to tell her about those things she smiles like a mountain-top guru with the answer to life: ‘let it rest.’ And, of course, she’s right part of the time but she doesn’t know why. And could care less.

Maybe she gets her attitude from gardening. There’s a rhythm to it all: the time for planning and the time for planting; the time for growing and the time for harvesting. Then she cans the vegetables and fruit, lines them on a shelf where, of course, they wait. Or maybe she gets her outlook from having babies. You can’t rush babies. It’s a long ride so you might as well relax. She has taken a lot of trips.

So, maybe after all these years of marriage, I can admit that she is right. This night, in this snowdrift, I’m going to let it rest.

Penney looked over at me. “Well, aren’t you going to do something?” she asked. “You know, like look under the hood, jump the carburetor or goose the battery or whatever it is that you do?”

“No,” I replied in a level voice. “I thought I would just let it rest for a while.”

“Are you nuts?” she screamed. “We could freeze to death out here.”

Then I watched her in the dimming lights of our fading battery as she flagged down a trucker and left me to rest a while.

A former corporate trainer and writing instructor, Joe Novara and his wife live in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, anthologies and articles. Check them out here.

Filed Under: ESSAY

OK BOOMER

November 7, 2019 By admin

Could there be a more patronizing way to dismiss us? I’m talking about the OK BOOMER  meme/viral sensation that seems to be everywhere in the last few weeks. Generation Z’s response to baby boomers who don’t “get” them is OK BOOMER. They are fed up with us and anything that appears to be condescending about them or the issues that matter to them.

It’s become so prevalent that the meme has morphed into merch. One of the big sellers is a hooded sweatshirt that says “OK BOOMER – Have a terrible day.”

Where is the anger coming from? Ask a Gen Zer and they will tell you it’s about inequality, political polarization and climate change ignorance, all of which foment into anti-boomer sentiment. They are fed up and angry. Just because they have tattoos and green hair does not mean they are irrelevant, and that’s how they believe boomers make them feel.

There’s always been pushback by younger generations. Remember when boomers were the anti-war, give peace a chance generation that could not understand how irrelevant their parents were. It’s kind of like that, only with more anger and frustration.

Some teens honestly believe that boomers are actively hurting them. When boomers and those in power make choices that adversely affect Gen Z, it becomes personal. Choices such as ignoring climate change or the rising college and health care expenses come across as active dissing to teens and young adults.

To be fair, Gen Zers say they are not just angry with boomers, but they are frustrated with any older adults that are putting them or their attitudes down. If you don’t like change or understand new technology, you are a target for their hostility. So ultimately, boomer is just a state of mind.

Describing it as the digital equivalent of an eye roll, teens describe “ok boomer” as the ideal response to the way they are treated. It’s their cool way of insulting us for the way we treat them and the issues they care about.

For a generation that’s often put down as snowflakes, “ok boomer” is a passive-aggressive way to let us know they are tired of being ignored and harmed by our indifference.

So a word to the wise. Stop criticizing and marginalizing your favorite Gen Zers. Ok, boomers?

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.

Filed Under: ESSAY

Shut Up and Write

November 7, 2019 By admin

During the workshop Natalie had also suggested that writing with other people is a way of staying accountable when you just don’t feel like doing the work. Karli greeted me at the lunch break and stated without a preface, “We should start a Writers Group.” I thought, “Well, sure,” even though I had no idea where such a suggestion would lead. It was her blue eyes and the self-confidence in her proposal that convinced me to show up on Wednesday mornings at El Café on Cerrillos. The place is nothing fancy, rarely crowded, just right for what we do.

Natalie’s instruction to “continue under all circumstances” keeps us on task at our meetings, and during that first year I managed to develop a consistent practice by filling the pages of a spiral notebook every month. I always believed in learning by doing. Things got a little more complicated after a particular writing session on Valentine’s Day when I stayed behind to work on a challenging paragraph. With my head down and doing my best to keep the hand moving across the page, I came to a realization that I was no longer alone at the table. Karli was standing across from me holding her laptop.

“Oh, hi. I’m just finishing a thought. What’s up?” I asked, as if I didn’t suspect a thing.

She leaned toward me and whispered, “Can we talk? Maybe not here. I could meet you later if you want to keep writing.”

“No, no, I’m about done. Tell you what- let me pay for the coffee and we could take a drive up to the ski basin. Is that okay with you?”

Her smile said yes, and she added, “Let me drop off my car at the house if you don’t mind. Meet me there in twenty minutes?”

My heart was racing when I pulled into the driveway. Karli wasn’t outside, but the front door opened, she waved to me, and I could see through the screen that she was wearing some kind of an above-the-knee pink robe thing, and that smile. I suspected that there might have been a change of plans. Without needing an explanation, I locked the car and headed for the porch wishing that I had brought a dozen roses.

Harpeth Rivers is a writer, musician and happy homeowner still living and working in New Mexico. Check out his latest book, Proof, an illustrated fable, on Amazon.

Filed Under: FICTION

The Eternal Now

November 7, 2019 By admin

I gave over control, to Wendy the Thompson’s Tour guide for their trip into the Drakenburg mountains out of Durban South Africa. As we tooled up and around lush green mountains dotted with cattle and tourist lodges, I looked up San Cave Paintings on my iPad. One of the paintings portrayed stick-figure Bushmen-hunters attacking a cow-sized antelope—an Eland. It reminded me of football—the Xs and Os of primitive man’s playbook for winning the big game.

My wife, snuggled into the tea shop, I trailed Wendy scampering over tangled tree roots and across bridges before hop-scotching over rock-filled rills along the increasingly primitive path. I pushed myself, breathing faster and harder until we finally crested a rise in front of the cave to find a locked gate and no guide.

“Wasted effort,” I rasped.

We moved more slowly and carefully on the way down, shaking legs making it difficult to negotiate precarious footholds in the gloom of the sheltered trail. When Wendy stopped for a slug of water, I took the lead and scooted past a huge boulder into the sudden glare of a sun-strobed meadow and the shock of a wild animal watching me.

I stopped dead. Thirty yards ahead a female Eland, belly-deep in grasses, stopped grazing to return my stare. This was what the cave painters would have hunted to sustain their lives. If I were a Bushman, this is when I would have nocked my poison arrow and let fly. And if I remembered the documentary I once saw, that’s when the Bushman would have tracked the beast until it died and then would have apologized for killing it and would have expressed his gratitude for the sustenance it gave to his family. Beautiful animal. Such exquisite lines. So eminently paintable on a cave wall.

Back at the café, I locked eyes with my wife trying to recreate my experience for her. “I was in that animal.” Pleading for understanding I went on. “She was just there…in the now. And, don’t you see, that’s what eternity would be…now…always. The San saw it. They tried to grab it with paint and pictures. But I got the original.”

“Wendy, get us back to our hotel,” my wife demanded. “We got to get this guy out of the sun.”

Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara and his wife live in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/

 

Filed Under: TRAVEL

Recent Posts

  • Cereal Killers
  • TGIF Now IFIF
  • Love Is…
  • Cash Money
  • Google as Side Show

Archives

  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016

Older Archives

ESSAYS
FICTION
ARTS
TRAVEL
Pre-2014

Keep up with BoomSpeak!

Sign up for BoomSpeak Email blasts!

Select list(s) to subscribe to


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact
boom_blog-icon        facebkicon_boomspk        dc06_favicon

Copyright ©2016 · DesignConcept