Archives for October 2022

Saw a disturbing headline today. “What is the future for baby boomers?”

I think/hope they were referring to lofty subjects such as eldercare, co-op housing, workplace transitions, etc. Otherwise, you would have to infer they were talking about the fact that we are not just retiring in great numbers, but also dying in great numbers.

Sorry about going a little dark here, but if you query Google for what year most baby boomers will die, you get the following: “Projected deaths rise steadily as the baby boomers age and eventually die, then plateau around 2045. By 2060, the tail end of the baby boom will be 95 or older.”

If the first thing you do upon seeing that statement is subtract 2022 from 2045, you are not alone. Let’s see…that’s 23 years from now. Twenty-three more years to live, breathe, travel, enjoy good food and fine wine, maybe visit places you’ve always wanted to see, finish reading the books you started but never completed, enjoy the companionship of one special friend (along with the other great friends and family in your life), play pickleball if still able, and the list could go on and on. I’ll let you make your own list.

But the picture is not all rosy. Life expectancies for boomers are improving all the time, but about 2.6 million boomers die each year. By 2050, that number will be 4 million each year. Whoosh! That’s the sound of positive thoughts now hurriedly escaping from your brain.

The point however, if there is one, is if we can just hang on in reasonably good health, there’s still a lot of time to enjoy life. The good health aspect is a major caveat. If you’re not taking good care of yourself, aren’t you just cheating yourself out of that 23-year package? That’s just a little nudge to get you out there walking and exercising. And flossing! Don’t forget flossing. No one really wants to travel to exotic places without their own teeth.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. You can also visit his author page here. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon.

The foothills of the Rocky Mountains west of Denver, are often bathed in sunlight and blue skies punctuated with cumulus clouds rolling through on a summer’s day. As 9 year old mountain kids, my best friend Pamela and I would often “pasture” our horses on open land during the summer. Our mountain family homes boasted only a three acre plot of land on which we each kept a horse. Any good horse owner knows that a horse requires at least 10 acres of grazing land to support its appetite. So, we had to supplement our horses’ diet by taking them to graze on available grassland nearby.

One such place was an area at Pence Park, a narrow meadow running along side the paved road to the little town of Kittredge below. We would often ride our horses bareback to this open area about two miles from our homes, take off the horse’s bridles and leave their “underwear” halters on their heads. We’d turn them loose and Shorty and Rombo would immediately put their hungry heads down and start munching the long grass, having no other interest but to stay right there and graze.

Meanwhile, we two girls would have to occupy ourselves while the horses chomped grass, moving one step at a time to find new bites. After talking and giggling as young girls do, we’d come up with things to do. Sometimes, we would bring a finishing brush with us and brush the horses until they were sleek and shiny. We’d play games, tie “grass knots,” tell stories, and sometimes take off our boots and feel the grass in our toes. These “pasturing” times would last about an hour or so and then we would bridle up and ride home, our horses satisfied with full bellies.

One beautiful summer day, while “pasturing” the horses, we noticed that the shadows cast by the huge white, fast-moving clouds would overtake us and we could feel the temperature suddenly drop and the world turned a little darker in the shade. After the cloud passed over and the sun’s rays could once again warm the tops of our heads and arms, the temperature would rise, we were warm and the color of our clothes brightened once again. We decided to see if we could chase the sunlight and hopefully outrun the cloud’s shadow which we did if only for a few moments. The line between the sunlit earth and the cloud’s shadow was a marked one and we’d run our skinny legs as fast as we could to stay in the sunlit area. The cloud’s shadow would always overtake us, however, and we’d flop down on the grass in defeat and catch our breath.

I’m reminded of the lyrics from an old song: “Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end, we’d sing and dance for ever and a day. We’d lead the life we’d chose, we’d fight and never lose. Those were the days, oh yes, those were the days.”

To live such a carefree and unburdened existence was the epitome of childhood joy and happiness. Two young girls chasing the sunlight while their beloved horses lifted their heads from their chomping and chewing and craned their necks to watch us in our follies. Yes, those were indeed the days.

Kathy Kain lives in Grand Junction, Colorado.

‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ blaring from the Good Humor truck trolling our neighborhood got me salivating for a popsicle. Another sound that got me running as a youngster was the single note, BLAT, of the junk man’s horn and his dreary old horse dragging a spoke-wheeled wagon through our alley. Recycling made easy. We didn’t have to schlep dead appliances and paint cans to the community recycling center on a certain day for no reward beyond the glow of environmental good stewardship. Nor did we have to pay for recycling service with a yellow-lidded bin at the curb once a week. Just the opposite, the wizened collector at our garage door gave us money for old rags, newspapers, bottles and anything else that might be repurposed. We kids took care of two-cent pop bottle deposits at the corner store on our own initiative. But other ‘stuff’ might earn a few pennies dredged from the dusty pocket of the itinerate salvage man.

Later in life, I experienced the call of the wild—plunged into lakes, hiked up mountains, peered down canyons. But as a kid in the bowels of Eastside Detroit there was nothing like the draw of alleys for shortcuts, hide-and-seek, and the search for abandoned treasures. There was a limit, however, a certain scorn, for avid scavengers who took too much pleasure in rescued ‘gems.’ We called them alley pickers. I mean, there is a limit!

Years of exposure to museums, digs reported in National Geographic, documentaries with letters, photos and relics from the past makes me wonder if there is a connection between a kid bringing a rusty roller skate home and an archeologist bringing a fossil to his lab. Is there shared social/historical value in a found artifact for both of them? Or is it simply hoarding—knee-jerk braking and turning at the glimpse of a Yard Sale sign? A way of finding a use for useful things? Addiction to bargains? Maybe an overdeveloped survival gene to squirrel and stash, to stock my cave.

Whatever…I still can’t stroll past a Goodwill outlet or the local Cancer Center resale and not feel a tug to save something ‘still good’ from the land fill? Or maybe I harbor a secret itch, deep in my DNA, to be digging for the missing link in the Olduvai Gorge. Ha!

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

The good news is that crime is going down. No, really. It’s been going down for the last 20 years. The arrest rate has gone down a third in that time.

As you would expect, most crimes are committed by younger, more agile folks. People who can jump over fences after a burglary, or outrun police after robbing someone at an ATM. But here’s the kicker. Crime among young people is decreasing at the same time that baby boomer crime is INCREASING. For adults aged 55 and older, there has been a twenty per cent increase. One way to read that statistic is that these boomers engaged in criminal activity when they were younger, and they are still at it. What the hell? Once a crook, always a crook, as someone close to me pointed out. She also mentioned a former President.

Other than fomenting insurrection, what sort of crimes are boomers committing? Like many other age groups, the crimes fall into the 4 major categories: murder/non-negligent manslaughter, robbery, rape, and aggravated assault.

If this is starting to worry you as much as it does me, we’re not alone. Think about the Gen Z kid who’s worried that Grandpa is cooking up a jewel heist or murdering his former business partner who ratted him out to the Feds for money laundering.

We are supposed to be retiring, moving to the Sunbelt and playing shuffleboard, not murdering anyone. What happened to the Summer of Love? That was 1967 in San Francisco. Timothy Leary told the hippie crowd to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” And many did just that. Unfortunately, many others followed the path of crime and now it’s clear that they are still on that path. Politicians alone must be responsible for a large chunk of boomer crime. Insider trading, misuse of government funds, misuse of campaign funds, bribery, perjury, tax evasion – the possibilities are endless.

If you are reading this and have committed a crime lately, my plea to you is “knock it off.” You’re making boomers look bad and we’ve done a fine job doing that without you adding to our bad reputation.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. You can also visit his author page here. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon.

You can’t work at a profession all your life and not carry over some telling behavioral traits into retirement. I like to observe elder folk, like me, and try to guess their earlier career — a version of the old TV show: ‘What’s my line?’ but instead ‘What was my line?’

For example: I was in a writing group that included two retired grade schoolteachers. We were in the middle of our bi-weekly read-throughs in a library meeting room when two eight-year-old boys stuck their heads in the door. There was a pause on all sides while we stared at each other.

A kind of stand-off at the OK Corral. One of the boys drew first.

“We just want a peek.”

They both took a step into the room. As if on a silent count of, one, two, both teachers fired back, “You’ve had your peek. Now leave.” A remnant from years in the classroom?

A retired sheriff was recounting a campus ruckus he had helped calm down. Talking in a normal voice, he told of the crowd getting more and more rowdy even in the face of his auxiliary mounted posse. To demonstrate his commanding presence under stress, he then raised his chin, took a deep breath, filling his diaphragm like a national anthem singer, looked over our heads and blew us all back a step or two with his stentorian, “Stand down. Disperse. Now.” Crowd control 101 learned at the academy.

Or my mother who was describing her recipe for spaghetti and meatball sauce to a friend. Hers was not a written recipe, composed in precise measured words of ½ teaspoons and ¼ cups. No. She described with gestures: hands and fingers. A pinch of this. A shake of oregano. Lightly rolling and browning meatballs illustrated like a conductor coaxing a soft interlude in a stormy symphony. Ingredients were only part of the process.

Or my friend, sitting at our snack bar chatting. He idly reached for the silverware caddy and without thinking about it began to sort them by spoons and forks and butter knives. I was tempted to tell him to leave them in my original jumbled mess—I mean who cares—until I remembered that he was an auditor and spent his work-life sorting.

Sometimes you don’t have to ask a person what they ‘used to do.’ You can just watch.

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/