Archives for August 2025

If you do any sort of email blasts and/or marketing, you are most likely getting inundated with entreaties to use A.I. to create your message. Really. Really?? How does that work? Does A.I. know what I want to say? Will A.I. read my mind? Can A.I. write an essay or fiction that somehow represents what is in my brain?

Here’s some samples of what A.I. promises:

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I’m tempted to take them up on it just to see what an A.I. robot would come up with, but the downside is it could be brilliant, albeit way off topic. So just for the hell of it, I asked ChatGPT to give me a blog post about the trials of being a baby boomer. Result? Decent. It combed the internet and discussed how we’ve gone from stability to uncertainty and struggle to keep up with relentless technology as well as ageism in the workplace.

So yes, by absorbing anything ever written about baby boomers, it produced a darn good summary of the challenges we face. By the way, it did it in about 20 seconds which was equally impressive.

But – a huge caveat here – it wasn’t what I was thinking. It wasn’t my viewpoint. It wasn’t the work of my brain. It was a mechanized harvest of what thousands of people on the internet and elsewhere had written on the topic. And don’t forget, some of us consider much of this harvesting to be theft. If you create any type of art, you must already be aware that A.I. may steal it.

If that wasn’t sad enough for me, I’m writing this on the same day that the New York Times ran an op-ed about the suicidal young woman who used a ChatGPT A.I. therapist called Harry. It did not end well.

A.I. most likely has a brilliant future ahead, but it will be of no use to me when it comes to producing BoomSpeak, writing original content, or featuring other baby boomer authors. We may have to add a line to our submission requirements stating that A.I. produced work cannot and will not be accepted.

As Walter Cronkite used to say, “And that’s the way it is.”

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.

Happy families are all alike. – Leo Tolstoy

The framed cross-stitch on Granny’s kitchen wall finally caught my eye after I learned to read. Like her pancakes with yogurt, her peach-chicken tacos and her pork chops with kale, the motto filled me with comfort. We were a happy family, weren’t we? Granny, Aunt Annie and me. I envisioned other kitchens like ours, the meals served with a warm, laconic “There you go, precious,” and my day’s chores listed for my agreement.

When I got to be ten, though, I’d been in other kitchens, some crusted with baked-on crud, others fancier but with anger in the air and stinky beer cans in the wastebaskets. Most had more than one kid – and either a mom or a mother and dad. I asked Granny, were other families unhappy because they were not like us? She smiled. “What the man said, sweetheart,” she said, patting my head.

In high school I discovered who Tolstoy was, a Russian author who portrayed clashing armies and mixed-up lovers in brick-sized novels. I also learned that in a trick called irony, writers sometimes put words together meaning the opposite of what they said. Or just getting you to think. We obviously didn’t have a happy family, with my Mom in prison for stealing and Uncle Bill abandoning all of us. We would have been giddy with togetherness had those two come back, right? “Life is complicated, dear,” Granny replied, giving me a side-eye.

Years later, when Granny went into hospice and I visited her empty kitchen, shadowy with spiderwebs, I examined the now-grayed lavender, pink and yellow needlepoint, so precise and meticulous. Being tall enough now to reach it, I unhooked it from the wall and took it to Granny’s bedside with a litany of grown-up questions. She silenced them when her eyes fluttered open like paper lifted by a breeze. “Hello, love,” she whispered. That was all she could manage.

Marcia Yudkin publishes the weekly substack, Introvert Upthink. (https://www.introvertupthink.com).

Have you heard about Boomer panic? Really. It’s apparently a thing. Someone coined the phrase when a Lowes hardware cashier was tagged on TikTok for getting all screechy and panicked when faced with dowels that did not have price tags.

That’s how these memes start. A baby boomer is called out for “boomer panic” which in turn becomes a condition the entire internet can jump on and voice their concurring opinion. Then the amateur psychoanalysis begins.

Here’s a direct quote from a commenter: “Boomers grew up when they had to bottle up their feelings to show their resilience. This can lead to growing anger, frustration with situations and people, chronic stress, and anxiety—all conditions that can lead to panicky, unhinged behavior.”

Another commenter opined “From conversations with my mother, they weren’t allowed to make mistakes and were harshly punished if they did.”

Holy cow! We really had it bad and we’re so effed up that we’re still paying for it today. Fear not, however, because experts (using that term loosely) advise younger generations to sympathize with boomers who are unable to regulate their emotions. Phew! I thought we were done for but apparently it’s all the fault of our parents. They never taught us how to regulate our emotions.

The irony here is that if you spend any time watching Instagram or Facebook videos posted by GenXers, Millennials or GenZers, it’s very clear that many of them (not going to generalize here) are totally clueless about how to regulate their emotions and should not be held up as proof that they had better (i.e. less effed up parenting) emotional balance.

I would put my clueless parents up against any of today’s clueless parents and we’ll see who is more emotionally well-balanced. Wait a second. It’s too late! Now I really am panicking! The amateur psychologists may be right.

Nah. This boomer panic thing isn’t really a thing. It’s just a manifestation of younger gens watching entirely too many TikTok videos and coming up with dumb conclusions. Maybe they would be better off reading the classics and analyzing why Macbeth’s mother found it so easy to manipulate him. Bet you he would be a riot buying dowels at Lowes.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.

I’m coming up on my eight-year retirement anniversary. Knowing what I know now, would I do anything different?

Hard to say. What I know now isn’t any better than what I knew then. I just have more time to ruminate on it. Occasionally I wonder if I have it in me to work again. Part of me says yes. I’m certainly capable, and I wouldn’t mind putting on real clothes, but I don’t see how I could sustain my lifestyle.

Unless I have a tee time, it takes me a couple of hours to get going in the morning. I revel in the slow start. Breakfast, coffee, news, constitutionals, puzzles. Of course, it takes time to get my blood pressure back to normal after reading the paper, so there’s that.

Although I was minimally fit during my working years, I’m in way better shape now. But it’s a commitment, and I find it easier to stick with the program when I don’t have to make decisions that interfere with happy hour.

I try to get all my exercise in before lunch because … well, lunch.

Dinner is just one more meal away. It creeps up fast, and you’ve got to be ready. I like to be involved in that whole business. I suppose my husband, Dale, could go back to being the primary for meal planning, but the older he gets, the more he eats like a 10-year-old boy. The man needs supervision.

It’s true I’ve gotten a little older in eight years. Haven’t we all? It now takes a village to maintain my aesthetic standards. Facials, massages, pedicures, haircuts. While I would have benefitted from all that when I was working … looking sharp for all those high-level personal interactions … there was no time for such indulgences. In my career, they didn’t hand out prizes for most chilled.

Now I have the time, except these days I’m talking to the cat. And seriously, he’s not interested in anything I have to say. Unless I’m coated in kibble, I don’t think he cares what I look like. It’s just me and the mirror. My steady date.

Finally, there’s the problem of my inside voice. As it is with so many retirees, what used to be my inside voice is now my outside voice, and it does not always reveal my best side. However, I think it’s like toothpaste. No going back.

All in all, I don’t see how it would be possible to go back to work. Which means I will continue to focus on the simple pleasures of retirement, which is my favorite job so far.

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

When my daughter was growing up in the 1990s there was a game called, “WouldYou Rather?” wherein the players had to explain which of two (often gross or extreme) possibilities they would choose if forced to do so. I remember listening to my daughter and her friends giggle and smirk at each other’s choices. And I observed that their choices revealed the values, biases, and expectations of those young people. They were laying it all out on the table, metaphorically speaking.

Now, as an older adult with limited time and energy, that game comes to mind as I think about how to integrate people into my life, or not. To me, the German notion of Weltanschauung, meaning your conception of the universe and human life, is reflected in the numerous things people say, do and believe. These days, whether I am first meeting or reconnecting with someone, there are some blatant red flags that serve as turning points in my decisions about potential relationships:

• If too much time is spent on talking about afflictions and illnesses (the organ recital) –If I see a lot of mental instability, particularly in the display of anger and grievance, even if it isn’t directed at me
• If I pick up on racism or homophobia. Deal breaking comments include things like, “I don’t see color,” or “That’s reverse racism,” Or “I don’t understand why gay people have to do that.”
• If there is incessant talk about being controlled by the government, or speculation about conspiracies, or fear of so-called socialism.

Moreover, as I get to know people, I am paying attention to the subtle ways they show up in word and deed regarding these four questions:

Query #1: Why are people poor? The answer to this shows how much sensitivity they have to class differences, social privilege, and economic injustice.

Query #2: What has been your experience around immigrants? This one tells me whom they “see,” and whether they are compassionate and culturally attuned.

Query #3: How much should you tip servers? I’m noticing how generous and empathetic the person is, and whether or not those who serve are demeaned or objectified.

Query #4: How would you respond if someone called you a racist? This is a test of defensiveness, introspection, and the ability to listen. (If someone were to tell me that I seem racist, I would show concern and want to know what I said or did that made me come across that way.)

I don’t pose these questions specifically to people I meet, but I am listening for the answers in their conversation and behavior. What some people call politics, I call values. At my age, I choose to be around those who share my outlook on life, people, and the greater good.

Karen Beatty lives in New York City