Boomers have gone from tinkering with their bucket list plans to pondering whether or not they will kick the bucket all together.

What a difference a few months make. The camping trip is off. The summer beach booking is in jeopardy. The trip to deliver a loved one’s ashes cannot be taken. You cannot proudly watch the daughter’s graduation. A lot has changed.

Maybe a vaccine next year will get us back on track, and yet, it’s a year lost while many boomers are wondering how many years they have left.

Are boomers better off than younger citizens who depend upon jobs and income to keep a roof over their heads and food in the pantry? Absolutely yes. It’s the reason so many boomers are donating to food banks and urging their representatives to vote yes on legislation to help those thrown out of work.

Still, we can’t help thinking we’re just one missed handwashing or sanitized countertop away from buying the farm. When you’re on the downside of the teeter board, it’s natural to see the lost time as a true loss. It’s also a reminder that mortality is a lot more than some hypothetical event in our future.

And what if some of the futurists are correct that the pandemic, this one or the next one, makes the risk of illness a constant in our lives. Are we ready to live with reduced mobility and socialization as a constant? Should we take our chances and get the virus so we can move on? Is that really possible when some experts are unwilling to predict that those who get the virus will not get it again?

No wonder everyone is experiencing more anxiety. We cannot predict or plan for what’s ahead at exactly the moment in time that we hoped we would be living the good life. It might be time to lower our expectations for how we define the “good life.” Or we could roll the dice and go for it like there’s no tomorrow, because there may not be one. I don’t appreciate Mr. Hobson, but he’s left us his choice.

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.

SPOILER ALERT: You may never eat Corn Flakes again!

Wheaties is known as “The Breakfast of Champions.” Lucky Charms is supposedly “magically delicious.” And then there’s Trix cereal’s slogan, “Silly Rabbit. Trix are for kids.” Good thing they didn’t use the scientific name for rabbits. “Silly Oryctolagus cuniculus. Trix are for kids!”

But if John Harvey Kellogg had to choose a slogan when he invented Corn Flakes in 1894, there’s a good chance he might have chosen:

“Wanna have sex tonight?”   “No thanks. I’m having Corn Flakes.”

At the time he invented Corn Flakes, John Harvey Kellogg was an accomplished doctor, inventor, author, nutritional expert, health advocate and businessman (All good, so far.). But he also was an anti-masturbation activist.

Kellogg’s Corn Flakes was invented, by accident when John Harvey Kellogg left cooked wheat on the stove.

Now you might think this is a joke. It’s not. The inventor of the world’s most famous breakfast cereal, John Harvey Kellogg, was a devout member of the Seventh Day Adventists Church and he believed that “sexual intimacy belongs only within the marital relationship.”

Kellogg’s Corn Flakes was invented to curb the passions of having sex. Even if you were alone!

So, he invented Kellogg’s Corn Flakes to curb sexual impulses and suppress the passion of that generation. John Harvey Kellogg believed sex and half-sex were unhealthy and abnormal. And he thought that meat and spicy food increased sexual desire, but that passion could be lessened by eating a tasteless food for breakfast. Wow. He could have invented Pop Tarts.

Now that you know the Shocking Truth behind Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, what are you going to have for breakfast tomorrow? Me, I’m having Komodo Dragon Chili and Five alarm-Carolina Reaper. They’re important parts of a balanced breakfast.

Jack Goldenberg is way more than a proficient copywriter. He is also the creative director at Einstein da Vinci & Goldenberg and you can get in touch with his inner adman at 10 Minutes of Brilliance.

 

Ann Pattchett’s Bookstore asks, ‘why write?’ when there are so many great writers out there.

It’s in Nashville. Ann Patchett’s bookstore. And as if there isn’t enough music on every corner and bar to grab you by the ears, inside the bookstore there is a recital in progress with a series of singers performing their party pieces to polite applause. More overwhelming than yet more music is the sheer number of books, books, books. The store has half a wall dedicated to Ann’s works alone. Rows of her paperbacks and hardcovers grouped by subtle colors and size are surrounded in turn by Clancy’s and Grisham’s and Patterson’s garish, grinning teeth begging for extraction.

I wonder why I should try to write when there are already so many words and sentences and pages and books to hand. I had just seen a sign down the road—WE BUY BOOKS. Books deftly crafted of stanzas and theses and similes and tropes treated like so much unwanted jewelry for WE BUY GOLD purveyors.

A writing student, after hearing an essay rife with metaphors, asked, “Why do we needs all those riddles?” Good question. Riddles and puzzles—who killed whom in the kitchen with what? What can I possibly add to that looming avalanche of plots and outlines, research and drama that would be new or interesting or insightful? Especially when there are so many superb writers, elegant wordsmiths, more sensitive and insightful than I.

I feel like the guy huddled in a doorway on Nashville’s Broad Street, tapping rhythms on his knee, begging for attention, his hat on the sidewalk for offerings to his minor skills while two doors down, full-fledged musicians play amplified country western with drums, guitars and fiddle behind three-part harmony. And just around the next corner are the recording studios for the actual name artists making CDs to sell after road shows and guest appearances.

I guess it’s all a matter of scale…so to speak. Just because a kid will never be a concert pianist is no reason to give up piano lessons. It’s the moment of creativity that makes it all worthwhile. The Rumpelstiltskin moment of making gold from straw when we suddenly connect unlike or unexpected thoughts and images into something new and original. That’s what makes writing worthwhile, if only for ourselves. As if that’s not enough.

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/

 

Pew Research Center called it. Millennials (23 to 38 year olds) are now officially the largest generation in America.

I don’t need to tell you how relieved I am/we should be. The pressure is truly off us, along with the monkey that’s been on our back for twenty years.

What people forget when they speak of the 800 pound gorilla, is that the gorilla also has feelings. Boomers have been the target and the scapegoat for just about everything that’s gone wrong in this country. We rarely get credit for what we’ve done right. Twenty years of that can leave a few scars.

Now, it’s up to millennials to get everything right. Get us out of the pandemic in one piece, rebuild our economy, fix climate change, end poverty, replace our aging infrastructure, and restore our role as a global leader.

No pressure.

I forgot one thing. Don’t pay any attention to the critics, and there will be critics. They will say you’re selfish, entitled, whiny and many more not nice things. Don’t pay any attention to them. You have so much on your To Do list that you cannot waste time listening to people who only want to criticize an entire generation with useless stereotyping.

How do you ignore all the sniping and carping? It’s not easy, let me tell you. It will come from all sides. From older generations as well as your own children. From the media and from authors of bestselling books. You will soon discover that everyone has an opinion for why your generation is a complete failure and huge disappointment. If you start listening to any of this criticism, or worse, take it to heart, it will drive you nuts. Take it from members of the punching bag generation, the bigger you are, the more they come after you.

Remember this most important fact. You are not the point person for your entire generation. When you hear the criticism, don’t take it personally. They are not talking about you. You’re doing your best to be a good, caring citizen trying to make the world a better place. If they don’t get that, #&@% them.

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.

It was the thing that many of us did back then. In the 1970’s, much to the alarm of my parents, I dropped out of college and moved in with my boyfriend. My father tried every tactic to dissuade me, even bringing up the cow and the milk, you know the one about why should someone buy the cow when they can get the milk for free? In any case, none of it worked. We moved in together and feathered our one-bedroom basement apartment nest. It helped that many of my parent’s friends’ kids were making similar choices, and in time, they adapted to the situation. My father even grudgingly admitted he liked the guy. Working part-time, I finished college, and eventually boyfriend and I followed the acceptable path – marriage, corporate job for him while I spent time raising our two beautiful children. My parents breathed sighs of relief, relishing in our comfort and success, at least until we divorced 15 years later, but that’s another story.

Flash forward to 2011. My second husband had died; my new love’s wife had met a similar fate. Such are the dishes served at life’s table. I was in a situation where I needed a place to live. He had a place big enough for both us, having raised his two children there. I had decided never to marry again, and he, before we met, had decided the same. My parents were long gone, so couldn’t comment, but my children could. Mom, don’t you think you’re moving in with him too soon? You haven’t known him long enough. His son, still living at home, said Dad, I thought we were going to be bachelors together. How well do you know this woman? My partner’s mother, the only parent still alive between us, hoped for a commitment ceremony, which we briefly considered, but never got around to.

Today, we enjoy a peaceful cohabitation, with our finances separate but our lives shared. Our children are used to it; his mother no longer mentions the commitment ceremony. Sometimes, though, we get questions from one of our six grandsons. Why don’t you wear rings? Is Gigi your wife? We explain that there are lots of ways to live a life, lots of good choices. My daughter, at the wise age of 35, laughs as she sums it up: You are just two happy grandparents living in sin.

Lee Stevens is a mostly wise elder and joyful writer in Hendersonville, NC