As a child, I wanted my family to be more interesting. To have foods and traditions that defined us as something other than yet another 1960’s suburban family with four kids, two parents, and a station wagon with wood-grained trim. I wanted to at least be like the neighbors, who were Italian. Their pot of spaghetti sauce made from an ancestral recipe simmered on the stove all day, with aromas of garlic, onions, meat, and herbs reaching my nose through their open windows.

“I danced the Highland Fling as a child at the Scottish Club,” my mother offered me, as she demonstrated a few moves in the kitchen.

Occasionally lefse would appear in our refrigerator, a Norwegian potato flatbread that my father would smear with butter, sprinkle with sugar, and proclaim heaven sent as he ate it. And he always wanted my mother to make fattigman, also known as poor man cookies, at the holidays, but she resisted because she was health conscious and they are deep fried.

Her resistance to frying fattigman paled, though, in comparison to the father-son battles over rutabagas that were waged at every holiday meal. After the turkey was carved, and the side dishes were passed around, my father would insist that my brother have some of the mashed rutabaga that was always on the menu. Orange and slightly bitter, I liked the taste and its contrast to the sweeter side dishes, but my brother, usually an adventurous eater, hated it.

I don’t know my father’s history with rutabaga – perhaps it was a connection to his mother who died when he was 11 – or maybe it was a food his Norwegian grandparents served. Rutabaga is a popular staple on the Scandinavian table – mashed with carrots and potatoes, baked into casseroles, made into soup. A cross between a cabbage and a turnip, it can be grown in cold climates and stored through long winters.

Whatever the source of my father’s love for rutabagas, he had a strong need for us all to appreciate them at every Thanksgiving and Christmas meal. But my brother’s equally strong resistance to eating them turned every holiday meal into a battle scene. I guess family traditions can come in all flavors, and ours was bittersweet. Today, I continue to enjoy rutabagas, and my brother reports that he likes them too, so this tradition anyway, has not stood the test of time.

Lee Stevens appreciates her Scottish and Norwegian roots as she writes and enjoys like in Hendersonville, NC

Are you bored yet? I’m not, but it’s worse.

I’m boring.

Sometimes it feels like my range of thoughts and emotions is increasingly smaller, less invigorating, numbing.

It’s not as though my life was filled with a cornucopia of exciting activities before the lockdown began, but that was by design. I don’t want an action-packed life. Still, the simple things I used to do with my time and micro-interactions with people kept me interested and interesting. I had lots of things to write about.

My brain can only hold so much, and my “interested and interesting” brain cells went on idle to make room for COVID-19, a bad tenant trashing the cheap real estate in my head. I want to evict him and make room for happy and creative thoughts.

Sadly, COVID-19, in some form or fashion, is most likely here for the long haul … which means I can’t completely evict him from my brain. My goal is to lock him in the basement and only let him out when I need critical information.

Perhaps we can all free up happy space in our brains as we get closer to a new normal that in some way approximates how we used to live. I feel like we’re on the cusp of getting some of it back.

Social animals may not find the new normal acceptable, but I can see how it might work for us. Dale and I don’t do large gatherings anyway. Our “normal” includes trips to the grocery store, golf, wine tasting. The occasional road trip.

Seriously, I could wear a mask and be socially distant forever if I have to. Masks are cool. Have you noticed the anti-aging effects? It’s like wrinkles be gone. You’ll look 10 years younger!

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

In a recent survey about how millennials and boomers relate to each other in the workplace, it won’t surprise you to learn that there’s just a little bit of friction there.

Millennials make up more of the workforce than any other generation, so it must be just a tad frustrating to have all of us baby boomers in their way. Thirty percent of the millennials surveyed indicated that older workers were holding them back from advancing. A quarter of them went so far as to quit because of a boomer manager or colleague. That’s going full OK, Boomer!

But here’s the flip side to that statistic. Thirty-six percent of boomers said they quit because of a millennial boss or supervisor and more than half say they experienced age discrimination.

Some of the findings are so predictable yet illuminating. We know that the generations have different work styles, but it’s still amusing that almost half the boomers are annoyed by the way millennials are always using their smart phones. Thirty-five percent think millennials are lazy and 41% think millennials act too entitled.

Meanwhile, 52% of millennials think boomers are know-it-alls, 47% think they act too entitled and 34% are annoyed by their egos.

Apparently, it’s not all petty grievances at work. Forty-two percent of millennials thought their boomer colleagues were dependable, 41% said they were punctual, and 26% said they had a good eye for detail. Boomers acknowledged that millennials could be positive (34%) and good problem solvers (32%).

One of the most divergent findings was how each generation viewed their employers. Sixty percent of boomers felt that their employer was loyal to them, while only 40% of millennials believed that to be true.

How loyal? Not that much really. If offered more money, 84% of millennials and 75% of boomers would split in a heartbeat.

Will millennials miss us when we’re gone? Hard to say. That question was not in the survey. I would like to think they will miss our steady and dependable work ethic, but it might just be a case where what they really want to know is “Where the hell is the key to the third floor mens room?”

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.

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.