I Finally Did It

If you were hanging out with me around this time last year, you might remember that I was seriously considering a return to college. You might also remember that I wimped out at the last minute with the same excuse I've used for decades - don't have the time. It's a valid excuse, but an excuse just the same.

Well this year I quietly did the research, filled out the forms and took the online tutorial class and as of today, I am officially a student at the University of Maryland University College.

I'll begin my return to higher education with online classes, something that didn't exist when I left school in the 1970s. I was in my third year of college, had changed majors at least five times and was on and off probation. I sat out a year, returned for a semester, made the Dean's list and dropped out again.

Like many Boomers, I am a life-long learner but I've always felt that not getting my degree was unfinished business. A degree might have helped me along the way - I don't really know.

I have declared History as my major because I like it. My fantasy future job in my 60s or 70s is to produce documentaries, so a History background could help me then. My current job is writing, producing and voiceing radio commercials. It's a stretch to think this degree will have much influence on this career.

At this point in my life, however, a degree is just for me and not for my career.

Go Terps!!

Gone Now, Gone Soon

Boomers reminisce a lot; maybe everyone does.

I was thinking about some items and brands that older Boomers grew up with that are no longer around. I don’t miss all of these things; I’m just amused when I think that I never thought I’d see the day when they would be gone.

Here are a few examples for your amusement:

Already gone or almost non-existent -

- Phone booths

- Plymouths

- Phones with wires

- VCRs

- Oldsmobiles

- Manual Transmission – in America, but not anywhere else

- Film


Gone within the next few years -

- Checkbooks

- Tube TVs with 4:3 ratio

- Computers connected to anything with wires

- Cashiers


Would you like to add anything to the list?

He Would Be 72

Some iconic statistics are hard to believe. Here are a few examples:

- Elvis died thirty years ago this week. Thirty years!!

- If he was alive today, he’d be 72 years old. Seventy two!

- Elvis recorded over 700 songs. Sixteen of them reached #1

- He is one of the few dead entertainers who had a #1 hit song in this decade … the remixed version of ‘A Little Less Conversation’ from the Nike commercial was released in the UK in 2002 and went to the top of the charts.

- Over 75,000 fans have converged in Memphis for the 30th anniversary of his death. Sadly, one of them died because of the heat wave there this week.

- Elvis bought Graceland fifty years ago at age 22.

- More than 750,000 people visit the estate each year. I was one of them in 1996.

Elvis is The King. But I don’t know that he influenced music as much as he kicked open the door to a new style of music for a restless generation of pre-Boomers and Boomers. Love him or hate him, it’s impossible to ignore him. Thirty years after his death, he is still a commercial empire, making far more money now than when he was alive.

Of the thousands of Elvis-related activities happening this week to commemorate the 30th anniversary of his death, the most unique is the release of a duet with his daughter. Lisa Marie Presley, who is almost 40 now, laid down vocal tracks over the original recording of her Dad’s 1969 hit “In The Ghetto.” It’ll be available this week on iTunes as a fund-raiser for the New Orleans branch of Presley Place, a transitional housing facility for homeless families.

I don’t have anything else to say about him; I just didn’t want to let the week go by without some kind of mention. After I post this, I’ll be searching my collection for that double CD Greatest Hits that I know is around here somewhere.

Boomerandomness 3

That's Right

On a TV newscast, you often hear one anchor say to another “that’s right” in response to the opening sentence of a story. “There are delays at the airport, John.” “That’s right, Mary and people are angry.” Just once, I’d like to hear the anchor say, “actually, that’s NOT right, Mary.”


Seen It All

From time to time you hear someone make the statement “now I’ve seen it all” to describe some incredible, unbelievable behavior they have just witnessed. Well I can safely say that now I really have seen it all. The behavior I observed recently: a guy driving a motorcycle at a high rate of speed in heavy traffic during afternoon drive in I-270 in Maryland did a wheelie. I mean this guy, while weaving in and out of heavy traffic, passing cars that were already doing 65-70 in a 55 mph speed zone, popped up on just his rear wheel and sped up even more, looking back as if to say look at what I’m doing! Isn’t this cool? I question whether or not this guy should have the right to drive. Or breathe.


Just Do It

In response to the recent bridge collapse in Minneapolis, one expert was quoted as saying that it would cost about $9 billion a year for twenty years to completely fix all the substandard bridges and roadways in the United States. OK, what are we waiting for? Get started. And don’t tell me the country can’t afford it. The Iraq war is costing almost $9 billion per MONTH!

Cult?

I think I’ve joined a cult. After years of hearing about this “club” I decided to join it today.

They have meeting sites scattered all over the United States. When you visit one of their meeting places you have to prove you are one of them to get in the door, a bright orange steel mesh affair with big locks.

In a way, they are like survivalists. They move supplies by the millions of items every day, right in plain site… everything from paper towels to clothes to meat. Some members even turn to them for innocent services ranging from insurance to wedding planning. I guess some of their members marry each other; many members are already married and join as couples.

Members of this organization swear by it. They talk to each other and anyone who will listen about the benefits of joining. Unlike other cults, however, these crafty members are out in the open about what they do. But non-members have no idea what it’s like till they actually see for themselves.

Meetings aren’t actually scheduled, but the meeting place is available to members at selected hours and days. Their rituals include a friendly greeting at the orange metal door, followed by a casual walk in the same direction down an aisle through at least half of their meeting site. Somewhere in the middle, the members split off into various directions in search of who knows what. New members are easy to spot because they don’t make eye contact with other members at first; new members are usually overwhelmed by the enormity of the meeting place.

They use normal currency to finance their transactions, I assume to avoid detection. But they also have their own currency, similar in appearance to a credit card, with the name of their cult boldly printed right on the card for all to see: COSTCO.

Space Teacher

Barbara Morgan is a 55-year-old Boomer. That means she was an impressionable girl during the early years of space flight and might have been as fascinated with astronauts and launches as I was. Maybe she watched Walter Cronkite narrate the TV coverage of Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Buzz Aldrin and the other early space pioneers and thought that she’d like to follow in their footsteps one day.

For Barbara Morgan, that day is here; she is the Space Teacher on the current Shuttle Mission STS-118.

Ms. Morgan was an elementary school teacher in Idaho when she first joined the Shuttle program in 1986. She was Christa McAuliffe’s backup and we can only imagine how she felt as she watched Challenger explode, carrying McAuliffe, the first teacher in space, and six others to their deaths just seconds after the launch.

And we can only imagine now the thrill she must feel finally making it into space.

In addition to being a role model for students and teachers, she also provides an example of creative aging, showing fifty-somethings and all others that age does not have to be a limiting factor in achieving our dreams.

In a short video piece on Space.com, Barbara Morgan humbly states that, “I am just the next teacher of many to come,” but I think she will be remembered as the teacher who carried out the legacy and dreams teachers and the rest of us shared twenty-one years ago when we watched Christa McAuliffe first walk down the hall toward Challenger.

Still Here

I won’t bore you with another rant about how busy I am. I’m certainly not the only busy Boomer or Gen-Xer on the planet.

But it just amazes me how busy we as a society have become. We have more options for time consumption and seem to have a greater capacity than our parents or grandparents for doing many things, often all at one time. We have many interests and we have the desire to pursue them.

But does all this activity really improve our quality of life?

One good thing about the simpler days of forty or fifty years ago is that there seemed to be time to get things done. We could focus our attention on one or two things instead of twenty or thirty. In high school I studied, played in the band, participated in a film club and in senior year I had a girlfriend. Yet, I always had time for all of those interests. I accomplished everything I wanted to without the aid of a cell phone, cable TV or the internet. And I only did one or two things at a time: drive and talk, play in the band and hang out with the girlfriend, study and, uh, study.

Now in my fifties I have one job that incorporates duties formerly handled by four different people, I commute a long distance so I can live away from the fray, I write this blog, I’m writing a book, I’m taking another run at returning to college, I exercise and on the weekends I work around the house and yard. Honestly, I don’t have the time or energy to focus totally on any one of those things with the degree of attention I would like to. I’m always tired except on Saturday afternoons because I’ve pissed away Saturday morning catching up on sleep.

Whine, whine, whine.

OK, I’ll stop now.

You are probably going through something like this too, in addition to child-raising responsibilities that I don’t have.

All that to say I’m still here. Thanks for visiting. I’ll have something with more substance to post again soon.

To Boldly Remember

Last week was the 38th anniversary of Apollo 11, the first space flight mission that resulted in a human lunar landing. During the next three and a half years, twenty four more American men visited the moon and twelve of them walked on the moon’s surface. No one has been back since December, 1972.


A whole generation has grown up knowing moon missions only as something in history books or boring stories from us fifty-somethings who were obsessed with the whole idea of spaceflight and what it might mean for our global future. The Apollo astronauts who are still alive are all over seventy.

The anniversary went by with barely a mention. I thought Boomers were running the world and the media. What happened?

Some of the national news casts on television and radio might have noted the anniversary, but the main stories were about Pakistan, Hillary Clinton and Harry Potter. The mentions this date did get were usually short and near the end of the newscast – something we media folks call “kickers.”

My biggest disappointment, however, is that I forgot the date too.

I was a space geek as a kid, spending hours watching the endless space flight coverage on the three television networks we had at the time, yet July 20th was just another Friday this year and no newscast I watched and no DJ I listened to mentioned anything about Apollo 11 or that magic moment at 10:56pm EDT on Saturday night, July 20, 1969 when Neil Armstrong climbed down the lunar landing ladder and said “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Today I searched the internet to see if I was mistaken about the lack of coverage. The ABC Nightly News podcast gave it 2 minutes. Predictably, National Geographic, Moon Today (that really is a web site) and Space.com made mention of the anniversary. But one space news site I saw didn’t and I couldn’t find any newspaper stories across the country. Admittedly that could be due to my lack of good search skills.

What if the Columbus generation had had the same attitude? Few Europeans would have bothered to venture across the Atlantic after 1495. Queen Isabella’s successors would have been spending their country’s money on fighting wars instead of exploring the vast unknown. The United States might never have happened.

I think remembering events is important, not as a vehicle for living in the past or reminiscing about the often misnamed good old days but as a reminder to pay attention to lessons we might have learned from those events.

Moon missions united our country and our planet and gave us a positive vision of how science could improve our future. The spirit of exploration is a key part of the spirit of humanity and to paraphrase the opening line of the original Star Trek television series … which, ironically, ended its run a month before Apollo 11 … space is the final frontier and provides us with the opportunity to explore new civilizations and to boldly go … well, you remember the rest.

Fifty Questions

Found this on Kim’s blog. She found it on myspace. KJ borrowed it from Kim.

Part of why I bother with these at all is that I’m obsessed with analyzing people, including myself. Another reason is to encourage other people to answer questions about themselves. I like reading them.

Sooo, please answer these questions on your blog and let me know where and when.

1) What holiday is your birthday closest to?
New Year’s Day if you count holidays that involve a day off from work; Valentine’s Day if you mean Hallmark holidays.

2) Favorite song?
I can’t name just one. These are songs I try to sing along with in the car: Friends In Low Places, You’ve Got A Friend and I Heard It Through The Grapevine. Dorky, I know.

3) Favorite fruits?
Nectarines, pears and strawberries.

4) Does it bother you when someone says they’ll call you and they don’t?
Yes.

5) Are you allergic to anything?
Not that I know of.

6) Is there someone/something you want?
I want to take a year off from my normal life for a driving tour of the U.S. Ain’t gonna happen, but it’s something I want. Someone I want that I don’t already have? Do you really think I’d say it here? 

7) When was the last time you went swimming?
Fifteen years ago. Really. Unless you count wading in the ocean as swimming; then it would be about four years ago.

8) How many states have you been to?
36 – Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Colorado, Hawaii.

9) How many of the states have you lived in?
5 – Maryland, Wisconsin, Illinois, Texas, Louisiana.

10) Have you ever lived outside of the US?
No.

11) How many countries have you visited?
3 – Canada, Jamaica, Mexico

12) What’s your favorite kind of drink?
Coffee or Merlot

13) Does anyone like you?
Yes.

14) Do you have any strange pets?
Sometimes I think my dogs are strange. They have incredible, unique personalities.

15) What is your dream car?
A fully restored ’67 Mustang.

16) What’d you do yesterday?
Mow the lawn. It’s almost an acre.

17) Who is the last person you fell asleep and woke up next to?
My wife.

18) Do you and your last ex have a good relationship?
Haven’t seen my last ex-girlfriend in years and I have no idea where she is. And I don’t especially care.

19) Where would you want to go on a first date?
Not applicable. :)

20) When’s the last time you were kissed?
Two nights ago.

21) Has anyone ever sang or played a song for you personally?
No.

22) Ever been kissed under fireworks?
No, but what an interesting idea.

23) Have you ever bungee jumped?
No.

24) Have you ever kayaked?
No.

25) Has anyone ten years older than you ever hit on you?
Once, in college. She was drunk and I was disgusted.

26) What sound are you listening to right now?
The whirr of the laptop fan and some TV show in another room.

27) What’s your favorite song of the moment?
I can’t pick just one.

28) What was the last movie you watched?
In theaters – Da Vinci Code (I don’t get out much). On TV – Hunt For Red October

29) Where is the last place you went besides home?
Safeway.

30) Have you ever seriously vandalized someone else’s property?
No, why would I?

31) Have you ever been punched?
No, but I punched a guy in high school. He was trying to push me into a pool and didn’t believe I can’t swim. He never talked to me again.

32) Did you participate in any sports in high school?
I did everything I could to avoid sports in high school. If I had my current attitude about fitness back then, I might have gone out for track.

33) What do you usually order from Olive Garden?
If I ever went there, I’d probably order Veal Marsala.

34) Say something totally random about yourself.
Most people who know me in real life think I’m quite and reserved. They’d be shocked to see there is another side to my personality.

35) Do you have an iPod?
I’m certain I’m the last person on the planet who does not. I plan to get one later this year.

36) Has anyone said you look like a celebrity?
Back in the 90s when my hair was longer and darker I was told I look a little like Seinfeld.

37) Are you comfortable with your height?
Yes.

38) How tall are you?
5’ 11”

39) Do you speak any other languages besides English?
No, but I wish I did.

40) Have you ever ridden in a limo?
Many times … funerals, weddings, some radio station promotions and parties.

41) Has anyone you were really close to passed away?
Family, yes; close friends, no.

42) Do you watch MTV?
Not since they traded in videos for teenage soap operas.

43) What’s something that really annoys you?
Drivers who tailgate.

44) Do you have a crush?
No.

45) Do you drive when you go on long trips?
Always. I’m a nervous passenger.

46) What’s the longest time you’ve ever stayed out?
Around 6 or 7am. It’s been a long time since I did that.

47) Have you ever thought you were honestly going to die?
No.

48) Were you ever rushed by an ambulance to the emergency room?
Yes, sort of. I fell down the stairs when I lived in one of those tiny row houses in Baltimore. It was 5 in the morning, they did have the lights on and maybe the siren, but I don’t think they were rushing.

49) Who is the best roommate you ever had?
Myself. I’m close to admitting that I’m hard to live with.

50) Who was the last person to text message you?
Deena at work; she was answering a question I texted her.

Twelve Steps or Three Hundred Channels

Have you ever watched a new TV show out of curiosity and instantly became a fan? I started watching Burn Notice, in part because of the relentless promotional efforts and in part because a friend’s son has a small role in one of the early episodes.

I didn’t want to like this show, nor did I want to begin to follow a new series. The plots are totally unrealistic but the characters are likeable and flawed, just like me.

Two shows I used to watch every week without fail finally ended … West Wing and NYPD Blue. Law & Order and all of its spinoffs are on so many channels that I don’t have to make an appointment or program a VCR or Tivo; I just turn on the TV any time, day or night, and there they are. Same thing with CSI and its spinoffs.

But Burn Notice intrigues me. So did the Mad Men premiere this week. Now I’m hooked on both. And The Closer.

They say teens and twenty-somethings are addicted to television and its computer and iPod counterparts. But I know at least one Boomer who is addicted to TV … me.

As addictions go, this one isn’t so bad. It isn’t a drug, it isn’t alcohol or gambling. My only addiction is television. And coffee. Every morning I feed both addictions, mixing Diane Sawyer with Starbucks. But that’s for another post.

How did we get this way? OK, I won’t speak for other Boomers. How did I get this way? I grew up on only three channels. Eventually there were five channels in my hometown. But that was all, till cable. There were two types of Parental Controls, my Mom and my Dad. The quantity and quality of what we were allowed to watch was strictly controlled.

I was thirty before I had cable and then it was only twenty channels. One of them was a new novelty that played only music videos. Another played only movies that at one time had played in theatres; it had the catchy name Home Box Office.

Now I have 78 channels and I watch them all. One day I will convince myself to subscribe to all 300 of them. I’m just a little old school, however, because I grew up in an era when TV was free. Now I have to pay for it. So I only pay for some of it.

Is there a 12 step program for television addiction?
1. We admitted we were powerless over (television)—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves (Comcast) could restore us to sanity (OK, it’s NOT Comcast).
That’s all for this post. The commercials are almost over. Back to the show.


(PS – I mean no disrespect whatsoever for the real 12 Step programs)

Just Wondering

The most Republican thing about the 40th President was his dislike for big government. Ronald Reagan’s inaugural speech included the sentence, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

So why are there are two huge government-related facilities in Washington DC named for Reagan? Just wondering.

One is the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. It’s a huge structure on Pennsylvania Avenue, three blocks from the White House. The GSA (General Services Administration) runs the place and many of the tenants are Federal government agencies, including some Homeland Security offices.

The other is the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. It was called National Airport or Washington National Airport for its first forty-one years, but was renamed for President Reagan in 1998. Why would they name an airport for the President who fired all the air traffic controllers?

He must be spinning in his grave.

Boomerrandomness 2

- What scares you more: reports that Al Qaeda is gaining strength and may be working in the US again or reports that the terrorists behind the recent UK bombings are doctors? DOCTORS!












- Were you ever really sure which one was Starsky and which was Hutch? Which one was Cagney and which was Lacy?

- I hope the co-worker who ate the lunch in the Safeway bag with BERNIE written in BIG RED LETTERS on the side, enjoyed the sandwiches Tuesday. The Snickers bar I had for lunch instead was quite tasty.













- We are at a moment in time when the two hottest trends in media are 1) the huge plasma TV that bring all the in-your-face action to an entire wall of the room it’s in and 2) the iPhone that brings you all the in-your-face action to a screen so small that it has to be in your face to view it.

…---…

Are you watching the Live Earth concerts today?

Are you soaking in the messages as well as the music?

I was a little skeptical about the sincerity and potential outcome of this global concert event. One hundred fifty artists performing in ten cities on seven continents to draw global awareness for environmental issues is a noble cause, but will humanity look at this as just a publicity stunt for the music industry? Or will we learn something from the messages that are spread throughout the television, radio and internet coverage?

Holding a concert for a cause is nothing new. One of the first was George Harrison’s Concert For Bangladesh in August, 1971. The concert, the album and the film has raised millions of dollars for UNICEF. Live Aid in July, 1985 was a huge two-venue, two-country event to help provide famine relief in Ethiopia. The early Earth Day celebrations often connected music with the environment as today’s event is doing.

Boomers can take credit for initiating the trend but successive generations are as much a part of this one as anyone. Boomer Al Gore is one of the organizers of Live Earth. Musicians include a generational potpourri of styles and artists: Madonna, Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Genesis (and Phil Collins), Duran Duran, Keith Urban, Kelly Clarkson, Linkin Park, Garth Brooks, Snoop Dog and more.

The temporarily reunited Police are scheduled for later today. No doubt they’ll perform Message In A Bottle, including the line I'll send an SOS to the world.

S.O.S. is a major theme in the logo and marketing efforts of this event. Does anyone younger than a Boomer know what S.O.S. means? And what the …---… means?

Televised coverage of this event includes many examples of simple steps individuals can take to help reduce pollution and other environmental problems. I usually consider myself to be environmentally aware, but honestly all I really do is recycle cans, bottles and paper. And turn out lights in empty rooms. Living 42 miles from work and commuting alone five days a week in an SUV with a V8 engine certainly does not bode well for me when I claim to be an environmentalist.

Maybe the awareness part of today’s event will change some of my behavior. Will it change yours?

A New TV Show Set In 1960

Mad Men is a new TV series coming to AMC. It is set in 1960 and the characters are ad men (and women) who work at an advertising agency. The pre-show hype includes a cool behind-the-scenes look at how the show was put together and the lengths to which producers went to accurately recreate 1960.

I was a kid then. Now I’m an “ad man” – I make radio commercials. Some synergy, ‘ey?. Here is some of what I remember from 1960 and some of what I’ve looked up.

If you weren’t around then, you might think the entire decade was peace, love, drugs, hippies and Hendrix. That was all part of the mid and late 60s. The first year of that pivotal decade was more like a carry-over from the 1950s.

On the surface, 1950s society appeared to be simple, conservative and boring. As the decade neared its end, youth culture began to exert some influence in the form of rock & roll music of the Elvis style. The Space Race had begun to influence style, particularly in the design of automobiles and kitchen appliances.


The early 1960s were more a decade of attempted coolness and class. It seems that every one smoked cigarettes and the three-martini lunch really did exist in some circles.

In 1960, thirtysomethings had fought and survived World War II and were trying to make their mark on society. Twentysomethings of 1960 were kids during the war. Their fathers had likely served in the military during the War and their mothers might have had a taste of the working world briefly while the men were overseas but now they were mostly back to being housewives.

An older generation still ruled style and politics, a younger generation began to influence some aspects of the culture and the oldest Boomers were not yet in high school.

Women who worked in 1960 were likely to be employed in clerical positions and their male bosses might expect them to engage in activities that involved the prone position. It is hard to quantify this behavior because it didn’t really make the news and wasn’t especially part of TV show plot lines. But overt sexism is “documented” in some movies of the era and in this new TV show.

A typical American family in 1960 had a mom, a dad and two or three kids, all living together in the same house. Divorce was still unusual. The typical household had one TV, one phone and one car. Dad worked all day at a job and mom stayed home and cleaned and cooked. Many TV shows on the 1960 schedule, such as Leave It To Beaver, The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet and The Flintsones, portrayed that idealized American family.

You could feel change in the air in 1960. Dreams of spaceflight were about to become reality. The civil rights movement began to get high-profile TV coverage of events when four black college students began a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s counter in North Carolina on February 1st. In November, Vice President Richard Nixon, part of the old guard, was defeated in his bid for President by the younger John Kennedy.


It will be interesting to see how Mad Men handles the various aspects of 1960. Will it be reasonably accurate in how it presents the era (as much as any TV drama can be) or will it be a stereotype drawn from the same kind of ‘skim the surface’ research I did for this post? We’ll know in a few weeks.



Meanwhile, here are a few interesting links that provide a glimpse into the ad world of the 1960s.

TV commercials from 1960s

More TV commercials

A Slinky commercial

A Chevrolet commercial


And here is a 1960 song survey.

Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?

The local TV station that carries the Jeff Foxworthy “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader” show has a quiz on its website. There are only six questions. I can’t resist a quiz. I went to college so I must be smarter than a 5th grader.

I only answered 3 of the 6 questions correctly. A fifty percent score on a quiz is an F.

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!