I thought I'd try to revive this blog. I originally created Baby Boomer Davy's Locker as a learning experiment after my corporate job of 22 years ended in 2008. As a creative person who found creativity basically shut down for most of those 22 years, when that job ended, I continued my persuit of what the Internet was doing, especially in the beginnings of social media and blogging. I began by setting up a blog, using blogger.com. To my amazement, I discovered I loved creative writing. I loved sharing stories of my view of the Baby Boomer Generation and the journey of my family.
During the time from 2008 through 2009, I was also exploring and wondering what I was going to do for a career and earning a living until my retirement years. My journey led me to realize that we Baby Boomers were probably not going to have what we saw our parents of the Greatest Generation enjoy as typical retirement. We were going to have to work longer but we also realized that working longer may be the key to living longer. Many of we Boomers saw our parents pass away not long after they stopped working those long hard work weeks of more than 40 hours. Stopping may not be a good thing. I spent the next year beginning the journey that would become what I do for my retirement years.
----- continued now on March 24, 2016 - I have successfully created a thriving small business, a music school named David's Music House in the Pittsburgh, PA area. Started on 10.10.10 - October, 10, 2010, I have now passed the 5 year anniversary, growing from 3 music teachers and 40 students to 17 music teachers and over 200 students. The school has become a staple of the community as area schools are sending students to us. This is a dream that started as a seed in my father's mind and heart and was born into me, through his support of my musical efforts. I feel and know that he is at my side, every day, enjoying what this dream has become. We are so much more than a place to learn how to learn about music. The mission is from my heart and mind to support the growth of kindness of the heart, in humbly, through the soulful connecting tool of music.
Look for more ongoing articles on this blog as I continue trying to show my mistakes and learning and growing of a Baby Boomer member, going through this thing we all call LIFE!
I have always loved listening to stories from older family members. Even when I was as young as I can remember I wouldn't go outside and play with my cousins during the Sunday visit to Grama's house. I would stay at the dinning room table during the after dinner coffee and desert time because I loved hearing their stories about times gone by. They were funny, everyone laughing to tears, colorful, wonderful stories that made me want to be inside their stories. This was almost better than television, and that is saying something because TV was everything to a Baby Boomer child of the 1950's.
Thanksgiving to a Baby Boomer conjures up instant feelings of warm fall colors, stopping the race of everyday life, great aromas of food, families getting together, and seeing friends. Yes, even with the normal dysfunctional family situations of dealing with our own oddities seem to be dealt with, diminished, ignored or resolved during this family gathering holiday. The house where the turkey is prepared was the place to wake up to that heavenly aroma of cooking that only Thanksgiving can produce.
To a child of the Boomer Generation, Thanksgiving meant waking to that wonderful smell of the turkey roasting in the oven, then rushing down to watch the Thanksgiving parade on TV and getting primed for Christmas and waiting for Santa to show up at the end of the parade. I am very aware that I was fortunate to have been born who and where I was to enjoy the abundance of food and memories. There were so many who did not have this abundance, who I was oblivious to as a child. Especially during the post World War II, 1950's, Thanksgiving was all about food. I have black and white photos of my Dad's dinning room display of food. He set up this display of fruit, berries, nuts, crackers, cheeses and anything else he could think of. Of course he managed an A&P grocery store at the time, which obviously helped. My Dad was always ready to set up a display of anything, most likely from displaying food in the grocery stores.
Thanksgiving was of course a way of celebrating the year's harvest of the crops, but it seemed logical and appropriate to make it an event of taking some time to give thanks for all the blessings we have.
May you all take time out this November 22, 2012 and give thanks for all the blessings you have and enjoy the day with family and friends.
It has been May since I posted to this blog. I have been overwhelmed with running my business, David's Music House, Inc. for the last two years and in these economic times, it has been a spectrum of highs and lows. This is the first business I have ever attempted and I knew it would have to be something that was connected to my passion and love of music, to get me through any difficulties. When a new business is started, it is often said that it will take 3 to even 5 years to see success. The idea is unique, the model is good and being tweaked and developed all the time but it is longevity and resources that are the critical piece. I continue, month to month, looking for ways to keep costs as low as possible while looking for new revenue sources and so far, I have been able to keep things going due to the support and help of a good many people!
In the meantime, I am going to try to amp up my posts on this blog. There's was just too much time spent on it and it has a good foundation to keep building upon to let it go of. I began blogging to become knowledgeable about social media while discovering that I loved to write so I need to continue developing those skills.
The Baby Boomer Generation is not going away.... yet, that is. We are getting older, to be sure. I was just realizing that I am finding more people who I graduated with who are passing away! I can remember my parents and their friends talking about the fact that they felt that all they were doing is going to funerals of friends.
As I have stated in previous posts about my small business venture and it being something I, as many Boomers are doing, am doing to be my "extended pre-retirement working years". Boomers have been told by financial advisers for quite a few years now, that we will not be enjoying the same type of "retirement" as our parents did. We will be working past 62 or 65 and beyond. I began thinking about this about ten years ago and knew that I really wanted to do something that I was more passionate about, which is music.
With Boomers being the largest segment of the population, whatever they do....is indeed, a factor that has a domino effect on many aspects of the country, with the main one being financial. As we Boomers age, all the aspects of aging will effect everyone in this country. What remains to be seen is how will the younger generation feel, react and care for their parents as we age. However Boomer children behave and react to their aging parents can not be blamed on how the Boomers raised their children anymore than the Boomers can blame on their parents, the Greatest Generation. We are each responsible for our own actions in our lives and responsible for the decisions we make.
If any readers of this blog have seen my other articles about what I have been doing lately, you may realize why I haven’t been active for quite a while on this blog, especially if any of you own or have ever owned your own business. The saying, “if it were easy, everyone would do it” is as true as true can be!
The purpose of this article will be to speak to why I haven’t been writing for a while and to bring my passion of sharing issues and raising awareness of The Baby Boomer Generation.
The short story from 2008 is that my job of 22+ years was outsourced at the beginnings of our country’s second biggest depression. I was unemployed for two years, while trying to look for a job and also deciding what else I could do. In 2009, I began my journey to create my own business, beginning with a “How to start a small business” course at a local community college, talking to my local SCORE representative and many other business mentors I either knew or just reached out to. I opened my business, David’s Music House, Inc. on October, 10, 2010 (10.10.10) I have now been open for 18 months and it has indeed been a journey of highs and lows! What I have learned is exactly what I was told in the beginning by all my mentors….it would be hard, it would take 3 to 5 years to see success and you can only succeed IF you don’t quit. The key to not quitting is continuing growth and searching for solutions for the dollars to last until success. It is indeed a FACT, that no one can succeed by quitting.
As I continue to search for ways to search for ways to make my business grow, I am also quite aware that I am still moving on the path of extending work years, or delay of retirement. I planned my business to be one that I not only have a passion for but also would be able to continue working beyond what were once considered retirement years. Being a member of the Baby Boomer Generation brings me to think about these actions that I and all of us Boomers are currently going through.
Only time and history will tell the true story of what effect the Baby Boomer Generation has had on our civilization, but there is no doubt that the Boomers effect our country by their sheer numbers. This applies for what this largest segment of the population is going through as we approach the retirement years. Retirement has been re-defined by occurrences of the last decade. Healthcare and new medical advances are continually extending the lifespan. While is definitely a good thing, from the perspective of us Boomers, what we do and go through has a profound effect on the course of all others as well.
Baby Boomers have been caring and dealing with their aging parents while we hit our 4th and 5th decades of life and we well know and wonder how our children will deal with the same issues. Will they even be able to deal with the impact of Boomers aging? One thing is certain and that is that we Boomers should be doing as much as we can to lessen the impact of what our children have to deal with….such as homes not cared for, estates not properly and legally planned, how to make decisions without living wills and legal documents to guide them.
I went into this segway of Boomers aging as that is what I am currently thinking about…..what do I need to do to deal with aging? How can I make it easier for my children to deal with my aging? One thing my wife and I have done is to create all the legal documentation, such as wills, living wills that clearly state and therefore take the decision and issues out of the hands of our children. We are also downsizing our home to one that we can more easily care for, is less of a financial burden for us rather than continue living in a home too large to care for so that they someday have to deal with their homes as well as ours.
It is important for us Boomers to do the same things we have been doing for our children since they were born…and that is everything we can to make them better people, follow the golden rule, try to make the planet better for them by recycling and paying attention to supporting better ways of energy consumption and prepare and clean up our lives so that they don’t have to do it. We are always parents, as long as we are on this planet, even if we don’t have children….all who remain after the Boomer Generation is gone are all of our children and they will benefit or not based on our actions.
We all know and hear from all sources that starting your own business is hard. “If it was easy...everyone would do it!” We still never know how hot the stove is until we touch it. Yes, I have touched the stove and yes... it is very hot! I get it. I knew it was going to be and I also knew that due to choosing a business that was a core passion of mine, was THE thing that was going to give me the strength to get through the hard stuff.
There is another aspect to this journey and that is those “passing moments”! We cannot get so absorbed in fixing all of the issues we face in life that we go past these wonderful, blessed moments without enjoying them! For me, that means doing something that is logic brain free. In that, I mean anything that totally distracts my thinking from my daily thoughts of the business. Personally, this is usually some mindless entertainment on TV or at the movies. This merely serves as a “slap of cold water in my face” as it stops me from thinking about the hard stuff. I am then able to purposely focus my thinking on all of the blessings and positive things in my life.
Most of the time in our lives, we can choose how we feel...happy or sad. Sometimes, something as simple as purposely smiling, for no reason, to myself, will snap me out of feeling worried about something. It is an amazing thing...try it sometime! People and situations affect us every day of our lives, but it is how we choose to react to these situations that guides how we feel. This is more easily said than done, many times, but we can choose how we feel, eventually.
Some times, events occur that are more devastating and physically disastrous and none of us know how we will react in these situations, until we actually go through them. Usually time is the determining factor in how we end up feeling with these types of situations. Time allows or helps us eventually determine how we need to think about these more difficult decisions, but in the end, it again, is how we choose to react that determines our outcome.
So, as I know I will continue to face issues that I need to correct and deal with in my start up business, I will continue to give myself that slap in the face with cold water, force that smile, watch some TV Land reruns of the Dick Van Dike show, and remind myself....”enjoy this moment, look at a blue sky, some green trees, listen to some inspiring music, but realize all the many blessings I have....in this moment”!
My business, David's Music House, Inc. is now entering it's sixth month of being open and I am realizing a new phase in owning my own business.
The first three months were just pounding in nails, ordering things, paying bills, looking for ways to bring in customers, ya da ya da ya da.....It was a complete whirlwind of emotions of both highs and lows. There weer golden moments and others of complete and utter stress. After three months, we were able to take a break due to the Christmas Holidays. After the break, I saw many things that needed tweaking and we made some changes of focus.
Now that we have hit the sixth month, I am seeing another similar phase. It is now time to do more tweaking, in the area of organization and time. We have hit a huge milestone in offering "A Total Music Experience" to the community as we added a whole new service. We have added dance to our host of services. Dance Etc. is a local dance business that has been in the community for 15 years. My youngest daughter, Savannah went to dance classes at Dance Etc. a few years ago. I was so happy to welcome Megan Beile, owner of Dance Etc. into our music family. This addition will also bring in many new families into our "experience" to see what David's Music House is all about.
Yes indeed, you can plan, get advice, read and research everything you can find to plan and start a business, but nothing but TIME of actually going through the steps and phases of starting a business will show you what it actually feels like. Don't misunderstand, the planning, advice, etc. is absolutely necessary to prepare you for going through the phases, but only going through the steps allows your to gain the true feeling, awareness and experience necessary to know if you're doing good or bad.
All signs point to success! The message is getting out to the community. Musicians are calling to perform in the Coffee House. Local musicians are discovering the recording studio and our helpfulness, comfortability and flexibility.
The main goal and passion to bring to any business is to NOT do the things that make you dislike other businesses when you are a customer. My passion is to ALWAYS present the best appearance of the business and to treat each customer as friendly and helpful as possible. We want to make sure that if anyone remembers anything about coming into David's Music House, it is that they were treated with kindness and made to feel welcome. This along with your expertise and quality service will insure that the word will spread and bring new customers consistently.
Let's face it, the first day of a new year is really just another next day, but having a calendar that marks it as the first day of the new year makes it a grand event. As such a grand event, it gives us a great opportunity to make it a day to start something BIG. We all usually make promises to ourselves to do things that we always want to do, but we decide that this is a perfect day to finally do it, such as lose weight or be better organized, etc.
Perhaps starting a new business, as I did in the final quarter of 2010, is making me do a lot of reflection, on what was going right and what needs fixing, but this is making me look at the new year by first, reflecting on what happened in 2010 first. Reflection will directly feed into what the focus for the new year should be. Reflection will provide the goals and resolutions for the coming year.
Starting a new business, especially for the first time, will have you going through a learning period from time you start planning, through when you open your doors and then for a period of at least 3 months. The dust has seemed to settle and the first 3 months are basically tweaking and getting things running. Suddenly, as the dust clears, you find that you begin to see some clear directions that need the most focus. In my case, it has been an awakening of needing to narrow my focus and key in on the original key areas that were in my beginning business plan.
I found myself trying to plug every hole and remedy every situation all at the same time. Since a human being is clearly only one physical body and not capable of being everywhere all the time, I realize that I must define my most important objectives and focus my energy and time into these areas. Doing this will not only insure a better chance of success but it will also take care of other areas, purely through osmosis.
Take some time this first week of the New Year to think about the last one and the lessons that were learned. You will find that it will lay out your goals to begin in the new year. Also, don't worry about setting goals that are forever or for the entire year. Concentrate on some immediate goals, and work on them until you achieve them.
The New Year will always be another year of challenges that will require you to constantly change your goals. The first day of a new year is a great time to refresh but we can and must make new resolutions all the time as we face what life presents to us, and you can be sure that that will always happen.
Thanks to all of the readers and supporters of this website/blog and I wish a prosperous and happy 2011.
Occurring before the Baby Boomer birth years, Orson Welles' grand hoax radio broadcast, "War of the Worlds" remains an all time Halloween classic. Orson Welles is an icon to boomers from many classic movies of our time, such as "Citizen Kane", which has been hailed as one of the best movies ever made.
On October 30, 1938, Welles, the host and creator of a drama based radio program called, The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast a live dramatic adaptation of the H.G. Wells' novel, "The War of the Worlds", about the invasion of planet Earth by creatures from Mars. The event was taken seriously by thousands of people all over the country and caused a great deal of panic. Of course much of the panic was over-hyped, but as many may have not heard the introductions of the show, they thought it was real. The program did not have commercial interruptions, making it seem even more realistic.
The next day, the New York Times article explained the radio broadcast as a hoax and it made Orson Welles famous.
Michael's article has some great information about archives of historic radio programs, so please read all of the article, but you can click here for the "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast. (You can even right click on the program link to save the mp3 to your computer)
Although Baby Boomers were the television generation and radio drama began to fade in popularity, there is something about listening to stories on the radio, where the listener has to use their imagination, that makes it all the more dramatic and enjoyable.
Give a listen to this classic radio show this Halloween with the family.
The video has a great interview from Roger as well as more information on GrowingBolder, which is a great site of inspiration to all of us Baby Boomers as they strive to show the amazing people of the over 50 crowd and how we age is all in the mind of the beholder.
Baby Boomers grew up in a world with three or maybe four TV channels that would sign off at the end of each day. Our high tech toys were Erector Sets, auto racing sets and toy electric trains. When we became parents, the marketing world targeted Boomers with new tech toys, knowing that we would buy in frenzy because we didn’t have anything like it when we were young. As Boomers grew up, the world went through so many major technical discoveries, that naturally, we all became fascinated with it all.
Boomers grew up through the 20th century and played a part in the fastest growth of scientific discoveries the world has known, and yet as computers and the Internet started to become a part of our daily lives and in our jobs, Boomers were in their 4th decade and became less likely to jump into the quickness of change with computers and the Internet. Many could not keep up the same pace of understanding and therefore resisted becoming as knowledgeable as our children, who grew up with computers being second nature, through their toys and video games.
Boomer parents found they were being left behind and clueless to knowing what their children were doing on the Internet. This, of course, made many even more wary of the Internet, due to bad news stories of children and others being victimized. Parents found they had to begin to learn more about this “Internet thing”.
As the main venue of Baby Boomers, television began displaying nearly everything in terms of the Internet, website addresses in news stories and advertisements, Boomers became more and more aware that they were being left out of this new media venue. Over the last decade, and especially over the last couple of years, Baby Boomers have jumped into the social networking world in staggering numbers. They have discovered how they can reconnect with family members and friends they haven’t seen or spoken with for years.
According to a Pew Internet and American Life Project survey, Internet usage among people over the age of 50 has doubled over the last year, growing from 22% to 42%.
It takes Baby Boomers a while to join into new ideas, but once we do, the resulting effects are always overwhelming, in many perspectives. Boomers still love new inventions. We grew up seeing some of the most amazing technical advances of our world’s history. Now that we are in our mature years, we may be slow to start, but as Boomers join in a movement, so goes the growth and possibilities.
Buffalo Springfield, left to right: Stephen Stills,
Dewey Martin, Bruce Palmer, Richie Furay,
Neil Young - Wikipedia
One era of time in our country’s history clearly illustrates the power of music and that is of the 1960’s and 1970’s when a movement of socially conscious musicians, who were disturbed by war and the path they felt the government was taking the country, led a young generation to force a change. Music and lyrics started playing the battle cries of a generation who knew the power that this music possessed. It caused the Baby Boomer generation to come together for a purpose of change that could not be ignored. The music didn’t make the change. It brought together a young generation of people who then felt the power they had to shout a message that was unified and undeniable. The government and the mainstream media heard them clearly and one of our nation’s clearest marks of how people can change a nation where imprinted in history. The power of music made that all happen.
Some of the earliest and most influential songwriters who helped use that power were Stephen Stills and Neil Young. There are many others, but these two came together in their beginnings of success and influence in a band named “Buffalo Springfield” and their first successful song, “For What It’s Worth”, written by Stephen Stills. Today’s generations hear this song and others of those times in the numerous movies about the Vietnam War, such as “Forrest Gump”. The music is included in these movies to not only show the role that music played, but to bring that same power to the movie itself.
Here is one of those first songs that made a generation come together and realize the power they had to make change happen.
(Clip of Monterey Pop Concert, 1987 from http://www.rockpeaks.com/)
These social changing musicians were just kids who were influenced by rock n’ roll of the 1950’s and The Beatles, who picked up some guitars and formed bands to have some fun. Their years of growing from teenagers living at home to becoming adults and seeing how much the government was going to direct their lives. They faced being drafted and forced to go to a war that did not have the same clear reason that their parents faced when World War II began. These musicians felt a spark ignite within them and they used music to release their feelings into stories and messages of social change. The rest of the country’s youth heard the same messages, uniting them for a movement of change.
Today's movement of unrest brought on by mistrust of financial, big corporations and government partisanship and special interests have their various portions of the population coming together, but using the Internet as their tool of today. The Internet lacks the passion and power that music has in our daily lives. Music was the key before and only music has that power of movement. The best thing about this emotional power of music is that it can't be bought by the haves to manipulate for their greedy purposes. Music has a truth within it, which is the reason for it's ability to grab onto the soul and inspire to do great things!
I have been talking about starting my own small business for so long, that it was starting to feel like that’s actually what I do....”talk about it”. I finally received the funds I need and signed a three year lease on a space in a shopping plaza.... ME!!!!!.... owning a business in one of dem’ dere’ shopping plazas, that I always drive by and get my hair cut and by a burger, or a D.Q..... I have to say...it was an out-of-body experience driving down to the owners office and signing that lease. I still feel like I’m dreaming. I can only image what I will feel like when I see construction going on and watch this creation come to life. It is all exciting and all scary at the same time!
The journey that has led me to this point is one of exploration, asking questions, and getting a HELL of a lot of wonderful, experienced people to help me find my way through the weeds and help me find the path. I have been creating a L-O-N-G list of these people to thank for walking me here, to where I am now. In the end, I realize that I have done some things that I look back on and am amazed! Who is that man behind that curtain?.... ME, that’s who!
Almost one year ago, in August of 2009, I enrolled in a Community College course, “How to Start a Small Business”, which was a six week course of a lot of information and a general teaching of how to start and a lot of resources to start investigating. It was a great way to begin my journey. Although I had already formulated my business idea before the course began, it made me aware that I have committed myself to this journey...I spent some money and placed my first baby-step forward. The biggest thing I learned from the course was how only through my passion and persistence to work through any and all obstacles, would this ever become a reality. Many a day over the last year, I have woken in the middle of the night, wondering “what in the hell am I thinking?... this isn’t something that I WOULD DO!!!”. Each and every time I have said that to myself, in a manner of speaking, I slap myself in the face to awake from that self doubting nightmare. It’s the same nightmare I have been waking from all of my life, but NO MORE! NO MORE will I listen to that self doubting inner voice that has held me back for over 50 years! At the age of 58, as I look back at many things I have accomplished, many of them in just the last decade or so, I come to a realization that I can do achieve a goal, IF, and ONLY IF, it is a true passion and ONLY IF I don’t stop moving toward the goal. Obstacles are only learning experiences and things to work out, work around and move aside, and most importantly....remember and learn from.
There is so much more to do to make this dream real and even more importantly, successful, and I know there will be many more mistakes and lessons learned, but I will always remember to push the negativity aside, look for a solution and keep moving forward. The first payback will be seeing my goals become real. The ongoing payback will be proving that I was correct in thinking that I can do great things. The most important payback will be waking up each day and looking forward to doing something that I absolutely love! Everything beyond that is all gravy!
There is a beginning of another new way the Baby Boomer Generation is changing what “retirement” will mean in the future occurring. This is resulting out of two driving forces, of which one is how the past decades of greed of the rich and powerful have destroyed what used to be thought of as retirement. The other is once again, just a natural result of the sheer size of this generation of people who were born between 1946 and 1964. Retirement is defined as, “the period of one’s life after leaving one’s job and ceasing to work”.
The generations previous to the Baby Boomers, “The Greatest Generation” was the first to actually do this. Previous to the industrial age, there really was no retirement, nor a need to do so, as the life expectancy was not long enough to know what that would have meant anyway. So, as the parents of the Boomers worked long hours of hard labor through their lives, they were able to save money to stop working the job they had for most of their lives and “enjoy” their elder years. The word, “enjoy” here is relative, as health issues, often brought on by a complete stopping of all activity and thought, deeply affected the amount of enjoyment realized by most. Now the Baby Boomers, who saw and just naturally thought this was what retirement meant and also knew that they would be forced to retire at a certain age, realized they must save for this part of their lives at some point. This is where the greed that took advantage of these life long savings comes to bear, followed by the realization that these life long savings were gone.
Once again, it’s time to be innovative and reinvent. Boomers are now changing what retirement means, which is to find what your best talents, put them to work, combined with your true passion and continue to work as long as your body and mind will allow. There is no need to quit working, in fact, stopping all work will remove one’s purpose and thus reason to live a longer and more purposeful life. My mother always said, “When you make yourself go to work, you stay healthy. When you take off is when you get sick”. How true that has become.
Since losing my corporate job of over 22 years in 2008, I have been searching for what I want to do when I grow up...or for the rest of my life. I knew it had to be something that I wanted to go do every day and that it had to have something to do with some of my best talents. My strongest passion has always been music, whether it was playing it or listening to it. Music is an expression of spirit and a language of the human species. It has much more of a profound affect on our lives than we can imagine, as much as the environment and planet we live on. It influences our behavior on a daily basis, even when we are not aware of it, through media and our surroundings.
Some of my other best passions involve behaviors between people. During those 22 corporate working years, I observed and learned how teams work together, how others manage or do not manage teams and how upper management disconnects from behaviors and talents of its core work force. There is a disconnect of how to get the best abilities from its corporate workers, so much so that a completely new industry grew out of the last 20 years. Many who were dissatisfied with the corporate environment found that they could go to these large businesses and provide some structure in how people behave with one another, with a method that corporate executives could buy into. Basically, this “Coaching” business was created out of the fact that the corporate business world totally lost its capability of how to understand how to treat people!
One of the fundamentals of human behavior is interacting with another person in a way that will allow cooperation with each other. When one chooses to work alone, that person quickly discovers the limits of their capabilities and realizes that they need someone else’s help to accomplish certain goals. The best way to enable this cooperation is to promote beneficial behavior among them, in other words, make a friend and they will help you. Large businesses became so deeply focused on the prime directive of profit and growth that they became dysfunctional in this key fundamental knowledge of how people work together as teams. This new Coaching industry was welcomed into the corporate world as a methodology of correcting this. (I find this completely amazing that large groups of people forget how to behave to others when they enter that corporate world, and become someone different than they are in their personal lives!)
This brings me back to another of my passions, and that is to make every member of a team or of any effort, feel that they are valued and have something to contribute to any goal. I knew that this is another passion that I must bring to my new business venture.
The third passion I have been developing over that last 20 years is innovative thinking. I found my corporate years very frustrating because, in spite of the fact that I worked in an area that was born from innovation, technology, my environment did not promote it. The corporate world has been throwing the word “innovation” around for the last 10 years, but most did not seem to really understand what it meant. The other aspect was really back to the lack of effort to find what employees do best, and matching their job with those abilities. One cannot assign a person to suddenly be “innovative”, as this is actually “creativity” and comes from a person who possesses a heightened ability of the part of the human brain that “creates”.
These passions, that have taken my last 50 years to develop and realize, will be absolutely key to the success of my own business. The ongoing need to focus my efforts on these key aspects must be centered as often as possible, as the day to day of business will tend to cloud this focus. This is where the love of what you are doing works for you. The enjoyment of doing something you love to do, always grounds you, to naturally make you do whatever it takes to keep that focus for success.
As the Boomers enter this latter phase of life and struggle through the transition of it, we may realize that the remedies for all the predicted health, social and ecological issues of the Baby Boomer Generation growing old, may just be the realization that we must continue to work forever for monetary reasons as well as providing the best “quality of life”.
I just happened upon this video narrated by Carl Sagan. I always loved to watch anything Carl Sagan every spoke about, as no one ever quite put science and humankind's relationship to the Universe in better words.
This video puts life as we know it very much in perspective. We all tend to think of the world and life as they evolve, surround and effect us, in our small moments in time.
In his perfect words, Carl Sagan puts everything we humans have ever known all in "perfect perspective".
I lost my Dad on December 21, 1989 and I think about, and talk about him more as the years go by. It seems like the early hurt goes away, but the yearning to talk to or see someone you lose, increases as time goes by. My Dad was the life force and humor of our family. I don’t mean to say he was perfect...none of us can say that! He was flawed and I was quick to find those flaws when I was younger. I basically got along with my Dad, but I often thought how I would be a better father than he was. I did do things differently, but that didn’t make me a more perfect father...just a differently flawed father.
As for a legacy of humor, that is what my Dad gave us. He rarely laughed at things he did. In fact, most times you couldn’t tell if he was getting angry that we were all laughing at something he did or not. The stories are endless. I remember a moment when the whole family spent a New Year’s Eve weekend in an area ski resort, Seven Springs, where I played for many years in one of the first bands I was ever in. The whole family was staying in a fantastic chalet and we were all gathered in the living room area, watching the skiers on the mountain come down the hill in the night, and we were all having a great time. This also was where Mom and Dad were going to sleep, on the couch that folded out into a bed. Well, it was time for Dad to go to bed and he couldn’t care less that we were still all lying around and carrying on, making noise. When it time for him to sleep, that was what he was going to do. He got into the bed with his pajamas and his black dress socks, which was funny enough, but as we turned to look at him, already beginning to laugh at the black socks, we went into hysterics when we saw that the bottoms of his socks were completely torn to shreds. There were only a few strings of thread holding together on the bottom of those socks. Well, we howled with laughter to the point of tears. None of this commotion bothered him in any way. He was the consummate straight man and off to sleep-vile he went. These are the little moments of laughter and life that my Dad brought to the family. They are moments that will last all of our lives. I had heard of so many more stories of him from before I was even born, of tales where he would dress up like a ghost and stand in the woods near the neighbor houses, howling like a banshee, until the frightened trick and treaters began throwing stones at him and he had to run for his life! The go on and on.
I know I have some of that within me, but there will never be another “Big Dave”! He was one of a kind and we all remind ourselves of the stories and laugh and enjoy his legacy to us, every day.
I also never hugged or said the words, “I love you” to him. I really regret that! We just never talked openly like that in my family. I make sure I say if often in my family. I even recently started forcing myself to hug my wife’s father. I have only shook his hand for hello and good-bye for the last 15 years. I recently just made my mind up to hug him instead, as I do to the rest of the family. I found, to my surprise, that he seemed to be waiting for it!
So this father’s day, if you are blessed enough to still have your father, make sure you show him and say the things that he wants to hear. Don't wait for someday, when it may be too late. Make yourself do it this Father’s Day. Once you do, it will be easy to continue from that point on. Give him a huge hug! It will be his best gift.
Video from http://www.paulmccartney.com "Up and Coming Tour"
I may have to break my long time rule of not going to concerts at large venues ever again. It was announced yesterday, June 3, 2010, that the entertainer who would perform for the opening of the new Consol Energy Center, which is the new home of the Pittsburgh Penguins Hockey Team, will be non other than Sir Paul McCartney! The show will be on August 18, 2010. McCartney is 67 years young and going stronger than ever, displayed at his grand concert in New York City performed over three nights as the inaugural concert at New York City's Citi Field, 17, 18 and 21 July 2009.
Paul McCartney was last in Pittsburgh Feb. 4 and 5, 1990, at what was then the Civic Arena. He had appeared with The Beatles at the same venue on Sept. 14, 1964. Needless to say, seeing one of the Beatles perform live is not something that occurs many times in a lifetime. As a Baby Boomer who was about 10 when The Beatles took the US by storm in the early sixties and then inspired by their music to become a rock musician at 17, in 1969, the year of Woodstock and release of “Abby Road” and the beginning of the end of the greatest rock band ever, I think I need to find a way to get to this performance.
McCartney’s performances in New York City this year illustrated how he is as good as ever. He played many of The Beatles, Wings, and solo works that were as good as they get. The older I get, after over 40 years of playing as a professional musician, the more I appreciate and realize how amazing the songs written by the Fab Four were, as they endure and stand the test of time. We see the newest artists redo their classics again and again and every new generation finds the Beatles music fascinating. Over and over, I hear stories of young kids playing classic Beatles songs and becoming avid fans.
There is no doubt that The Beatles changed the world and have continued to do so for over 50 years. The idea that one of the most successful musicians of our times is coming to perform in the newest entertainment venue in Pittsburgh, this year, decrees to be a part of this in my lifetime. Now the problem is, will I even be able to get a ticket?
Be sure to check out a website that I just came across with the most Beatles information, rare early music, out takes, interviews and rare background detail on each recording. Check it out at The Beatles Rarity
When Paul McCartney performs Aug. 18 at the Consol Energy Center, Carl Grefenstette hopes to be there for two reasons:
1. The owner of Pittsburgh Guitars in the South Side is a diehard Beatles fans.
2. The ex-Beatle will be playing a guitar Grefenstette once owned.
"It's a 1960 Les Paul, left-handed guitar, and it came from here," he says.
Grefenstette sold the guitar to Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick 25 years ago. The late Linda McCartney bought if from Nielsen a few years later for her husband.
Art Linkletter was known to Baby Boomers mostly for his TV show, “Art Linkletter's House Party”, which was on CBS for 25 years. The most popular segment was “Kids say the darnedest things”, where Art interviewed children of all walks of life and was able to get the most unusual and funny answers from them. Art was an innovator in Television and started many of the ideas used throughout TV to this day.
Art lived to the age of 97 and died on May 26, 2010. He hoped to live to the age of 100 and was very healthy most of those 97 years. Here is a fantastic interview of Art by Growing Bolder Radio Program from 2006 and shows how incredibly quick minded and healthy he was even four years ago. Art was an incredibly talented and intelligent person of our times.
Check out this audio clip from the Growing Bolder Radio Program and be sure to check out all the other really interesting interviews from GrowingBolder.com. They have just announced that their television program, Growing Bolder TV, has gone national to PBS stations. Check their website out to see when they will be playing in your local PBS affiliate and if they are not, ask your PBS station to add them. Growing Bolder is all about aging, but illustrating how age is not a factor in how much and what people do to contribute to society. It’s not growing older it’s Growing Bolder! Check out their new website for all the latest information: http://boldermediagroup.com/gbtvshow/
Most of us Baby Boomers have been living a path of “what do you want to be when you grow up”? Our parents, part of the Greatest Generation, lived through the Great Depression when there never was a need to ask this question. They quit school and got any job they could to all pitch in and help the family survive. When they became adults, World War II impacted their lives. As young adults, there was no question again as to what they would be doing. They would be involved in a World War, whether they went to war or helped at home. As the country was young and thrown into a global war, everyone had to do whatever they could to help the country ramp up for war. So, most of our parents lived the first two or three decades of their lives being forced to do whatever was required for survival.
When World War II ended, there was such a feeling of pride and glory of defeating the evils of the world. This combined with the war’s need for industry to discover new methods of production now enabled the country to have its moment of economic growth that it had never known before. Think about the feeling of our parent’s generation going through an economic disaster, then a global war, getting through all of that with a huge feeling of pride and success! Now, it was time to celebrate and enjoy the fruits of their labor and sacrifice. This success was their legacy to their children, the Baby Boomers. This beginning of growth and pride of the United States of America brought jobs, new homes, better wages and babies.
Baby Boomers were born to a generation of people who came to the United States for freedom and opportunity and after World War II, and who began to realize these dreams. As children, now receiving the benefits of this American prosperity, Boomers didn’t need to be rich to feel rich and happy. Our world was made of television, toys, better education opportunities, even college and a generation that did not possess a fear of everything going away. Our’s was the age of the birth of “middle class”. Baby Boomers have never had the fear of failure of this country. As an obvious side note, there is never a time when life is prosperous for everyone, nor did every person have a glorious time as a Baby Boomer. That being said, the majority of Boomers lived in a time when their parents began seeing this as the great country they had always hoped it could be and they wanted their children to never have that fear in them. Boomers have not, until possibly the last few years, as we have seen and felt our retirement savings melt away during our economic crisis, felt that same fear.
Now that Baby Boomers are in an age of maturity and realizing their mortality, they are looking at life with perhaps, for the first time, the kind of fear that our parents felt when they were young. Boomers now have felt the fear of "how do we survive, especially with longer life expectancies?" The vision of living a life of retirement of the same model as their parents, Boomers wonder if their income during retirement will be enough. Due to the crisis of 2008, retirement is taking on a completely different aspect.
The generation that was asked, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” can find the key to the new retirement model by finally answering this question. As countless people in our country are all facing hard economic times, rather than looking at what retirement was “supposed” be, they need to find what they have always wanted to do, but never did as they chose careers based on amount of jobs and salaries, instead of pursuing their dreams as entrepreneurs, as their parents and grandparents did when they came to this country. When Boomers graduated from high school in the 1960’s, they were given advise on what jobs would be available and how much they paid. They were not asked, “what do you want to do” or “what can you do well”? We began our migration to living life as a means to and end, rather than look for how to use our true passions for our career choices.
When you do something you love and are good at, success and income become by-products and there is not the same reason to stop doing it and retire. The Baby Boomer Generation looked at retirement as an end of doing something that provided things and security. These career choices were most likely something that we looked forward to retiring from, as our reward for doing something we didn’t like doing most of our lives.
Now is the time for Boomers to get it right, find what they love and have a talent or expert knowledge of and then find a way to do it and earn some income from it. Income is no longer the focus, but a side effect that will provide for that “non-retirement, retirement”.
I have finally reached that age when I no longer have either of the people who brought me into this world. That really makes me realize that I am indeed older than I thought. I often think of my dad, who passed away 21 years ago, as I find myself so much like him. My mom lived a relatively healthy life for those years since, even though she lost her life time partner. I don’t know how she did it!
At least it was a good, happy life until the last three years of her life, when she slipped into the living nightmare of Alzheimer’s Disease. We all started seeing signs of Dementia but as most families do, dismissed most of her actions as just old age. After all, she was 89 years old, and she still had good physical health, had regular doctor appointments and was only on medication for high blood pressure and a supplement for good bone health. Even her high blood pressure only began in the last couple years of her life. She never had a serious health issues, could see without glasses most of her life, with the exception of reading since the age of 50, which is normal. In her last decade, she had issues hearing and could never quite get used to finding a hearing aid that worked as well as she wanted.
As mom became more fearful of driving and living in her long time home that she and my dad bought when they first married, she willing wanted to make changes such as selling her home and stopping driving. These weren’t really issues that we had to argue with her about. She didn’t want to drive when she began fearing losing control or not seeing as well. She wanted to sell her house when she realized that it was becoming too much for her to keep up with cleaning and repairing. She fortunately found an opening in a newly built retirement home that was in her community and rent was determined by income, so her monthly rent was affordable to her. We all felt better that she was in a secure environment and she made many new friends as well.
Then when she hit 89, we saw her begin to withdraw from some of the friends at the retirement residence. We saw just little signs of her showing her age, even though she still kept walking on a treadmill every day and often sat with and took care of others who had bad health and no other family to be with them. Mom would often deliver daily newspapers to many and keep them company.
Then the dreaded fall. It was only in a carpeted hallway and was just one of those things, but she broke her hip. As many people have often observed, something about the anesthetic from the surgery seemed to flip a switch and she began a relatively quick short term memory loss. After some time passed and all pain medications were stopped, she did very well with her recovery of the broken hip and did well in physical therapy. Still, something had changed as she often slipped into forgetfulness of many small things. She repeated things often. Still, we all took into account her hearing loss and recovery process and age and thought that this was probably all normal. Well, it wasn’t!
The real first sign of what was happening to her brain was that she fell again. She did not get hurt this time, but went back to physical therapy, during which it was observed that her mind was probably affecting her physical walking. Her muscles were forgetting how to walk. It went downhill from there. Between my sister and myself, we tried to have her live with us for quite a while, as we continued paying rent for her apartment as we hoped she would recover and be able to live there again. This unfortunately never happened.
As her mental condition became worse it finally became apparent that she now needed 24 hour professional care and we moved her to a nursing home. This was something that we never wanted to do, and bothered us daily, but we faced that she needed care that we could not do for her. The partially good thing about her memory loss was that time was a confusing thing to her, as it was both never ending and yet standing still. We hoped and prayed that most of her time in the nursing home wasn't apparent to her as every moment was the same as the next moment. She was known as one of the most loved patients at the home who always wanted to make everyone else happy, although when we visited her, she would mostly unload the troubles of her world and mind on us, most likely as she felt comfortable enough to not hold those thoughts in. It was always hard to visit her there and harder to leave, not knowing how long this would last. Her physical condition remained fairly healthy, which during Alzheimer’s, only makes the nightmare last longer for the victim.
During this last winter, due to many snowy days making it difficult for us to get there, we missed a couple of weeks visiting her. In January of 2010, when we finally visited her, she looked like she had taken a turn for the worse. The staff also told us the same about her condition. She wanted to stay in bed most of the day and seemed much weaker. We happened to visit her on January 24, 2010, on Sunday and she was weak and in her bed. She could hardly speak but seemed to snap out of it for a while because she was so happy to see us. It seemed as if she was waiting to see us that last time.
When we left, I knew it would be a matter of a short amount of time for her to last, but I didn’t think it would happen as fast as it did. That night, January 25, at about 3:30 AM, we received a call from the home. The nurse said in a very quiet voice, “I sorry to let you know that Hannah passed away a few moments ago”. Although I thought it may happen soon, at that moment, it shocked me. I called a local funeral home and hoped they would guide me through what I needed to do. I hung up the phone and laid in bed thinking of the life I had as a young boy, living with my parents in our small home. I thought about how I didn’t have a care in the world, while they made all the difficult decisions of life that parents do. I realized that both of my parents were gone from this world and felt a deep emptiness inside that I had never felt before. I was always closer to my father and my mom seemed to always be closer to my older brother, but now that she is gone, I know she did all that she could to give me the mind, heart and emotional soul that I possess. Who I am and how I am in this world, is because they had an unexpected surprise one day of finding out that they were having another baby, ten years after their, what they thought, was their last child. They gave me the happiness of a 1950’s, Baby Boomer, middle income life. I was blessed to have been born where I was, and to whom I was from. I had the life of a child of the seemingly innocent 1950’s, of television, suburbia life, neighborhood friends, baseball, toys and freedom to be happy as a child should.
This Mother’s Day will mean probably more to me than any other, as I face the first time that I know.... I no longer have a mother!
I wished I could place my hand on my children’s hearts and transfer the knowledge of what it feels like to no longer have your parents, not to make them sad, but to awaken to how blessed they are right now, to NOT have that feeling.
Happy Mother’s Day to everyone. Give them your time more than anything and perhaps one of the biggest hugs you have given them for a long time. It will be among their greatest gifts and memories!
Happy Mother’s Day Mom! I pray that you feel nothing but complete happiness every second of time, now that you are released from the pains of your last years.
