Revival of my Baby Boomer Blog

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!

Peace & Love,

David

That's all I can stanz, cause I can't stanz no more!

Ack...Ack...Ack...Ack....Ack....

So today, December 8, 2009 would have been the 115th birthday of E. C. Segar, the creator of the cartoon Popeye. 


Elzie Crisler Segar (December 8, 1894 – October 13, 1938) was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of Popeye, a character who first appeared in 1929 in his newspaper comic strip Thimble Theatre. - Wikipedia.


To Baby Boomers, Popeye was the one-eye'd, huge forearmed cartoon sailor who had a strange relationship to a baby named Sweet Pea, and a girlfriend, Olive Oyl, who supposedly was not the mother of Swee' Pea and an antagonistic rivalry with Bluto. Also, there was Pappy, Popeye's dad or grandfather...who knows? Lastly, there was Wimpy, the hamburger chasing character who usually seemed innocent but mostly just got in the way for one reason or another.


Boomers loved Popeye, in those days of after school cartoons and Three Stooges. There wasn't much on TV, which only 3 channels that signed off around midnight or 1:00 am until about 6 in the morning. I suppose that was really better because it made all of us look for other avenues for entertainment, such as playing outside, getting a bit of fresh air and exercise...something lacking for today's youth, unless scheduled and paid for.


Popeye taught us, in a strange way, about right and wrong and how to handle a bully...by eating your spinach. Boy, I sure wished that worked when I was young. There was alwasys a neighborhood bully around that we would have liked to eat some spinach'k and beat the heck out of.


Check this old Max and Dave Fleischer short and pay attention to all the noises and sound effects. I still think they are hilarious!



Popeye had quite an unusual speech defect, where he liked to add a 'k to the end of many of his words, if you could hear them, as he usually mumbled most of the time. His arch enemy was Bluto, who just had to have Olive Oyl for himself and had to get rid of Popeye to make that happen. Of course, he had to beat the hell out of Popeye every time until somehow, Popeye managed to have a huge can of spinach, hidden in his shirt, or someone else tossed him a can. Did you ever try to eat spinish without preparing it in some way? It's not something you'd want to do, but we probably would have, if we thought we could sudden develop the strenth of Superman.


So, check out some Popeye on Youtube and eat your veggies!

Baby Boomers - This has been a week of awareness of our mortality

Three cultural icons of our Baby Boomer Generation passed away this week and I will remember this week as a transition into increased awareness of the phases throughout our lives.


Edward Leo Peter "Ed" McMahon, Jr.
(March 6, 1923 – June 23, 2009)


Farrah Fawcett
(February 2, 1947 – June 25, 2009)


Michael Joseph Jackson
(August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)

Youth has a natural protection within it’s mind of foreverness. When you’re young, you have absolutely no idea of what forever means, and as we grow older, we realize that we will actually never know what forever means, but we grow very aware that we are never going to gain that knowledge! We all can remember when we were very young, when all we wanted to do was grow up, mostly so that we can make our own decisions. This really only enters our minds when we have been told by our parents to do something that we didn’t want to do. Some of us may actually experience knowledge of a family member or even a young friend dying, but we still will not realize the concept of death. Each day lasts forever as we are only in the moment of whatever toy or game we may be playing.

NOTE - (As a side note here, I have to say that I am obviously speaking from the perspective of having a happy youth. I have no way of knowing the horrors that some children all over the world experience of a life of hunger or war. These children lose their childhood innocence immediately as they struggle only to survive the day)

We then go through some various phases of life, searching for ourselves, combined with what our elders have told us and the experiences we hopefully learn from. Personally speaking, from my experiences, I look at life in segments of decades in relation to how our lives change.

• 20’s - These are the times of subtle change as we seem to slide from being cared for to rebelling direction in order to make our own choices. These are the years of showing ourselves that we have a better way...we will correct the mistakes we observed from all the years previous. These are actually the years when we make the most mistakes and yet, learn the most from them. We may not be aware of this or put corrections into action, but we retain these mistakes and they help us later.

• 30’s - I think of this as real mid-life, not physically or in lifespan, but in that we more or less, keep moving forward, as a ship at sea with no particular destination...working on whatever directions and paths we started in the previous decade. We don’t make a lot of big changes here. We partly think we made the correct choices or at least the changes we have to live with. I also lived through the most physical pain in my 30’s, most likely from the mistakes of foolishness of the previous years.

• 40’s - The age of enlightenment! This is still not awareness of mortality, but more so that it’s time to get serious about correcting the mistakes and pains of our lives. It is usually the time that both male and female go through what has been called, “the change”. For men, that has been labeled as going nuts and trying to be youthful. I personally think that the people who use this phrase are jealous of those who wake up, shape up and begin correcting their lives. We also begin to be more aware of loss of a parent or perhaps a friend of similar age, which adds to our thoughts of making changes that would lead us to that same end. We start to think about our careers and bad choices. We think we should eat healthier and exercise, especially if we have neglected those for so long. I made huge changes during this decade. After losing my father who died of a sudden heart attack, was a life time smoker and over-weight, I seriously started eating healthy, started exercising and lost nearly 100 pounds and never looked better, nor felt better in my whole life! This feeling good also made me question my marriage and futile efforts to wait for it’s problems to go away. I made the biggest, life impacting decisions of my life during my fourth decade.
  

• 50’s - As I am currently in this decade, I do not have the full perspective of it’s life effect, but I am on the ending years of it, so I do have some perspective. This has been a phase of re-thinking my career choices and realization that I have worked for nearly 22 years doing something with a pure purpose of providing for my family’s income and standard of living. This was not a bad thing, as it was a good job that allowed my family to live a middle income lifestyle...not rich, but not poor. I struggled to find ways to enable this job fulfill some purpose to my happiness and legacy, and only hit constant blockage, partly due to my own inadequacy and lack of direction and care of those who love life in a corporation. I ultimately found that I was just a square peg in a round hole environment. I began to search for what I could do for a living that would also feed my inner happiness. Many times throughout my life, I found that life or divine purpose made decisions for me. I am a profound advocate of “everything happens for a reason”. The hard part is that it may take years to discover that reason...but as I have told so many.... you WILL discover it!

I will obviously continue this effort as I gain the experience of life, but I have gained some insight as to what people in their next possible four decades may realize. I have seen and heard my mother, who is now 91 and living in a nursing home, suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease....tell me often, “David...you don’t know what it’s like to be.....(fill in the age)!” and I think I am starting to “understand her.” This week was a definite spike in this learning!

There are some CEO execs who "Get It"!!!!

I just had to post this story from CBS's Sunday Morning because in these record breaking economic times, there are actually executives who head companies in this world who understand what is going on and realize that EVERY person in any company share not only the good times, but the bad times as well and that the majority of corporations who follow the selfish, take care of ourselves because we are special... will eventually end up sinking their own boat.

BRAVO to the few CEO's who "GET IT" !!!

HELLO 2009!!!

Hello 2009!!!

I think most of us are looking to 2009 to be a turnaround in a new positive direction. Honestly, I feel like the country has practically hit a point where it will naturally begin a pendulum swing in the other direction. This is not something that will flip on like a light switch. This is the beginning of reaching an end point of a long journey and then deciding to go back in the other direction. It’s the first baby steps in the opposite direction. This decade has been one of incredible events that have led to all of the hardships that we are all well aware of. There is no doubt that the amount of Baby Boomers have made a direct impact on all of this, just from sheer numbers. I am placing no blame on any of us, but only saying that if you have a huge number of people of a particular demographic, anything that happens to everyone will greatly be influenced by that largest group. I, for one, am looking to 2009 with HOPE! I am also a practical thinker and always aware that bad things can occur at any time and I am not naive enough to think that 2009 will not have bad things happen, but I rather, am trying to think in a positive way about things such as job loss and new career changes and taking better health choices to strive for a better future.

Let’s all hope that many of the things that we have all faced during 2008 will awake a new effort in us to take better care of ourselves, become more aware of helping others, getting back to basics by buying less useless goods and make better choices by spending our money on things that we really need, saving more and contributing more to charities.

Please have a joyous and healthy New Year and help someone in need whenever you can.

WHAT A YEAR...Good-bye 2008!!!

This year was one for the record books....a year of extreme highs and lows. It was, in some ways, the BEST of times and the WORST of times! We all know the words, we have read them for what seems...forever!!! Personally, I lost my job of 22 years, but I found that to be a good thing as I was unhappy doing what I was doing and I have been given a chance to do what I love with music as a full time career. Our country and the entire world seems to be going down an economical drain, but we can look to 2009 to be a turning point and opportunity for better times as well.

This is how I have chosen to look at 2008...a time of complete change and turning point for all of us.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all a very happy and prosperous New Year! May it be one of health and happiness for all people of the world!!!

How do you want to go out of this world?

It seems that Baby Boomers are reinventing how they want to be remembered after death. We all wonder if we will leave a mark on the world, have meaning to our lives or make the world a better place, but what I am referring to here is the actually memorial service. It certainly can't be said that Boomers aren't innovative! We have changed how our culture behaves while we are alive and now we are changing the long time rituals of the memorial service.

I have always thought it is senseless how cemeteries are filling up beautiful landscapes all over our country. Both my wife and I feel that an area of earth for family or anyone to visit to pay respects is silly. There is no need to visit a physical place to think about someone who has passed on. They are as close as your thoughts, any time you want. We both want to be cremated and perhaps scattered over a favorite place in our lives. I for one, have kidded my family that I want to be on the mantle, still overlooking the family members, reminding them of all the advice I've given them during my life. Seriously, I rather be remembered for the love and fond family memories.

Here is an article of some of the new ways Baby Boomers are thinking of to do with their remains:

More funerals feature special requests from families, deceased

Someone else likes Naps!!!! This is really coooooollll!!!

I found this from my subscription to my RSS reader from 43folders.com.

43folders.com - Guide to Better Napping

I remember both of my grandfathers taking naps during the day. They were from 2 generations previous to the Boomers. I also remember some of the sitcoms from my youth and newspaper comics showing, usually only dads, taking naps...mmmmmm... you now that old stupid saying, "man will work from sun to sun, but woman's work is never done"...

I have often voiced to most people who know me that everyone would probably benefit from taking naps during the day, to catch up on lost sleep during the night and give an extra boost for the afternoon. I don't know how it would work as it would obviously take a LONG time to try to blend that into today's culture, at least in the U.S.

The origin of the word napping seems to be related to stealing, as used in kidnapping, etc. So basically, it means to steal or seize some extra sleep. Here is some info on the origins of the word napping:

World Wide Words

So, I guess there are some companies that are trying out what the current, innovative generation is calling "power napping". Now a days, everything has to have a powerful sounding descriptive word associated to it... ????

But I have long thought about how much of a benefit this might be, mostly as a joke, but then again, there seems to be some serious benefits that may be associated.

In any case.... now that I'm not in a corporate environment, I seriously am going to investigateeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ..........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Some amazing things human beings can build!

This link is to a site called Zuza Fun that has pictures of the most amazing things that humans create.

http://www.zuzafun.com/3-human-wonders-worth-seeing

Here's to the Courageous Explorers of the World!

I was reading an article posted on a friend's blog (http://adamtina.com/2008/04/18/varanasi/ - you must read this full article... she has a great command of descriptive language! ) about a trip to Varanasi, India and it struck me how incredibly different we all are!!! In our U.S. suburban lives of our Baby Boomer Generation, we were born into our environment much the same as anyone else in this world and it becomes part of us. We are comfortable in what we have known most of our lives. It has always surprised me how much even driving a few miles to another area close to my home town shows culture changes. Neighborhoods in our country have their own cultures and we usually feel out of place, at least least until we are there for a few days. As we drive through these "other places" (even though only miles from our homes) we begin to feel that comfort and stress leaving us as we near our own homes... ah.... yes... "there's no place like home"!

I have even been amazed by friends who have permanently moved out of our local area of where they were born... "how can they do that?", I would think to myself! I lived most of my life in the town I where I was born, until I underwent a life changing event of divorce. I still don't know how I did it to this day! Some things were going on in my life that made me different, as if I was being guided by some outside force. I often though it was the spirit of my father who had passed away just the year before I began this change. Never the less, I did courageous things! It can be done. I met my soul mate and now wife and best friend of 15 years and we made a few physical moves and ended up really less than 20 miles from my city of birth, but at first it was strange...it wasn't home to either of us. You find that you can change and adapt, well at least as long as it's still middle income suburbia, U.S. :-) (I'm not that fearless)

We Boomers in our country have a culture and bountiful blessings beyond the imaginations of millions of people around the world and that is an understatement to be sure! I can not image what it must be like for someone from a resource poor nation to come here and be placed in any of our local shopping malls. They would surely feel as if they had died and gone to heaven for the site of "stuff" we take for granted that is within our grasp.

So I take my hat off to the daring explorers of the world... from the friends who moved to a new job across the U.S. to the two who struck out to Varanasi, India and all the "indiana Jone's" of the world. Without you, we would know nothing, but I really prefer watching you on websites and television instead, from my comfy reclining chair in front of my wide screen television... :-)