It has been quite a while…

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.

Saturday, March 27, 2010 is Earth Hour - will you participate?

There is no doubt that Earth Hour does not get near the publicity that it needs, at least in the U.S. I have not heard any mention of it during the nightly national news, nor have I seen a television advertisement. I really only found out as I belong to the Earth Hour Facebook page.

Show that you care about the planet we all share that we have seen over recent times how easily it can greatly affect our lives. The problem with not caring or not believing in things like global warming is that you have everything to lose if you're wrong and nothing to lose if you change some daily habits, such as changing light bulbs to new green energy efficient ones, recycle more than you used to and think a bit more about how your actions affect our world.

This is greatly celebrated all over the world and is to be actually kicked off in China's Forbidden City in Beijing.

Here are some of the following locations:

• Italy’s Trevi Fountain in Rome and Leaning Tower of Pisa,
• Big Ben and Houses of Parliament in London,
• Edinburgh Castle in Scotland,
• India Gate and Red Fort in Delhi,
• Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe,
• Bosphorous Bridge in Istanbul
• Hohensalzburg Castle in Salzburg, and
• Independence Angel in Mexico City.

The National Parks: America's Best Idea - added to my bucket list

PBS is airing a series called "The National Parks" by Ken Burns beginning on September 27th. You can view some excerpts on pbs.org. I have realized that these parks have been preserved for all of us, the citizens of this country through the efforts of some brave explorers, wealthy benefactors and a few Presidents who thought about the future generations benefits of seeing some large portions of our nation in the state they have been in for thousands of years.

Here is an excerpt from PBS about the series:

"Filmed over the course of more than six years at some of nature's most spectacular locales — from Acadia to Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska — The National Parks: America's Best Idea is nonetheless a story of people: people from every conceivable background — rich and poor; famous and unknown; soldiers and scientists; natives and newcomers; idealists, artists and entrepreneurs; people who were willing to devote themselves to saving some precious portion of the land they loved, and in doing so reminded their fellow citizens of the full meaning of democracy. It is a story full of struggle and conflict, high ideals and crass opportunism, stirring adventure and enduring inspiration - set against the most breathtaking backdrops imaginable." ( source - http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/ )

I realize that visiting some of these amazing natural wonders should have a high priority on my list of "must do's".

June 5th is not FRI, it's WED, World Environment Day

This is not the same as Earth Day. This is a day that started in 1972, as the United Nations established WED to bring the world's attention to our environmental crisis.

The National Holidays Examiner at Examiner.com has a great article about the day's events, including Tweet for Trees, a WED campaign running on Twitter.

You can find all the information on the Examiner's homepage.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

A study has shown that pollution may be actually decreasing the number of males being born. Some women may say that’s a good thing...some may not, but clearly it is a display of the many subtle things that occur from our lack of care about what we do with our garbage, how products are being made with the wrong materials and our government’s lack of insuring that companies are eliminating these pollutants in their products and services.

The article from Riverwired.com:

Is Pollution Creating a World Without Men?

The article gives reference links to wholelifetimes.com and to the data from a team of Scandinavian scientists who did the study of how pollutants are actually decreasing hormones in women that have an affect on their births being either male or female, amoung other side effects.

Video from The Pickens Plan Website about Sweetwater, Texas

This is a video about the town of Sweetwater, Texas and how the little town that was pretty much abandoned by most of its people years ago and is now being revitalized because of the jobs that have become available in the Wind Energy Industry. The town’s work force is now 20% from the Wind Industry. Sweetwater is being looked at as a model of how many more similar towns across our country can benefit from the surge of new energy businesses.

If you think of the list of benefits of using wind as a large part of our energy, it is larger than you may first think. First, there is the jobs and economical benefits. The new industry will create thousands of needed jobs to our country. It also gives families who have been struggling for decades as farmers a new source of income by being paid by the wind industry to use their land.

Next there is the fact that as we need less and less oil from the Middle East and other areas around the world, there will less need to become involved in the conflicts that occur in those areas.... perhaps we will not have to jump into wars that are based on oil! I am not saying that we should close ourselves to the global economy, but that we should NEVER depend on any ONE source or country for our needs. We all know that we shouldn't save our money or invest in only one source don’t we? Diversify is what we are all told. This is the way our country needs to think about the global economy as well. If we are able to become less dependent on other countries for our needs, it will make them MORE dependent our us as well, which will benefit our economy.

Lastly, we will finally START putting our words into actions to put a stop to our planet's global warming and STOP thinking about only ourselves and our current times. We all know that it is our job to leave a better world for our children... not a worse one! In the article I posted just before this one, the young girl spoke of how we adults are not doing what is needed to give them what we were given. If we bring a child into this world, it is at that moment that we have the responsibility to give that child a better life than was given to us.

The actions that we take NOW, in these times of the beginning of this millennium, will determine how and IF our children and their children will be able to enjoy all the GOOD things that we have had throughout our lives.

Please watch the Pickens Plan video and join the website and do whatever you can to CHANGE the direction that we have been going in....

CLICK HERE JOIN THE PICKENS PLAN

The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes

This may be the most amazing video I have ever seen! To think that this young girl has the wisdom, passion and confidence to speak to the Earth Summit during it's session in 1992, at the age of 12 is amazing in of itself, but the content of what she says is what we ALL need to hear and she says it straight up and in our faces.

Her name is Severn Cullis-Suzuki and she is 29 years old now. Here accomplishments listed in Wikipedia are amazing and she is still crusading for the planet.

This is a perfect wake up for all of us as the topic of global warming and the news media and politicians talking on a daily basis about our environment. I don't think anyone could put in better words that Severn did 16 years ago.

It is time for a NEW energy plan action!

View my page on PickensPlan


Who knew??? An oil man actually taking action to push the U.S. toward a new energy source... even if it's for the purpose of making more millions...it is the right direction. This is a action to use social networking on the internet to gather people toward a common goal of taking action to use wind energy to get the U.S. off dependancy of foreign oil. This is better than the wasteful effort to increase more U.S. off shore oil rights, which in the end, only keeps us all dependent on this one energy source. We must diversify.

Check the site out, sign up as a member and read what we can each do to make this the decade and beginning of a century that is looked back on as when we saved our planet!

Here is a link to an article from CNN Oil billionaire Pickens puts his money on wind power

Going Green.....

There is more exciting news all the time about new innovative ideas to change how we all use energy and effect our planet. It just goes to show that so many things can be done to make our environment better for us and our children, but it just seems so hard to get things going into our everyday lives! It does seems that we are finally moving on this as companies see the value in selling green items. I do feel that although the oil and gasoline crisis at the pump is crazy and we all wonder why things aren't being done to stop or slow it down, this is really making us all take a serious look at changing how we think. Sometimes it takes something to hit us all hard for us to realize that we need to find better ways.

Here is a great site with a lot of information and other site links about going Green. There is some great news from Toyota on new directions for our cars using hydrogen!

Toyota FCHV-adv: improved hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle