tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-215332732024-09-23T03:28:03.611-07:0060's NowAs the '60s generation ages--looking back, looking forward, looking around...Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger236125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-9598911378731441512024-01-26T23:04:00.000-08:002024-01-26T23:04:14.703-08:00Keep This BlogThis is one of my Lost Blogs, even as blogworld becomes the land of the lost. But there's a lot of good stuff here, and I want to keep it alive. So I'm posting this just so Blogger doesn't eliminate it for non-use. It apparently is being used, judging from the hundreds to many hundreds of hits (though they may all be bots, what do I know.) But mostly, I intend to use its Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-74239718325144305982018-06-30T02:13:00.003-07:002018-06-30T02:13:50.553-07:00Turning 72: I Dwell in PossibilityThis blog hasn't been active in awhile, but I did post on significant birthdays here: turning 60 and turning 65. Now I've gone past the 60s. So although I've posted this on my more active blog (Captain Future's Dreaming Up Daily), I thought I'd add this "turning 72" piece here, since it relates to the others.
It was a pretty good 72nd year. No one close to me died, or came downUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-19555261313847288092015-11-02T14:40:00.001-08:002015-11-02T14:41:12.516-08:00Remembering John Lindsay
New York Magazine's website has an article celebrating 50 years since John Lindsay was elected mayor of New York City. It briefly describes what made him different and memorable, backed up by some testimonials from now famous or influential people who worked on his campaigns or mayor's office.
I met or at least heard John Lindsay when he was a member of the US House of Representatives, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-51359499980041052832015-10-20T23:32:00.000-07:002015-10-30T22:02:29.869-07:00Washington Sticking It To Seniors (With Surprising Update)
This hits home, literally. The recent announcements from Social Security and Medicare raise multiple issues, but the very local bottom line amounts to what for me is a hefty cost, as my medical insurance monthly rate will increase by 50%.
As per stories like this one in the Washington Post, Social Security announced there will be no cost of living increase in payments next year, becauseUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-31852849525993109492015-03-29T01:03:00.000-07:002015-03-29T01:03:10.360-07:00The Year That Was, The Year That Is
They are called the 60s, a single ten year lump to praise or blame. But those of us who lived through them know that each year of that decade was different, had its own shapes and smells, and each was filled with momentous events sufficient for a decade, so the 60s were as crammed and as various as a century.
Those of us who were young then were a big part of those events--as Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-11749638490302139572015-02-15T21:48:00.000-08:002015-02-15T21:48:37.546-08:00Appreciate
Paul McCartney takes the subversive power of rock and roll into the post-human future, but with a poignancy at the end that speaks for all human music. Watch it, you'll appreciate.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-92214400781416128372014-08-25T03:37:00.001-07:002014-08-25T03:37:30.498-07:00The Flame Still Burns
A little inspiration for boomers from the 1998 film "Still Crazy:" one of the two great songs in a movie about 70s rockers reuniting a couple of decades later. This isn't the best picture but the sound is pretty good.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-78287964684313760322014-07-12T00:43:00.000-07:002014-07-12T00:58:11.032-07:00Aging, Forgetting and Remembering: The Insistence of Memory
In The Nostalgia Factory (Yale), history of psychology professor Douwe Draaima deals with both aspects of memory in the aging mind: the forgetting, and the remembering.
He is reassuring on the forgetting. After reviewing various memory techniques (most of dubious value) he writes: “However active your lifestyle, however varied your existence, your memory will gradually decline with age. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-66540789348545461062014-04-18T15:41:00.000-07:002014-04-18T15:42:10.743-07:00A Smaller, Deeper World
The recent deaths of writers Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Peter Matthiessen bring home a truth about those of us in our 60s now: our world is getting smaller.
The deaths of our near contemporaries is always sobering, and they represent a loss even if they are people we used to know and haven't even thought about for years. There were also two such deaths in my life this past week (orUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-15417073290595749662014-02-21T23:48:00.000-08:002015-02-15T21:59:41.143-08:00The Miracle of '64
There was so much hype for so long about the 50th anniversary of the Beatles first trip to America and first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, that I missed the actual anniversary days. The first Sullivan show was February 9, 1964.
Though I saw that Sullivan show and liked them well enough, I personally didn't have my Beatles satori moment until 1965, when I sat in a near-empty movie Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-36040251768791526452014-02-16T21:05:00.001-08:002014-02-16T21:05:28.603-08:00Our Icons and Their StoriesIn the 1960s it was becoming clear that pop culture was becoming American culture. By now that seems perfectly normal. The media covers pop music and movie stars as our royalty, television shows and movies like the latest artistic and cultural events. Scholars study Beatles lyrics and Doctor Who scripts. The new myths of gods, goddesses and heroes are the scifi and Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-2647495851367926232013-11-22T23:30:00.000-08:002013-11-23T01:55:15.354-08:00The Day Everything Changed
When President John F. Kennedy was murdered on November 23, 1963, the course of the future changed in the U.S. and around the world. Fifty years later, that's clearer than ever. On that day I felt that the course of my life would change, and fifty years later, with that course nearly run, it is a certainty. It was the day that everything changed for me. My life would perhaps not even Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-15319040250566316212013-09-01T01:52:00.001-07:002013-09-01T02:03:02.948-07:00An Altered State: My March on Washington (50 Years Later)
I was 17 and a Catholic high school student when I participated in what was officially called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. I heard my own beliefs expressed by President Kennedy in his television address that June: “We are confronted primarily by a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.”
In Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-15708908521882528332013-07-08T17:29:00.001-07:002013-07-08T18:30:05.572-07:00 Rooms of Nostalgia
From a report in the New York Times on psychological research into the functions of nostalgia:
Nostalgia has been shown to counteract loneliness, boredom and anxiety. It makes people more generous to strangers and more tolerant of outsiders. Couples feel closer and look happier when they’re sharing nostalgic memories. On cold days, or in cold rooms, people use nostalgia to literally feel Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-88669549647102176482013-06-05T21:03:00.001-07:002013-06-05T21:04:27.156-07:00RFK on The Future
On the 45th anniversary of his assassination, some words on the future, from speeches made at various times and places by Robert F. Kennedy.
"The future is not a gift: it is an achievement. Every generation helps make its own future. This is the essential challenge of the present."
"The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-11023456834537939962013-03-04T01:10:00.003-08:002013-03-04T01:10:53.297-08:00Generations
This is one of the videos now on Youtube from a concert featuring James Taylor and his son, Ben Taylor. The video quality isn't great but the sound is okay, and you certainly get the message. This is the most fun of the ones I saw. Ben's voice is so much like James it's almost scary. But he says he's influenced by his mother, too, who happens to be Carly Simon. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-53969211519606581542013-02-11T15:51:00.002-08:002013-02-11T15:51:39.038-08:00Start Making SenseThrough press secretary Jay Carney, the Obama administration today ruled out raising the eligibility age for Medicare. It was proposed as a deficit-cutting measure.
Ezra Klein has a first take at the reasoning. But he doesn't mention the most obvious argument against it, and it's me. I've been paying into Medicare, not only the tax but direct payments because I am Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-49913446433170445582013-02-05T00:09:00.001-08:002013-02-05T00:09:15.635-08:00Perspective Conventional wisdom--what "everybody" believes--is a tricky thing. When it involves assumptions based on experience, you have to ask, whose experience? Who shares it?
I'm probably not the only early boomer to notice that "everybody" doesn't necessarily include those of us who had different formative experiences in our youth. For instance, there's the perception that every Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-18638031544019200622012-11-05T00:50:00.000-08:002012-11-05T00:55:05.282-08:00A Vote for the Future
Older people often care passionately about the future, even if--and maybe especially if--it is not a future we are likely to share. We care about the future of the children we love, and the young in general. We care about legacy, about the world we will leave behind, and its future.
There are plenty of reasons why older Americans should vote in their own interests to Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-42252437252365886352012-10-22T00:18:00.001-07:002012-10-22T00:18:45.512-07:00R.I. P. George McGovern
George McGovern died Sunday at the age of 90. I remain proud that my first vote for a presidential candidate was for him in 1972. I covered aspects of his campaign for the Boston Phoenix, and met him briefly. I've never seen as devastated an election night headquarters as I did in Boston that November, even though Massachusetts was the only state he won.
During that campaign I wrote about Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-5332678891362571852012-09-28T03:57:00.000-07:002012-09-28T03:58:20.190-07:00Among the Forgotten
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
It's not often that the decisions young men had to make in the 1960s about Vietnam and the draft come up, and almost never is the decision to oppose both and refuse to participate in either given any respect. But Lawrence O'Donnell does it here, in the context of highlighting the amorality of Mitt Romney in Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-60691181216948069772012-09-16T19:25:00.000-07:002012-09-16T19:25:15.457-07:00Magical Again
Martin Amis is a writer I've admired mostly from afar. I've enjoyed the novels I've read and the non-fiction collection about the 80s, The Moronic Inferno, a title that describes the 80s and a lot of the ever since. But I haven't read a lot of his work, for often his most urgent concerns are not mine--at least not of the same moment.
Maybe it's just that his life has been so different from Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-74777946929145782682012-01-05T01:54:00.000-08:002012-01-05T02:02:47.245-08:00The Long GoodbyeI saw an interview with Harry Belefonte on Charlie Rose recently. Especially since he's promoting his autobiography, Belefonte talked about his fascinating life, in music and film but mostly in politics. He has a long history of activism, that extends back to Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King. When the subject of President Obama came up, Belefonte expressed Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-44535942157553793632011-12-17T01:59:00.000-08:002011-12-17T01:59:31.059-08:00Thought of the HeartThis is the season when the famous dead of the past year are remembered again, in a group. I've checked many such sites on the Internet, replete with photos, but none of them include James Hillman, who died in October. I will make my usual remembrances from the year past on other blogs, but since my last two posts here have involved Hillman and his work--and he's been Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21533273.post-26297672410343659852011-08-29T02:24:00.000-07:002011-12-17T02:01:47.780-08:00On Turning 65me and my grandfather, my First Communion. Ignazio Severini was around 60.
Again, in terra incognita for baby boomers, the 60s generation. Though since turning 65 at the end of June, a bunch of others have done it, including Bill Clinton and George Bush. So obviously it's different for all of us.
It's been a more ambiguous and perhaps a more sobering milestone that 60, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0