Category: boomer life
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My Word and My Resolution for the New Year
My life seems to revolve around my propensity toward procrastination. I am great at making plans, writing to-do lists, then concocting excuses for why I did not do all the things I aspired to do. I have given up on New Year’s resolutions in any serious way. I will not achieve whatever I decide should…
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Musings on the Winter Solstice
The winter solstice, the day with the shortest hours of daylight in the year, has been celebrated by various cultures for thousands of years. The Roman holiday of Saturnalia, the Soyal celebration of the Hopi Indians in Arizona, the ancient Persian festival of Yalda, the Chinese observance of Dong Zhi are just a sampling of…
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Celebrating the Season In the City
The City – New York City, the Big Apple, the island of Manhattan. The Sunday before Thanksgiving hub and I drove into Manhattan, a challenging, demanding, wearying experience, one we would not normally, usually, when in our right minds, undertake. But our Florida family was staying in the Big Apple for a few days, and…
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A Pre-Election Survival Guide
Less than a year from now a momentous event will take place across the United States. A Presidential election. I am already tired of the constant, incessant beating of the election drums. My ears and my mind are numb. How to survive the bombast without losing my mind? I want the rhetoric to STOP! But…
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Off Season Travel an Ideal Senior Activity
Morning in upstate New York, end of October. Photo by Meryl Baer In much of the Northeast by the end of October leaves fall, tourists vanish, and a calm creeps over towns and tourist sites. The off-season reigns. Too late for vibrant, picturesque landscapes, too soon for ski and snow activities, visitors are sparse. There…
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An Inconsequential 1960s Memory
Do You Remember This Iconic 1960s Musical Performer and the TV Event that Rocketed him to Fame? There are certain events, personal and public, that are remembered forever. We can recall them immediately and, no matter how young or old at the time, the occasions become imprinted permanently in our minds. Many of the major…
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Musings of a Mature Belly Dancer
My dance experience begins at the tender age of four. My mother enrolled me in a ballet class. I spent an hour a week pirouetting and spinning. There was a recital at the end of the year – my first and last public appearance as a dancer for decades. Imagine a line of a dozen…
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Every Year Older But Not Wiser
By the time my birthday arrived each year, school was out. No cupcakes for my elementary school class, no ribbon corsages in junior high, no friends to celebrate with as they scattered…somewhere. June birthdays are often relegated to second-tier status, shoved to the background, subordinate to end-of-school events, graduations, weddings, and the onset of summer…
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The Arrival of a New Season Yields Memories and One Plentiful Crop
We, meaning folks living in my town, state, and region of the world, have endured a week of dreariness. Rain, winds, chilly temperatures, and cloudy days prevailed. Grayness descended and refused to move on. The bleakness underscored the passing of summer and the arrival of fall. One rainless, windless day, blue sky and sun peeked…
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Boomers Boost the Economy
A trip to the grocery store, gas station, or favorite restaurant and today’s economic reality cannot be ignored: prices seem to rise daily. And my generation – the baby boomers – has been hard-hit. Many folks will not wholly recover assets lost during the Great Recession and recent skyrocketing inflation. But boomers are an optimistic…