By Jim Selman | Bio
David Brooks wrote a very compelling New York Times op ed piece called “The Geezer’s Crusade”. His point was that the elders in our society hold the future for everyone in their hands (so to speak). Since 1980 when I was serving on the California Commission on Aging, one of my biggest concerns has been that, as a society, we are turning older people into constituents competing
By Jim Selman | Bio
I think that one of the things going on these days is that ‘Baby Boomers’ are waking up to the fact that they have a choice about how they age and what it means to be old. The Boomer label is just a demographic slogan. Personally, I don’t like being lumped into a single category with 70 million other folks. This sociological category of “Baby Boomer” (which is now almost synonymous with growing older) makes it easy for us to slip into generalizations about age and
By Kevin Brown | Bio
Have you noticed lately the impact that Boomers continue to have on the world as we know it? Yes, the ‘Net Generation’ is beginning to have a growing influence on our world and the way we interact with everyone in it. But the Boomers are not retiring or withdrawing from being in action on the field like their parents’ generation did before them. No, the Boomers are choosing to remain in the game and to impact how life occurs for them and for everyone else.
By Kevin Brown | Bio
Increasingly I find myself thinking about the word
retirement and whether it has the appeal that it once had for the mature
worker. I remember, as if it were yesterday, my father talking about how he was
looking forward to retirement. After working long hours and raising a family,
there just did not seem much time for anything else. Through much of his
mid-life, my dad’s job (conductor for the
By Jim Selman | Bio
It’s getting hard to stay ‘upbeat’ in the face of all the economic news. The line between a recession and depression is blurring more and more each day. It seems pretty obvious that we’re entering what will be a long road to some sort of prosperity. The old joke about a recession is when your neighbor loses his or her job and a depression is when you lose your job isn’t so funny anymore. I learned today that China is embarking on an official policy of selling directly
I have been having a lot of ‘state of the economy’ conversations lately. The consensus is that we are going in the wrong direction and the only question is how long, how deep and how prepared we are for the long haul. I made the observation that the economic consequences of a recession are only part of the problem. A recession is a trust issue. When credit dries up, it means that lenders don’t trust the borrowers to keep their commitments. It creates a kind of double-bind. Here is how it
I guess everything starts somewhere. This is my first ‘blog’. I’m
still getting used to the local jargon in these here parts. I see the
‘blogosphere’ as the perfect place to share my ideas about age and
aging.
Actually, this isn’t the beginning of my interest in and commitment
to do something about the culture of aging that we all share. It has
been a kind of hobby of mine for a long time. And now, as I approach
65, it has become more of a mission.
I
am clear that, in North America