Tie-dye Generation

February 20, 2010 at 12:47 am (Stories and Advice)
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Tie-dyed clothing became popular in America during the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of hippie style. This fabric dying process is found in many cultures around the world.  It changes monochromatic cotton into a kaleidoscope of bright colors and unique patterns.  It is an appropriate symbol of the societal changes that began in the 1950s.

Boomers broke away from cultural stereotypes during their teens and twenties.  Our radical behavior caused older generations to shake their heads and worry about the future of the country in the hands of such children.  The free thinking boomers engaged in and encouraged a blending of lifestyles, races and cultures that changed the look of the country.

Drug use in the hippie subculture made the news frequently. Writers implied that violence and mayhem came along with any and all illegal drugs. The reality was that marijuana use was rampant on college campuses, at rock concerts and in black-lighted basements all over the country. Some did upgrade to other recreational drugs that offered longer and more intense highs. Some even died from the deadly combinations. But not everyone followed that path. The controversy about marijuana continues today as it is legally made available to pain and cancer patients. Some jurisdictions have even decriminalized the possession of small amounts.

The tie-dye generation was not all about drugs. It was also defined by war. Viet Nam was in the newspaper headlines every day and on television news broadcasts every night. A war had never before been seen so publicly by so many in the comfort of their own homes.  We lost our classmates before our very eyes.

Many young men chose to protest the war by crossing the border into Canada to avoid the draft. This particular conflict was seen by many as only political and it did not have the wide support of previous American backed wars.

Anti-war demonstrations against the war that began on college campuses spread to include many people in the general population including Viet Nam veterans themselves. The futility of the war became apparent and finally the will of the people got the attention of those in power and the war ended.

 Never before had the youth of America so openly dared to disagree with the decision makers in Washington.  They persevered with such energy and determination that others finally had to listen. These were children most of who were not even allowed to vote since at that time the voting age was twenty-one.

One important lesson that we learned after Viet Nam is that a negative opinion about war should not be taken out on the warriors. Those who followed their hearts to the enlistment office or showed up when drafted should not have been treated so badly by overzealous protesters.  Thankfully, this behavior has not been repeated in subsequent conflicts.

Many women in the boomer era shook off the Donna Reed image of cooking and cleaning while wearing a shirtwaist dress and pearls and entered the workforce in record numbers. Their children were put into daycare as women found that climbing the corporate ladder was very rewarding. The “we can do it” attitude that started in World War II when women took to the factory floors came to full bloom with many boomer women.

Boomer men were not immune to the breaking of traditional roles either.  Unlike the generations before them, men began to take on more responsibilities at home and with child rearing. A big shift in child birth practices brought fathers-to-be right into the delivery room.

We are the children of those known as “The Greatest Generation.” I think baby boomers can state without question that they were also a very significant generation.

It may be our grandchildren’s turn to put their stamp on the world, but I don’t think we are ready to fade into the background quite yet. Boomers are still running businesses and staying very involved in government and education.  We are healthy, fit and active and you have probably not heard the last of us yet. I believe there are still a few barriers we can still bend or even break.

By Paula Scanland

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Boomer Retirement

December 18, 2009 at 9:24 am (Current Events)
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When we were in our 20s the phrase “don’t trust anyone over 30” echoed over and over like an anthem for the times. It is often credited to Jerry Rubin, activist and founder of the Youth International Party.  It was really Jack Weinberg, the civil rights and Berkeley free-speech activist, who made the statement to get rid of a reporter that was bothering him with endless questions.

No matter who first said it, it was a naïve way of hanging onto our youth, thinking we were more important than anybody else, trying to deny we would ever change as we aged, and that for sure we would not become our parents.  Now we are well past 30 and planning where we want to spend our retirement years.

A poll of owners and renters age 55 and older conducted by the National Association of Home Builders and the MetLife Mature Market Institute gave interesting results. One-third of those polled would choose a suburb close to a city while another third preferred to be slightly farther away.  Twenty-five percent like a rural community and 9 percent want to be right in the heart of the city.  Nearly eighty percent of those polled want a single story home and most say they want it to be the same size as their current home.  Twenty-seven percent said they were not concerned about the impact of home building on the environment.  Twenty-three percent said they were concerned but it would not be a consideration when they purchased a retirement property.  Thirty-seven percent said they want an environment-friendly home, but are not willing to pay extra for it.  Only twelve percent said they would pay extra.

I noticed that no one in the poll said they wanted to live in a commune where everyone shares in the crops that we all helped to grow.  In summary, most boomers prefer single-story living in suburbia.  It sounds exactly like the way most of us grew up in the 1950s and 60s.  It seems we have come full circle and will end up pretty much were we began.

And where are Jerry Rubin and Jack Weinberg today?

Jerry Rubin was born July 14, 1938.  He was, ironically, 30 years old in August 1968 at the Democratic Nation Convention in Chicago when he was part of the group arrested for conspiracy and incitement to riot because of the Viet Nam anti-war protests.  He died in November 1994 at the age of 56 when he was struck by a car while trying to cross in the middle of the block on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Jack Weinberg has continued to be an activist for free speech throughout the world and is now 69 years old.

By Paula Scanland

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Hepatitis C – Boomer Warning

October 23, 2009 at 3:32 pm (Current Events, Stories and Advice)
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A friend of mind gave me the following Hepatitis C story and I think it is worth sharing since the debate on health care is in full bloom these days.  She prefers to remain anonymous to protect her identity and that of the subject of the story.  This is valuable information for boomers who spent any of their youth living life a bit on the edge.  And the moral of the story could be expanded to consider the ramifications of genetic testing to see if you carry a gene for breast cancer, Alzheimer’s or any number of other diseases. Is the possibility of a disease enough to leave people unable to get insurance coverage?

I knew a wild 15-year-old teen who fancied herself a hippy. A bit precocious in 1971, she ran with the big boys and girls and did most of what was being done at that time . . . marijuana, psychedelics, IV drugs, etc. At a regular annual checkup her gynecologist looked at her yellowed eyes and informed her she had hepatitis. She had not even noticed her jaundiced condition, nor had she felt ill. Back then Hep A and Hep B were the typical forms of hepatitis so the doctor gave her a prescription and in two weeks she was all better. However, many of her friends also had the same condition. Odd coincidence?

As the girl grew into womanhood she became responsible, reliable, ambitious and gave up all her wayward activities.  She got her undergraduate degree and then two masters degrees and successfully held well-respected managerial jobs in the business world.

Over the years during each visit to the doctor she always checked the box on the health survey that said she once had hepatitis.  Not one doctor ever questioned her about it until she was well into her 40s.  Finally one diligent physician asked what form of hepatitis she had when she was 15. She didn’t know. The doctor who discovered it back then never told her.  He treated it  and no symptoms had ever occurred again. So the new doctor asked, how did you get it? The woman answered truthfully that it may have been from IV drug use since many of her friends with whom she had shared needles also had gotten the condition.

The well-intentioned doctor, all up in arms, declared the woman must be tested. He feared it could be Hep C, which was undiscovered until 1992. Little did she know what repercussions would occur when the test came back positive for Hep C. People could contract it through transfusions prior to 1992, since blood was not being screened for the disease before then. Many people got very sick, but many did not and never showed symptoms.

 The disease is not sexually transmitted except perhaps by anal sex when blood exposure can occur. The woman gave birth to and raised a child who does not have Hep C. She has been married and had unprotected sex with her husband who has not contracted the disease. When reading the literature and information on the Internet regarding the disease it is presented as a dramatic malady with no cure.

 Now this woman is trying to get individual health insurance since like so many in the recent past, she lost her job. Hep C is treated by insurance companies like other pervasive and incurable diseases such as HIV, Parkinson’s, Leukemia, and many others. After trying to get insurance with several companies she was turned down flat. No exclusions, no higher than usual premiums, just one big NO.

The woman’s COBRA is about to run out and state law requires and guarantees they provide continued coverage. Yay! So she thought. The premium quoted to her for continuation coverage from COBRA through CIGNA (I am sure they are not the only insurance company that does this) is $6,432 per month. YES, that is $6,432 per MONTH for hospital coverage with a surgical maximum of $9,000. No office visits, no prescriptions, no preventive care is included in the policy. The lifetime limit under this policy is $250,000. What a joke!

However, there is good news. Since this woman is a resident of Colorado there is a high risk pool available where the woman can get individual coverage for a very decent policy that covers preventive check ups and has a lifetime maximum of $2 million. She will pay, at her current age of 53, $450 per month. There is a $3,000 annual deductible and some percentage co-pays. See CoverColorado.org for more information. Other states may have similar programs available.

It is time for the moral of this story. If you are a former or current IV drug user, participate in risky sex practices, received a blood transfusion before 1992 or even have old tattoos from before the parlors were regulated you are in a high risk group for Hep C.  If you were diagnosed with “hepatitis” before 1992 but have no current symptoms DO NOT get it confirmed by your physician.

The subject of this story has not received any treatment for and has never been sick from Hepatitis C, but she is paying dearly now to get insurance coverage for something she never even had symptoms for. If you find you have it and are afraid you will give it to others, don’t be. Enjoy a lifestyle without shared IV needles and engage in sex practices that do not endanger your loved one. Transfusions are now screened and tattoo parlors are regulated.

Natalie Cole was featured in the November/December AARP magazine. She had kidney failure (unrelated to Hep C) but the doctor worked up a Hep C diagnosis from some blood work. She got it when she was 23 and had never had any symptoms or any clue she had it. Having Hep C is not the end of the world . . . unless you are trying to get health insurance with a Hep C pre-existing condition.

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Bomb Shelters

October 9, 2009 at 8:57 am (Stories and Advice)
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A friend reminded me about the bomb shelter craze in the 1950s.  I had forgotten about the fear that was instilled in grade school children that at any moment Russia was going to drop bombs on all the major cities in America.  So, about once a month we heard the fire alarm go off in our school so we could practice getting under our desks in a crouched position.  It is laughable now to think that our little wooden desks with tubular metal legs would protect us from anything let alone a nuclear blast and radioactive fallout.  But, since our school was about a mile from a factory that had been converted from making tractors to bomb parts during WWII, it was assumed we were probably still on the primary target list.  Our school administrators were determined to do what they could to protect us.  So we dutifully dove and assumed the tuck position but turned our heads to giggle at each other that for a few moments we had escaped our lessons.

 

The back yard bomb shelter was a big topic of conversation all the years we were growing up.  You could send away for plans on how to build one for your own family.  I remember programs on television that showed inside various shelters.  They all had bunk beds and basic supplies stacked to the ceiling.  It looked like a great place to play on a rainy day to me.

 

Our own back yard had a hill in one corner that rose to the house next door.  I begged my mom and dad to consider digging a doorway into the side of that hill and building us a shelter.  My dad had drawn the plans for and helped to build the house we were living in after all.  It would be no trick for him to do it in my opinion.  When they repeatedly refused I determined that they did not value us enough to save us from certain death.  It did not occur to me until years later that we did not have a single friend or neighbor with a bomb shelter.  The family budgets in our neighborhood would never allow such an expense.  Our walkout basement had a cement block storage area that held coal for the furnace.  That would have to do for our protection.

 

My friend Chris remembers:

I grew up in a small town in central Illinois.  We had a basement.  My parents and two other families (who didn’t have a basement) helped to build shelving in one corner.  Each family was assigned a set of shelves.   We all stocked canned goods, blankets, water, medicine and bandages.  They brought CASES of canned foods and other supplies.  We spent a lot of hours in that basement during tornados, but we never did break into the food.  The food on those shelves was reserved for use during nuclear warfare.  Our basement was our refuge instead of building a bunker in the backyard.  My biggest fear as a child was - who had the can opener?

 

In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s the fear was always that some explosive device would shoot in from outside our borders and anonymously destroy lives and property.  Decades later we now have information flying around the globe that gives us news within seconds about happenings thousands of miles away.  Unfortunately, this amazing creation of free flowing information has not helped to make this the more peaceful and tolerant world we dreamed of in the 60s.

 

We raised our hands in peace, we demonstrated for peace, and some of our generation joined the government to try and work toward peace.  Nothing has given us the lasting world peace we hoped for.  My continuing wish is that some future generation can find a way to finally make that happen.

By Paula Scanland

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Health Care Reform

September 25, 2009 at 11:50 am (Current Events)

My Republican friends say the health care reform bill that is currently being considered is the worse thing ever, that it is socialism and we can’t possibly have a government run health program in this country.  My Democratic friends say that the bill is the best thing ever and we should all get behind it without question and of course a government run health program will be wonderful.

And there are people of both parties over the age of 65 who swear this country is going down the tubes.  They are sure we are heading straight toward Communism if we put a national health care program in place.  But, of course those same people happily walk through the door of their doctor’s office with their government run Medicare cards in hand and get all the care and testing they need.  According to the 2000 census there were about 35 million people over age 65 at that time.

It is all the people under the age of 65 who are the ones potentially in trouble with health care.

Insurance companies can look at you and decide they don’t want to cover you for any reason they choose.  They can drop you if you get sick which is right at the time you need them.  And they can raise premiums, following state imposed guidelines, whenever they want.  To offer you some relief from the higher premiums, you can switch to a higher deductible.  In other words they dangle the carrot ever farther out, but can ultimately yank it away completely.

Hospitals charge thousands of dollars for spending 4 hours in an emergency room.  They have lots of high tech equipment and highly trained staff, but does a piece of gauze for your wound really cost that much more than what you can buy at the corner drugstore?  That is, if you can even get an itemized bill from them to see what they charged for anything.

With over 1,000 pages in the proposed health care bill we should all have lots of questions about it.  Is the entire document somewhere on the internet for all of us to read?  I think it should be.  There are lots of very intelligent people out here who might be able to offer some wonderful suggestions.  And I think we should see all the “pork” that gets tacked onto it. This is one bill more than any other one in history that should be passed on its own merit…pork free!

I don’t think that the 435 representatives, 100 senators and one man with a pen should be able to decide something of this magnitude without input from the people it will actually affect.  Stop the party line bickering.  Stop citing only the parts that make your parties point about the good or bad aspects of this bill.

According to census.gov the current projected population of the United States is 307, 535,852 people.  We are looking to 535 people to create this reform.  In other words .00000174th of the population gets to decide what to do for the other 99.99999826th of us.  By the way, are you 535 people going to toss out your current plan and join this plan that you create?  Some reports I have heard say it is exactly the same as what you have.  But, how would I know?

To all members of Congress I would like to say this – stop trying to “be right” and start trying to “do what is right”.  Figure it out – that’s what you were elected to do and that is what you are being paid to do.

By Paula Scanland

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The Technology Revolution

September 20, 2009 at 2:05 pm (Stories and Advice)
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Most people in the world today simply assume they will be able to sit in front of their computer screen at any time of the night or day and type an email to a friend on the other side of the globe.  Or, if you have the right software on your computer, you don’t even have to type.  You can just talk and your computer will type for you.

The way technology is advancing in cell phones, pretty soon you won’t even need the computer.  We will be able to walk down the street and talk to a small device in our pocket and have it send emails, browse the web, place phone calls and send a document to any nearby printer.

The industrial revolution took decades from the late 18th century into the early 19th century.  It changed agriculture, manufacturing and transportation from manual and draft-animal labor to machine labor.  In those decades almost every aspect of daily life was changed dramatically.  During this time the telegraph, the telephone, radio and television were invented.

Although Gugliemo Marconi made the first successful transatlantic radiotelegraph transmission in 1902, residential radios and program broadcasts were not common until the 1920s. In movie theaters in the 1920s my parents’ were watching black and white “moving pictures” with text dialogue that flashed on the screen between scenes.  The actors’ voices could not be heard until sound was added.  The first talking picture, The Jazz Singer, was released in 1927.  The first commercially produced color movies did not come out until 1939.  The movie The Wizard of Oz switched from black and white to color when Dorothy entered Oz.  That introduced Technicolor to the viewing audience.  Gone with the Wind also came out that year in full color.

The first black and white television sets began appearing in American homes in the late 1930s.  Only the wealthy had them at first.  Programs were only broadcast for a short time each day and most cities only had three or four channels to choose from.  Color television sets did not follow until many years later in the late 1940s and even then, most programs were still broadcast in black and white.  The first color television broadcast was the January 1, 1954 Tournament of Roses Parade.

As teenagers, we boomers were far advanced from what our parents had.  We could buy a transistor radio that ran on batteries and take it with us to the pool or beach.  We went to Saturday afternoon showings of Frances the Talking Mule movies and could come in whenever we wanted and sit through it three times if we had nothing better to do.

My friend Patti shared this story:

I remember returning to the United States at the age of 5 after living in Panama for three years.  My dad was in the Navy.  We lived with my grandparents in the apartment building they owned in west Denver.  My first experience with television was watching through the window of a radio repair shop on the street level of the building.  The owner of the shop mounted a loud speaker externally above the window.  People would gather around on the sidewalk to watch the news and listen to the external speaker.  When Howdy Doody was on after school all the kids in the neighborhood would gather to watch.  Rain or shine, there was always a crowd.  The selection of programming was quite limited at that time.  Only two channels were broadcast in Denver and both began their programming at around 3:00 p.m. Every day there were two shows for kids, Howdy Doody and Romper Room, there was one soap opera and two evening news programs.  The format was later extended to add a couple of variety shows after the news program.  I will be turning 60 this year.  I have seen a lot happen with technology, as have the rest of my boomer buddies.  I just wanted the youngsters to know how fortunate they are, and to be aware of their generation’s “wonders” happening right before their eyes.

In our parents time technological advances took years or decades to perfect and market.  For us it was merely years and now they only take months.  By the time you walk out the front door of a store with your new electronic gadget in hand, it is already woefully out of date with the shipments that are arriving through the back door.

In recent years, we have all become so dependent on being so connected to each other and yet so mobile.  Just think that the cordless phone only became commonplace in our homes in the 1970s.  Before that, we bought long cords so we could make dinner and talk on the phone at the same time.  And check out the mobile phone Danny Glover is using in the original Lethal Weapon movie that was made in 1987.  Is that a car battery he’s carrying around with that thing?

We have come so far in such a short time that I wonder what chaos would ensue if we lost it all now.  I hope the young entrepreneurs of today appreciate what they have and are giving some serious thought to safeguarding it all.  Massive power loss will take down the servers, transmitters and the entire network that binds us. After all, it is their future they are protecting and we will all be in our nursing homes listing to ZZ Top being piped into the dining room.

By Paula Scanland

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The College Experience

September 17, 2009 at 5:09 pm (Stories and Advice)
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I recently visited a university campus to attend a wedding.  Although it was not the same school that I attended, the atmosphere brought back vivid memories from some 40 years earlier.  I remembered the anticipation of making new friends, the excitement of learning new things, the joy of being free of parental scrutiny and the one I least expected – fear.

When I started school I brought with me all the bravado of an 18-year-old kid thinking I knew everything about everything.  I couldn’t wait to leave my home town and travel 1,000 miles away to freedom.  I marked off the last few months to high school graduation on a calendar with pages that never seemed ready to turn.  Unlike all previous summer vacations, this one was endless.  I passed the days with friends and family and the nights by dutifully sewing name tags into my clothes.  Yes, to my mother this was exactly like going to camp and the name tags were a condition of my ability to go so far away.

When the summer finally ended and it was time to pack up I was the first one in the car.  Mom and dad drove the 1,000 miles and helped me carry all my possessions up three flights of stairs to my tiny dorm room.  We said goodbye and they drove away.  Many years later my mother told me that she cried most of the way back home.  I was after all the last child to leave the nest.

It was fabulous for the first few days in my new home.  The sky was blue, the leaves were red and gold and new friends were easy to come by in a dorm full of strangers trying hard to get acquainted.  We registered for classes by going from table to table in the gymnasium and collecting IBM punch cards from the people sitting there.  If you waited too long to get in line the cards would be gone which meant the class was full.  So, you hunted through the class catalogue that was tucked under your arm and tried to find something else that would fit in that time slot.  Then off you went to another table.

I liked my roommate although we had little in common.  I liked the population size of the school at about 6,000 students.  I liked the old campus with the big trees and vintage classrooms as well as the newer section with the modern buildings and large student center.  I didn’t like that on the second weekend of the term the school nearly emptied out.  It turned out that many of the kids were from towns 60 to 75 miles away and although they lived in the dorms they often went home for the weekend.

All of a sudden the reality that I was away from everyone and everything familiar unexpectedly sent a wave of panic through me.  I dialed home and reversed the charges for the long distance call and began to sob as I heard my mother’s voice accepting the call from the operator.  I told mom it had been a terrible mistake to come here and I wanted to come home.  She remained calm and said that it was too far to come back so soon, but that I could fly home at Christmas and find a new school.  I was satisfied with that solution and started marking off days on the calendar again.

Soon after the call to my mother I fell into a comfortable routine of going to classes and spending time with new friends.  The fear of being so far away and so alone subsided.  I did look for new schools over that Christmas break but none felt as good as the one I was now calling home.  I fell so completely in love with my new state of residence that to date I have not lived or worked anywhere else.

That first time so far from home I learned more than I anticipated.  Like most teenagers I thought I knew so much already.  Important life lessons started right then and haven’t stopped yet.  That was just the first time that I realized it was okay to be afraid and acknowledge the fear.  It was okay to admit I might have made a mistake and look for a solution.  It was okay to ask someone for help.  Mostly I learned that I had to give new opportunities a real chance before I quit.  You never know where they will lead you.

By Paula Scanland

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Getting Started

September 16, 2009 at 6:56 pm (Beginning a Blog)

I hope to tap into the vast experiences of my family members and friends for suggested subjects for future posts. It is my intention to give credit where credit is due for the help and inspiration of others and contributing names will be included when desired. I will also invite others to post their thoughts directly to this blog which I believe will enrich the content beyond my own musings. I hope the resulting continuous dialog will prove useful and even entertaining for all readers.

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First Words

September 16, 2009 at 6:54 pm (Beginning a Blog)

I am well behind the times in creating a blog. But every new adventure begins with a single step or in this case with a first posting. So the journey begins.

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