Tag Archives: women

Generational Wisdom: How Baby Boomers Can Inspire Change

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I originally wrote and posted this on 2012. I have made a few tweaks but think the message is still clear for us Baby Boomers to WAKE UP and shake and move what we can! We need to get on with our lives in new ways!

And, speaking of baby boomers, I never really thought I was old until I saw Al Sharpton on the TV (2012). I thought to myself, “Wow, he really looks old!” Then, he said, “The first time I was allowed to vote was in 1972.” Then, I said to myself, “Holy crap! That was the first year I could vote!”
Next thing you know, I’m looking at myself in the mirror and see the face of a stranger – no wait! It’s my mother! All of us go through these series of difficulties as we grow older. Some of us embrace the changes. Others just get grumpy and afraid.So when exactly did we get so afraid?

I wrote this dialogue in my book Discover the Life You Want to Live. And even though I published it right after the original blog, I believe it’s still worth the read. It just may explain this fear:
What happened to us?
-I’m used to women who went to Alaska to save the birds when the oil spilled.
-I’m used to women who took martial arts and could defend others and themselves and felt good about it.
-I’m used to women police officers, horseback riders and trainers – women who have their own tools!
-What happened to us? What is going on with the new twitter-tweeters (or X), texters, Facebook, bloggers, Instagramers,  all of those crazy people who rant and rave about things that aren’t real. Why are they staying and home and believing what they hear? Why aren’t they stepping outside their homes to do anything? Is there a gene that says we have to become passive and safe after we turn fifty? I’m at a loss when I talk to women who’ve never tried skydiving, or taught juvenile delinquents how to take care of themselves – how to take responsibility despite the fact their family is dysfunctional – women who could nurture, yet at the same time remodel a house, remake a garden, bake bread, or rebuild a car and have their own all-women’s car club!
-What happened to us?  I’ve been spending time together with savvy women who aren’t afraid to invest their own money even after 9/11. They are the kind of women I want in my life all the time. I don’t won’t the whiners – the poor pitiful me types. That really brings me down. When I go there it makes me sad. I still want to live a productive life even if I have to be alone, which is a challenging thing to do sometimes.

After 9/11 why were we so afraid? (I am also adding after the Covid epidemic in 2019 to this fear list.) Safety became so big – we wanted the government to do something about it but we didn’t want government intrusion at the same time (we’ll do it ourselves except we want you to protect us mentality) was what people screamed. Viagra, Paxil, those things we started worrying about more because the ads told us to worry about these conditions. Red Hat Societies started, but what did they really do? Talk a lot and drink a lot of tea? Come on! Where’s the doing? Ads about body hair and other unmentionables for crying out loud! What’s that all about? Reality TV instead of making our own reality? Cable shows getting better and better than regular channels, but we have to pay for it; elections being about women’s bodies, gay rights, and religion; our rights being taken away each and every day. What happened to all these women speaking up in the 1960s and 1970s? We got old and gave up. We worried about health care, instead.

So now I must shout to everyone: “Bahala Na!” or “Come what may!” I read this in a novel called Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff. It is about women soldiers surviving a plane crash during WWII. They were on a small island on what is now part of the Dominican Republic. They had to survive their injuries – concussions, gangrene due to severe burns from the plane exploding, all while walking in uncharted territory with little or no food, where no non-native woman had ever been. These were some tough women! Why have so many of us never been exposed to this environment? Oh, sure, we’re weekend warriors; we have running clubs, but have we really ever had to survive like they did?

And yet, there are people out there doing this every day. They are unhoused folks. Yes, perhaps they made bad choices somewhere along the lines. Perhaps they overspent, and then lost their homes and their jobs. Perhaps they were living on the edge and addictions got in the way. But, as things get increasingly expensive for all of us, we need to rethink our finances and try to help these people in our community. We have so much wealth where we are today. I mean wealth as a term for our lovely town, of living standards that surpass any other place; for green and sustainable living; for our ability to buy and prepare foods that have been grown locally and being able to eat out in places that are healthy and actually good for us. And one that makes us above the average income of any other place in the country.

I know, I know, you don’t think you have a lot of money because you have to pay off your house, your college, your kids’ college funds. But there are people who have no savings at all. They live day-to-day. And, if they lose their jobs, they plunge more quickly in debt. They are not the dreaded welfare moms image that the Reagan administration foisted on us. People who sometimes need help genuinely want to work and don’t have jobs, not because they are lazy, but because their job was outsourced. Women our age have a lot more influence than I had in the past. Now is the time to use our leverage.

We cannot encourage our young daughters to buy into the Trad Wife mentality. It will only hurt them in the end. We need to have honest conversations with them (turn off the phones during that time!) and I encourage you to read all about this phenomenon. It is quite disturbing and is simply wrong. This concept is making only one person money because they are listening to her. IT IS NOT REAL! Here are some articles that I found that explain this current phenomena:
https://www.parents.com/tradwife-meaning-and-why-its-controversial-8656603
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-trad-wife

Most of us didn’t come from old world money. We came from middle class America. Our mothers didn’t wear designer clothes while cooking or were the perfect wives. We came from a generation that taught us how to cook and keep a home, but some of our mothers also worked outside the home to make ends meet. We also learned how to pinch pennies in a time when we weren’t paid very much. We came from a generation where we knew women were underpaid and did a lot of work, both in the home and out of it.

Now, we have an opportunity where we can give back. We can teach our daughters to understand the 1950s family is not real. We can become the mothers and fathers to others. We can become role models to the people who have never had one. We can teach others how to live within their means, no matter how meager it is. We can give others a chance to survive in this world.

Material things aren’t the most important things in life. We can learn this lesson and teach others how to understand that survival and safety come first. If we are good cooks and bakers, we can help others make their own hearty meals. We can volunteer at community centers and kitchens. We can teach them how making their own food makes the house smell wonderful, and they learn how to be a family by eating and cooking together. We help ourselves and others by turning off the devises, and TV to learn how to appreciate what is free in life. We learn to take a good walk. If we grow personally, we get ideas to stimulate growth in others. Ideas escalate to useful concepts for humanity. Only then can visions of paradise become reality.

I love you all and will walk this path with you if you want. Hugs to all on this cold day!

LIFE IS AN EDUCATION-Reflections from School in the 1960s-Part I

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I think it’s important to expand a little more about my school years and the importance of community, the current events of the time, and of math and science. I grew up in a tumultuous time in this rural county in the south. My pre-college school years were from 1961-1972. It was a time of discovery and baby steps into space. It was a time of transformation from the man-centeredness or anthropocentricity (as Edward Abbey called it in his book, Desert Solitaire). Abbey was right when he advocated that the world did not exist solely for the sake of humankind. The two key events that expanded this opinion into depths we had never seen before were the race riots and space exploration. Our civilization was changing whether we liked it or not.

At first, my small rural community didn’t experience as much racial tension as was occurring in the larger schools such as Atlanta, Savannah, Macon, and in the bigger cities in the mid-west and up north. However, the general opinion among most adults and many of their children was zero tolerance for differing opinions among the races and the sexes. Most people in positions of power would have preferred that we remain as we had for the past two hundred years, since the inception of the colonial states.

Some of the earliest horrible memories of high school were listening to the male students in high school trying to impress me with their tales of chasing down Black men and hurting them. They followed their parents’ lead and would chase these Black students into the woods, in the middle of the night, and unceasingly beat them – sometimes beating them to death – with sticks and chains. We were afraid to speak up in case we got burned out. We saw it on the TV, the burning of churches and crosses.There were talks of hanging these same men in front of their families. Those were the memories that stick out of my early education years, and the people I grew up with.

I had vastly different opinions about who was a part of our community. I believed back then and still believe today that everyone should be treated equally and fairly. Thus, the few friends I had in elementary school dwindled to a minimum, since I didn’t believe in what they did.

My school was the only school in my small rural county. Since it was one school for the whole county, one simply moved up the hall to high school. There were two schools, one for people of color, and one for whites. We didn’t see complete integration until 1971, my junior year in high school.

I suppose I could say I was a crusader, an early civil rights activist, in the south for rights of all people – especially women, people of color and anyone who the southern white male felt was inferior to them. I wasn’t a physical demonstration-type of person, but I continued to write about it in my high school reports as well as to the local paper about what was going on in the world and how we should just Wake Up!

It’s hard to believe how far we still must go and how racism and women’s rights have vanished vigorously in these past few years. I have believed in women’s rights since my birth, but I didn’t like the harshness of the feminist movement. You cannot hate the entire male race for what they believe. Unfortunately, that’s the way they grew up and so many women bowed to that way of thinking. We made some changes, and now it seems to be reversing. I still believe that everyone must learn by doing. I felt that if you did an exceptionally excellent job, didn’t do inappropriate things with men to climb your way up the ladder and expect respect as a result (this was a popular at the time to get promotions through side benefits), that you could do anything. I did learn that from my naivete, I didn’t get as many promotions, but I tried to stay on the path and do the best job I could in the circumstances presented to us. I had to come home and respect me no matter what others said.

I always kept that idealistic belief of how the world should really be in my mind throughout all the struggling times. I continue to work towards that ideal today. We must get beyond that deep-seated prejudice that will rise up inside us when we are afraid. We are ready to unite in one cause to keep our loved ones safe, our fellow human beings alive, our environment clean, and reach for the stars.

We must help everyone, no matter their race or who they represent. We should unite in one cause to keep our loved ones safe, our environment clean, and reach for the stars.

To be continued tomorrow……

I love you all and want you to be happy! Hugs and Kisses!