My Year of Turning 50

GOP presidential candidate John McCain made light of his age by appearing to fall asleep as he was interviewed about the impact of age on his candidacy. See the video here. I guess I would rather have seen him take the question a little more seriously.

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The New York Times Week in Review section today had an article on “When Icons Die Young,” spinning off the death of actor Heath Ledger. I wondered, though, about one sentence — “In 1955, Baby Boomers grieved the passing of the 24-year-old James Dean, who received two posthumous Academy Award nominations on his way to [...]

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I’m not sure how many times I’ve received AARP’s offer to join the organization. I think at least four times. Another came Friday. When will it end? I wonder if this strategy works — eventually, will I give in, pay my $12.50 — less than a 12-pack of good beer! — and start getting the [...]

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When I mentioned in a recent post about a prayer list for turning 50 years old, I was thinking of a colleague who recently was diagnosed with cancer. I and others have added him to our prayers, and combined with his treatment, his attitude, and his family, we expect to see him again soon back [...]

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Down the right side of my blog, I have an RSS feed of Google News stories on boomers. One today was a column in the Chicago Tribune by Mary Schmich called, “Basic premise for a column Boomerangs.” It opens:
If I hear the term “Boomer” one more time, I’m going to go kaboom.
That was going to [...]

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Our office at Kennedy Space CenterOriginally uploaded by John Cutter.
This is a photo of our office at the press area of the Kennedy Space Center. I’ll be there in couple of hours to help cover the space shuttle launch of Endeavour at 6:36 p.m. We’ll be blogging, sending our Twitter alerts [...]

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A little self-promotion for my day job, as senior editor for online news for OrlandoSentinel.com — we ran an article this weekend about GrowingBolder.com, a soon-to-launch social networking web site for baby boomers. The plans are for it to start in the Central Florida market, but go nationwide. Social networking is a big thing on [...]

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First it was China! Now my ears! I think we need a new category, perhaps “Scary things about turning 50.” Today’s New York Times web site features an article on how we boomers are losing our hearing. (I wrote a version of this in 2000 for WebMD.com.) Perhaps the scariest thing about turning 50? All [...]

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We’ve been on Hilton Head Island this week, vacationing with our two daughters and staying near another couple and their kids (and grandparents). It’s been good, even if I did wake up one day to read in the local paper that my retirement depends on…China? Of all the things we baby boomers were told to [...]

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I love articles that make big bold generalizations, like this one in Time titled “What Gen Y Really Wants.” This piece manages not just to generalize about Y’s, but also X’s and us Baby Boomers. A triple threat! I’ve done my own version of this, in an article for the Poynter Institute titled “Meet the [...]

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