My Decade of Turning 50

I talked recently with a 20-something and during our lunch he mentioned how some teachers often told war stories, sometimes literally, about their time as young journalists. Is that a baby boomer pre-occupation — that we illustrate any point with a story from our youth — when I was a kid, when I was in [...]

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It’s been a busy week at work, with some changes, some people making a decision to leave, others facing some uncertainty. There are many newspapers going through similar changes to mine — figuring out how to better serve a world gone digital with smaller staffs and less revenue, so our changes are not so surprising. [...]

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Update from today (4/25): Catholic officials say ‘crying’ Mary statue phenomenon is natural I was surprised a bit by my reaction today to a report on a local Orlando TV station that a replica of Michelangelo’s Pieta appeared to be shedding tears. (See some of our photos here.) I have faith enough that there are [...]

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Found this blog post today, which includes a piece Julia Campbell wrote about her experiences with the Peace Corps in the Philippines. In it, Julia wrote: “I joined the US Peace Corps, the American government’s all-volunteer service corps, because I wanted to help people. I’m just one of 7,749 volunteers in 73 countries around the [...]

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11Originally uploaded by maryowen. A friend of Julia Campbell’s from her time in the Philippines has some wonderful photos of Julia on flickr, including this one. You can find the rest of them here. Notice the smile, which is how we all remember Julia. Update on Monday (4-23-2007): Found a link to some of Julia’s [...]

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The Washington Post reports this morning that baby boomers seem less healthy than their parents. At first, I wasn’t surprised, since I think of people like my dad, who worked a lot harder than I ever did at physical labor (although, unlike me, he did smoke). I think of my generation as a lot heavier [...]

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UPDATE: Julia’s sister is quoted in this article late today, saying family is not outraged by the killing and plans to celebrate Julia’s life. Just checked around this morning for any updates in Julia Campbell’s murder. Some sites are saying police in the Philippines have a suspect identified but not in custody, which sounds a [...]

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UPDATED with photo and link to some blogs and to family statement: A woman I worked with in the 1990s, Julia Campbell, has been missing for more than a week after taking a hike in the Philippines, where she was in the Peace Corps. This morning, AP reported that her body was found in a [...]

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Just noticed this in my Google news feed about baby boomers (on rail down right side of page): A new social networking site for baby boomers, called Drumtable.com. (Read PR news release here.) Here is the description from the page source: “Drum up your life stories. Drumtable allows people to easily create and share their [...]

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The New York Times annual Retirement section is out today. I used to write for it when I was a freelancer. Good section, especially pieces by Elizabeth Pope on reinvention. (I know Betsy from my agebeat years). I do wish there was more multimedia. I would like to hear more of the voices of folks [...]

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