baby boomers

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The Next Generation

I grew up surrounded by the biggest names in aging. Eden’s first class of Regional Coordinators was initiated in my house, and I have met countless aging professionals since. My father took me to see the first Green Houses open in Tupelo, Mississippi. As a child I wore one of the first Eden shirts ever to come off the press. The point is I have been connected to the aging movement since I first started aging myself.

A Hosting Odyssey on the WeEarth Global Radio Network: Boomer Future, Aging, Business, Marketing, Advertising, and Public Policy Thought Leaders

Amazing conversations awaken a stronger sense of where the Boomer generation is heading. Amazing conversations instill clarity, insight, motivation … even hope. Amazing conversations showcase the brightest minds in Boomer business, marketing and aging today. Thought leaders. Trendsetters. For nearly a year, I have been undertaking a radio host odyssey on the WeEarth Global Radio Network. Dovetailing my new book, the show is entitled Generation Reinvention: How Boomers Are Changing the Future. Guests on my show have included a remarkable…

Smoker-ism: The Stigma That’s Killing Post-50 Adults and Boomers

If you are a cigarette smoker, or if you smoked sometime in the past, do you deserve to die faster? According to prevailing norms, you warrant an earlier death—a bitter truth rooted in the shadowy realms of human experience. Racism holds that distinctions exist between biological groups, that members of a race share traits making them less or more desirable participants in society. Pervasive assumptions about racial groups have justified destructive treatment of perceived group members for centuries. But ostracism…

Dr. Mark Crooks, A 57-Year Cancer Survivor, A Life Dedicated to Showing Baby Boomers How to Age Well

I have completed writing a biographical novel inspired by Dr. Mark Crooks, my long-time friend and fitness mentor, entitled: WARRIOR: The Life and Lessons of a Man Who Beat Cancer for 57 Years. Here’s a pre-publication book trailer: Mark Crooks, Ph.D., an exercise physiologist, sports psychologist, fitness pioneer and daredevil risked everything to survive five bouts of cancer spanning 57 years. This is the second of a two-part post, the first of which you can read by clicking here. The…

Two Major Boomer Wellness Goals: End of Sarcopenia, Compression of Morbidity

The aged man struggled to get out of his recliner. His leg muscles could not lift his weight into a vertical position, so he fell back into the chair, exhausted. He sat there for a few minutes, trying to command his weak muscles to help him stand. He barely had strength to push upwards with his hands against armrests. Finally in a single determined push with arms and forward momentum from rocking, he stood, though unsteadily. It took a few…

Boomer Women, Photoshop, Fashion Advertising, and the Future of Beauty

Beauty is only skin deep. A time-honored idiom recognizes an inexorable truth of human aging: that exterior beauty is fleeting and superficial. Now this olden expression has found more contemporary implications in an era when digital photo editing challenges another long-established idiom: Seeing is believing. For background, take a look at this disquieting short video from the Dove Self-Esteem Fund: The British government may force advertisers to divulge Photoshop perfecting of fashion and cosmetics models. As reported by the Associated…

Boomers as Consumers, The New York Times, and the Value of Aging

“After 40 years of catering to younger consumers, advertisers and media executives are coming to a different realization: older people aren’t so bad, after all.” So goes the lead to a recent New York Times article about a marketing transformation underway. Suddenly the venerable newspaper has produced an article that unambiguously acknowledges what the marketing industry has been way-too-slow to accept: “older people,” namely Baby Boomers, are too lucrative to ignore even though over 80% of the generation has aged…

@LifeReimaged – a Strengths Based Approach to Life
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@LifeReimaged – a Strengths Based Approach to Life

I recently had the honor and privilege to be part of an all-star team working with AARP to develop a set of tools to help folks rediscover their passion and purpose as they enter the second half of life. The project is called Life Reimagined and it’s currently in the Beta testing phase. Coincidentally, the core purpose of this project is to help folks discover and use their personal strengths and gifts, which, according to new research, is more important than ever.

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Is "American Idol" an example of institutionalized ageism?

Popular culture favors youth. Celebrity favors youth. Many of today’s icons of the Boomer generation achieved fame before turning 25, certainly by 35. But unlike older generations, where many youth icons faded from superstardom after age 45, Boomer icons persist today, filling stadiums (Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Gene Simmons, and Bonnie Rait) and winning starring roles in movies (Richard Gere, Jessica Lange, Meryl Streep, and Sigourney Weaver, to name a few). The Boomer generation’s cultural hegemony is maintaining and even…

Baby Boomers and the Future of the Financial Services Industry

On Wall Street is an online resource that provides “financial advisors at the largest and most prestigious brokerage firms with the best information and analysis in the industry.” Reporter Elizabeth Wine asked Dr. Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, four questions about Baby Boomers and how investment firms can better serve this generation. In addition to directing AgeLab, Dr. Coughlin speaks at conferences, consults with businesses worldwide, and writes a perceptive and informative blog entitled Disruptive Demographics, an apt…

Baby Boomers: The Entitled Generation, by Bill Keller, New York Times Op-Ed Columnist

Bill Keller, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, painstakingly summed up his baby boom birth cohort as “The Entitled Generation.” This snippy criticism is typical of jeremiads written by and for Boomers to portray unseemly conclusions about the nation’s largest generation. So writes the columnist from on high, “We are an entitled bunch.” Keller’s views fall way short of balance. For example, while warning of and alleging future entitlement fund shortfalls to be imposed by the generation, he…

Foreclosure Crisis Hits Eldest Americans and Minorities hardest
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Foreclosure Crisis Hits Eldest Americans and Minorities hardest

AARP reports that the mortgage crisis is increasingly hitting older adults — especially those 75-plus — and that Latino and African American elders and their families are the hardest hit of all Americans, according to a new study released today. It remains true that those under age 50 are more likely to be in foreclosure, but the report found that the risk of “serious delinquency” on mortgages is growing at a much more rapid rate among those over age 50.