Vaboomer -- Baby Boomer Views & News

Baby Boomer Blog Carnival # 101 -- Inaugural Reflections

Change has come to America!   Welcome to Boomer Blog Carnival # 101.  The best Baby Boomer Blogs on the web...

Gen Plus: 

You probably were one of the millions watching Obama's inauguration last week.  But did you catch "The Moment"?  There was a bit of exciting technology last week and Janet Wendy at Gen Plus brings you two must-see items. 'The Moment':
 

This Marriage Thing:

Our President is a Baby Boomer

Ponder what that means with Dina at This Marriage Thing.

Midlife Crisis Queen

The Midlife Crisis Queen says LOVE is the mightiest word!  She recalls the words from one of her favorite Indigo Girls song:
 "Learn to pretend there's more than love that matters!"  Even Puppy Love!

Don't Call Me Granny!

Life Two:

Don't Call Me Granny

 

Today's boomers don't see themselves as old and they don't want to be stereotyped as such by their grand kids. So there is a movement to eschew such traditional names as Grandpa or Nana in favor of more youthful sounding monikers. Is this and example of boomer individualism or is it just an attempt to avoid the inevitable?

 

Baby Boomer Entrepreneur:

If you have a business blog or web site, doing better on the search engines is always a concern. Andrea J. Stenberg at The Baby Boomer Entrepreneur helps solve this problem with her post How to Improve SEO by Getting Links

 

Fabulous After 40:

Is the recession cutting into your plans for a new spring wardrobe? Get some great tips for shopping on a budget at Fabulous after 40!

Shopping on a Budget

I Remember JFK:

There was no doubt about it. We Boomer kids had as much fun reading comic book ads as the tales themselves that were contained in the twelve-cent journals.

Besides giant submarines, Charles Atlas spiels, and monkeys in teacups, we also were intrigued by a little blurb hat we must have seen a million times that claimed to teach us how to throw our voices for a quarter.  Throw Your Voice

Contemporary Retirement:

Head over to Contemporary Retirement to find out why an increasing number of people are saying: Bury Me With My Cellphone!

 

Don't Gel Too Soon:

Cynthia Samuels at Don’t Gel Too Soon on the Inauguration and generational change – even at the concert:  Pete, Bruce, and Beyonce.

Generational Change

 

The Boomer Chronicles:

Can a boomer still go on a five-hour pub crawl? Find out at The Boomer Chronicles.  Boomer Pub Crawl

 

So Baby Boomer:

Boomers are up to our eyebrows in debt--consumer, corporate, government.To survive in another Great Depression, we will have to save--lots.  Retirement in another Great Depression

 

The Mightiest Word

What if the mightiest word were love?

Elizabeth Alexander, asked today in her poem at the Obama swearing in. Yes, what if love were the mightiest force--what then/ Would we never have strife, or wars, would we live in a paradise of peace and plenty. No,I don't think so, but love would open our heaRts in a way unforseen to any of us. Loce would mark a path to connection and contact.

If love were a force, would love guide us, make us strong?

Would it open us bring the force of loce inmy life more strongly and out in a raw way as a new born, as a spring tendril? Would it make us wise and bring us into sagehood?

I am hoping and following the path of love. I am hoping for the force of 'love in my life. And you? 

READ Transcript of Obama's Inaugural speech:

WATCH  Obama speech on Youtube:

Inauguration of Barack Obama -- Praise Song for the Day

The following is Elizabeth Alexander's poem, read at the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States,

Barack Obama:

Praise song for the day

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair. 

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky;

A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

 We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then  others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light

read more about poet Elizabeth Alexander