New Seniors

New Seniors well remember when the Russians launched the first satellite, Sputnik, back in the mid-‘50s. It signaled the beginning of the space age. We made some progress with manned space flights but we lagged behind the Soviets and were losing the race. It was President Kennedy’s promise that the United States would land a man on the moon in the next decade that inspired us to this great achievement.

A recent trip to my local polling place caused me to question a number of things about the waste of money and possible abuse and fraud that arises within the system. The problems extend well beyond the voting process and must be addressed if the state and municipal governments are to get their collective houses in order.

It was only two years ago that a spontaneous grassroots movement sprang up known as the Tea Party. The spark behind this was shared frustration about the high cost of government in general and specific concerns regarding the health care reform bill that was working its way through Congress. Like the ongoing union demonstrations in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states, the tea partiers gathered to protest. But that’s were the similarities end.

Communications is moving faster than most people perceive, this is especially true with New Seniors. As television brought the Vietnam War into America’s living rooms and the Internet put worldwide news at our finger tips, social media is making all events personal. The recent revolution in Egypt and other Middle-East countries was fueled by reports and calls-to-action through Facebook and Twitter.

When folks in Japan awoke on that fateful Friday many began planning their day and thinking about what the weekend would bring. At 2:46 PM Sendai time their plans went out-the-window and the grim reality of surviving the aftermath of the 9.0 earthquake was all that mattered. What good could possibly come from this disaster?

How old were you when you learned to ride a two-wheeler? I was about seven or eight when I mastered riding the rather small second-hand bike my dad got for me. It had no extras, not even a chain guard, and was repainted in a distinctive Chinese red. Aside from the color, the bike was pretty unremarkable by most standards, but it soon became the means for expanding my world.

Back in the early ‘90s pagers were more prevalent than cell phones, the Internet was beginning to experience real growth and personal computers were the buzz. Today pagers are museum pieces, the information superhighway gives us access to more content that we can absorb and cell phones are fast becoming the hand-held version of our PCs, especially with the pace set by social networking activities.

Remember when snow was still around in grimy shrinking mounds, crocus and other bulbs popped their heads through the dormant soil and the ground felt like mush when you walked on it? That’s when the kids in my neighborhood went to the basement and got their baseball gloves and balls out of winter hibernation, because we knew spring was finally here.

“Lead, follow or get out of the way,” has been the battle cry of ambitious people worldwide. This is, in particular, the case here in the United States. In recent years, however, the growth of government and the controls, regulations and spending resulting from it have done little to advance the creative spirit needed to get the American economy flying high again.

I lived over a mile from the elementary school I attended from kindergarten through the eighth grade. During the ‘40s folks called it grammar school. Those years represented a happy and innocent time of my life, as I suspect they did for most pre-boomers.