With the advent of the internet has come a revolution in how we find each other.

Information is freer than it has been at almost any point in human history, and so naturally we have access to personal information alongside the revelations from big businesses, government organizations, and diplomatic missions.

Access to personal information has, in turn, allowed a new wave of business to flourish. Online residential address and phone number finders have enabled people to find each other with unrivaled ease.

So what does this mean for the phone book?

The once all-important phone book, lynchpin of many a successful newsroom and business venture, seems for many young people to be declining into total obscurity, a nuisance at best.

But is this really true, and what does it mean if it is true?

The Green Backlash

Paper phone books use one resource in huge quantities that online phone books simply don’t.

Paper.

If you guessed that correctly, you can collect your prize from your local bank or used car dealership.

This, alongside the fuel required to distribute the books, has caused many environmental activists to rail against the waste involved in distributing phone books that are apparently outdated and infrequently used.

Paper phone books are decreasing in size, according to the BBC, but they will never really be able to compete with online resources in terms of waste – and worse, as they decrease in size they decrease the amount of information they contain.

The Strange Case Of The Missing Phone Distributors

In August 2011, it was reported that five men had been released from a notorious gang-land area in Mexico, having been kidnapped and held for days.

The odd thing about these men is that they were all distributors of phone books.

It seems almost as though the idea that someone could be a distributor of phone books (in this day and age!) was incomprehensible to their kidnappers, a transparent and fundamentally suspicious alibi.

This is a Private Number

For some reason, people are inherently more protective of their privacy online than they are in other situations. It also appears to be certain things (like phone numbers, addresses and so on) that impel people to protect their information.

It doesn’t make much sense on the surface. The difference between, say, Facebook and the old White Pages isn’t that Facebook holds your phone numbers and address: it’s that Facebook contains a lot of personal information and images as well, that link to your number.

Protesting that Facebook is infringing on your right to privacy over the former and not the latter is, in my opinion, getting it a little bit backwards. Especially when it later turned out that the panic was largely based on a misunderstanding.

The privacy issue might well influence how older individuals use phone books, but it’s unlikely to help their cause long-term.

Our Survey Says…

Polls and surveys carried out into the use of paper phone books are frustratingly inconclusive.

If we can just nip across the pond for a bit, we find that florissant.patch.com reports that nearly 80% of Americans have stopped using phone books. Meanwhile, connectamarillo.com’s own survey, at time of writing, fully reversed the figure, with only 20% of their readers claiming that they “Never” used phone books.

It’s a problem of bias. Journalists need good stories, and they need the facts to match.

A peremptory analysis of a broader range of surveys shows that there appear to be two distinct demographics, internet resource users and phone book users.

The two rarely meet in surveys, both of which tend to be carried out for one industry or another (and thus are systematically biased), explaining the huge difference in the surveys, any one of which can, taken alone, be plucked from the ether and used to support your own take on the debate.

So, What Next For The Phone Book?

It seems as though phone books are not exactly on death’s door: they fulfil a niche role for niche audiences that the online phone book or postcode finder simply does not.

Small businesses, local news, the elderly and those who are less keen on technology are all more likely to use phone books than to try searching for a friend on Google or Facebook.

It does seem, however, that the younger generation, the digital natives as they were once called, are using phone books less and less.

Phone books are (slowly) on the way out.

Patrick Robson is a freelance blogtrepreneur and writrovert who wordsculpts text-bombs into a spicy content pasanda. Or to put it another way, he writes blog posts for White Pages, an online postcode finder and alternative to the BT Phone Book.

Baby Boomer Generation

Aging Gracefully: Dealing with Chronic Pain Through Meditation

by Richard S. Ellis

Many of us are fortunate to enter our sixties in good health and enjoying lives filled with blessings. We look back with pride to decades of achievement and to the joy of raising a family, which now has expanded to include the super-blessing of grandchildren. As our working years draw to a close, we look forward to a retirement free of the stress of the workplace and devoted to travel, reading, volunteer work, taking courses on topics we had always wanted to learn but never had time for, relaxation, and more.

Retirement will end in death. How, if at all, can we prepare ourselves for that final passage?

Some of us will die in our sleep without pain and without burdening our loved ones. However, many of us will die difficult deaths involving disease, dementia, or chronic, debilitating pain. How will we cope? How will our families cope? These are questions that most people never consider but one day can be a reality. Surely, waiting until the end to discover strategies for coping is doomed to fail. We should start now while we are still healthy and have time.

Buddhist meditation is an answer. Not only can it help us deal skillfully with the challenges of aging, but also it can enhance our lives immeasurably right now.

Here is my story about how meditation changed my life. I am a professor of mathematics and an adjunct professor of Judaic studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I have published numerous papers in mathematics and am the author of two research-level math books. Outside of math, I have published poetry and articles on the Torah, literature, art, and anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Sadly, I have also been the victim of two attacks of debilitating headaches separated by twenty years.

The first attack occurred in 1980. A friend who was also a therapist helped me slow down, minimize stress, and do relaxation techniques based on meditation. These techniques completely healed the headaches. But as soon as that happened, I stopped meditating and threw myself once again into my work. In 2000, when I was nearly 53, an onslaught of much more intense headaches nearly destroyed my career. Desperately seeking help from doctors but unable to find relief from the many pills they prescribed, I dealt with the pain by anger, avoidance, and fear, which only compounded my suffering.

After suffering for two and a half years, in September 2002 I started to work with another therapist who showed me the way. Jean Colucci guided me in meditation and urged me to participate in a meditation retreat, at which I experienced the truth about the headaches and the suffering they had caused. This truth is so simple, yet so deep: it is not the pain that causes suffering, but the mental state associated with the pain. Through meditation I learned not to push the pain away, or to react to the pain with anger and fear, but rather to accept it. Accepting the headaches allowed them to become my best teacher, a wise guide who constantly reveals new insights about life and pain and suffering and letting go and love.

The wisdom about pain, suffering, and healing that the headaches revealed is the subject of my recently published book, Blinding Pain, Simple Truth: Changing Your Life Through Buddhist Meditation. My goal in writing it is to empower people who suffer from physical and emotional pain to heal their suffering and embrace their lives with equanimity, gratitude, and joy. Detailed information about the book is available at http://RichardSEllis.com. Interested readers can email me at rsellis_at_math_dot_umass_dot_edu.

One of the deepest gifts of meditation for me is that the rewards of meditation are potentially infinite. Here are some of them.

1. Meditation calms the mind and brings equanimity.
2. It teaches us to accept whatever happens with perfect trust.
3. It enables us to connect with the wisdom of our bodies
and the wisdom of the present moment.
4. It helps us cope with pain, reduce stress, and alleviate suffering.
5. It allows the innate wisdom planted within us to blossom.
6. Through meditation, we heal ourselves.
7. Calming our minds creates peace within us and peace for those with whom we interact.

These gifts have guided me into a new relationship with chronic pain, and they can guide all of us into skillful relationships with the challenges of aging as they occur. As I learned from the headaches, dealing with these challenges unskillfully will only increase our suffering. Instead, let us open ourselves up to them and let them become our best teachers and let us quiet our minds to allow the body’s natural healing powers to flourish. By doing so, we will enjoy our lives in the present moment as we age gracefully, finding happiness and peace as we express our gratitude for having been blessed with the greatest gift of all, the gift of being alive.

I am not belly aching. But, gosh darn it all, how does that happen. My mom had some mini strokes that laid her up when she was approaching 70, but my dad had nothing like that. What’s up with that?

Yet, I assumed my case of being less healthy than my parents was an exception. According to a new study, it seems my experience is the rule.

“What is the expression? Forty is the new thirty? Alternatively, fifty is the new forty? Granted, most fifty-year-old women do not look like their mothers or grandmothers did at the same age. That is courtesy of cosmetics, access to hairdressers and hair colorists, better clothing choices and Sshhh, Botox and plastic surgery, but the truth is that today’s Baby Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964 – with the eldest turning 65 in 2011 – are not as robust and healthy as their parents were at the same age.” (read the whole story)

After the stints earlier this year, I have begun to ride a bike.  Like everything else in the sports realm, I ride hard, at least for me.  What does the future hold for my health.  I leave that to THE POWER on the throne.  Not sure I want to live as long as my parents, but I do want to live what years I have in some what good health and a measure of gusto.

I thought I would add a couple more cartoons to inject some humor into what has left me with a bit of a downer.

baby boomer generation health

Not all Baby Boomers give credit to the U.S. protesters of the 1960s for changing the world. What cannot be denied is that for this year’s protests the stakes and loses were much higher, yet they achieved their goals within months.

Sure, there was the Kent State massacre and hundreds of hippies and political activists jailed in the 60s. This year, hundreds of protesters died and thousands were wounded. Not very many were arrested and taken to jail, they were just hauled away and went missing.

Masses of people holding posters and shouting the longings of their hearts flashed onto our TV screens and popped up on our twitter screens many times over the past twelve months.

The year began with protesters taking to the streets Tunisia demanding the resignation of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The demonstrations sparked by the actions of one poor fruit vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi who was humiliated in front of his friends by a police women when he tried prevent the unlawful confiscation of his produce.

Later in the day, he doused himself with pain thinner, lit himself on fire and burned to death. Within days, videos of Bauazizi’s story and the initial protests by his peers, were uploaded to Facebook and the world watched as Ben Ali, the Tunisian dictator, was forced to step down. If you have forgotten the Bauazizi’s courageous story, view the video below. The fruit merchant could have himself been selected as the person of the year. His death gave raise to similar popular uprisings across the Arab world.

After just a couple of weeks similar popular uprising occurred in Algeria, Oman and Egypt. The Egyptian youth employed Facebook and Twitter to organize their logistics and communicate with each other and the world. The dangerous drama played out day and night in Tahrir Sqaure, ending in the resignation of Hosni Mubarak.

Protesters just recently formed into militias and toppled Muamar Gaddafi. There are on-going protests in Syria, Jordan and other Arab states.

What of the he Occupy Wall Street protesters currently demonstrating in major cities around the United States? Are the stakes as high as those of their Arab counterparts? Will they have as great an impact on the world? The jury is out, but right now I take a bow, tip my hat, and lift up a prayer of thanks giving for the bravery of the protesters in the Arab world.

They are the People of the Year 2011.

Recent studies have shown that elderly people who are socially active and have a close circle of friends surrounding them are more likely not only to live longer, but also to live healthier lives.  With today’s mobile society, young people being transferred because of jobs, and old people moving to warmer climates for health or convenience, maintaining old friendships is becoming more difficult.  That doesn’t make them less important.  It can be said that new friends are like diamonds, sparkly and interesting. But old friends are more like gold, pure, strong and patinaed with time to feel good against our skin.  And diamonds need a strong gold base of gold to hold them.  In other words, if you have developed old friends over the years, the new ones will settle nicely into this golden circle.

Just about every but the most antisocial of us has had the feeling of being with or talking to an old friend after not having seen him or her for a while.  Don’t you feel as though the conversation just picked up where it left off?  It is a wonderful, secure, comfortable feeling that literally warms the heart and is good for our psychological soul.  New friends are exciting to make, but there is always that nervousness, that feeling of trepidation that you may not be liked, may make a fool of yourself, etc.  Because of a shared history, we rarely have that problem with old friends and we never have to feel ashamed of ourselves.  I have always said that I can never lie about my age because I have too many friends who have known me since I was born.  This feeling of healthy confidence in your relationships is very good for anyone’s psyche.

Imagine if you had to go through your whole life always meeting new people and never being able to reconnect with the ones you already met.  Every social encounter would be a new one where you had to hope to impress, had to be careful to be liked, had to walk on eggshells to make sure you did nothing wrong.  We would all be nervous wrecks.  The “eustress’ of new situations is good for us, but it must be balanced with the comfort of knowing we are loved and accepted as we are because we have common ties that bind us and common battles behind us.

So it is important to reach out and reconnect with our old friends.  Call, write, email and visit as often as possible to keep those old ties strong.  It’s good for your health.

Spending some time with old friends is always a fun thing to do and healthy as well. Discover how it can improve your overall wellness by checking http://www.findermind.com right now.

Baby Boomer Generation

Health Food Industry

Whole Foods grocery stores seem to be gaining some momentum, according to The Sizemore Letter, a stock market newsletter, on December 13th, 2011. The newsletter attributes the growth to “benefits from several macro themes.”  The number one theme is “As the Baby Boomers age, they are taking their health a lot more seriously, and part of this is having a healthier diet, including more natural, organic food. This is a theme that will likely have some staying power.”

Those concerns are right at the sweet spot of product delivery for Whole Foods.  When I have visited there stores recently I have noticed that many of the customers are my age.  There is something about the arrangement of the store as well.  It gives one the feeling of shopping in a bistro or a posh farmers market.   They offer products that you cannot find elsewhere.

However, if you can find the same products in another store, you are sure to pay less than you will at Whole Foods.  Yet, this is the second them that the stock newsletter says is helping Whole Foods.  “The other theme is the divergence of the Two Americas. Working class and younger Americans have taken the brunt of the recession and slow growth. But highly-educated and wealthier Americans are doing just fine for the most part.”  So, the “better off than others” boomers seem to be attracted to luxury goods, especially luxury foods.

Some might say that boomers are attacked to Whole Foods because of their “green” mentality.  For sure one will find many “organic”, “green”, and “no additives” products.  At the check out stand, my “green” purchases are put into paper bags …. sorry trees.

-

Baby Boomer Generation

The duo of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper not only road from California to the South, but they did it prompted by the dreams, they wrote, directed and produced the Baby Boomer Generation cult classic Easy

Rider.  It was release on July 14the (my birthday by the way) in 1969.  The film had a budget of less than $400,000 yet collected $41 million at the theaters.

Easy Rider is the story of the two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and South with searching for freedom.

Easy Rider lays bare the social diversity and prejudices, issues, and wanderlust prevalent in the United States during the 1960s. It is said that in Easy Rider real drugs were used by the actors.

The producers asked Bob Dylan to write music for Easy Rider, he stepped away for the Byrds to sing “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding). They thought he would write the theme song, but he just jotted down the first verse of the “Ballad of Easy Rider” and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds finished and sung it.

Easy Riders soundtrack included, along with the Byrds, performances by The Band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Steppenwolf.

Below are all ten songs from the movie with great scenes as well. Enjoy.

The Pusher – Steppenwolf

Born to Be Wild – Steppenwolf

The Weight – The Band

Wasn’t Born to Follow – The Byrds

If You Want to Be a Bird (Bird Song) – Holy Modal Rounders

Don’t Bogart Me – Fraternity of Man

If 6 Was 9 – Jimi Hendrix Experience

Kyrie Eleison/Mardi Gras (When the Saints) – The Electric Prunes

”

It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) – Sung by the Byrds leadman Roger McGuinn and written by Bob Dylan

Ballad of Easy Rider – The Byrds

Baby Boomer Generation

Just like back in the 1960s, get the gang together and hit the road.  Guest blogger Kristy Ramirez give you some outstanding ways to get your friends to join you on a road trip.

6 Ways to Convince Your Friends to Hit The Road With You

Wide open spaces, new sights and daring experiences are not just reserved for the very young. Are you a mature, adventurous individual just itching to hit the open highways? Then you are not alone. Many reports around the globe show that people between the ages of 35 to 75 are eager, experienced travelers who are getting out and about like never before. And since they are at their peak in earning years, they have the resources to do so. Commonly, mature travelers prefer to travel in groups. If you are having trouble convincing a friend or relative join you on a great road trip adventure, read on for some suggestions that may help.

Save money

A road trip can save tons of money for travelers; especially people traveling in groups. In fact, four people can travel by car for about the same price as one passenger can take a plane ride to the same destination. Divided among two or more people, the cost of a rental car is inexpensive. The same goes for gasoline, lodging and even food. Overwhelming numbers of travelers take advantage of the savings road trips can bring during holiday seasons, when other forms of transportation are at peak prices. A road trip, planned carefully, can save all travelers quite a bit of cash; which can be used for expenses or other travel plans.


Feel Younger

As the saying goes, age is nothing but a number. As we all know, we have no control over the number of years that seem to fly by. However, there are things that we can control while we still have good health. Travel is one way to get a sense the excitement of trying something new. Nothing screams youth like packing up a bag, throwing it in the trunk of a car, putting in that favorite music and hitting the road. Remind your reluctant friend that a change of pace and a different location will put that spark back into an otherwise monotonous routine. And if they still seem unconvinced, remind them about the great places to eat that can be discovered on a road trip.

Escape the Rat Race

Nothing says decadence like throwing watches, clocks and caution to the wind. A leisurely road trip is the perfect solution for harried workers who spend each day racing the clock to complete work, tasks and family obligations. A peaceful road trip offers a feeling that time doesn’t matter. With travelers taking turns driving, fellow passengers can enjoy catching up on that great novel, great conversation or types of activities that they felt were to selfish to engage in back home due to other responsibilities. Often worn out from the stresses of everyday life, a lot of passengers use the time to catch up on much needed rest and arrive at their destinations relaxed and ready to have a good time.

Scenery

Part of the excitement of a road trip is the entertainment value of the excursion. At any given moment some unexpected sight can be seen just outside your car windows. Car enthusiasts have a grand old time keeping an eye out for their favorite rides like classic cars or fabulous campers and other recreational vehicles. Some of the funniest and oddest vehicles, people and pets are spotted along the highways and byways during road trips. Anyone who has traveled on the road has experienced that breathtaking feeling when an exquisite landscape or other natural beauty comes into clear view so close you can touch it if you are standing still. And a road trip, unlike an airplane ride, allows you to stop and explore attractions and other sights while en route to your destination.

Meet New People

One way to convince your friends to join you on the road is entice them with the prospect of meeting new and exciting people from different areas. Millions of people have made a stop at a visitor center along their route and ended up meeting lifelong friends with a compatible interest in traveling. A stop for a quick lunch can lead to a conversation with some of the most interesting people you have ever met. Road travelers, in most instances, share camaraderie of sorts as they go from city to city. They can be the friendliest, most helpful and interesting people who are very willing to help fellow travelers if they are in trouble. No one can have too many friends, and knowing people from different areas can come in very handy.

No regrets

Remind your friends that they may be missing out on an opportunity of adventure, fun and companionship. Involve your friend in planning the road trip. Ask them to choose a location they have always wanted to see. Even if this is not the destination, perhaps it is along the route so that you and your friend can experience it together. Lastly, give your time friend to decide whether they want to come along for the ride. Most likely, providing them space will give them time to decide to join you. No one wants to look up when they are too elderly or sick to travel and ponder what they may have missed.

Kristy is a road trip fanatic and freelance travel writer for Drive My Car Rentals. Whether you’re seeking caravans for hire in Darwin or luxury Brisbane car rentals, DriveMyCarRentals.com.au have a huge range on offer right around Australia.

A Baby Boomer Generation Thanksgiving tale from the 60s – Alice’s Restaurant Massacree. It is a real life story right from Arlo Guthrie’s life. And, so it happened back on Thanksgiving day, 1965.
Enjoy this great illustrated version.

The Group W Bench – from the movie

Baby Boomer generation

From the article – “Laird Schaub, the executive secretary of the Fellowship for Intentional Community, estimates that the United States has about 4,000 intentional communities with a combined population of about 100,000.”  Wow, I had no idea there was that wide of a participation in something that was only on the peripheral of my radar back in the 60s.  The Fellowship for Intentional Community has a website that is worth a look.  It might even be a resource for many of us who find the present economy forsing us to look at novel, innovative retirement opportunities.


It is not all, or even very much, self indulgence.  The Farm offers courses, apprenticeships, and practices midwifery, holistic medicine, and ecology.  A statement on one of their websites says, “We choose to live in community where we share our lives and fortunes, good times and hard times. We feel that we can be stronger and more useful together than we could be separately.”  Maybe they have something to teach the world, and just maybe we are more willing to listen now than back in the 60s.

The Fellowship for Intentional Community site has a list, state by state, of commune around the country and the world.  Might be something for us each to look into one near us and report back.