Boomers Unprepared for Retirement

Boomers who tended in their youth to live for the moment need to wake up according to Washington Post columinist David Ignatius--who writes as a fellow boomer

"People have accused the baby boomers of being whiners almost since we were born. But just wait until we get to retirement age and discover that we don't have nearly enough money to take care of our "golden years." That's going to be the ultimate generational bummer."

According to new research boomers who have not taken seriously the need to prepare for their "golden years" are about to get hit with another whammy--the recent economic meltdown:

"53 percent of households that hold at least one retirement account, the median combined balance was a mere $45,000.Hold on, you say, that figure includes some younger workers who haven't started saving in earnest yet. Okay, for households headed by persons between the ages of 55 and 64, the median value of all retirement accounts was just $100,000. Purcell noted that for a 65-year-old man retiring last month, that $100,000 would buy an annuity that would pay a paltry $700 a month for life, based on current interest rates. And here's an extra bit of bad news: The Fed data used in Purcell's study were gathered in 2007. With stock market declines since then, the median account balances are probably even lower now."
Ignatius quotes from a poll released in January by the National Institute on Retirement Security showing that "83 percent.. were worried about having a secure retirement; of those with a 401(k) account, only about half thought they would have enough money to retire. And 71 percent said it was harder to retire now than for previous generations."

So no longer is the line "I am going to work until I drop" a throwaway line--it is going to be all too true of our fellow boomers. Boomers helped by people like Madoff, may have killed retirement as a serious option in America for a generation or more, except as an option for the extremely wealthy--and even many of those (haven't you noticed) --prefer to keep on working.

Are Boomers Prepared for Alzheimers?

Alzheimer's is the second most-feared illness in America, following cancer, and may affect as many as five million Americans. As the baby-boom generation moves through retirement, that number could soar to more than 11 million by 2040, and have a huge economic impact on America's already fragile healthcare system."
Maria Shriver (wife of the California Governor) is raising awareness about the need for research into this tragic disease and offering some hope in focusing on some recent discoveries that will accelerate a cure if further funding is forthcoming.
According to the HBO Alzheimers Project Shriver (whose father died of the disease and is the projects executive producer) described Alzheimer's as "an epidemic for this generation", saying that as Baby Boomers age, the disease is coming right at them and something needs to be done.
She said a cure could be within reach if the world focused on it, allocated the funds for research, and pressured lawmakers.

On a personal note, I started my website LifestoryDVD in part as a way to help people who maybe in the early stages of the disease at least record their memories for their children and grandchildren, and use lifestory telling as a therapy to at least help delay the full onset of the disease.

Will Boomers Embrace or Resist the Coming E-Book Revolution?

Will boomers embrace the new e-book revolution or resist it and leave it to generation x or y to figure out?
As the largest generation with still a good deal of disposable income despite the crash, also with the last
generation for a taste for reading as opposed to sitting by an electronic screen--my guess is that the boomers
will reinvent the entire process of writing books, distributing them and reading before we move off.
I was prompted by these thoughts due to an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal that
focused on how the economics of ebooks--otherwise known as digital books will transform
our half a millenium or so habit of reading the printed word. Author Steven Johnson writes
in this section about how we will get to discover new books:

"The economics of digital books will likely change the conventions of reading and writing as well. Digital distribution makes it a simple matter to offer prospective buyers a "free sample" to entice them to purchase the whole thing. Many books offered for the Kindle, for instance, allow readers to download the first chapter free of charge. The "free sample" component of a book will become as conventional as jacket-flap copy and blurbs; authors will devise a host of stylistic and commercial techniques in crafting these giveaway sections, just as Dickens mastered the cliffhanger device almost two centuries before.

It's not hard to imagine, for instance, how introductions will be transformed in this new world. Right now, introductions are written with the assumption that people have already bought the book. That won't be the case in the future, when the introduction is given away. It will, no doubt, be written more to entice readers to buy the whole book.

Steven Johnson tells a story about how he was suddenly inspired in a coffee shop to stop what he was reading on his Kindle
and "dutifully working my way through an e-book about business and technology, when I was hit with a sudden desire to read a novel. After a few taps on the Kindle, I was browsing the Amazon store, and within a minute or two I'd bought and downloaded Zadie Smith's novel "On Beauty." By the time the check arrived, I'd finished the first chapter."

Nice.

Johnson predicts that a la carte pricing will emerge

".. as it has in the marketplace for digital music. Readers will have the option to purchase a chapter for 99 cents, the same way they now buy an individual song on iTunes. The marketplace will start to reward modular books that can be intelligibly split into standalone chapters.

This fragmentation sounds unnerving -- yet another blow to the deep-focus linearity of the print-book tradition. Breaking the book into detachable parts may sell more books, but there are certain kinds of experiences and arguments that can only be conveyed by the steady, directed immersion that a 400-page book gives you. A playlist of the best chapters from "Middlemarch," "Gravity's Rainbow" and "Beloved" will never work the way a playlist of songs culled from different albums does today."

Boomers are we ready for this world--will we be the ones to embrace or resist? What about you? Please send us your comments.

Is the Obama Era Heralding a Return to Sixties Values?

Frank Rich got it about right this week in the New York Times as he applauded Harvard's President and Ohio Weslyan's cajloing new graduates to forgoe the promises of getting rich and do something important for humanity.Rich quotes first Dr Drew Giplin Faust who urged the new grads to

to "Find work you love,” adding that The “most remunerative” job choice “may not be the most meaningful and the most satisfying.”
This same note was hit a month earlier by the commencement speaker at Wesleyan University, Barack Obama. “The big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy,” he said, amount to “a poverty of ambition.” He wasn’t speaking idly. As America knows, Obama turned down the lucrative career path guaranteed to the first African-American president of The Harvard Law Review to pursue the missions of service and teaching instead. The potential rewards for our country, now that that early choice has led him into the White House, are enormous.



Obama had choices--but many of today's grads know that the high paying jobs on Wall Street aren't likely to come back for a while if at all. The loans however that it took to enter the Ivy League are not going anywhere and so most new graduates will have to look forward to a long period of reduced lifestyles before they can become the new masters of the universe.
Good thing though? Non profits and idealistic enterprises can sure use the brainpower that would otherwise be wasted making huge bonuses for not very economically productive work.

So our "thought leaders" will need to help our young students whose reward system has been measured out in dollar signs with new harsher realities. Boomers will have to rise to the challenge too. As the parents of many of these youngsters -they have a role to inform them of the choices they made not necessarily between serving mamon and public service but in terms of the humanistic values they recognize as important and lasting. Good luck everyone as we enter (re-enter) this brave new idealistic age.
Let's hope this one--makes the lasting improvements that the sixties seemed only to promise us.

John Martyn Original Singer Songwriter Dies--1948-2009

John Martyn-- a much under-rated singer songwriter from the 1960s died in January.
Martyn leaves behind many great songs to remember him by. Solid Air was a masterpiece album and it deserves to be better known. Martyn's musical originality was easily apparent --his ability to fuse jazz and folk rhythms set him apart from his fellow artists. He was not one to court fame or seek a more commercial sound. It is sad to read about the misfortunes that attended him towards the end. We hope that Word Magazine a new and superbly written and edited UK music journal will allow us to reprint some of the great article they published in their March issue on the singer's life and achievements..

New Dylan Album on the Way- and-the Oracle Gives another Interview

Who of us given some of the great tracks on Modern Times can resist another Dylan fix? Who can resist another glimpse into the musical worlds Dylan now so masterfully creates? Yes folks a brand new album (not one of those compiliations of outtakes and rejects that he likes to throw out from time to time) the title is intriguing enough--Together Through Life-- to be released in April 28. As expected there is a new interview out--designed to create the necessary "buzz"--in it Dylan delivers the same mixture of wry wisdom, humor and mystery as he prepares his audience for another musical reinvention. Asked why he doesn't "milk" his best selling Modern Times album and not change things around:

"I think we milked it all we could on that last record and then some. We squeezed the cow dry. All the Modern Times songs were written and performed in the widest range possible so they had a little bit of everything. These new songs have more of a romantic edge."
How so?
These songs don’t need to cover the same ground. The songs on Modern Times songs brought my repertoire up to date, and the light was directed in a certain way. You have to have somebody in mind as an audience otherwise there’s no point.
What do you mean by that?
There didn’t seem to be any general consensus among my listeners. Some people preferred my first period songs. Some, the second. Some, the Christian period. Some, the post Colombian. Some, the Pre-Raphaelite. Some people prefer my songs from the nineties. I see that my audience now doesn’t particular care what period the songs are from. They feel style and substance in a more visceral way and let it go at that. Images don’t hang anybody up. Like if there’s an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs it’s not going to make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed. Images are taken at face value and it kind of freed me up.

The last point is an important one--Dylan's supersensitivity to all aspects of his personae--including the prophet image that has stuck with him since the early days
must have been a burden. Now he has found, it seems, a way to work through it--to free himself artistically even more. So eager anticipation across the globe--this is a master setting an example for all of us boomers as to the possibilities of reinventing and reimagining ourselves..and we all should pay close attention.

First Beatles Masters Degree Offered--Mixed Reactions

Well it has finally happened--the first Masters Degree Program in Beatles studies--now hosted in the home of the Beatles at Liverpools' aptly titled "Hope University."

There are about six reactions I have--three vaguely negative and three a bit more positive--here are the negatives:
1) It is a bit of a leap--to study just one rock group--how about the entire phenom known as British rock circa 1960 -1975--perhaps more ripe for sociological explanations and less more iffy speculations based on personality and armchair psychology?
after all we don't do Wordsworth or Keats MAs --rather we study Romantic Poetry, the Late Victorian novel within the context of an established discipline.
2) As the New York Times op ed writer Allan Koznin also notes "what do you do with a degree in Beatles studies?"--be a Beatles tour guide? Aren't you setting yourself up for polite chuckles if you add this particular credential to your resume?
3) How do you do original research--Abbey Road/ Apple tapes--interviews with Paul and Ringo? Do you make the two surviving Beatles honorary professors?
On the positive side:
1) As Beatles books over the last few years have become more serious and interesting it is fitting that more academics move into this space concerning this remarkable band. We need to understand better the interplay between commercial pressure, individual artistry, audio engineering etc.
2) A degree program will encourage more scholars to cross the usual academic boundaries that the best Beatles criticism is able to straddle.
3) Understanding the popularity of the Beatles is a step towards understanding one of the unifying aspects of the boomer generation. The Beatles were our avant garde--leading us towards new forms of expression and experiences that had an important role, if we are honest in shaping the kinds of people we are today.

OK where do I really stand? What should Beatles study be all about? What is the "meat" in the sandwich? I think the meat is to understand the sixties which they mostly inhabited. Understand their social and historical background and the way that like the great artists they were--together they transcended their early influences. Studying the Beatles is different from studying someone like Dickens if only because you are taking on a larger range of social forces --ones that have not been properly absorbed into some of the usual disciplines like literature, sociology and history. The study involves musicology, sociology
and cultural studies (absorbing media studies) and semiology. It is also about the interplay of four very different personalities and their managers, record companies, studio engineers, agents, friends, girlfriends, wives, other artists, politicians and what can be losely called the 'temper of the times.'

Let it roll I say--let us all await a new generation of Beatles scholars--just as long as they keep a sense of humor about them--I won't mind too much and don't try to over interpret Yellow Submarine as some kind of answer to Freud's theory of the subconscious.