Small Business Boomers

 
Many Boomers are at a stage where family memories have great meaning. 
They also are into scrapbooking and journaling.  They often are caregivers for parents or relatives and find themselves saving those persons’ memories for children, grandchildren and future generations.
They realize, as Mma Ramotswe did, in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, about her father:  His life was unrecorded; who is there to write down the lives of ordinary people?
There are members of my family, who have died without children or spouse or anyone to record their lives.  If I don’t do it, who will?  Will they be simply a statistic …read more

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Repurposing has become one of the new terms for recycling.  That’s the art of using something for another purpose than that originally intended.
To many Boomers, recycling or repurposing is an extension of a philosophy they were raised on.  Their grandparents, and probably their parents, experienced some phase of the Great Depression.  In those days, you didn’t throw much of anything away.  I didn’t experience the Depression, but my parents carried over that way of living from their experiences.
Not much was thrown away if we could find some use whatsoever for it.  You also saved anything you thought you might have …read more

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As I sorted through some of my mother’s collection of memorabilia, I came across lists and letters and account summaries of her years operating a small country general store on the edge of our farm property.
My dad and a friend built it and the friend managed the business.  When he had a heart attack, Mother (a former school teacher, who had no storekeeping experience) decided she would operate it.  So during my last year of high school and my college years, I spend weekends and vacations working at the store and on the farm my father owned.
Mother didn’t make a fortune.  …read more

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Where were you when you first saw The Big Chill? There are some movies that capture us and clearly this was one of them. I remember watching it on video and I knew as soon as it ended that it would be a classic movie.  Doesn’t seem like 25 years ago, does it?
The parts I remember:

The jacket sleeve being pulled down over the cuff of the dead guy’s sleeve (turns out it was Kevin Costner; the rest of his part was cut).
The football game on Thanksgiving Day
The dance scene after dinner to “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg”

What …read more

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Did you know Barbie is a Baby Boomer?  Yep.  She’s turning 50 this month.
It seems like just yesterday that I heard about Barbie. My sister and I got Barbie dolls when we were pre-teen.  Pretty cool stuff back then.  My daughter (now 30) wasn’t a big Barbie fan.  She was more interested in playing soccer and running.  My grand-daughter, though, is carrying on the tradition and starting her collection (she’s 8).
So 3 generations of girls have been collecting Barbie stuff.

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There are two schools of thought on pennies:
School 1 – I’ll call it the “old school” – Exemplified by an elderly lady I know who cannot pass by a penny anywhere – on the ground – on a table – in a store — without taking it.  She says that every cent is valuable and that the accumulation of all those 1 cent pieces adds up.  She’s obviously a child of the Great Depression (1929 variety), when people got used to hoarding things and stuffing money in mattresses.
School 2 – I’ll call it the “new school” – Exemplified by Valerie …read more

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Henry Ford published this purpose statement in 1907:
“I will build a motor car for the great multitude.  It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise.  But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one-and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.”
So what happened?  If …read more

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One more important invention that needs to be on the list of “most important inventions” that I listed yesterday.  It is … the disposable diaper.
It was a woman, of course, who invented the disposable diaper, back in the 1800s.  I don’t understand why it took so long to catch on, but she should have a place in the Invention Hall of Fame.
Remember Cloth Diapers? I remember when my children were born, at the beginning of the time when cloth diapers were being replaced by “superabsorbent” disposables.  I got a diaper service, and quickly figured out it was a heck of …read more

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Nightly Business Review on PBS, in conjunction with the Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania, have conducted a survey and asked experts which were the best innovations of the last 30 years.  I received a sneak preview of the list, which will be released on NBR tonight.  Here are the top 30 innovations in reverse order:
30. Anti retroviral treatment for AIDS
29. SRAM flash memory
28. Stents
27. ATMs
26. Bar codes and scanners
25. Bio fuels
24. Genetically modified plants
23. RFID and applications (e.g. EZpass)
22. Digital photography/videography
21. Graphic user interface (GUI)
20. Social networking via internet
19. Large scale wind turbines
18. Photovoltaic Solar Energy
17. Microfinance
16. Media …read more

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I don’t know about you, but I seem to get more forgetful as I get older. My sister (a year younger than I) said she feels the same way. As I talk to other Baby Boomers nearing 60, it seems many of us are concerned as much about staying fit mentally as we are with physical fitness.
Did you know you could train your brain to increase your memory and be more productive? In his book: Train Your Brain: 60 Days to a Better Brain , Ryuta Kawashima provides exercises to help your brain be more healthy. Just …read more

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