| The summer of 1969 was a pivotal time for the | | | | by the newspaper or even the radio, but in a visual |
| emerging baby boomer generation. While we | | | | real time by television. In an interesting, but profound |
| commemorate Woodstock this month and the small | | | | way, the experience of our peers thousands of miles |
| hamlet of Bethel's onslaught of 500,000 youth, it | | | | away shaped our own desires and destinies. |
| must remember most the 77 million baby boomers | | | | Many of those desires for experience got |
| weren't there. Likewise, they didn't participate in | | | | sidetracked as we entered adulthood. We often |
| Haight-Ashbury experience in San Francisco. Yet, | | | | exchanged experience for a good job, and raising a |
| those events have been deemed essential in | | | | family. Not that there weren't good experiences |
| describing the baby boomer experience. | | | | connected with those parts of life. |
| What makes the baby boomer generation unique | | | | As people approach retirement, they are hoping to |
| beyond our shear numbers? | | | | recapture the escapades and experience they craved |
| Other than being born between 1946 and 1964, we | | | | as youth and forego as adults. |
| have very little in common with each other. | | | | We see many of the traditional retirement activities |
| In fact, so much of the folklore concerning baby | | | | approached in unique ways. Travel is being partnered |
| boomers - the sixties - the summer of love, the civil | | | | with learning and volunteering. Would you go to |
| right and women's movement, activism against the | | | | Hawaii, not just for a tan, but to volunteer on an |
| Viet Nam war involved very few of them personally. | | | | organic farm? |
| This is a generation that is diversified much more | | | | We're learning quickly that there is no recapturing of |
| than it is unified. | | | | youth. Retirement and aging will bring its own new |
| What defines baby boomers more than most other | | | | rewards and trade-offs. Experience can no longer be |
| descriptors is their desire for experience. We might | | | | achieved with wild abandon, but must be carefully |
| not have attended any of the events mentioned | | | | selected, nurtured and savored. |
| above, but we were aware of their occurrence, not | | | | |