PUBLIC BLOG, PRIVATE READERS

Dear Friends,

I’ve come to realize that writing a public blog is a time hog.

According to an expert (wife), it’s not normal.

And I don’t disagree.

But I like it.

Sound familiar?

If I could dig down, deep in my heart
Feelings would flood on the page
Would it satisfy ya, would it slide on by ya
Would ya think the boy’s insane?

 

Crazy, right, to think a one horse blog means more than a vanity thing.

Then call me crazy because I’ve written enough to find meaning for others.

If you’ve never been in the newspaper, or on television, getting mentioned in a public blog like boomerpdx feels like the start of something new.

Or a request to take said blog post down, to delete it to the depths of hard drive hell.

 

I’m excited to find international readers around the globe.

How do I know they are there? Analytics.

I’m also excited to know 25% of my email audience don’t open the updates.

That’s better than any emails I open.

That means my readers from Canada, Mexico, China, and Russia found boomerpdx on their own.

Thank you all for scrolling and clicking.

Whether part of a bot-farm, or people in real time, I hope you can find value in what it takes to remain current.

My laptop is trained to my blog when I google ‘portland baby boomer bloggers.’

That’s my kind of algorithm.

Not that anyone but me would search for portland baby boomer bloggers.

I take it as an affirmation for the time spent, but not the biggest affirmation.

That comes from my younger readers, not baby boomers.

The millennials are settling into early middle-age nicely, feeling the push from the generation below them, and the ceiling of the one above.

They’re feeling the squeeze and starting to look like their parents in the ancient pictures from their youth.

The kids have things to prove and the clock is ticking.

 

Are The Kids Alright

I’m here as a witness, a listener, a recorder.

This is what I know so far:

 

Young woman: Weren’t the WWII years kind of an experiment?

 

Her actual word was holocaust.

I’d never heard the experiment explanation, and like I said, I’m a good listener.

So I listened more before painting a better picture.

I’ll paint it here so you can hang it on your wall for reference.

This is all you need to know: Out of five nations leading the global fight against one another, the bad guys were Japan and Germany, who finished the war as ethnic cleansing criminals.

The good guys were the three remaining, America, England, and the U.S.S.R., aka Russia.

Out of those three, one was a human rights neglecting buzz saw that fed soldiers into the maw of the Eastern Front before rolling over everything that had been plowed during the eventual German retreat.

In the experiment mode, Germany showed what industrialized death looked like while Russia showed what an expanded police state looked like.

This is the same Russia today that invaded Ukraine and pours more soldiers into that conflict while the old Allies work it out like it’s their first time around.

WWII is the greatest conflict in human history, bigger than any Roman war, Persian conquest, or Egyptian rule.

With a compressed time frame due to more effective death dealing machines, the balance of the world changed.

Boomers have been raised by the old veterans, and raised their kids in the Cold War trauma of the years since the Big One.

If we know one thing, we won’t last forever.

 

Coping Together With A Public Blog

If I had one wish on a public blog to come true and I’d never post again, it’s this:

Give people the good sense to make the best decisions for themselves.

This means a choice in education, a choice in healthcare, a choice in government.

In this case government means the grease needed for people to live together in peace.

If you remember, this is the same wish Miss America contestants said: World Peace.

Maybe it’s too much to say out loud, or too simple; maybe it’s not my place and a waste of time.

But it’s not.

And if you made it this far, I believe you agree, and that makes me happy.