America Archives • Page 7 of 19 • BOOMERPDX

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ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE

November 1, 2025 by David Gillaspie

Part of the job in writing a blog like boomerpdx is reading The New Yorker. That’s where I found The Fifties by Monica Ferrell. She’s got a website loaded up with the works. The works?

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: America, another place, another time, attentive, baby boomer, Baby Boomer blogger, blogger, boomer blogger, boomerpdx, duty, education, frank o'hara, history, marathon man, Monica Ferrell, new yorker, Oregon, place, poem, poet, poetry, Portland, the fifties, the New Yorker, time, why you, write, writer, writing

LONELY PEOPLE: FROM HEMINGWAY TO AMERICA

October 27, 2025 by David Gillaspie

The answer: lonely people. The question: What does the band America have in common with Ernest Hemingway? Their bond comes from both ends of male adulthood, young man to old man. One sang about them, the other wrote about them. By now baby boomers are both.

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: adulthood, aging, America, blog, blogger, boomer blogger, boomerpdx, Cat Stevens, Ernest Hemingway, family, future, GUITAR, history, loneliness, lonely, lonely people, mistake, neil young, old man, relationship, travel, writer, writing, wrong thinking

READING LESSON: WHO? WHAT? WHERE?

October 19, 2025 by David Gillaspie

A reading lesson is more than the title for a blog post, more than a list of books, but it’s not more than you need. If you didn’t know, now you know. I need a lesson, you need a lesson, we all need a lesson. After a writing lesson, I’m here to help. All ready? […]

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: America, Baby Boomer blogger, blogger, boomer blogger, boomerpdx, boomerpdx reading, boomerpdx reading lesson, boomers, booze, choose carefully, education, great gatsby, Love, normality, Oregon, party life, Portland, PORTLAND BABY BOOMERS, predicable normality, predictable, reading, reading lesson, sex, writer, writing

THE OTHER PORTLAND OREGON

September 28, 2025 by David Gillaspie

The other Portland once had a reputation as a place for rich hippies to retire young and send their kids to Reed College. If that was the 70’s those kids might be fifty or sixty years old; thirty or forty if they started a family late, or decided to have more than one family. Since […]

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: America, baby boomer, Baby Boomer blogger, Baby Boomers, blighted area, boomers, commander in chief, education, Eisenhower, family, hippies, kids, learn, millennials, Oregon, Oregon duck football, Portland, Portland Oregon, president, Reed College, retire, rich hippies, south portland, teddy roosevelt, travel

DIFFERENT STORIES FOR DIFFERENT PEOPLE

August 14, 2025 by David Gillaspie

New stories, different stories, hold our interest. No one hangs with a snoozer story that repeats itself until a predictable ending. It needs cliff-hangers, narrow escapes, unimaginable risks to overcome. Most of all, it needs a hero, someone to cheer for, someone to welcome into our hearts. What does a hero need?

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: America, attention, citizen, citizenship, democracy, different, different people, different stories, entertainment, following orders, freedom, hero, kidnapping, law, law abiding, law and order, laws, people, primetime, readers, readers' attention, registered voter, stories, submitted, tactics, television vision, Tom Hanks, truth, United States, villain, voter

GOOD FORTUNE: ACCIDENTAL OR PLANNED

July 13, 2025 by David Gillaspie

My happy good fortune could never be planned any more than a shark chooses their favorite remora. It’s all been a long string of happy coincidence. Just another fat baby boomer taking up space in comfort and luxury. That’s me. How about you, same thing? Probably not, but check with younger people to know for […]

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: accident, accidental, America, baby boomer, bad boyfriend, blog, blogger, blogger attention, BOOMER, boomer blogger, boomers, Constitution, fortune, good fortune, history, Jakes, law, misfortune, Oregon, planned, Portland, PORTLAND BABY BOOMERS, Portland Oregon, shared concern, staged, unmasking, veritable quandary

THE PORTLAND DIFFERENCE: URBAN FEAR

June 19, 2025 by David Gillaspie

The Portland difference means telling yourself one urban space is different than another. How can anyone make such a judgement? There’s only one way: wander around urban spaces both new and old. From London to Paris, more like Paris to London; from Philadelphia to New York City, which most people think is only Manhattan without […]

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: America, blogger, boomer blogger, boomerpdx, downtown Portland, fear, Love, millennials, modest blogger, Oregon, Portland, portland blogger, Portland Oregon, travel, urban, urban center, urban fear, wife

INDIVISIBLE WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

June 9, 2025 by David Gillaspie

I’ve been personally indivisible for quite some time. It could be from growing up with brothers where you carved out your own identity, and a sister who had it all figured out. And I wasn’t the first born, which is important, so I never had everything to myself without some pesky little creature making sounds […]

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: America, american free speech, Army, Baby Boomers, Bandon, blogger, caring community, dignity, education, effect change, family, Florence, following orders, history, hope, indivisible, justice, kindred spirits, liberty, marching, pepper spray, Portland, present and accounted for, protest, SPORT, spring chicken, travel, wrestling

CITIZEN JOURNALIST REPORTING ON TWITTER

June 3, 2025 by David Gillaspie

If you are a new ‘citizen journalist’ you should never scroll twitter. At certain times. As a seasoned writer, and speaking for all writers seasoning in their personal blogs, you need sources more reliable than x. The drumbeat over there is too tempting to tap a foot to. Don’t do it.

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: America, attention span, baby boomer, Baby Boomer Generation, BOOMER, boring, citizen, citizen journalist, collateral damage, Death Benefit, grandkids, journalist, kids, literacy, lose interest, mass consumption, media, millennials, personal blogs, readers, reference, responsible writing, scroll twitter, seasoned writer, sensational expose, tweet, twitter, twitter deception, twitter hysteria, twitter post, war, writer

POWER RULES WRITTEN TO FOLLOW

June 2, 2025 by David Gillaspie

Power rules come in a variety of formats including written, verbal, and example. The written ones seem to carry the most importance since we’ll never know the verbal or actions of history. Unless it’s written down. Once direct orders are written down, the next bit of documentation is the recollection of events, the after-action report […]

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: America, baby boomer, better stories, books, BOOMER, boomerpdx, boomers, documentation, education, family, first historian, germany, history, history books, history writers, informed decision, japanese, kryptonite, power, power distribution, power rules, rules, stories, story, trauma, unconditional surrender, war, wife, write, writer, writing, written, written down, WWII