What is the baby boomer legacy to US history? My generation woke up America from the slumbering 1950’s and all that preceded, to the psychedelic flower power of the 1960’s and beyond. The only thing not out of the closet is death. CV 19 is taking care of that.
Baby Boomers have stories they may be afraid to tell. Stories told around a burning wood fire elicit memories, dreams and deeply held secrets.
I had a pack of dogs in the early 1970’s, shared with my commune buddies at the time. These dogs lived short lives, each brought down in their prime by the bullets of our hippie hating neighbor, whose name was and is, John Barley.
After John Barley killed eight of our dogs, he became a corrupt political figure in the Republican Party. He sold 300 acres of his property for a landfill expansion which polluted large swaths of land bordering the Susquehanna River. The Susquehanna supplies more freshwater to the Chesapeake Bay than all its other tributaries combined. The Susquehanna is also a back up source of drinking water for Baltimore, Maryland. Ironically, the Baltimore Sun revealed this mass polluting effort while rural Lancaster County chose to deny this assault on land formally untouched by polluters.
John Barley made $20 million on the deal, while swindling neighboring lands through rezoning efforts, including the commune where I once lived. A grass roots out cry ended some, not all, of Barleys attempted heist.
Baby boomers have a unique opportunity at this juncture of American history. We can bring death out of the closet. We can help American culture revere the beauty of aging and aging well. We can create movements to save the planet from the John Barleys of the world. We will need commune – ity, just like the good old days.
Most stories don’t have story book endings but can be created from the ashes of every day life, thus piecing together the fabric of our own lives into a meaningful whole.
What is your story? Use it to transform your life and everyone around you. OM
