The Majority of Boomers have more in common with Gen-Xers than Stereotypical Boomers. Why? Because the last half of the Post World War II Baby Boom, temporally speaking, contains more members than the first group. I spent years writing about this. Just search the term Late Boomer and you will find my stuff, because as far as I can tell, I coined the term and due partially to my multiyear campaign to let marketers and advertisers understand the real cohorts within the Boom, I – along with a few other dedicated souls – managed to inject the term Late Boomer into the vocabulary of American demographers and the people who use demographic info to make money.
The original Generation X was a book written about the last half of the Baby Boom. So kids of the 60s and 70s have as much in common as the supposed “generation” of Boomers. Beats, Hippies, and New Waving Punks are the sort of overlapping stereotypes of groups that are more cohesive than groups created by the statistical artifact of annual birth rates.
But, anyway, the women of Boom X are coming into their own in so many ways at this very moment. BlogHer12 finally had a session about mid-life and blogging. I’m launching a site that should appeal to women who are Done Nesting. It is in heavy development heavy development as we speak. There are scads of other sites that are new or will soon launch that are also intended to appeal to the Boom X women.
So in the name of information exchange I’m linking to some of my recent discoveries of sites related to what seems to be developing as a 45+ women’s online movement.
There is a 45 plus women’s Facebook group for bloggers called, reasonably enough, Bloggers Over 45.
I mentioned Second Lives Club a few posts back as a spiff online magazine featuring women who have reinvented themselves.
Of course, Done Nesting, will have a directory of “empty nest,” and late boomer sites of interest to women who have already or are looking forward to having adult children and are no longer actively creating a “nest” for children.
I’ve also found many similar minds from similar life stages to mine on another Facebook Group, GBE 2.
Culturally we are at a pivot or tipping point for both women’s culture and global digital culture with both of these systems interacting and transforming human culture. I’m so excited!
Familiar Face Summary of BlogHer 12
While not the be all and end all of BlogHer, the personal connections made at BlogHer, and retained from conference to conference, and grown between conferences provide a positive anchor within the network for me.
This point was well illustrated for me yesterday when @flexhourjobs, aka Jacqueline Sloboda, tweeted:
“Great to see another familiar face @nerthus among the amazing 5000 influential women voices making an impact #Blogher12 New York.”
I posted previously about the meta communication and pioneering elements of BlogHer 12 as a cultural network of women, and I cannot place enough emphasis on this defining aspect of the BlogHer network. But why an event, BlogHer, is successful or significant doesn’t capture the personal elements of the experience that make me happy to be a part of the network and to show up time and time again at events close to home and across the country.
Nothing says welcome better than a smiling face! Mimi, Suzi, Jacqueline, Jan, Judi, and yes, Denise, Elisa, and Lisa, were all repeat smile generators for me. No, we are not all buddy-buddy in real life but we came, we conferenced, and we grew as individuals while growing our personal recognition networks in meaningful and yes, influential, ways.
The “old girl” network isn’t as big as it should be. And while part of me cringes at the thought of creating divisions rather than building bridges with what already exists, the exclusion of women from much of what already exists in the world of public networks remains problematic. Going around and building new structures rather than infiltrating, attempting internal change, or destroying competitors is a civil and feminine tactic of the ages.
I met and talked to women, lunched with, and laughed with women I would never ever meet if I stayed inside my box. Hmmmm…… that was an interesting choice of words, and certainly worth a post in and of itself…file away for later.
I met a woman who is a TV Producer for Fox, Paula, who writes The List Producer, not someone I would normally meet or have a chance to talk to. But she is seriously into lists. The power of taxonomy, organization, indexes and distillation intrigues me. We talked our way through the introductory exercise at BlogHer, and I am sure I missed some other people, but becoming aware of her work gave me a female node (OMG, there is another inadvertent article – I’m just full of them, or it, this morning) or reference from which to hang other related concepts and constructs other than Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto.
I met the women behind The Second Lives Club Mary Lou Floyd and Carrie Tuhy who are powerhouses of perception and publications. I didn’t realize who they were (and I have to confess didn’t really care to know until later…) because I thoroughly enjoyed the compassionate intelligence that beamed from Mary Lou and the sardonic nonstop wit of Carrie as I snarfed lunch with them during the Martha Stewart Keynote address/interview. Click on over to their site and check out the August 2nd article on “The Her in BlogHer.” These are “women to be reckoned with…” as they used to say in the colloquial parlance of a rural, agrarian community with which I was far too well acquainted.
I met many women with whom I would love to stay connected and see again and read their thoughts, and so on, and I would list them all but I would leave someone out and that would be sorrowful, and besides, kudos and giggles are for Twitter. I’m @nerthus. Follow me. I mentioned some wonderful women I met at #blogher12. And thanks in part to them, and the acceptance of menopausal memory, I finally catch on to most things, and I have figured out that Twitter helps me to organize my connections and it is great for taking notes. Thanks to this conversation:
Nancy Hill (@Nerthus)
8/2/12 10:11 AM
I wish I could take notes and tweet at the same time….
Dave Hartman (@HartmanDave)
8/2/12 10:13 AM
@Nerthus Tweets are notes!
Shared via TweetCaster (http://tweetcaster.com)
I now understand that tweets are notes. The problem is getting the tweets from note taking sessions more than a few seconds ago…. Tweetcaster allows me to see ALL my Tweets. So my iPad app of the week is once again, Tweetcaster.
Personal Exec Summary of BlogHer '12
Amazing women of all stripes, that sums up the annual BlogHer conference for me. Annually in July or August since 2005, for two to three days, women who write online or who are thinking about starting a blog gather in a major city to learn, share, discuss topics with each other and woo and be wooed by advertisers and sponsors.
I tried to attend the BlogHer in 2006, but my personal life was disintegrating at the time, and I had to make some tough decisions about priorities.
My first time attending the annual conference was in 2007, a couple weeks after my mother’s funeral. The trip to Chicago saved my sanity and gave me a network within which I could exist as a writer. I was closing up my Mom’s house in Indiana that month and the proximity of the conference to the place where I had grown up and where I had taken care of my Mom during the last few months of her life was a godsend.
Since then I have attended when the conference was in San Francisco, then last year in San Diego, and now, this year, in New York. I also attended the first BlogHer Business Entrepreneurs and Technology Conference in Santa Clara in 2011.
I feel like I am a real part of the BlogHer network of women who are creating and developing communication experiences that are changing the world for the better. That is the secret to BlogHer’s success. Women who interact within this network know it is real.
BlogHer is a network of women doing what women have always done even in the days before social media and blogging. Women communicate and organize the now. Yes, it is sort of Zen. Women are the curators of culture. Throughout the last few millennia men have traditionally created and curated the historical world through the lenses of geography and politics/religion. Women are now sharing the organization and curation of their lives and the lives of their families in a way that previously had been accomplished face to face in small family and groups. When these personal processes were documented it was usually done through letters and recipes.
Now we are sharing evolved, contemporary letters and recipes of all sorts through a global community. The women who were smart enough to give a structure to the expansive contemporary community of women are Lisa, Elisa, and Jory, the cofounders of BlogHer. The structure of the BlogHer company expands as a publishing platform, advertising network, and conference series. There are now “TV” and print offerings and ads served beyond a bounded network. But more than anything else BlogHer feels like a network of women. That’s because it is.
Much more to come on different aspects of the network this week as I publish my “report back” from my attendance at the 8th Annual BlogHer Conference. Just a bit of a teaser, but BoomHers abounded, tit for tat info exchange was de rigueur as sponsors know more of what they want and what we can offer, and oh my, we are 8 years older than when this all started. Plus, I am already planning next year’s attendance as BlogHer returns to Chicago in 2013!
My Zilla Monster's Home Near Lake Wobegon
My grandpuppy is happy to see me, but was keeping an eye on Hubby last night when we arrived.
For those who haven’t heard, the reason I call my daughter, Zilla, because at an early age she could have easily destroyed Tokyo just by toddling through it.
We saw wispy bits of perceptible air as we drove in last night. I think it is called fog. I’ve seen it only twice in Tucson in the last 24 years. I believe it was at this time that we entered the mythical land, or perhaps it is a time warp, of strong women, good looking men, and above average children when we stopped to fill up the gas tank at a cooperative and purchased some sweet corn ON THE HONOR SYSTEM. I had not seen an honor purchase system in place since I was a little girl. I took my eight ears of corn and put $4.00 through the hand made slot in the top of a metal tackle box secured with a tiny lock that really does nothing more than keep the top from accidentally being spilled.
I’m going to be here for about a week before I go on to travel by train to BlogHer at the beginning of next week. Perhaps I will find more Wobegon-esque elements of this area, even in big, bad Minneapolis to report on before then.
Gonna See My Grand-Dog!
… and my grand chillums.
Summer visits will mean that I get to see all my Grands. They are all pushing two years!
In less than a month I will get to see my baby and her baby. Can’t wait!
Of course I am also looking forward to seeing the Twins from the daughter not of my flesh but of my heart! Grandbaby girl toddlers. What fun!
Adorable, even if I do say so myself!
Late July, here I come!
Home Is a Feeling of Place Without Pretense
To me home is comfort. To me it is a place where I can be comfortable. It is not like the comfort of an overstuffed chair. It is the comfort of being able to be my, guard down, unkempt, and relaxed self. I have had a few houses that were homes in my life. I have dreams with recurring themes that take place in dream-altered houses that are based on houses I have owned in the past; they are almost unrecognizable with two kitchens, secret rooms, and unfinished wings. Renting apparently does not create a dream worthy construct in my subconscious mind.
Most of the people who shared my childhood home with me are gone now. My childhood home is a memory. My parents home was a home, at least my room in it, on the unheated second story of that old farm-house was and always will be home in my mind. It was my safe place. The land around it will always be home to me. The house is owned by someone else, now, and totally unrecognizable as the place I grew up, but my connection to the land is so strong that I know I will always be able to return to a place that feels like home. Mother Nature was a real mother to me, and the places where I feel and smell the damp scent of rich earth with always call out a welcome greeting to me.
The home I live in now is one in which I have lived for more than 20 years. The cabinets my husband is building in the kitchen remain unfinished, as they have for several years. The trim along the 900 plus sq. feet of tile we installed ourselves is still missing. Our home is a work in progress by two intellectuals that will never be tidy and never be finished. I’m just now claiming it as our home as a couple. It is the only house my daughter remembers; we moved in when she was 11 months old. Her first Christmas tree was planted to the south of our home and it now towers over the house, shading us from the Sonoran Desert sun. She was the center of our life until she grew up, chirped her own song, and flew the coop in her own sweet time. This was and will be always, I suspect, Zilla’s home, like my parent’s home was and is one of my homes in my head. My husband and I have only been living here together, by ourselves, for a couple of months.
I like staying in one place. It makes me feel safe. There have been many times in my life when I did not feel safe. I’m speaking not so much about feeling physically safe as feeling mentally and spiritually safe. Home is a place where I do not have to pretend to be anything to anyone, it is a place where I can relax. Home is a feeling without pretense, it is also a place I know every crack, scratch, and off kilter bit of plaster, tile, and pipe. I’m one of those people who could not easily pack up and move. I can travel, though, and I suspect one of the reasons I so love to travel is that I have a home, a real home to which I can return.
I am so lucky to have this concept, place, awareness, and people who share it with me.