Boomers

Roxanne Guy and Stephen M. Milner are the two faces of plastic surgery. In Melbourne, Fla., Guy performs tummy tucks, face-lifts, Botox and breast augmentations. Miller, who heads the burn unit at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, honed his skills as a plastic surgeon with the British army in the first Persian Gulf war. They will meet with colleagues from around the country in Baltimore this weekend as the American Society of Plastic Surgeons begins its five-day annual convention here.

We big-foot baby-boomers are at it again, changing the nature of the relationship between humans and their food. And I am not talking about Early Bird Specials. It seems that a good meal isn't good enough. We want dinner to heal us, to postpone aging and prevent disease. With the dressing on the side. The buzz at the recent Institute of Food Technologists conference in Chicago was all about "nutraceuticals" or what they are calling "functional foods." Apparently, we baby boomers are demanding food that will keep us eating for a while -- food filled with antioxidants to prevent cancers and vitamins to hold off the signs of aging, such as heart disease, memory problems and arthritis.

No matter how many hours you've put into elliptical training and counting carbs, no matter how well you can maneuver your body into the actual clothes you wore in the 1970s and 1980s, there's no nice way to put this: The effect just ain't the same. Allegiance to plunging necklines and '80s tapered jeans is one aspect of baby boomer fashion that Sherrie Mathieson would like to forever banish. Another is wearing a denim skirt, of any length, followed by a scary fondness for heaps of gold neck chains.

MILWAUKEE -- As baby boomers become more interested in hip and knee replacements than motorcycles, Harley-Davidson Inc. might feel their pain. Even as it comes off the most profitable year in its history, the Milwaukee maker of the world's most famous motorcycles has challenges on several fronts: The graying of its prime audience. The median age for a Harley buyer is 47, compared with 38 for other motorcycle companies. Increased manufacturing costs. Harley is gearing up for labor contract talks in Milwaukee and Kansas City, Mo., after weathering a short but costly strike at its largest assembly plant in York, Pa. Some union members say the spirit of cooperation that once existed between labor and management is broken.

When it comes to baby boomers' musical tastes, the mood of summer has always extended beyond the media's fond memories of Woodstock. Tomorrow night Barbara Huston plans to settle into an orchestra seat at the Wolf Trap performing arts center in Vienna, Va., as Tony Bennett's smooth voice washes away the frustrations of work. At 54, the Severna Park resident is among thousands of boomers expected to hear the legendary singer this summer on his national concert tour. "Tony Bennett has been singing about as long as I've been alive," Huston says.

Kids still rule.That's the lesson that most clearly emerged from Hollywood in 1998, and there's no doubt movie executives took it to heart. The throbbingly illogical "Armageddon" and similarly themed "Deep Impact," followed by the surprise comedy hits "There's Something About Mary" and "The Waterboy," double-teamed to win the day. (Can the action-comedy "Kick My Asteroid" -- with Cameron Diaz as a rocket scientist who gets into lewdly comic trouble with...

Generation X -- that youthful, "slacker" generation -- is facing a quiet crisis. The leading edge of that group is turning 30. Time to grow up, get serious. Time for a major identity shake-up.Time to panic."We think of ourselves as not really that together and not really very grown up," said Kristin Beck, a Bay-area writer who hit the big 3-0 last April.After reading up on adult development, she and colleague Lauren Dockett interviewed more than 30 women about "lessons learned and dreams examined" as they reached their first scary "decade" birthday.

Kids born after 1979 live on the Internet, play extreme games or none of the above. They listen to 'N Sync, or maybe the Beatles. They wear cargo pants or dress like disco queens. They think the world is worth saving -- or, on the other hand, don't care that the hole in the ozone layer is growing and the Third World is getting poorer.The teen-agers of this generation hate the idea of being lumped together but are already being labeled Generation Y, or the Millennium Generation or the Millennials (because they'll come of age during the early years of the 21st century)

The Rev. Eric Peacher and his wife, Bernice, knew it was time to leave their split-level Timonium home when the routine upkeep took a downturn."If we could afford a caretaker and a maid, we might have stayed," said Peacher, a retired minister who works part-time at Towson United Methodist Church. "As you get a little older, you don't work as fast. You are spending a good amount of time working for the house -- even though you love it."In their early 70s, the Peachers will soon move to Mays Chapel North, a development tailor-made for senior living.

Baby boomers saw the divorce rate soar and the marriage rate plummet among their peers -- but some of them managed to build long-lasting unions anyway.The current calculated blitz of '60s nostalgia would have you believe that everyone was a tie-dyed-in-the-wool hippie back then. Not true. For every boomer president who probably inhaled, there is a boomer special prosecutor who probably tried to sell you a Bible.And as free-loving as the '60s now appear through the media's gauzy lens, it was a distinctly unromantic time.

Baltimore was on its belly the last time the economy got this bad. Unemployment was 11 percent in 1991. Nearly one in 10 city-based jobs had disappeared only a year after the recession began. Residents were fleeing by thousands for homes in nearby counties or the Sun Belt. Homicides were about to hit a new high, never to be exceeded. Say what you will about the terrible recession of 2008 and 2009, but it is unlikely to maul Baltimore in the same way. The city is showing a toughness that would shock those who once predicted it had passed a downward "point of no return."

MONTCLAIR, N.J. - My husband, three children, dog and I recently moved - from Baton Rouge, La., where we lived for 13 years, to Montclair, N.J. I thought I was a fairly meticulous housekeeper, the type who cleans out closets and attics regularly. But it turns out we accumulated more stuff than currently exists in, say, Haiti. So we had a great purge. Then we moved, and started unpacking the stuff we hadn't gotten rid of, things so numerous that, if listed, they would fill up a piece of paper as long as the New Jersey Turnpike.

The Baltimore region is going gray. While the region's population showed a modest increase of about 4 percent from 2000 through 2007, the number of residents ages 55 to 64 and those 85 and older increased by about a third, according to an analysis of U.S. census data released today. The former group is the result of the baby boom generation reaching retirement age; the latter, an aging society living longer. "Longevity has increased so much," said Rose Viscidi, a resident of Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville who is her in 80s. She takes daily aerobics classes and keeps busy, engaging in a lifestyle that has become more the norm for her age group.

Baby boomers are afraid of the bear market. Raised on Wall Street's buy-and-hold primer that's been spoon-fed to the first generation of 401(k) investors, many boomers gritted their teeth and stayed with the market through the 2000 to 2002 bear. Now, however, retirement is only 10 years away - or less - for many boomers, and they are wondering if it is foolish to stay the course. The stock market has recently touched bear market territory again - a drop of about 20 percent since October 2007.

Amid the torrent of unhappy economic news comes this from The New York Times: Our children shouldn't expect to inherit anything from us except, perhaps, a tendency toward male pattern baldness. Ron Lieber wrote last week that boomers have so many more demands on their retirement savings - from health care costs to a desire for a comfortable lifestyle - that there won't be anything left in the piggy bank for the kids when we go. Whether that is good news or bad depends on whether you are me or my kids.

We seem to have settled the issues of race and gender this election season (although that might be optimistic), so only one rude and divisive issue remains on the table: age. John McCain is old, there's no getting around it. He'd be 72 at his inauguration, the oldest president ever. His hair is white, he protects his cancer-scarred face with a silly hat that makes him look like he is a member of the cast of Cocoon and he moves like the Tin Man because of all the injuries and torture he suffered during his time as a prisoner of war. Barack Obama is young by comparison.

Last year, as Father's Day approached, I asked readers to answer the question, "What did you learn from your father?" The response was impressive. Men and women from all over, most of them baby boomers, took the opportunity to write loving tributes to their dads and to enumerate life lessons they'd passed along. Reading them made me happy, and envious. Many of the responses were posted on my blog, Random Rodricks. This year, we asked the same question and didn't get much of a response.

Are you a baby boomer? Statisticians consider anyone born between 1946 and 1964 to be a full-fledged baby boomer. The oldest are 62 and just old enough to start collecting Social Security and qualifying for a reverse mortgage. But for this group of Americans, retirement looks a whole lot different, according to Gene Warren, president and chief executive of Thomas, Warren and Associates. Warren, an economist who specializes in the study of retirement, helps developers and communities figure out how they're going to attract future retirees.

Boomsday By Christopher Buckley Twelve / 323 pages / $14 Today we face mortgage defaults and a falling dollar, but so far it isn't as dismal as the picture satirist Christopher Buckley presents in this rollicking tale that comes out this week in paperback. In this novel, the American economy becomes so beleaguered with massive debt that a 29-year-old blogger and an ambitious senator mount a campaign to fix the problem by ridding the country of baby boomers. Not surprisingly, the boomers are less than thrilled with the idea and cultural warfare erupts.

Boomers contribute to nation's wealth If columnist Jay Hancock really wants to have an honest discussion about our nation's current fiscal mess, let's start with the facts ("Boomers planting a debt bomb," April 30). American workers and taxpayers who are between 44 and 62 years old (the baby boomers) didn't create our current budget crisis; the Bush administration and its allies in Congress did that. President Bush inherited a budget surplus and a Social Security trust fund built up in preparation for baby boomers' retirements.