When BoomerCafé was born in 1999, its co-founders, journalists David Henderson and Greg Dobbs— that’s us— wanted to give baby boomers a place to tell their stories. Stories about boomers’ adventures, stories about boomers’ relationships, stories about boomers’ challenges, stories about boomers’ lives, which are really your lives. With that formula, BoomerCafé quickly became the most popular place... Source ..read more

La dolce vita. This wasn’t just the name of a Fellini film when we were young, it is the definition of the idyllic life one can live in Italy: the sweet life. Australian baby boomer Kathy Gates discovered it years ago, and her love hasn’t waned. Almost six years ago, retirement gave me something precious: time to travel. I sold my apartment in Australia and hit the road. Since then... Source ..read more

It takes a clever baby boomer to turn a heart attack into fodder for humor. Jerry Zezima, humor columnist for the Tribune News Service of Chicago, is just that kind of boomer, as he writes about The Heart of the Matter. Love means never having to say you’re sorry for not doing the laundry. For the first time in 43 years of marriage, I have been washing clothes. I’ve also been performing tasks I... Source ..read more

Because of careers, because of incomes, because of families, different generations have weathered the pandemic in different ways. Baby boomer Brian Hersch is the creator of board games to which a lot of us turned when we were pretty much stuck at home, games like Taboo, Outburst, Malarkey, and Super Scattergories. As he writes from his home in Los Angeles, that was a new experience for younger... Source ..read more

Generations before ours couldn’t do what we now can do: reconnect with people we knew in the distant past. Thanks to social media, baby boomer Jeanne Litwin of Newtown, Pennsylvania, has found links to her past that have been as good as the bonds she’s made since then. I find it curious that in my sixties, I have reconnected with people who I was friends with in my twenties. I was a free spirit... Source ..read more

How many New Years resolutions have we made? The oldest baby boomers have probably been making them for 55, maybe 60 years. Even the youngest probably can count up to 40. But here at BoomerCafé, we’d venture to guess that few have been as insightful and as introspective as this, from former CBS News correspondent Rolland Smith in Santa Barbara, California. It is his approach to the new year... Source ..read more

After a troubling year, let’s lay back for a moment with a photo essay from BoomerCafé’s co-founder and executive editor Greg Dobbs, about a world we rarely see. I need a break. So do you. A break from politics, a break from the pandemic, a break from the pandemonium of the last few years. So, in the spirit of the opening line from Monty Python’s Flying Circus— “And now for something completely... Source ..read more

Sometimes, as an active generation of baby boomers, we still do new things. Sometimes we do old things differently. That’s what Stuart Brotman of Knoxville, Tennessee, did a few years ago. He’d had a junior year abroad forty years ago and this time he turned it around. As a bonafide senior, he did a senior year abroad. It had been 40 years since my college junior year abroad in London. Source ..read more

As baby boomers, the best thing that can happen if we don’t just retire but also relocate is, life gets better. For Paula Ganzi McCloin of Millsboro, Delaware, that’s exactly what she got. “I love the waving,” said Rick. “We do, too!” I gushed. My husband Billy and I were out to dinner with Rick and Martha, new friends and neighbors. We recently retired and left Long Island for southern Delaware... Source ..read more

Online dating? That’s for kids. Or, is it? In another of his essays about the absurdity of everyday life, longtime San Francisco columnist Nick Hoppe writes that finding happiness can be tricky. But it’s not impossible. Not even for baby boomers. My wife and I went to a rollicking wedding last weekend in the wine country. The beautiful bride was 70 years old, and the dashing groom was 72. Source ..read more