I was trawling through Baby Boomer sites the other day (yes, having a look at the competition) and I noticed that most of them concentrated heavily upon music. This brought two thoughts to mind almost simultaneously:

1. The Baby Boomer generation spends a lot of time listening to music and is almost defined by the music of the sixties and seventies.

2. Is that really all we are - just an explosion of music?

After some weighty pondering (it’s what I do), I decided that there is some truth in the charge but it is not the whole truth. Yes, music was and remains very important to us. If any generation is going to insist that we had the best music, it’s the Boomers (and we’re right, of course). Music was our battle cry, our rallying point and our standard. It makes perfect sense that Boomer sites will look back to those songs and tunes, stirring our nostalgia and memories.

Yet that is not the full story. If music was our outward expression, what were we expressing? The answer has to be that we were reaching for something beyond the world our parents had built, that we wanted more than the material goods and chattels that seemed to be their driving motivation. Perhaps more than any generation before or since, we tried all sorts of ways to live differently, nothing was sacrosant and everything subject to scrutiny.

Of course, the energy and desire for change faded eventually and we wandered back into the great machine called society, retaining only our dreams of what might have been. But in those few years we had changed the world and made it possible for it to be as it is now.

Many of us look at what we have wrought and wonder where it all went wrong. Somewhere along the line things became less than we had hoped and much has changed for the worse, not the better. So we look back to our youth as a golden age and the music is the most direct expression of what we were striving for.

But that music is only the product of our generation. The real explosion happened in our thinking, as we threw everything out and started again from scratch. And that willingness to see things from another angle still pervades the attitude of the Boomers; we have not forgotten and are still striving for a better world, even if our efforts are less noticeable now.

At least, that’s the way I see it…

So much happens on the internet these days that often we can get left behind. I am still trying to figure out what is so great about MySpace, for instance, but everyone seems to be using it. These things become the preserve of the young because people our age have not the time or inclination to keep up with all that’s happening.

Being so resistant to the new means that sometimes we miss out on really useful and interesting things, however. And YouTube is one of these - a library of videos on the net that can be viewed and added to by anyone. Naturally, the young discovered it first and there are lots of very silly and pointless videos included as a result. But, as demonstrated by a 94-year-old veteran, Les Loken, YouTube can be used for worthwhile purposes too.

Les has been recording his memories of World War II and other times, then putting the resulting video on YouTube. These are fascinating records of a time that is distant even to those of our age group. But they also point the way to another advantage of YouTube: it’s a nostalgia machine!

Think back to those glorious days of the 1960s and the music that filled our ears; and it’s probably on YouTube. There are videos of the most surprising things, bands long forgotten (or so we thought), videos of groups made before videos were invented. It is a treasure trove of memories for us.

Just to give a few examples, here are some clips of music from the sixties, arbitrarily selected as they sprang to mind:

Beach Boys

Kinks

Beatles

Give it a try - just go to YouTube, in the search bar enter the name of a group you want to hear and see what comes up!

Fidel Castro has appeared on Cuban television, proclaiming that rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated.

Interesting to note that the film of Castro was sent to the television broadcasters, it was not filmed by them. Castro appears alive and well, but how can we really tell? He holds up a newspaper with the date on it but he wears a shirt with his name on it- as though he might wander away and thus can be returned if found.

But Castro, despite his assertions that he is taking part in government decisions and working, will one day die. He is 80 years old, underwent surgery in July and is rumored to have ill-health.

Change is not coming to Cuba today, but it is coming. Even if power falls to his brother Raul, who is 75 years old, eventually the Castro reign will come to an end.

The question is: Where will Cuba go from here?

The question isn’t a new one, it’s been debated for several years as Castro has aged and exiles in the US have found their hearts beating a little faster with any news of injury or ill-health. I found several articles on the net relating to plans and the possible future of a post-Castro Cuba. Here’s a sampling:

Hoover Digest - After Fidel

Pondering Post-Castro Cuba

CNN - Get Ready for Post-Castro Cuba

On September 8, 1966, television viewers set out to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before. It was our first trip aboard the Starship Enterprise.

40 years later, Star Trek is a classic, a series that NBC cancelled in its third season, yet around which a cult following sprang up. The series went into reruns, and became more popular than it was during its brief run in prime time. It spawned 5 additional Star Trek series, and 10 movies, six of which featured the original stars.

Now some of the original props are up for auction. Christies in New York will auction off some 4,000 items from the original series. The items include models of the Starship Enterprise as well as costumes and communicators. You can even buy the bridge of the Enterprise - estimated selling price is about $20,000.

I was thinking of buying one of these little items, but then, we all know the trouble with tribbles.