Over-50

Before There Were Counterculture Hippies, There Were the Beats: Lawrence Ferlinghetti as Culture-Changer

"Poet, publisher and bookseller Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who helped launch and perpetuate the Beat movement, has died. He was 101. Mr. Ferlinghetti died at his San Francisco home Monday, his son Lorenzo Ferlinghetti told the Associated Press on Tuesday. The cause was lung disease." - The Wall Street Journal (originally published by AP), February 23, 2021.

Even many Baby Boomers don't remember the Beats. But had not Ferlinghetti been a culture-changer, America wouldn't have been fully able to shake off the white-bread Eisenhower era. 

But shake it off it did. On university campuses in the west, then the midwest, we got it: Traditional Americana was oppressive.

Men grew their hair. Women got on The Pill. And many of us ducked out of graduate school before finishing our dissertations. We regretted not having gone to law school. Otherwise we could do more for consumer rights than just be a grassroots Nader Raider.

Then came the brutal economic downturn of the mid 1970s. Those of us who were going to amount to anything suited up for the career opportunities in Corporate America. Eventually, some of us did try law school but it was too late. I left Harvard Law as a 1L. That's a career path which must be embraced early in the game.

And now here we are fumbling for how to honor Ferlinghetti. After all, his medium was the book. Print. Now the culture-shapers like Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen are podcasting. For them it's a collaboration. It's hard to resurrect the ethos of the Beat Age. Come to think of it, it's difficult to time travel to the counterculture. Were we ever really so free? Internally did we question our lack of attention to careers? We who become ultra careerists? The money was in corporate. 

Now, we have shifted from working all the time to the oddball pleasure of post-career just-earning-a-buck. As in the counter culture days, we again can have fun while earning income, trust most of the co-workers and have no desire to "get ahead." It's a different kind of high than the counterculture.

But it is a high. During the long days of angling for those promotions our insides felt just like T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland." Now we can reimagine some versions of freedom. Meanwhile, unlike Millennials, we have Medicare and Social Security. Maybe even an investment fund. In the counterculture, crashing on someone else's waterbed, we had nothing. At least not that didn't fit in a VW Beetle. 

Small changes can trigger big success in your career and your business communications. Swing by for a complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

In Play - Resumes of Those Employed at MyPillow

"My Pillow founder Mike Lindell says he has lost $65 million in revenue this year because of mass boycotts over his ongoing claims that the presidential election was stolen." - Lee Brown, New York Post, February 23, 2021.

What the heck did Lindell expect to happen in the marketplace when he, like Donald Trump, kept the post-election turmoil going and going? Of course, the reasonable people lawyers often refer to were going to push back.

The most effective way to do that in capitalist America is with pocketbook tactics. About 20 retailers refused to sell My Pillow. And even if they continue selling it, many consumers would have stepped back.

Meanwhile, lower-cost non-branded imitations of MyPillow probably have knocked the MyPillow brand out of the box. It might not be able to get back in, ever. Thank you, my neck and back are doing just fine with the cheaper version. 

Of course, Lindell, a businessman, should have anticipated the fallout. 

Yet, right now he seems to be positioning and packaging himself as the noble guy who took the bullet for the cause. Does he expect his alleged selflessness to result in a GoFundMe set up to help with the loss - and pay the legal bills he will pick up in battling $1.3 billion lawsuit "Dominion, et al. v. Michael Lindell?"

The collateral damage in all this could be the MyPillow employees, if they wind up getting laid off. As with the fallout after the collapse of Enron, those employees could be blocked in their job search by having MyPillow on their resume. 

Small changes can trigger big success in your career and your business communications. Swing by for a complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)