Rebecca Nappi

When Ryan Crocker, then ambassador to Iraq, visited the newspaper in February 2008, we learned that he read The Spokesman-Review almost every day online. He knew all of us in the editorial board meeting by name because he saw our bylines all the time. It was humbling and heartening to know our words, generated in little old Spokane, were read across the world.

Some readers have gently criticized this column for being a downer about aging. They have a point. Last week, for instance, I wrote about the reasons boomers may not live into great old age (chronic illnesses and high suicide rates). So this week, I counter with a more hopeful report.

A decade ago, my boomer-age sister accompanied my then 80-something mother to the doctor. The doctor said he always took his elderly patient’s blood pressure, as well as the blood pressure of the grown daughter or son with the patient. Almost always, the grown child’s blood pressure was worse than the parent’s. The stress of the sandwich years, the doctor theorized.

Exhale. April is finally over. Nearly everyone in my world seemed overextended last month. So many events, so little room in the schedule. The busy April calendar reinforced my long-held observation that the two busiest months of the year are April and October.

We’re tired. Really tired. And as this Centers for Disease Control and Prevention graphic points out, women of all ages report feeling more exhausted than men.

In Ritzville recently, at noon on a Thursday, I heard the town’s warning sirens blow. It was an immediate “memory meld” as I call those sounds, smells or sights that transport people from the present to their childhood in just an instant. Growing up in Spokane in the Cold War era, we heard warning sirens tested every Wednesday at noon until 1973, when the tests went to once a month. In February 2000, the era ended when Spokane County deemed the county’s 50 sirens “surplus property” and silenced them forever.

In last week’s Boomer U stories about embracing new technology, I should have stressed more the advantages of Twitter. When big news breaks, Twitter is instantly filled with information, as it was last Monday when bombs killed three and injured at least 180 people at the Boston Marathon. People on the scene quickly tweeted 140-character messages, as did reporters throughout the country working on the story. For instance, within minutes of the news, a reporter at another newspaper tweeted a link to the marathon website that listed all the runners registered. Our reporters then found the names of Inland Northwest runners, and they started making calls to see if they were OK. Thankfully, they were.

In children’s books and in old movies, grandparents look and act their parts. Grandma is a round and cuddly cookie baker, and Grandpa plays catch – slowly – in the back yard with his young charges. The good old days, when grandparents in reality reflected fictional grandparents. They were content at home, wearing age-appropriate clothes. They didn’t work way past retirement age or, when retired, didn’t declare that instead of babysitting the grandchildren, it was time for them to have some fun.

At Easter Mass a few weeks ago, the crowd was bigger than usual, and I had plenty of time to observe an aging boomer trend. It’s harder to kneel as you age, if you’ve had knee surgery, especially knee replacement. And lower back problems can make impossible a long kneel.

You don’t text. You don’t Skype. You don’t do Facebook. You don’t tweet on Twitter. And you are proud of the fact, though relatives and friends urge you to connect with them through social media and other modern technology.

In the 1979 movie “The China Syndrome” the main character played by Jane Fonda returns to her home and listens to a message on her answering machine. It was the first time I saw an answering machine. It used cassette tapes and looked pretty hefty. It would be a few more years until answering machines showed up in most homes. You can still find some of those old-fashioned answering machines, but they are rare. So how do you explain cassette-tape answering machines to children? You rent “The China Syndrome.”

The illnesses that killed our parents and grandparents won’t kill as many of us in the future. Deaths from strokes, heart attacks and cancer declined significantly between 2000 and 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while death from Alzheimer’s increased significantly.

Now showing on the Showtime cable network is the documentary “Family Band: The Cowsills Story.” A 1960s band, the Cowsills grew famous, in part, because their mother and little sister sang with them. The show “The Partridge Family” was later based on this family band. Older boomers will recognize many of the Cowsills’ hits, including “Hair” and “Love American Style.”