Celebrating Middle Age: You Plan To, Don't You?

Hey you young whipper-schnappers out there: Buckle your seat belts and look both was before crossing the street and it's very likely that some day, you too will reach middle age. Oh, but of course you knew that. . .

Even here in Kiev, Ukraine, people imagine themselves forever young. Twenty-five years from now, this bunch will look at this photo and laugh themselves silly. But for now, this look works.


Saturday I was at a youth event here in Kiev. The theme was Youth: The Church of Today and Tomorrow. They allowed youth group alumni such as myself to attend too. Oh yeah!

Not one person said Hey Eileen, you should be home with your knitting. A good thing since I don't knit. But this lady does.

By the way, how to say knit and purl in Russian? I haven't a clue, komrad.

We baby boomers figured that we'd be forever young, thanks to the dawning of the Age of Acquarius, the Age of Acquari-uuus, Acquar-eee-us. Harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding. . . Oops, reminded me of a song from the past. . .

Anyway, a year or maybe 20 years ago, back in a previous millenium, I decided that I would officially be middle-aged when my youngest brother Ben turned 40. You see, when I graduated from high school (Go Manchester Panthers!) he was a little blond tyke, two years old. Well, lots has happened since then and this past August, our Ben turned 40.

And now he's got a little blond tyke or two of his own.

Not everybody is as lucky as I was, to get a baby brother at age 16. So here's another definition of middle age: You know you've reached middle age when you work for someone younger than you.

Are you there yet?

Or, in an interesting twist: You know you've reached middle age when youre older than the nation's president. As you may be aware, President-elect Obama was born in 1961, the final wave of the baby boom generation. He's not the first baby boomer to be president, of course.

Presidents Clinton and Bush were both born summer of 1946, on the leading cusp of the baby boom. You know, if this election had gone differently, maybe almost everybody would feel younger. Who isn't younger than John McCain? ;)

Politics aside, there's something refreshing about having young blood, young energy in leadership.

How about you, dear blog readers: How do you define middle age? How will you know when you've reached that milestone?

The "Kitchen Debate" with Nixon and Krushchev: This Week in History

On July 24, 1959, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev got into a lively discussion that came to be called the kitchen debate. Nixon was in Moscow for the American National Exhibit which featured an entire house filled with the latest labor-saving devices such as a dishwasher and lawnmower. Items that the U.S. exhibitors claimed anybody in the U.S. could afford. It was a display of capitalism at its best.




Thanks to YouTube, we have this video snippet of their exchange. What impressed me was Nixon's composure and diplomacy in the conversation although he was no pushover with Khrushchev. The later had more of an in-you-face, bombastic style. No surprise there.

How about your family? Did you folks have a dishwasher? We did too. Ours was the two-legged type.

* * * * *

By the way, you might be interested in how to pronounce Khrushchev in Russian. It's different from the English pronunciation and the first few times I heard his name spoken here, I didn't recognize it.

Let's start with the easiest part . In Russian, the second syllable of Mr Nikita K's name is accented. And that changes how the "e" is pronounced. According to the rules of Russian pronunciation, when the letter "e" falls in the stressed syllable, its pronunciation changes from "ye" to "yo." Often in Russian, the accented "e" is shown with two dots over it. But not necessarily. Well mercy me, I see there's a "yo" right here on my keyboard. So here it is for you, ё.

The next thing in his name is harder to explain. That would be the first letter of the Mr. Nikita K's surname, which in Russian is the letter "Х." It looks like a letter in the English alphabet but don't let that fool ya. The Russian letter makes a very different sound.

Some Russian language books represent the sound by Kh, although that hardly does it justice. We don't have that sound in American English and, as per my language books, it's best explained by saying it's pronounced in the back of the throat. It's close to the gutteral "ch" sound in the Scottish word, loch. Which of course is a word we say quite often. Or maybe not.

That sound is similar to the sound made when a person clears the back of his throat and -- not to be crass -- and expectorates on the street. Which happens constantly here. Okay, so there you have it, the Russian letter "X." It's a little painful to say at first particularly for those of us who, you know, are not into expectorating anywhere, any time.

Well back to Mr K's name -- in Russian it's written Хрущёв. The Russian consonant "щ" is so efficient that it is represented by four English letters, "shch."

* * * * *

Funny, I ran across a funny tidbit about Mr Krushchev a minute ago. Apparently Russian folk have coined a term for the apartment buildings Mr Krushchev built in order to alleviate the housing shortage. The term is a combination of his surname and the word for slum. Don't imagine that he mentioned that during the kitchen debate.