Geri and Toby

FOF Toby is a dynamo. She talks fast, thinks fast and moves fast, from the moment she wakes around 5 am to tend to the turkeys and chickens on her farm until she crawls under the covers at 10:30 p.m.

Toby lives with her husband on a six-acre farm in upstate New York, works full-time in an executive position for a utility company, bakes scrumptious chocolate zucchini bread, sews her own clothes, blogs, and is about to spend half a week–every week– caring for her first grandchild.

Toby has religiously commented on my blog for months. I always enjoy her insightful observations and even her opposing viewpoints, so I was excited to meet her when she came to Manhattan for the day yesterday. No surprise, she’s a pragmatic and edgy gal. When I asked what her younger daughter does for a living, she answered, “She’s the best-educated hairdresser in a world.” A college graduate, her daughter studied at Aveda’s beauty school before she married and moved to London, so she could get a job there. She loves her work, Toby told me.

One of the first women to be admitted to Colgate University in the seventies, Toby earned a masters in journalism from the prestigious Newhouse School of Journalism at Syracuse University and a masters in business from Binghamton University. Although she always dreamed of living and working in NY after school, she stayed upstate when she met and married. ”It was a great place to raise a family,” Tony explains. But I could tell she was thrilled to be in Manhattan, even for just a day.

Meet Toby on her blog, Kitchen Counter Economics, where she shows us how to cook a perfect barbecued brisket, ruminates about sewing proper-sized waistbands and keeps us up to date on her garlic plants, turkeys and tomatoes.

She’s another outstanding reason why FOF is the greatest generation of women on the planet.

I’m pretty wary of people who call themselves “image consultants” because it sounds so pretentious.  What is my “image” anyway?  Is it the way I look? How I dress? The way I act? How well I photograph?

I’m also wary of someone who calls herself a “renowned image consultant.” That’s even more pretentious.

Anyway, I was about to trash a PR release about FOF Janice Hurley-Trailor, a “renowned image consultant” but one of her quotes caught my eye: “Even the best-dressed, best groomed people can compromise their image (there’s that word again!) if they don’t communicate well.”

Hmm, I thought, how true. So I read on and loved Janice’s tips on how to communicate better.  Here are two of them:

On Interrupting: Don’t stop someone in the middle of a sentence to insert your opinion.  This is a common communication flaw. Let others finish their sentences and thoughts before saying a thing.  “Insert a pregnant pause before you answer someone’s question and you’ll effectively communicate that you really listened to what was said and gave ample consideration to your response,” the release said.

Let Someone Else Have Center Stage: We all want to talk about ourselves, but give others the chance to do that, too. When you hear about someone else’s experience, hold yourself back from telling a story about yourself. Instead get interested in what they’re saying and ask questions.  People like to know you care about them.

If you’re interested in hearing more from Janice, visit her website.

My 83-year-old aunt, Sylvia, is on her deathbed. Just this week, her cancer became more aggressive. Her body is weak, she can barely muster the strength to talk, she isn’t eating and she can only tolerate a few sips of liquid at a time. She calls for her momma (my grandmother, Fanny) for hours at night and cries that she wishes she were dead.

I found a wonderful Buddhist guide with sensible, comforting advice on how to act around a dying person. It has helped me to communicate well with Sylvia during the last couple of days.

I’ve never spent so much time with someone so close to death. When my father was dying over twenty years ago, I saw him once a week and wasn’t as spiritual or psychological as I’ve become. (Not that I’m exactly Mahatma Gandhi now, mind you!)

I thought, as I was sitting next to Sylvia this morning, how similar a dying person is to a newborn, so helpless. I know this concept isn’t original, but I bring it up because it is chillingly true.

Something else occurred to me today. Yes, the newborn is just beginning his journey. But, as far as I’m concerned, so is the dying person. I can’t see it being any other way.

How revealing is this: A recent Nielsen study determined that boomers account for 38.5 percent of purchases of consumer goods, but only 5 percent of advertising expenditures are currently aimed at ages 45 to 64. “Today’s middle-aged and older consumers are different than their predecessors. The conventional wisdom that they spend little, resist technology and are slow to adopt new products needs to be re-assessed.  Boomers are an affluent group who adopt technology with enthusiasm,” Nielsen’s website says.

Does FOF Becca look like someone advertisers should ignore?

DUH!

We didn’t need a fancy study to tell us about members of our own generation, but someone needs to tell the rest of the world what we’ve known for years.

Someone needs to tell beauty companies with big name brands, like Estee Lauder, that it’s okay to feature great-looking FOF women in their ads because women don’t stop using beauty products at 27.

Someone needs to tell fashion companies, like Ralph Lauren and Gucci, that it’s okay to feature great-looking FOF women in their ads because women don’t stop buying clothes at 24.

Someone needs to tell car companies, like Toyota, that it’s okay to feature great looking FOF women in their ads because women don’t stop buying cars at 32.

Someone needs to tell tech companies, like Apple, that it’s okay to feature great-looking FOF women in their ads because we love our tech toys as much, maybe even more, than our youngsters. And, like the study said, we adopt technology with verve.

I would also venture to say that we’ll be taking care of our looks, our minds and our bodies right up until the moment our minds and our bodies give up on us. Not a moment before that.

As a matter of fact, I think Apple ought to get together with a wheelchair company and figure out how to jazz up those contraptions with storage pockets for iPads and iPhones. Might as well keep up, even if we can’t stand up.

We’re FOF and it’s going to take a lot to keep us down.