Are baby boomers—the generation born between 1946 and 1964—the most privileged, spoiled, and clueless generation in history? Subsequent generations seem to think so, which is why “OK boomer” has become a thing on social media. The phrase is described as an electronic eyeroll, a dismissal of lectures from the old folks in their mortgage-free suburban homes with riding mowers and Medicare. Are you of an age to wonder why millennials can’t move out of Mom’s basement? OK boomer. To riff on the unrealistic expectations of your company’s latest 25-year-old employee? OK boomer.

When my husband and I married, after a two-month courtship, I didn’t know how to cook. Some experience with baking constituted my home-ec resumé, but man does not live on cookies alone (as much as my man would have liked to). As we were both enrolled in college, he insisted I sign up for a noncredit cooking class, an idea that would never have occurred to me. His instinct for self-preservation might have prompted the suggestion, but in practical terms, that was the best class I ever took—much preferable to food poisoning. 

Two hours among the giant sequoias of Yosemite, drinking in reams of information from a National Park ranger, will redefine anyone’s interpretation of “a walk in the woods.” 

I don’t envy others their big houses or frequent vacations (or not much!). Here’s what I do envy: Those grandparents who get to visit their grandkids more than twice a year. Living less than a day’s drive—say, three hours—away from grown children seems ideal. It’s close enough to join them for school plays and tournament games and sleepovers, but not near enough to be an imposition (or a convenience?). I’ll have to say, though, if my offspring wanted to move down the road I wouldn’t object. Instead, they both live on opposite sides of the country.

The accumulation of 20-plus years in the same house can be intimidating—not so much from the plastic bins stacked on garage shelves, but from the little stuff, the mementos that weep when you think about pitching them. Do you have boxes of old photographs under the bed or in the closet? Vacation pics from the Grand Canyon or that collection passed down from Great-Aunt Susan that never got labeled (who are these people)? As I was sorting through my last box of photos, and categorizing them to put in another box, it struck me that none of them were more recent than 2008.

The new documentary One Child Nation explores the effects of China’s infamous “one-child policy” from 1980 to 2015. In the film, co-director Nanfu Wang returns to her home village to reflect on growing up while the policy was in place, though ignorant of its implications. Only when she herself became pregnant, as an adult living in the United States, did her thoughts turn to the bitter harvest of the one-child years in her home country. While interviewing an elderly midwife, she asks how many babies the woman delivered. “I really don’t know how many I delivered.

Does the date Aug. 20, 1619, mean anything to you? It’s the day the first African slaves were traded into North America.