Generation

This summer, hair weaves are taking a turn for the kinky, the curly and the wavy. Why is this news? When black women first started sewing hair onto their scalps during the 1990s en masse, the resulting shoulder-length bobs were as much about achieving a smooth texture as it was about having length. Fabulous hair was defined as long and straight. However, as more black women have come to terms with their natural curl pattern, store-bought tresses are trending toward the fuzzy rather than the flat-ironed.

From the White House to a boardroom near you, baby boomers are defining our politics (Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich), our economy (Bill Gates and Michael Jordan) and our entertainment (James Cameron and Oprah Winfrey). But why let them have all the fun? What of their foibles, those skeletons in the closet, those embarrassing moments that are edited from the annual retelling of Woodstock or Summer of Love stories? If you were born before 1945 or after 1964, this is your chance.

Sen. John Glenn is scheduled to revisit space on Thursday. Many are wondering whether, at 77, he can carry his weight on the Discovery mission. In truth, Glenn will be carrying the hopes of his generation, a generation that defined this century. Glenn, the original American orbiter, has been assigned to serve as payload specialist on the mission. Its major objective is the deployment of the SPARTAN science spacecraft to document solar activity affecting Earth's environment.

I think it was poor policy to publish an article such as "Do the elderly have it too good?" (Inquirer Magazine, June 8). In my opinion, the central premise is petty - but it could fuel controversy that could ultimately become a serious generation war. And with all the problems that exist in America today, we certainly don't need another one. I know there's a "safety" clause - "rich retired people get breaks they simply don't deserve" - but "rich"...

TWO WEEKENDS ago, fours kids from Newark, N.J., were shot in cold blood in their neighborhood schoolyard. All were African-American, all headed to Delaware State. Three young men were killed, the woman survived. There's a resurgence in violent crime sweeping through our inner cities, and segregation is worse today than it was at the time of Brown v. Board of Education. We know it's true, but we pretend it isn't so. This country has stopped talking about race. My generation, the twentysomethings, has never had a national conversation on the topic.

"This is a day that the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it," the Rev. Jerry Lowry prayed. If God is a multicultural advocate (and she is), then it just doesn't get any better than this: a Native American Methodist minister, quoting a psalm by a Jewish king at a predominantly white Southern university in the Lumbee tribe's heartland, whose commencement speaker is a black Baptist. The Lumbees are America's second-largest tribe. But because of opposition by North Carolina's courtly antediluvian, Sen. Jesse Helms, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has refused to recognize the Lumbees as a legitimate tribe.

Dear Grandfather, You never met me, so allow me to introduce myself. I am your 26-year-old grandson, born in 1977 - five years after you died. From what I have heard, you fought for our country in World War II and returned to start our family. Your contribution may have worn you down a bit and made life tougher, but you did it willingly. I often think about you, and have many questions. You see, Grandpa, our country was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. That day changed me, as Pearl Harbor probably did you. I don't know how you initially reacted, but I haven't been able to live my life the same since.

This year my parents shocked me by turning 70. The tremor I felt, though, was small compared to the one a few years ago when my uncle retired, closing forever the doors of the corner shoe store started in 1909 by my grandfather. The loss of such a permanent fixture of those years of my youth was no less of a jolt than if, well, the Berlin Wall had suddenly disappeared. And now, among these signposts, many passing by too quickly these days to be read, is the election of Bill Clinton.

It was 17 years before Frank McElroy heard his father talk about the Vietnam War. Before last fall, he never knew that his father, Joe, had sought comfort in a makeshift chapel in the middle of a jungle in Vietnam, and prayed to become a better soldier. Or that his father left the church that day a changed man, purged of his fear, and ready to fight a war he would never really understand. Until his father spoke to Frank's high school class last fall about his Vietnam experience, Frank McElroy admits that he did not really care, like many in his generation.

Every year, scores of students whose families are new immigrants to the United States enroll in the Upper Darby School District and Margie Tavakalian helps them adjust. The 55-year-old English Language Learners (ELL) teacher at Beverly Hills Middle School takes shy and scared youngsters who speak Punjabi, Thai, or Greek, and helps them communicate — and more. When frustrations mount because a student can't open a locker or tell a cafeteria worker what he or she wants to eat, Tavakalian is there.

‘I'm a child of the Sixties," says acclaimed British screenwriter Paula Milne (The Politician's Wife, Night Watch), whose latest drama, White Heat, opens in that strange, turbulent, mythic decade. "There was between the 1950s and 1960s this huge, seismic change ... and I was a part of that," says Milne, 64. A six-episode ensemble piece premiering Wednesday on BBC America, White Heat is a bold, fabulously written (if at times overbearing) chronicle of the political and social changes which sweep through Britain beginning in the mid-1960s and which shaped — and in some cases, radically misshaped — a generation.

We parents of college students had better get the basements fixed up. According to Karl Rove and his political action group, chances are the kids will be hauling themselves and their ratty belongings back home after graduation. American Crossroads is out with a political ad that shows President Obama dishing with celebrities and quaffing a beer, and notes that "after four years of a celebrity president," half of college graduates can't find jobs that fit their skills, student debt has topped $1 trillion, and — OMG!

Jen Lancaster is up on her high horse again. Fans of the witty memoirist are delighted to see her back in the saddle. Her just-published book, Jeneration X (NAL, $25.95) is a plea for her contemporaries to stand apart from the willfully infantile generations that bracket them -- the boomers and the millenials -- by acting like adults. "We're differentiating ourselves by becoming the only grownups in the room," says Lancaster. "We're tired of seeing all these baby boomers running around talking about their feelings and these Gen Y kids that you have to constantly coddle or they'll have a meltdown.

Snockey's Oyster and Crab House — a Queen Village fish joint across Washington Avenue from the equally quirky Mummers Museum — turns 100 Thursday. Longevity like that is astonishing, given that a restaurant marking its 10th birthday is considered an odds-defying institution in this town. And, in this era of ever more polished menus, the fact that Snockey's is celebrating a century in business is even more improbable given its old-school menu of fish house classics like deep-fried filet of flounder, fish cakes, deviled clams, and broiled bluefish.

Twenty-five years after it first cruised the final frontier on TV, the crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation is docking in the Philadelphia area. Actor Patrick Stewart, Star Trek's Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, is scheduled to join a rotating set of former cast members for a weekend of Q&A, autograph signings, trivia and other events in celebration of the silver anniversary. "The Official Star Trek Convention," produced by Creation Entertainment, will be in Cherry Hill from Friday through Sunday.

Chances are you had a better week than Jim Kenney. The veteran Democratic councilman found himself on a cover of the Philadelphia Daily News above the headline "Sucking on the Public Tweet," a "Socially Inept" report on how he spent nearly $29,000 of taxpayer money on a contract for a "social-media strategy," including the management of his Facebook and Twitter accounts. "I, at 53 years old, do not have the facility," he told the Daily News about Twitter. Thank heaven it was Holy Week, which meant Council wasn't in session because folks had to head back to their districts and dye eggs and stuff.

Periodically and cyclically, the economy will stink, even more so for people who are less experienced, educated or trained, the youngest members of the work force. The Depression walloped one generation. The recession, oil shortage, and stagflation whipped mine. Many classmates avoided the job market, or the pronounced lack thereof, by diving into grad school and further debt, which drove them toward more lucrative professional if not necessarily innovative endeavors. As The Inquirer's special report "Struggling for Work" makes clear, these are days of diminishing economic returns for the "millennial generation," adults 18 to 34, entering a challenging and rapidly changing marketplace.

Now comes another skirmish in the generation wars, the fight about whether post-boomers are selfish, moneygrubbing fame seekers - the "Me" Generation - or confident, group-oriented volunteers - the "We" Generation. The latest salvo comes from Jean Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University and author of Generation Me and the Narcissism Epidemic . Not surprisingly, she's still critical of her own generation, the Generation Xers born between 1962 and 1981, and the Millennials born after that.

HE'S NEARLY 27 years old, unemployed, living at home in the Philadelphia exurbs with his dad, and spending a good chunk of his day on the computer. But Chris Cocchi isn't playing video games. Instead, the West Chester 20-something - who's worked most recently as a line cook - spends most of his time on Craigslist, hoping to find the career listing that will break the cycle of dead-end jobs and unemployment - and pay well enough for him to move out and maybe go back to school.