Boomer With a View

Draft version

Every memoir needs a push to begin. I’ve had two. The first has been from my oldest daughter, who for years urged me to write about the group we belonged to when she was born in 1970. It has been called many things, including commune and cult. Neither label is fully true nor false, but she’s right — it makes quite a story.

The second has been building all year. 2025 feels like an inflection point. Those in power are rewriting our national history and telling stories to justify a future that excludes most of us. The best answer, I believe, is to tell authentic stories of the America we know — flawed, yes, but worthy of remembrance.

By weaving my own story into the larger narrative of that era, I hope to leave both a legacy for my family and a testament to an America the world once admired.

Another force shaping 2025 is Artificial Intelligence. For forty-five years I have been an early adopter, but have kept AI at arm’s length until recently. A few experimental prompts convinced me it could streamline the research needed for a project like this. I’ll also write about my experience using it: a mixed bag of opportunity and pitfalls. History suggests that once a technology gains acceptance, it doesn’t go away. My hope is to make AI — as both topic to understand and tool to use — more accessible to other Boomers.

Finally, the blog. Unlike during my 2017–2021 run, I don’t expect a quick reversal of our political climate. Still, with this platform in place, I intend to use the blog as the present-tense counterpoint to the Memoir’s history and the Archive’s curated past — joining my voice with others pushing back against corrosive narratives.

About the Author

My name is Michael Massengill. I’m a retired educator in Seattle, where I live with my wife, Ann. Blended, we have six children and eight grandchildren, about half nearby.

Books and writing hooked me early. After a B.A. in English and a teaching credential, I earned a Masters in educational technology in the mid 1980s, when computers first began entering schools. By the end of that decade I was a district instructional technology director, also responsible for building out our networks. Through most of the 1990s I ran a summer computer camp; in 2000 I detoured for two years as Chief Educational Officer of an Internet startup. When I returned to public schools, I made the happy choice to finish my career as a librarian — the job I had always secretly envied.

In those early days, my colleagues and I correctly believed computers would open vast new possibilities for students and teachers. But, I didn’t foresee the darker side of the Web. Now, with Artificial Intelligence, I approach with tempered enthusiasm: wary, but curious. My decades in software and online tools keep me from being dazzled for long. But, AI is here to stay, and I look forward to sharing the highs and lows of working with it in this project.

“Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.”
– Stewart Brand, co-founder and editor of The Whole Earth Catalog

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.”
– B.F. Skinner