Opinion: Dying traditions; is it Gen X’s fault?

I think that I became conscious of traditions while I attended college in Mountain View/Los Altos Hills on the San Francisco Peninsula. Foothill College opened in the late 1950s, located in an abandoned Lockheed building that had to be reinforced with “flying buttresses” (the heavy supports that were supposed to hold the building together during an earthquake).

At the end of the 1960-1961 academic year, I had earned enough units to get my Associate of Arts degree and transfer to a state university. However, Foothill’s new, award-winning college campus was scheduled to open in a picturesque setting in Los Altos Hills in September, 1961. So, I ran for student-body office and enrolled in 12 more units to be eligible for the position of Commissioner of Activities. When we student-body officers met for the first time on the new campus, we decided that “anything done once is a tradition at Foothill College.” Therefore, I’m sorry to see many of my generation’s traditions disappear as Gen X (the generation born between 1965 and 1980) has imposed its folkways on our culture.

Reading newspapers

Reading the news on paper with one’s morning coffee was a part of life. If one received an afternoon or evening newspaper, then relaxing after work with a beverage and the days’ printed news was a way to make the transition from the workday to a quiet evening at home. Now, Gen Xers and the cohorts that followed them prefer to get their news in some digital form.