hobbies

Confessions of an Unrepentant Phillumenist

Published August 14, 2020 | By Clark Norton

Part of my phillumeny collection

Last year, I confessed to being a hodophile (which is just a fancy word for someone who loves to travel).

Now I’m admitting to being a phillumenist.

If you don’t know what a phillumenist is, don’t worry — I didn’t even know it myself until yesterday, when I came across the word in a trivia quiz.

A phillumenist is someone who, naturally enough, engages in phillumeny: namely, collecting souvenir matchbook covers and match boxes. The word was coined in 1943 , derived from the Latin “lumen” for light, “philo” for loving, and “ist” for one who does something.

It’s apparently a particularly popular hobby in the UK, though major collectors are scattered across the globe.

My own collection dates from my childhood, and, truth to tell, I haven’t really practiced much phillumeny since the 1980s; my interest waned, and labeled matchbooks are also less ubiquitous… Continue reading →

Posted in Baby boomer travel, Collectibles, hobbies, Travel obsessions | Tagged Matchbook collecting, Phillumenist, Phillumeny, Raffles Hotel | 4 Comments

The Surprising Health Benefits of Gaming

Published July 9, 2018 | By Clark Norton

When I first saw this infographic from the UK company Computer Planet about the health benefits of playing video games, I thought, “Hmm, interesting, but how much relevance does it have to baby boomers?”

After all, the prototypical image of gamers is of young men — who, as the infographic itself suggests, are seen as “anti-social hermits who shut themselves in their bedrooms day and night.”

And along with that image goes empty pizza boxes, bottles of soda or beer, maybe a haze of cigarette smoke…you get the picture.

Then I did a little research and was surprised to read that nearly a quarter of all gamers in the U.S. are age 50-plus, outdistancing those aged 36-49 and not too far behind the under 18 and 18-35 age ranges.

There’s more: according to surveys by Pew Research, in 2017 55 percent of Americans aged 50 and up played video… Continue reading →

Posted in Baby boomer travel, Electronics, Family travel, health, hobbies | Tagged Computer Planet, gaming, gaming health benefits, video games | 16 Comments

Stamp Collecting: My Travel Inspiration

Published November 29, 2016 | By Clark Norton

A few months ago I attended a stamp and coin show in Tucson and was disappointed to see that most of the displays were devoted to coins, not stamps.

And I became almost morose while chatting with some of the few stamp dealers there (all of whom were baby boomers, by the way). They each told the same story: in their experience, at least, stamp collecting is a dying hobby. Many of their items had been marked down for faster sale.

As a boy growing up in Indiana, I became a fervent stamp collector while still in grade school.

While I collected stamps from all over the world, including the U.S., I especially liked the issues of British and French colonies — not because I romanticized colonization (I didn’t know its moral implications at the time), but because they beautifully depicted far-away, exotic places that, quite simply, made me want to… Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Asia, Baby boomer travel, Bucket Lists, hobbies | Tagged Africa, Borneo, Fiji, French Equatorial Africa, French Polynesia, Hong Kong, Martinique, Mozambique, Sarawak, stamp collecting, stamps | 2 Comments

According to government and private surveys:

Leading-edge baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1955) and seniors account for four out of every five dollars spent on luxury travel today.
Roughly half the consumer spending money in the U.S.--more than $2 trillion--is in the hands of leading-edge baby boomers and seniors.
Baby boomers (born 1946-1964) travel more than any other age group.
When asked what they would most like to spend their money on, baby boomers answered “travel” more than any other category, including improving their health or finances.