"Tune in, turn on, drop out. Free love. Everything was free. No responsibility. We all still have that kind of feeling, that free spirit," she says.

"We're talking about the Beatles and `Love Child' and round, purple glasses. And we wear the badge proudly. I'm an old hippie."

And how does a hippie grow old?

That's easy. "Hey, we never do. We just progress," she says without missing a beat.

Here they come again.

They are grayer than they once were, and perhaps a bit heavier, too.

They're all in the same boat, staring squarely at a number that once meant one thing: You are old. But these are baby boomers hitting 60, and like everything else they have encountered, they are likely to make it their own.

They've got the power. Those born between 1946 and 1964 number 78 million strong in the United States.

That means they are landing on 60 with startling regularity. Every seven seconds, a baby boomer turns 60 - a phenomenon that will continue for the next 18 years.

It will happen to President Bush on July 6, and former President Bill Clinton on Aug. 19. Dolly Parton and Donald Trump joined the crowd this year, too.

from

http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/nation/14953921.htm