AARP Bulletin - June 2011

In the News ;
31 Percentage of personal care aides who did not have health care coverage in 2009.
Free
Harvest
Programs
Crop Up
Now Hear This
eas
In January 2010, a group of neighbors
in Salem, Ore., found-
ed a nonprofit dedicated to providing fresh
produce to food banks from private sources.
By the end of a season that ran from July to
November, the organization now known as
Salem Harvest had rallied some 1,700 vol-
unteers who picked 53,000 pounds of fruits
and vegetables on local farms and delivered
the produce to more than a dozen food pro-
grams. Volunteers also got to keep half their
harvests. ; Similar programs have cropped
up across the country. Philadelphia Orchard
Project volunteers have planted more than
200 fruit trees in 23 city orchards. And
Neighborhoodfruit.com lists 10,000 regis-
tered fruit and nut trees nationwide and
helps people locate trees closest to them.
All fruit picked is free. ; “What we all have
in common,” says Salem Harvest cofounder
Lisa Clark-Burnell, “is the recognition of
an abundance of fresh, local food going to
waste when hungry people are all around
us.” —Jessica Maxwell

In 2006, Craig Roberts and Fi- amma di Gioia traded a calm
life in Lindstrom, Minn., to adopt
two teens and their 10-year-old
sibling. ; “It’s a huge under-
taking,” says di Gioia, 72, who
has two grown children from a
previous marriage. ; Despite
some struggles, the husband
and wife say adopting has been
well worth it. “It’s a way to give
back, to have an impact each
and every day,” says Roberts, 61.
; Couples and singles in their
50s and 60s are embracing par-
enthood, according to adoption
and child welfare agencies. “More
50-plus people are adopting,”
says Adam Pertman, executive
director of the Evan B. Donald-
son Adoption Institute, a New
York-based think tank. “Adopt-
ing older [children] from foster
care is usually the easiest route
for them by far.” ; Of the 3,330
couples active on the Adopt
USKids website in late March,
43 is the average age of pro-
spective fathers and 41 for pro-
spective mothers, says Kathy
Ledesma, the agency’s national
project director. ; Older same-
sex couples are also looking to
adopt, Ledesma says, and she’s
seen how they “can make an
enduring, positive difference.”
—Susan Kreimer
Adopting Kids Later in Life

Divine Calling
Boomers may be act-
ing holier than thou
for a reason: They’re
the fastest-growing
age group in U.S. di-
vinity schools, in-
creasing from 12 per-
cent of students in
1995 to 21 percent in
2010. “Many boomers are looking to spend
their time in ways that hold greater mean-
ing and make a positive difference in the
world,” says Eliza Smith Brown of the As-
sociation of Theological Schools. The Rev.
Robert Fellows, who earned his theology
certificate in 2007, says he didn’t feel the
call to ministry until he was 55. “I had
been involved in the church, but I felt a
strong tug back to ministry and to work
for social justice,” says Fellows, 61, pastor
of Community Congregational Church in
Greenland, N.H.

2010

21%

12%

1995

; Craig Roberts and
Fiamma di Gioia with
their children in 2006.
Fashion Statement
How did a bike-riding octogenarian become
an icon of fashion photography? That’s one of
many questions tackled in the new documen-
tary film Bill Cunningham New York, playing at
selected U.S. theaters. “Bill is a fashion histo-
rian,” director Richard Press says of the 82-year-
old New York Times legend. “His eye is so gen-
erous and open to
anything that is cre-
ative. I shot the movie
to convey this inex-
haustible joy.” Cun-
ningham, who cap-
tures fashion trends
in his Times photos,
says in a movie clip:
“Fashion is the armor
to survive the real-
ity of everyday life.”
—Mike Tucker