Surviving and thriving
THIS week's newspaper notes the passing of the Sargent Shriver, the public servant who founded the Peace Corps and helped start a number of the key programmes of the "War on Poverty", including Head Start and VISTA. Scott Stossel, Mr Shriver's biographer, reflects on his legacy:
Shriver's voice, then, is a voice from a more hopeful past. But while he was in part a product of his times, his optimism and idealism and commitment to service transcend the particularities of his time and circumstance. His career is a rebuke to cynical journalist types like me who focus on what's wrong with things, what's "realistic," what can't be done. Often the things that he accomplished (starting the Peace Corps in just a few months, or getting 500,000 kids into Head Start programs its first summer when the "experts" said that 10,000 kids was the maximum feasible) were things that everyone beforehand had said were not realistic, or downright impossible. Shriver had a gift for what one of his old War on Poverty colleagues called "expanding the Horizons of the Possible." In my darkest moments of despair over my biography of him, when I had a half-written, 1,000-page pile of garbage, and I'd think to myself that I'd never be finished, and that this wasn't worth pursuing, I'd tell myself, For God's sake, Shriver ran the Peace Corps and the War on Povertyat the same time, while raising five kids!so you can damn well finish this book.
Thinking of the Peace Corps reminds me of one of my favourite fun ideas from George W. Bush, that more senior citizens should join the Peace Corps. (My other favourite fun idea: manned flight to Mars.) It would be something really nice to look forward to for the empty-nest years, and many seniors, with long careers behind them, would be well-qualified for Peace Corps activity. So this is slightly off-topic, b! ut let's take off from this to consider our senior-citizen friends. America is getting older; according to the Administration on Aging (I didn't know it existed, either), about 13% of the population was over 65 in 2009. By 2030 the figure is expected to expand to about 19%.
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