Encore: Work that matters in the second half of life.

Many encore careers will take the form of national service, whether it’s tutoring schoolchildren as a member of Experience Corps or signing up for a stint in the Peace Corps.

Thus, it was refreshing to see the contribution of older adults so prominently featured in Time magazine’s cover story.

Indeed the whole package was refreshing, with it’s unusually direct call to action and excellent resource section, which highlights Experience Corps.

“The way to get citizens involved in civic life, the way to create a common culture that will make a virtue of our diversity, the way to give us that more capacious sense of “we” — finally, the way to keep the Republic — is universal national service,” writes Richard Stengel, Time’s managing editor and former head of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. “It is time for the next President to mine the desire that is out there for serving and create a program for universal national service that will be his — or her — legacy for decades to come.”

Stengel endorses the notion of a baby boomer education bond — a $1,000 education voucher for every 500 hours of community service. But more importantly, he calls for a vast expansion of national service of all kinds, including expansion of AmeriCorps and the National Senior Volunteer Corps and the creation of an Education Corps, a Health Corps, a Green Corps and a Rapid-Response Reserve Corps to increase disaster preparedness. All of those should be appealing to baby boomers looking to adjust their priorities to emphasize purpose and passion.

“There is a whole trend of people starting second careers with a focus on service,” Marc Freedman, author of Encore, tells Stengel. “National service is not just for young people. This is the generation that national service was created for in the first place, whom J.F.K. called on to help and for whom we created the Peace Corps. Many missed their chance and are now getting a second opportunity to ask what they can do for their country.”