Hot Topics: Intel Offers Encore Career Stipends

Intel this week announced it would offer paid internships to its retirement-eligible U.S. employees to pursue encore careers in the nonprofit world -- making it one of the first companies to make such a program so widely available.

The Silicon Valley chipmaker said it will offer $25,000 stipends and health insurance coverage as part of the fellowship program.

Intel's encore internships are part of an expansion of the Encore Fellowship program started by Civic Ventures, the Bay Area think tank that promotes social entrepreneurism for boomers. Fellowships help corporate workers transition to nonprofit work by placing them in temporary posts at schools, community agencies and environmental groups.

Approximately 12 percent of Intel's worldwide work force is eligible for the new fellowship program, according to the Oregonian. "It fits in perfectly with the changing nature of retirement," Bill MacKenzie, an Intel spokesman, tells the paper. "It's no longer just leaving work."

Social Venture Partners Portland will help Intel administer the program in Oregon, where Intel has 16,000 employees and is the state's largest private employer. Civic Ventures has partnered with organizations in eight cities across the country to encourage other companies to create encore career training programs.

In other news:

Talk Turkey, Not Politics: If Democratic strategist James Carville and Republican consultant Mary Matalin can get along well enough to stay married, you can make it through the Thanksgiving weekend with relatives whose opinions on Obama, Bachman and the federal deficit are diametrically opposed to your own, says author Christie Mellor on HuffPost/50. "We will suspend our snarky comments and our disbelief for one evening, because we love you," Mellor writes. "We'll all drink a lot of wine and attempt to keep to safe subjects, like our children, and our shared history, and how good the stuffing is this year."

It's Healthy to be Grateful: A new study links having an "attitude of gratitude" with better health, sounder sleep and more long-term satisfaction with life, according to The New York Times. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Miami found that people who kept a gratitude journal for two months were more optimistic, felt happier, reported fewer physical problems and spent more time working out, according to the paper.

Stuffed: In an essay on Grist, special projects editor Greg Hanscom bemoans the epic piles of junk threatening to engulf his family, and America, and explains how he's downsizing. After he, his wife and children moved to Seattle two months ago, they were too busy to unpack much, then realized they didn't miss most of the unopened stuff. "Every time we rifle through boxes to find some lost implement, we come up with a dozen other things that we didn't miss, and add them to the growing mountain of giveaways in the basement," Hanscom writes. On Black Friday, don't expect to see him at the mall. Instead, he says, "I'm going to be busy taking a load of stuff to Goodwill."

Best Books of 2011: Whether you're braving the malls or shopping online, if you're buying books as presents, The New York Times' 2011 gift guide includes a list of the most noteworthy titles of the year. Among them are baseball novel The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, as well as new works by Michael Ondaatje, William Kennedy, Stephen King, Russell Banks and Jeffrey Eugenides. Nonfiction works include Blue Moon, Joan Didion's tribute to her daughter; a Kurt Vonnegut biography from Charles J. Shields; and titles from Susan Orleans, Robert K. Massie, Alexandra Fuller and Erik Larson.

Springsteen Tours Again: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will hit the road this spring for dates in the U.S. and Europe. It's the first time the band has toured since sax player Clarence Clemons died last June from complications of a stroke. Springsteen broke the news on his website, telling fans, "We want you to know that the music is almost done (but still untitled), we have almost settled on the release date (but not quite yet)." U.S. tour dates haven't been announced.

Last Word: "I'm so thankful for losing my job and rising again to pursue my passion," says Barb Tobias, Colorado author and expert on frugal chic, in SecondAct Asks ... What Are You Grateful For?