Ed Rose is 68 and retired, sort of. He is retired in that he no longer goes to work at accounting giant KPMG, where he was in charge of the auditing side of the business and a partner in the company's Cleveland office. After spending most of his life in Ohio, he and his wife moved first to Arizona and then to Chapel Hill. He is not retired in the sense that his life is probably busier than ever.

Rose is one of the leaders of Triangle BoardConnect, an enterprise that matches up nonprofits with prospective board members. It operates under the Executive Service Corps of the Greater Triangle. People interested in serving on nonprofit boards can go to the Web site (www.triangleboardconnect.org/) and get matched with nonprofits looking for directors. That might be just the ticket for retirees who are looking for a way to stay involved and put their skills to work. And that's something that Rose ponders a lot, because he thinks that one of the biggest challenges facing the growing ranks of retirees is how to stay engaged ... how to stay sharp. He wrote about this several days ago on Triangle.com.

Rose talks about what happens to most people when they retire. They go from a highly structured life -- studying for a career, working in a job with clearly defined responsibilities -- to loose ends. "There was no structure when I retired," he wrote in his blog. "I could sit around and do nothing, play golf or tennis every day, travel, etc. But I was most concerned about being mentally challenged, and getting up every day with my projects. I wanted more flexibility to do them when I felt like doing them, to a degree, but I wanted to have my 'to do list' for activities that were making a contribution to my community."

What to do after work is a big question facing the more than 900,000 North Carolinians who are between 55 and 64, according to census figures. That's one in every 10 of us. If you stretch the range to age 74, it's one out of six North Carolinians. Now, some folks, I'm sure, want to do nothing more than kick back and do exactly zip. But for people like Ed Rose, that's unthinkable. So he started a conversation at share.triangle.com/retirement.

A case in point

One retiree who has found a good cause is Betty Edwards of Louisburg. Her hobby is picking up litter. "Some people like to play golf, some like yard work, cooking and sewing. I like to pick up litter," she wrote me in an e-mail note. "Sounds crazy, but I get so much pleasure looking at the difference it makes. " Betty, who is a member of the Franklin County Solid Waste Task Force, wanted to let folks know how they could keep trash from blowing out of their pickup trucks on the way to the dump. So she posted some ideas at share.triangle.com/litter.

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