Ken Cummings, 82, has been feeding the pigeons in his back yard for nearly 20 years. "I love all living things" he says. "We've had all kinds of animals over the years, now it's just something that I keep doing." Ken and his wife Candy, 86, have lived in the same home in Tucson for 30 years, seeing the city grow up around them. Now with rising prices affecting cost of bird seed, Cummings has felt strain on something as simple as feeding his feathered friends. "Prices have doubled just in the last couple years" he says. "I don't think I'll stop though. If I don't feed 'em, what are they gonna eat?"

Seniors Affected by Economic Downturn

Like many journalists, I have been searching for opportunities to tell stories about how the downturn in the economy is affecting everyday people. With our own economic challenges in the newspaper business, our greatest challenge is to tell compelling stories on a shoestring budget with very little time. This is an attempt to do just that. Based on a daily story about how Meals on Wheels is in danger of cutting services due to budget cuts, I decided to take an inch and turn it into as close to a mile as I could in the few hours of ride along that we would go on. "Turning it On" is what I feel like journalists have to do when a situation calls for maximum effort to get the picture, the story, the appointment, whatever. It is when we are at our best, and it is when we are most challenged. This is a result of giving it my best shot to do complex, layered story telling on a daily story. What great practice!