Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: The negative of a photograph

In this digital age, the disappearance of the negative in photography is quite appropriate; for, this is an age that has attempted to expunge everything negative, both in form and in substance.  That thin strip of plastic film that was always retained, and carefully coupled with the “positive” prints, was preserved with the idea that the more valued sets of prints may become lost, distributed or otherwise disseminated, and in that event, so long as the negative of the original was retained, more could be printed out. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: The dead, the dying and youth

Have you ever seen a flower arrangement that weaves together deadwood with bright and colorful summer explosions?  They tell us of that which reflects modernity:  The dead are forgotten in the background; the sick and dying are mere echoes fading quickly into a distant past; and it is only the vigorous who dominate and forcefully remain in the forefront.  How a society coordinates the interaction between the triad of life’s complex ingredients reveals the extent of its inner soul and character. […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: No time for empathy

Perhaps its disappearance and rarer occurrences are not because of defection of angels and loss of virtue from the circumference of human character, but for a much simpler reason:  We have no time for it, nor patience, nor capacity to embrace.  Often, the intersection between the reality of our social constructs and the loss of moral foundations mixes […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Life’s Alliteration

The repetitive recurrence of mirroring sounds or letters at the beginning of adjacent words is merely a reflection of how we live our lives. What is inherent in human beings that we would discover, create or otherwise compile an aggregation of such a linguistic phenomena? The universe could have continued happily on its mindless course of fated determinism without people engaging in such nonsensical rhythms of prose and poetry; but as each act of indeterminate vacuity [… ] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The Complexity to Defeat

Simplicity of former times is what we all seek; in the end, it is never as “good” as we all like to make-believe it was, and never as “bad” as we may feel at the moment. But within a world which sees technology advancing not in incremental, thoughtful stages of periodic progress, but in exponential warp-speed unseen in the epochal movements of past generations, it is difficult to keep pace with the dizzying speed of innovation. And that’s just in trying to choose a lightbulb at the local grocery store. […] Read More …

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Narrative for the Ages

The Age of Modernity is too cynical to believe; or, at the very least, too arrogant not to disbelieve. It was once thought that information is all that is necessary to propel humankind into a state of sophistication, but time has revealed that Orwell’s reverse effect merely compels us to rely upon devices more and more, and that neither knowledge nor greater wisdom is gained by the wide dissemination of data and content. We want a “cause” to believe in; yet, each day, we encounter those who allegedly toiled throughout their lives for just such a motivating core, […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: The tapestry of modernity

Every age has its feel of fabric of the times; in ages past, the woven loom of quiet hamlets with curls of smoke slowly rising from the warmth of the hearth; in others, the tension wrought at the dawn of the industrial revolution, where the ways of old and the textiles of handiworks would soon be replaced by the machines of progress. In modernity, there is the tactile sense of restlessness, of communities splintered, where we are told that the inevitable march of progress is but for the dawn of an age of leisure, […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The Peril of Bypassing Process

Efficiency negates process naturally; or, if not in pure extinguishment, a progressive curtailing of the methodology of reaching from initiation Point A to finality of journey at Point B.  Additionally, when American Pragmatism combined with capitalism of the tallest order sets about to attain the greatest return in the shortest time possible, with minimizing effort and curtailing human toil, it is the end-product which is the focus, and the profit to be gained. […] Read More …

Disability Retirement from Government Employment: The Beat of Life

Have you ever had a dream (or nightmare) where you are the only one out of sync?  Whether in a choir or perhaps playing an instrument, and everyone around stares with irritation or dismay, and no matter what efforts you expend, nothing seems to allow for a synchronization of movements, sounds or stylistic applications?  Or in other similar circumstances, whether in sports, dance, or other events  […] Read More …

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: In troves of battered grey

It is the crisis point of one’s life, and the interruption of plans, which seems to define the value of the narrative. We tend to judge by leaps of negation; in a hurry to determine worth, we skim the beginning chapters, then rush through the middle, and read with intensive interest the last few pages and conclude the life of a character based not upon the lengthy experiences of amoral devices, but by the standards of terminal avalanches. A short story is merely a slice of life; a novel, a jagged graph of extrapolated instances cumulatively garnered to present a coherent and systematized itinerary. […] Read More …