Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Ruins

We take extraordinary steps just to visit them; of the Parthenon, the Athenian Acropolis; of the Great Wall of China; of unspeaking relics where life once bustled, and still does but in a different way; of mere onlookers to a civilization once vibrant, but now twice removed — first, in the incremental abandonment of a society no longer relevant, and second, by the implicit concession that tourism establishes the death of the substantive content of any collection of structures. Or of Aleppo, where modern-day devastation intersects with the ruins of old, and where actual suffering echoes throughout the ancient cascades where antiquity overwhelms the current screams of flesh and blood. […] Read More …

FERS CSRS Disability Retirement from OPM: Fatal Flaws

Nature is harsher than the artifices created by man; egalitarianism or empathy for the less fortunate, are not found as traces of widespread encapsulation of the essence of the wild; instead, the opposite is true: of indifference, abandonment in the face of a wounded comrade, and flight as opposed to commonality of surrender. It is only in the antiseptic universe of human civilization that we discover character, trust and fortitude in the face of threat. Is this a fatal flaw in the humanity of the species? Perhaps. Time will tell, as civilizations rise and fall, as to whether the inherent weakness of totalitarianism […] Read More …