Federal Employee Medical Retirement: The collision of grammar and life

The cynic will scour each entry for just such an error of punctuation or misspelling, and declare that, indeed, the author’s own actions confirm such an event; the greater question, of course, is not that it occurred, but of what import or consequence. There was a time, of just a few generations ago, where the number of noted authors, commentators and social giants measured by pen and ink, were counted by the hands of a single individual; now, with the diffuse pervasiveness which includes paper editions exponentially quantified by electronic media, as well as the vast array of blogs, comments and Internet “conversations” […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Pause

It is an act which involves non-action, and results from the character trait of caution. As an identified activity of inert behavior, it is telling that the concept is recognized as a contrast to its linguistic cousin, like the coupling of “being and nothingness”, or of “love and hate”, as if the mercurial combination is a natural outflowing of innate necessity. Not quite the punctuation of finality in a period, nor the elongated independence of a semicolon; yet, the pause is marked by a comma, that grammatical eavesdropping left like a careless crumb on the way to a destination not quite directed, yet motivated by hesitant steps of trepidation. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Loss of that subtle distinction — fun versus training

Reading older works of literature is a lesson in historical perspective; times were different, and not just slightly, but by leaps and bounds. The linear nature of lives results in the incremental adaptation by evolutionary subtlety; that was precisely Darwin’s argument — that the metamorphosis reacting to physiological necessity in order to allow for the propagation of any given species, occurs not by genetic alterations involving sudden and drastic earthquakes, but by slow, almost undetectable nuances of change. […] Read More …

Medically Retiring from Federal Government: Environmental Toxicity

We read about it in the print and other media; the global nature of the problem, the haunting images of rusting barrels and canisters with leaking liquids of foreign and unidentifiable hues of chemical mixtures; of stories involving deformed babies and cognitive delay, with early onset of dementia causally related to the drinking water, air pollution and osmosis of agents otherwise harmful. Science Fiction writers employ the genre of antiseptic cities of artificial constructs, with men and women who venture out into the tainted world in white suits of sealed purity, breathing through tubes and oxygenated rasps barely audible through the thick materials of protective immunity. […] Read More …