Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
The reference is likely outdated. One doesn’t hear of the phrase, anymore, that “X is like an albatross around my neck.” If it is referenced at all, one is likely to witness everyone standing around within earshot to whip out their smartphones and Google it, to find: Literally a large sea bird. The phrase alludes to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” in which a sailor who shoots a friendly […]
We all have one to tell; it is the telling of it that becomes the question, and not the answer. The tale itself is the unspoken journey of one’s life, until the telling of it leaves it spoken and revealed; but until the tale is told, the un-telling of it leaves a silence within a cavern of echoes where memories flourish but the story remains unfinished. […]
If an alien from another universe came to visit the world of Humans and somehow landed within sight of a gym or some semblance of a physical fitness facility, and remained invisible to the watchful eye, the single contraption that would puzzle and befuddle would be the treadmill. For, ambulation upon the mechanical device would surely be observed; […]
Is that what we are all striving for? Is the myth that never occurs the one that urges us on? There are multiple idioms and pithy sayings by which “wisdom” is extracted and thought to be a solid foundation for acting and reacting in certain ways. “No one ever says at the end of one’s life, ‘I spent too much time with my kid’”. “Live for tomorrow and you will regret a month of Sundays”. “Time spent at work is time away from family.” […]
There are trains that come and go daily; others, with lengthy destinations, like the Trans-Siberian Express traveling from Moscow to Vladivostok or the Venice-Simplon Orient Express visiting Paris, Venice, Istanbul, and places in-between; and others merely for the monotony of going to work and coming home. Those who engage the latter often find that vacations utilizing trains are boring and uninviting; yet, for others who struggle through the vehicular traffic jams […]
Can a footman in former times, or a scullery maid while scrubbing the floors, experience envy when class structures forbade any hope of advancing beyond? In days before of rigid demarcations of social and class differentiations, where terms in modernity like “upward mobility” or “moving up the ladder” (have you ever wondered at the condescending connotation of such terms, where “up” is the direction of the movement, as if one were ascending to the heavens, even when such barometric activity often corresponded to moral degradation and sacrifice of one’s character?) were unheard of, […]