Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
What is the proper balance in a person’s life — between leisure and work; between thought and living; betwixt the physical and the psychological? How much is “too much” in getting lost in the fantasies we surround ourselves with: Of watching the news; of enjoying a movie; of “doing” Facebook posts or “surfing” the internet? […]
What does it mean for the government to “shut down” because the Congress and the President were unable to come to a budgetary agreement? It is often the question that is focused upon, but may be the wrong one. The more relevant issue concerns the events that will occur after the cessation of the shut down. What happens afterwards? […]
Whether one does X is often of little significance; “Why” it is done, and to what extent, is quite another matter. The past – whether of long ago, beyond the time of memory holding presently or of history being read about, or the past of one’s own kept in sequestered moments of reflective thought and in photographs carefully guarded and encased within a protective album of shelved remembrances […]
So, in the cackle of laughter and the roar of a campfire, or perhaps in the hazy heat of summer outside by the swimming pool, or wherever; among friends, enjoying an afternoon, a late morning, an early evening or into the twilight hours when children whisper sweet sounds of snoring dreams and even the dog has had enough of the friendships, […]
We can imagine other worlds in which things are different; science fiction does it all the time, and even traditional literary fiction – though the differentiation between “science fiction” and “regular fiction” can often be lost in esoteric and academic ways – can depict other worlds not quite familiar, though recognizable enough to keep it apart from fantasy or that of the bizarre. […]
It is a metaphor that is familiar; of secrets, or near-secrets; of those cluttered past incidents and events that need to be kept in the hallway closet, perhaps even locked for safety and security, whether of embarrassment, regret or shame. Yet, modernity has less of them. With the disappearance of shame, of openness of societal mores and normative values disappearing, almost vanishing, […]
The “straw that broke the camel’s back” is a known idiom that essentially reveals to us the last in the series of incidents or actions that cumulatively result in the destruction of the whole. What in the series preceding the last straw; of what weight and import; to what significance may be attributable, we rarely focus upon; it is the last one in the series that we focus our attention upon, precisely because we assume that it is the causal connection to the event that conclusively occurs with a finality of actions. […]
There are different ages in different times, designated by the dominance of one entity over another. Thus do we refer to the “Age of Dinosaurs”, or the “Ice Age”; the Age of Feudal Lords; the Age of Man, of course, is a general aegis under which everything falls, once the four-peddling quadrant of living beings became dominated by the bi-pedaling progenitor of carnivorous over-consumption that prevails from time immemorial to the present “age”. Modernity had now become the “age of therapy”, […]
Of course, we teach our kids to believe that it does, thinking that education is the all-important focus for future endeavors and successful careers. And yet, the statistical studies show a consistency of denial – after schooling, whether of high school, college or beyond, the majority of individuals stop reading, unless you include road signs, directions on the back of packages (which most people disregard as well – come to think of it, of road signs, too), and the fine print on warranties (ibid). […]
It has been widely commented upon, by naysayers, essayists and various commentators upon life’s winding course of pessimism, cynicism and some rarefied sprinkling of optimism, wherever the “isms” will take us: we are crippled from an early stage of life by being fed Fairytales and Fanciful Fantasies, and then pushed out the door to deal with the reality of the real world, which are NOT like the storybook tale. […]