Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
Would you hold a dinner party without preparing? Or attend an important meeting, host a regal gathering of accomplished celebrities or go camping in the wilds of winter’s ferocity — without making adequate preparations? The elaborate extent of such preparations is often correlated with the importance, significance, relevance and complexity of the issue at hand, […]
These days, the distinction between the two has been almost completely lost. One must qualify such a statement with “almost”, only because there may still be minority bastions and pockets of hope still holding out that the madness prevailing will someday be overcome. Somehow, the lines bifurcating the distinction that once were so obvious became obscured, […]
Hope is the fragile string that first becomes frayed when avenues of discourse become closed and the corner that was once merely a lexicon of intersecting walls becomes a place where no exit can be found, anymore. Cornered animals and armies without a pathway for escape become desperate in their responses; and as survival is yet an instinct that has not evolved much beyond the stage; […]
(It is the parenthetical previous statement that ultimately matters, left blank to be completed, and never to be presumed). Actions of finality, or seemingly so, tend to create an aura of despair and angst. Once, in a world where purpose was never questioned, and the teleological end of man never brought forth the hint of doubt, the cohesiveness of society’s resolve was never a pause. It is the modernity of hesitation, trepidation and loss of judgment that brings us to the pit of incessant questioning, as opposed to “doing”. This is a maddening world, where the rise of Existentialism and post-modern impotence leaves us to seek therapy at every turn. […]
Whether we have become meaner as a whole, or that people have always been so and we just never knew it, we shall never know. How does one contrast the incomparable? What algorithm would be applied, which quantitative analysis, and how would a qualitative methodology of content-purity be administered? Parity of differentiation would destroy any meaningful application; for, the generational divide would question the relevance of any prior criteria applied, and the subjectivity of inherent bias as to the meaning of innately elastic words would undermine the entire format. […]
We don’t seem to have a capacity to share of those things which we have no need, anymore. Does scarcity of resources result in “doubling down” in ways formerly described as miserly in deed? Does the free market principle of supply and demand explain the loss of social grace in responding to need? What ever happened to the spare tire, the jingle of spare change, and the ephemeral absence of spare time? Has society come to a criss-cross of contending forces, where the explosion of population growth, the rise of the middle class in developing nations around the globe, coupled with the exponential depletion of finite resources, have cumulatively coalesced to an incandescent compromise of character crisis? […]
Generally, this blog does not review books; however, exceptional works may prompt exceptions to the general order of things, where relevance of subject and beauty of personality may coalesce to consider a slight change of venue. The work itself will neither become a masterpiece nor a conversation focus beyond a generation or two, as the world it describes is quickly fading into the sunset of eccentricity and scarcity of understanding. Tim Sultan’s book (and from the jacket cover, it appears to be his first one at that), Sunny’s Nights, is a mixture of reportage, love of character and annotation of provincial myth. […]