Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
We often avoid the subject; of futures yet to be contemplated and images triggered by fears; of questions pertaining to old age, retirements, early onset of dementia and the fearful “A” word — Alzheimer’s. Are such fates certainties? Or, do we just shrug them off with a flippant side-step, like the partner dancing with a clumsy other who is nimble enough to avoid being stepped on, making dancing with the stars seemingly like a cakewalk. […]
There are times when you simply “feel” different; of having greater confidence; of sensing that you can accomplish things in life beyond the negative reality that circumstances have imposed; and that had you been born in the days of feudal lords and castle moats surrounding the dungeons of the human heart, you would have been knighted on this day of days where reckonings don’t matter and the callous universe around fails to dent the optimism abounding. […]
One normally presumes that the two go hand-in-hand: That if something is true, then it is credible. But doesn’t the origin and source of it, at least in a subjective sense, matter? If a known lier makes a truthful statement, could we assert that, “While the statement made by X is true, the fact that X made it results in my questioning its credibility.” Does that even make sense? […]
He wrote about mundane things; of middle class neighborhoods, Pennsylvania towns in which he grew up; farmlands before strip malls replaced them against the skyline of cornfield rows; and of affairs that grew naturally out of a revolution emancipated from the Sixties; of quiet sufferings and the rhythmic monotony of ordinary lives. John Updike was an “in-betweener” — too young to fight in WWII, […]
It is what Cordelia recognized but which her father could not foresee, and the ruin of a kingdom, the loss of order and the crumbling of relationships resulted all because of the failure to recognize sincerity from entreaties based upon hidden motives of greed and the concealed hand of evil; and of the truism of ex nihilo nihil fit — that nothing comes from nothing — even Parmenides could not warn us of the consequences. […]
Doubting can become infectious. Once the confidence wanes, the seeds of doubt have been planted; once the seeds begin to sprout, further fears of shaken self-confidence begin to appear, and the shattering of a once-certain sense of calm begins to pervade insidiously within the soul of a questioning mind. A denial from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in a Federal Disability Retirement case is intended to do exactly that: Doubt the strength of your case. […]
It is the acronym that represents a Federal Agency whose “headquarters” is located in Washington, D.C., but has an intake office in Boyers, Pennsylvania. There has been somewhat of a “reorganization” of sorts, where — in the past — the Boyers Office was merely where all Federal Disability Retirement applications were received, initially processed for identification and assignment of a “case number”, then shipped to Washington, D.C. for further consideration, evaluation and determination. […]
Is not much of opera a booming voice, a lingering chord and the grand mayhem of combining movement with long, loud and hanging sounds emitted from men and women who are born with a talent rarely heard? So, can there be a silent opera? An opera where movement and gestures are seen, but when the performers open their mouths, only silence come out? […]
A woman sits on a park bench surrounded by the concrete giants of looming buildings and antiseptic structures overhanging and overshadowing all but the remnants of nature’s detritus, with the cooing pigeons that bob their heads back and forth as they meander about in the contrast between reality and poetry. And she has a book in her hands. It is a book of poetry. Who the author is; what the verses metaphorically narrate; how the images impact the quiet reader; these are not so important as the oxymoron of life’s misgivings […]
Most “secrets” are well-known; it is the combining of a multiplicity of the unknown, which constitutes the importance of leaked information. Thus, it may be disseminated as to the “what”, but until it can be connected to the “when” or the “who”, the irrelevancy of the data remains in its isolation of significance. Or, perhaps what will occur is revealed, and by whom, and even the destined time and place; but if caution delays the planned event for another day, hypervigilance can only be maintained for a limited period of time before exhaustion of focus, concentration and attentiveness wanes by profound fatigue. […]