Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
One can, of course, obtain an “excellent” medical report — i.e., one that has full, unequivocal support in providing a clear diagnosis, description of symptoms, impact upon specific job functions, etc., with an unequivocal conclusion of disability beyond the specific elements of one’s job functions, etc. — and yet get denied by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. […]
We come upon it, and it sits gleaming with partial concealment in the tall grass beyond the river’s edge. Whose was it? Was it a child who threw it, or a parent, grandparent, or maybe even a sibling? Did the child search for it, or was it forgotten soon after a futile search in directions otherwise unaccounted for? Was there a party gathered, a picnic prepared and a blanket covered upon the grassy knoll; and were gloves included in the melee? Was there laughter rumbling through the forest beyond, slowly dissipating in voices joyfully warmth in the sunlight of mumblings incomprehensible and lost among the groves of wildlife hidden behind and beyond? […]
What if a ‘special day‘ falls upon an unfortunate date? What if one’s birthday, for example, happens to be on 9/11, or on Christmas eve, Valentine’s day, etc? Or, for those who strictly proscribe the Sabbath Day, what happens if one’s birthday happens to fall coincidentally upon the concurrent segment of solemnity? Does one set aside the significance of the unfortunate date, and celebrate that special day as if the former is an irrelevancy, trumped by the latter? […]
Most of us stumble through it, and somehow end up down unexpected corridors of unplanned venues; and then we have the nerve to think that we can have kids and impart wisdom we never learned, refused to lived by, and rarely listened to. It is said that hypocrisy is the characteristic of the common farce; it just happens to infect everyone else, and never ourselves. But there is an evolutionary determinant even in the comedy of life; it used to be that Western Philosophy would teach us to always seek out the substance of a thing, […]
The linear attempt is the methodology of direct purpose; it is the measurement of length — of a straight line from point A to point B, of a one-dimensional character. Any obstacle placed in its path represents a frustration of that purpose, and merely delays and obfuscates the attempt to accomplish a stated goal. How to ad lib in circumstances where obstacles appear; the consideration of options and alternatives in the face of detours and unexpected deterrences; what malleability of core values must be shown when necessity arises; these are all challenges within a universe of expectations otherwise untested. […]
Once a cereal brand, a glob of mush whose nutritional content was suspect at best, and the bland taste of which represented the monotony of modernity; now, it is mere pap, where the lack of substantive content belies the true nature of harm, insipid and incremental, creeping daily and slowly deteriorating. Isn’t that how a medical condition destroys? Yes, there are traumatic events — where loss of limb and even of life suddenly cuts short the vibrancy of a human narrative; […]