The Foreign Service Journal, December 2016

10 DECEMBER 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL LETTERS The Air We Breathe Both articles on air pollution in the October issue of The Foreign Service Journal really hit home. I am a retired FSO and served with my family in two posts where we were exposed to high levels of environmental pollutants (Ankara and Sofia). I also served in Hel- sinki, where many of us lived in homes with documented high levels of radon. I was diagnosed with idiopathic pul- monary fibrosis (IPF) two years ago, and a recent scan indicates that the disease is progressing. IPF is an ultimately fatal disease; “idiopathic” means there is no way of knowing exactly what caused it. In my case, environmental pollutants would be a good guess, because X-rays and scans show particulate matter scat- tered throughout my lungs. Coinciden- tally, I live close to another FSO who also served in Ankara and has also been diagnosed with IPF. Clearly, we both wish these articles had been written 30 years ago. In “Living with Air Pollution ,” Nicole Schaefer-McDaniel made a number of good suggestions on how to reduce the dangers of air pollution and provided some great air pollution resources. Unfortunately, the State Department’s Air Pollution Working Group seems to have overlooked gathering health data from Foreign Service retirees. That’s surprising, because many medical conditions (like IPF) take years to develop. AFSA members and their families deserve to know the medical condi- tions, if any, our retirees and their fami- lies are facing at a significantly higher rate than the rest of the U.S. population. If State is unwilling to conduct a retiree medical survey, maybe AFSA should consider doing it. Outside of my immediate family, I have not talked about my IPF diagnosis publicly. But the threat of air pollution to the health of Foreign Service families is just too great for me to remain silent. My apologies to Foreign Service friends who are hearing about this for the first time here. Bill Burke FSO, retired Williamsburg, Virginia Involuntary Separation Revisited I write in reference to the letter in the October Journal by Mr. Nicholas Stigliani, “Life After the FS: No Regrets,” that men- tionedme ad hominem. I’ve never met Mr. Stigliani, and he did not contact me before sending his letter. There is no indication that he knows or has ever researched anything about the facts of my and others’ involuntary-retirement cases. That Mr. Stigliani is content with having been involuntarily separated from the Service is great, and I wish him well. But for him to go beyond to lecture me and others invol- untarily retired to “get over it” is excessive. As I andmany others recog- nize, the policy of up-or-out is problematical because it is sus- ceptible to toomany other fac- tors unrelated to performance. These include such things as bud- get strictures limiting promotion numbers; legal pressures and policy choices related to gender, minority and diversity prefer- ences; and arbitrary conal-designations and other decisions. The upshot is that by forcing out num- bers of otherwise fully qualified people, up-or-out can and does collide withmerit principles that are supposed to govern the Foreign Service. I do agree emphatically withMr. Stigliani’s statement, “My Foreign Service experience was overwhelmingly interest- ing, positive and beneficial. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” I make that same point strongly in talks I give about the Service as a member of AFSA’s Speakers Bureau. But I also point out some of the challenges and perils of a Foreign Service career, including but not limited to up-or-out. D. Thomas Longo Jr. FS-1, retired Lawrenceburg, Indiana The Wende Museum I would like to acquaint Foreign Service colleagues with the Wende Museum in Los Angeles, which has become the foremost repository in the United States, and perhaps the world, for art and artifacts from the countries of the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. The founder of the museum, Justin- ian Jampol, was originally focused on the German Democratic Republic (hence the name). But the museum has since expanded to cover the Soviet Union and all the countries of the Warsaw Pact in the post–World War II period. In 2014, the German Taschen Verlag published a 10-pound coffee-table book with 2,500 images of GDR art and artifacts from the Wende collection ( Beyond the Wall: Jenseits der Mauer by Justinian Jampol). A similar volume is in preparation on their Hungarian col- lection. The museum also has amazing col- lections of Soviet, Czech, Polish, Roma- nian and other socialist realist art and