shut up, speak up

I was originally going to come here and rail about the Imus train wreck/Duke Lacrosse case. There were parallels of speech and accountability, which I am now going to save for another day.

Kurt Vonnegut is dead.

I just heard about it listening to Lionel, and zipped over to the New York Times to get the full story. He was 84 years old.

He was one of my heroes. When I was in college the first time, at eighteen, and in the time thereafter, I made explorations which have affected my whole life. I read Orwell, Bradbury, Huxley. I read assembled columns of the Village Voice. I read Tom Wolfe, and the voices of the generation before mine. And I read Vonnegut.

At first I didn't get it. I understood it on the surface, but deep down, it took a while to assimilate. I still have copies of "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle", among others. His works were strange, and funny, and weird. I loved them.

I suggest that if you haven't read his work, you should. And if you have, you should again. Geniuses, true ones, are hard to come by. Best to embrace and remember the ones we have. There was a quote in the Times article I liked, and wanted to finish with.

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”

Sound advice. Good night and good luck...stimp