Though I haven’t read a Kurt Vonnegut book, I mourn as others do the loss of one of America’s great writers, who died on April 11, 2007 after suffering brain injuries related to a fall in his Manhattan home.  He attempted suicide in 1984, by pills and alcohol, yet lived another 23 years after this failed effort.   
   
On an epitaph on a headstone he sketched in his classic novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, the author wrote, “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.”  If only nothing...