Literary lion dies without a roar

Inter Lake editorial

For an entire generation, one word summed up the giddy swaggering insanity of our time - Vonnegut.

He was to the 1960s what Hemingway was to the 1920s, but if Hemingway wrote about the "Lost Generation," Kurt Vonnegut wrote about the "Lost in Space Generation," a pastiche of pop culture and philosophy that generally ended in a giggle.

In "Cat's Cradle," "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Breakfast of Champions," and a variety of other books - mostly ersatz science-fiction novels - Vonnegut explored what he saw as the ever-increasing disconnect between modern life and the essential human spirit. The fact that he was also funny made his bleak observations addictive.

Vonnegut died the Friday before Cho Seung-Hui sucked all the air out of the news media with his act of colossal selfishness at Virginia Tech, and thus many of the testimonials that would have been written about Vonnegut either never got written or never got published. More than anyone, the 84-year-old author would have appreciated the irony that his long life of dedicated craftsmanship and toil could be overshadowed and upstaged by the savage final minutes of an immature brat.

As Vonnegut himself would have said, "So it goes."

OUR HATS are off to the hundreds of volunteers who cleaned up the Flathead Valley last weekend in recognition of Earth Day. Crews were seen everywhere, scouring road ditches and gathering trash.

Volunteers are the lifeblood of our communities and add to the quality of life we enjoy here in the Flathead.

United Way and D.A. Davidson & Co. recently doled out their annual volunteer-of-the-year awards. These top volunteers deserve the kudos they were given, and we know that for every one of these honored helpers, there are many, many more who work quietly and diligently behind the scenes to make life a little better for all of us.

It was a small number but it meant big things.

The number was 2 percent - Montana's unemployment rate for March.

That paltry jobless rate was the lowest in the country. Usually when Montana leads the country it's for less positive things (such as low pay), so it's quite an accomplishment when our state - tiny in population but vast in size - can be No. 1 in an important economic indicator.

That 2 percent is an unheard-of number and a powerful affirmation of the strength of the state's economy.