God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut

Author:Kurt Vonnegut
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781609802097
Publisher: Easton Press
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

jack kevorkian and i thought

we knew all the risks I was taking during the controlled near-death experiences he has been giving me. But today I fell in love with a dead woman! Her name is Vivian Hallinan.

What made me want to meet her was one word in the headline on her obituary in the New York Times: “Vivian Hallinan, 88, Doyenne of Colorful West Coast Family.” What made someone or even a whole family “colorful”? I had interviewed people in the Afterlife who had been brilliant or influential or courageous or charismatic or whatever. But what the heck was “colorful?” Two possible synonyms suggested themselves: “clownish” or “cute.”

I have now cracked the code. “Colorful” in the NewYork Times means unbelievably good looking and personable and rich, but socialist.

You want to talk “colorful?” Vivian’s late lawyer husband Vincent Hallinan, loaded with real estate bucks, back in 1952 ran for president of the whole United States on the Progressive ticket! How clownish and cute can you get, even in California?

Here’s how clowning and cute. Vincent did six months in jail for his obstreperous defense of the labor leader Harry Bridges, who was accused of being a Communist during the McCarthy era. Vivian spent thirty days in the slammer for unladylike behavior during a civil rights demonstration in 1964.

And get a load of this: Her five sons were all in the demonstration with her, and one of them, Terrence, is now district attorney of San Francisco!

In Heaven, you can be any age you like. My own father is only nine. Vivian Hallinan has chosen to be eternally twenty-four, an utter knockout! I asked her how she felt about being called “colorful.”

She said she would rather have been called what Franklin D. Roosevelt was called by his enemies: “A traitor to her class.”

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