God bless you, Dr. Kevorkian (20 page)

the sky, not on the ground, and I quote: as a

fish flopping on a riverbank knows it belongs in the water." As soon as he was old enough, he went up in the sky at the controls of all sorts of airplanes, from World War I Jennies to commercial transports.

"But I felt like an invader, an alien up there, tearing up the sky with my

dirtying it up with my

noise and exhaust," he went on. "I didn't go up in a balloon until I was thirty-five. That was a dream come true. That was Heaven, and I was still alive.

"I became the sky."

This is Kurt Vonnegut, signing off with Jack Kevorkian in Hunstville State Prison. Until the next time, ta ta.

for James Earl Ray, confessed assassin of Martin Luther King, on today's controlled near-death experience, I didn't have to wander far and wide into Paradise. James Earl Ray died of liver failure on April 23 of According to Saint Peter, though, he has so far been unwilling to take a single step into the Life Everlasting awaiting him beyond the Pearly Gates. He's no moron: he has an

of 108, well above

average when measured against the intelligence of the general American population. He said to me that he wasn't going to set foot into eternity until a prison cell was built for him. He said the only way he could feel