A Eulogy For Zog and His Creator

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, not quite stormy, but it was bleak.

Those lonely hours, years ago, found me in the depths of despair. No, not depressed or suicidal, but spent and numb. I was devoid of the energy that I would need for the following day to sustain our meager lives.

A divorced, single mother, I barely scraped by between waitressing and welfare. Thrift necessitated washing baggies and tin foil for reuse, but nonetheless, the cupboards went bare long before the first of each month.

I couldn't sleep for worry. The car was broken down and I had a bad cold. How would I get to work. Should I beg the babysitter to let me slide for a week so I could pay to fix the car?

Life was a fruitless struggle.

I left my bed to search for an old paperback book which had been prescribed and delivered, along with some chicken soup, by a friend who had visited during the day. I began to read and forgot Old Mother Hubbard, my stuffy nose, and the damn car. I read until I laughed.

It all made sense or made no sense at all.

I laughed so hard I cried. I laughed so long that I felt the warmth of human connection fill the void. I'd laughed a thaw in the numbness. I was alive.

This is what I read:

"A flying-saucer creature named Zog arrived on Earth to explain how wars could be prevented, and how cancer could be cured. Zog brought the information from Margo, a planet where the natives conversed by means of farts and tap-dancing. Zog landed at night in Connecticut. He had no sooner touched down than he saw a house on fire. He rushed into the house, farting and tap-dancing, warning people about the terrible danger they were in. The head of the house brained him with a golf club."

I thought, now and then, about writing the author a letter to thank him for saving me from the kind of poverty that saps the soul. He'd rescued my fading spirit by making me laugh. What a resorative gift - laughter.


I never wrote that letter. Hero worship held me back. Admiration for another can sometimes have disasterous results if the paths of the admired one and the admirer converge - even through the mail. I was sure that if I put pen to paper somehow my words would swirl into an incomprehensable jumble.

Such a disaster happened several years back when I braved to speak to a person whose artistic work I find magically beautiful. Some months after the devastating Cedar fire raged through the canyon where we live, my husband and I, attended a lecture given by artist and fire victim, James Hubbell. When he was finished speaking, I ventured forth to join the group of admirers who surrounded Mr. Hubbell.

I was excited and confident until he shook my hand. When I tried to speak, suffice it to say, I babbled incoherently. I am blushing as I write this.

Mr. Hubbell, if perchance you ever read this, I don't know what to say.

So Mr. Vonnegut never got a letter from me and I am late in writing this. He went to Heaven ten days ago to share a cloud with Mr. Azimov, tee hee. I am not one of those fast bloggers. I think about things for a while. Better late than never.


Thank you, Mr. Vonnegut for Zog and thank you for not letting the British and the Americans get away with the genocidal, three-day fire bombing of Dresden that occurred between February 13th and 15th in 1945.

Thank you too, for living as a Humanist and writing about it. I have found kindred thinkers at the American Humanist Association and am currently a member. Thank you for all you have done for we inhabitants of this poor abused planet during the spanse of your well-lived life.


And so it goes

........I bid you adieu........
Kitchen Window Woman