When I saw Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. had died this week, I went down to the basement and dug out my old copy of Slaughterhouse Five and read it once again.  It certainly reads differently at 52 than at 17, especially the parts where Billy Pilgrim thinks he is old at 44.  Though Tom Quirk once warned me (nicely) to leave literature to you literati, the book seems appropos to the recurrent discussion of whether Twain was a racist.  We get unstuck in time.  Where Sam was.  When he was.  Who he was. Where we are.  We only see these things through our own long narrow pipe on the fast-moving train.
    Hello Sam, Goodbye Sam, Hello Sam...
    Hello Kurt, Goodbye Kurt, Hello Kurt...
    So it goes.
    Terrell