I just learned that today marks the 15th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide.

This was a big deal for me at the time, and not just because I was one of the legions of dirty-haired, plaid-wearing Pacific Northwesterners for whom Nirvana's music had become something of reverence. In the days following Cobain's death, there were two suicides at the Seattle-area high school where I was flunking my freshman year. These only added tragic punctuation to the dozens, hundreds, of to-be-expected self-mutilations, tattoos, dropouts, etc. The school went so far as to hold a memorial service on the football field, and make grief counselors available to all students.

You must understand, by April 5th, the skies of Seattle have been constantly obscured by near complete cloud cover for over 6 months. It is life-stifling in a way only climate can be. Kurt Cobain was the product of this climate: withered, deformed, malnourished. Just as surely as such a climate breeds robust natures, it shows no mercy to the weak.