Martin Luther King's widow, Coretta Scott King, died Monday. She was 78. She had suffered a severe stroke and a mild heart attack last August and had ovarian cancer.

For some reason, the BBC found this a more compelling and newsworthy story than CNN. Read more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4665820.stm.

I was a young fellow when the Kennedys and King were assassinated. That was a time when there was nothing but glorious hope for the future, and "they" seemed to be fighting back to ruin it all: killing our heroes, and destroying government, ending with the resignation of Richard Nixon. Or should I say, that was the beginning of this long, slow slide to insanity. The hippie generation, so-called, was crushed. Those same freedom and love-loving hippies grew up to be the guys who run companies like Nortel, firing 5,000 people at a time because profits are never big enough. Not that there are losses, you understand: profits are not big enough. Puke.

I'm sad to see yet another umbilical cord, to my past, move on.

Now I want you all to read about a particularly fascinating group in Black American history: the Black Panthers. This was what we call a BIG DEAL. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3150491.stm