Le roi est mort

Forty years ago today I was hitchhiking through France during the European equivalent of Spring break. No cellphones, no Internet, and transatlantic calls were still a big deal. A man, perhaps in his 30s, picked us up, and as soon as we got into the car, he started yelling. He was talking so fast and so loudly that even though my French was reasonably good, I couldn't understand what he meant. "Keeng! Keeng!" he said over and over. We weren't responding until finally, in desperation, he said, "Le roi est mort! Martin Luter le roi est mort!" And then we realized what he was saying, turned our attention to the radio...and...

PS: I chose this photo for this post for two reasons - first, grief, which speaks without words here, and second, because of this great honor: Coretta Scott King is also a graduate of my alma mater, the once and future Antioch College.

Comments

[Steve Teicher]

try again...network crashed.

The 1960's was the decade when good people were slaughtered in places where they should have been loved.

And we still allow the NRA to say "guns don't kill".

I say, "Take away guns, make ammunition prohibitively expensive, and stop allowing a small rich lobby group to control our lives."

Did you hear the news last week that a 14 year old hunter killed a woman hiker by mistake, thinking she was a bear. Why was a hunter shooting at a bear? He did not need it to eat and he was not defending anyone? Fucking guns are bad.

We asked a woman who races dogs in the Iditarod if she was armed. She said, "No, I'd likely just hurt myself." Iditarod racers do sometimes get attacked, but by moose, not bears.

[Steve Teicher]

CNN reports today that a 15 year old kid was killed by a high powered rifle while he was asleep in bed.

It turns out that the rifle was fired by a 19 year old who lived on the floor below. The 19 year old purchased the rifle for self defense and fired it by accident while cleaning it.

Remember -- GUNs Don't Kill --