Births, deaths and disasters....

Well, we managed to mention all but one event on the list published yesterday - the 1967 space-craft fire. Somehow we remembered Challenger, said happy birthday to Etta James, Angela Davis and Jose Marti, remembered Zora Neale Hurston - and heard her singing, and Coretta Scott King, who had championed gay rights, unlike her daughter Bernice...
A song by Ewan MacColl commemorated the hanging of Derek Bentley - who took the punishment for the crime committed by his friend who, at the time was only 16 and therefore too young to suffer capital punishment. It took until 1998 before he was given a complete (posthumous) pardon after the family had campaigned for 45 years.

We heard excerpts of interviews and speeches by Angela Davis speaking about the prison-industrial complex.
For more information on the subject check out Critical Resistance
For more on Angela Davis see the Wikipedia article

We heard some reports of the Bloody Sunday killing of protesters by British soldiers ... and denial that they had not been fired on first.. a fact that was clearly disproved in a report last year.  And finally some documents and music to commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz.

Let's hope we can be a little more cheerful next week. We will have entered the Year of the Rabbit and in the UK we celebrate LGBT history month, while in the US it will be Black History month.
Plenty of opportunities for positive stories, great poetry and wonderful music. Who knows, maybe this sliver from a prediction page about life in the Year of the Rabbit will prove right: For once, it may seem possible for us to be carefree and happy without too many annoyances.


This week's radio programme is on www.celestialnavigation.podomatic.com