Sometimes we remember the death better than the birth. Forty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. died by gunshot at a hotel in Memphis. Of course, we remember his birthday, too. It's a national holiday. A Monday holiday.

I know why we do the Monday holidays (it's so workers get a longer weekend, rather than break up a week...or not get a day off when it falls on a weekend day), but this always dilutes and confuses the actual day. Presidents Day came from having two Presidential birthdays (Washington and Lincoln) in the same month. I think Lincoln is on the 12th of February and Washington is on the 20th, but I'm not sure. I could look it up, of course, but that's not the point. The point is that they are now celebrated together, and it's the third Monday in February (usually around the 20th).

But back to the death days.

I remember the death day of a friend who died about six and a half years ago: November 4th. But I couldn't tell you his birthday. It's sometime in May.

King's birthday is what I remember more, actually. But there is a song about the 4th of April, 1968. U2's "Pride (In The Name of Love)" was the first song I remember by that Irish band seeping into my consciousness. When there is a violent death, the death day becomes important. Kinda like Easter. Or, more specifically, Good Friday--the name itself illustrating the dichotomy of celebrating a death in positive light.

Martin Luther King, Jr. would be important to our history if he wasn't shot and killed forty years ago. But the violent and early death helps to mark something important in our minds. Being a martyr--dying for something--brings up the importance of the death.

Charlton Heston died Saturday, nearly the same death day as King. Most people will not remember this in a few years. We'll remember Heston, but his death does not boost his story, it just ends it. We'll remember that scene at the end of Planet of the Apes, though. Because it was us. We did it, y'know.

We killed a lot of people in the 60s who were never replaced. Their importance, their iconic status, has not been achieved since. Maybe because we stopped killing our leaders, for the most part. But maybe because we've become individually lesser as the nation has grown. With more people trying to be important, none of them ever make the impact of those killed relatively young in the 60s.

Even the tens of thousands of US soldiers who died in Vietnam in the 60s seem to be more relevant and important than those 4000 or so who have died in our latest war. I don't mean to denigrate anyone who has sacrificed in this war (although I do completely question the underlying reasons for both the Vietnam and Iraq wars), but it is continually pointed out, when someone compares the two wars, that more soldiers died in Vietnam. The US death count from Iraq--even if we are there for another hundred years--will never match Vietnam.

And there is no one like MLK now. No one like Malcolm X. No one like JFK or RFK. There are those who echo certain things about all of these people, but they only echo parts, not the whole. And you can see, no matter how sincere the leaders these days try to appear, the machinations of imitation.

I think most of us have been conditioned to keep our mouths shut.

If you have something important to say, you probably mumble it under your breath. Or write it in a blog no one reads. And maybe it's not that important anyway. Does anyone have any really good ideas about how to fix all the problems that have percolated up in the last few years? We've thrown money at problems. People have made speeches. There's an occasional march or protest. But there is no general consensus. There is no rallying cry to wake up the nation. The political parties can't decide who they want to be, either.

Republicans had to decide if they were a certain narrow sect of "God's" people or war people. And they went with war, because it boils the blood quicker. Besides, a lot of Republicans wouldn't go to heaven under the narrow guidelines of redemption.

Democrats are still fighting it out because it's not an idealistic struggle, it's an inherited identity. Nothing Barack can do about being black. Nothing Hillary can do about being a woman. It seems strange that all the fighting is really about two things neither candidate chose or could change if they wanted to. But that seems to be the fight. I can't really see another difference between the two.

But it also gets back to my point. No one inspires us much anymore. At best, they don't piss us off as much as other people.

I missed all the violence and upheaval of the sixties, but I do look at that time for explanations and inspiration. I wonder, as these children of the sixties fight over control of the most powerful nation on Earth, if any of them learned anything from a time they lived through. Or if they just feel like they inherited the spirits of those who were sacrificed to wake us up back then.

Funny thing about inheritance: it means less to those who inherit than those who earned it in the first place.

Matt Worley's birthday is the death day for Challenger astronauts who blew up on reentry a few years back.