MILESTONES

By BY JANICE M. HOROWITZ, NADYA LABI, DANIEL S. LEVY, LINA LOFARO, JAMIE MALANOWSKI, GABRIEL SNYDER, JOEL STEIN AND SUSANNE WASHBURN

ENGAGED. CATHY GUISEWITE, 46, chronicler of the travails of the Single Woman, whose alter ego "Cathy" has become a comic-strip fixture, and CHRISTOPHER WILKINSON, 46, screenwriter of Nixon; in Los Angeles.

CHARGED. AMORET POWELL, 24; with first-degree murder, after her heroin-laced breast milk allegedly led to her seven-week-old daughter's death from oxygen deprivation; in Tucson, Ariz. The baby's father was also charged.

PLEADED GUILTY. JAY KIM, 58, Republican Representative and the first Korean-American member of Congress, and his wife JUNE; to three and two misdemeanor counts, respectively, for accepting more than $230,000 in illegal campaign contributions; in Los Angeles.

DIED. SVIATOSLAV RICHTER, 82, Russia's incomparable piano-poet; in Moscow. Virtually self-taught until age 21, Richter treated the piano like a soul mate, listening for the romance of Schumann or the fury of Beethoven. Perhaps he could not match Horowitz's brilliance or Rubinstein's panache, but showmanship was never paramount to him. "I don't consider the public," he told TIME. "My only interest is my approaching encounter with the composer."

DIED. ALBERT SCHOEPPER, 83, conductor who kept the Marine Band--the President's Own--in line and on key; in Alexandria, Va. Colonel Schoepper also played the diplomat at White House concerts: he once continued gamely when Winston Churchill burst into song to accompany the band.

DIED. MATTIE LOU O'KELLEY, 89, nostalgic folk artist of rural America; in Decatur, Ga. Only in her 50s did she start to paint. Her canvases became her memoir, telling stories of hard work and simple pleasures.

DIED. WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS, 83, novelist, cult figure and perhaps the most audacious member of a Beat Generation trinity whose two other divinities were Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg; after a heart attack; in Lawrence, Kans. Burrough's groundbreaking novel Naked Lunch, first published in Paris in 1959, was both praised as a work of genius and denounced as incomprehensible garbage and pornography. His life was as extreme as the experimental fiction he pioneered, involving alcohol, heroin, homosexuality, a celebrated obscenity trial in Boston and, in 1951, his accidental killing of his wife while shooting a glass off the top of her head. In his last years, he became a recurring pop icon, with cameos in movies and even a Nike ad.