On Matt Zoller Seitz's blog, the incredibly sad news of the (sudden) death of his wife, Jennifer Dawson; it happened two weeks ago, but i hadn't been reading Matt's blog (i was amazed at his blog-a-thon a while back on Altman) in about three weeks, and this news was wrenching (http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com); he's got people guest blogging for a while, and i just hope he is ok. Dave Kehr's blog (http://www.davekehr.com) has the very unfortunate news that Jami Bernard's contract is not being renewed at the Daily News; Dave has comments on how film criticism is consistently being lowered to worse-than-lowest common denominator. But that's why so many of us blog: we're trying to maintain some semblance of a critical community, and retain some actual perspective, rather than the rubber-stamp publicity which so many people seem to feel is the function of criticism.

Reading about Matt's tragedy reminded me of the death of Margie Keller. That sudden, inexplicable death, which left P. Adams Sitney with their twin daughters. Haven't seen P. Adams in a long while (maybe two years?) and the last time we talked, i didn't ask him about his daughters. I see Sky (his older daughter from his first marriage) occasionally: she's now part of the team running SilverDocs for the AFI. Amazing to think that i first met Sky when she was... what? 4? 5?

I've been at this (writing about film, etc.) for almost 40 years! It's not getting any better, that's for sure!