There's been so much happening, but on Sunday, when the announcement of Osama Bin Laden's death was made by the President, i felt a little like a Munchkin: ding, dong, the witch is dead. The celebratory tone that was all over the media by Monday morning was confounding. I understand it, but it's also rather alienating.

I've been seeing a lot of movies lately, all sorts. A sampling: "Anagraph Tom" (Ken Jacobs's 3D reworking of his "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son"); Ichikawa's "The Makioka Sisters"; the Chinese epic "City of Life and Death"; two movies which never seemed to be released but were on HBO, "Neverwas" and "Method"; the PBS documentary "Stonewall Uprising"; "punk" videos from San Francisco. Two big events on HBO: Todd Haynes's miniseries of "Mildred Pierce" and the Berman-Pulcini "Cinema Verite". Also tried watching some of Neil Jordan's "The Borgias" on Showtime. All of this has provoked a lot of reactions on my part, but i'm still thrown by current events.

I've also been indulging in one of my obsessions: i've been working on my digital still collection for the last two months. Once i start one of these things, i go beserk and it's total tunnelvision. I just spend hours on it. When i started this blog, it was a very simple format, and there was no way to post pictures. Now you can, and friends of mine have done some really impressive visuals on their blogs, but i haven't really learned how to change my blog.

But maybe i'll start.... i have to say that Oprah Winfrey's show this afternoon (May 4) was really impressive: she had the 100-plus surviving Freedom Riders. It was really historic!