I was out of the office Monday when Michael Dirda, the Post's longtime book critic, sent me an e-mail about the death of Thomas M. Disch. He had known Disch very well and had commissioned him to write dozens of reviews for the Post's Book World over the years.

As I mentioned in my obituary, Disch was a remarkably versatile writer who had fallen on tragically hard times in recent years. I described some of the circumstances that led to his suicide on the 4th of July, including failing health, financial trouble and the death three years of his partner. A fire in Disch's apartment building in Manhattan damaged many of his possessions and books, and a flood at his house in upstate New York destroyed just about everything else. Because the rent-controlled apartment was in his partner's name, Disch could not inherit it and was about to be evicted. As I mentioned in the story, his publisher, Jacob Weisman, said Disch told him he would kill himself if he had to leave the apartment.

Disch hadn't done much writing for several years, but he had a late flowering, and by the end of this year he will have published four new books in a period of 16 months. Weisman said he had just shipped 20 copies of Disch's new novel, "The Word of God," to his address in New York, but he didn't know if Disch had a chance to see them or not. Disch was also working on final revisions of a new collection of stories, set for publication in the fall. Weisman said someone would have to dig though Disch's desk to see if he had completed the revisions on the stories.

We were a day late with our obituary of Disch, but neither the NY Times nor LA Times seemed to find Disch's blog, in which he recorded his thoughts, anxieties and complaints, sometimes in lyrical poetry, sometimes in vulgar prose. If you read back through it, you can see Disch coping with the sad realities of modern life -- the rising price of food, for instance -- but he also exulted in the publication of his new book, "The Word of God." (Disch's publisher, Tachyon Publications, had set up a site in which Disch would reply to "Letters to God.")

But in these sad jottings, the depression and sorrow in Disch's voice are unmistakable. In retrospect you can see that he's skating farther from the safety of the shore, ever closer to the dark abyss. What a tragic tale.

If you're too young to remember the '70s, well, you missed a decade of showmanship, grandiloquent excess, great movies and spirited journalism unlike anything we've seen since. There was more than enough decadence to go around, but it was also a time when great reporting was seen as a way to save the world. (It was the decade of "All the President's Men" and Hunter S. Thompson, remember.)

For about nine madcap years in New York, the undisputed emcee of magazine journalism was Clay Felker, who was one of the pre-eminent journalists of his age. Felker died July 1 at age 82, and his obituary appears in today's (July 2) paper.

There was no one like Felker, who first made his name ...

Purely by chance, our lead obituary and Local Life this week are about two people who overcame handicaps to accomplish remarkable things. The lead obituary is about baseball player Bert Shepard, who pitched for the original Washington Nationals in 1945, despite having had the lower part of his right leg amputated. (And, yes, the team was officially known as the Nationals in 1945, even though they were popularly called the Senators.)

Shepard, a fighter pilot during World War II, was shot down over Germany and was almost killed when his plane hit the ground at 380 mph. A doctor at a German hospital amputated his leg and saved his life. (Be sure to read to the end of the obituary to get the complete story, by the way.)

Shepard had been a minor-league baseball player before the war and came back more determined than ever to prove his worth on the baseball field. He was the only amputee in history to play in the major leagues. (Monty Stratton, about whom a movie was made, had a leg amputated after a hunting accident in the 1930s. He returned to pitch in the minor leagues, but never again played in the majors, in spite of what Hollywood may imply.)

Del Ankers, the subject of this week's Local Life, was a longtime Washington commercial photographer and filmmaker. His handicap was that he was blind in one eye, but I think you can tell from his pictures that he had an uncanny vision. For more than 50 years, he photographed almost every side of life in Washington, from presidents to the city's poorest residents. He was a colorful, well-liked man and an early associate of Muppet master Jim Henson, who got his start in Washington in the 1950s. Ankers's photos evoke an earlier and sweeter time when life here had a slower, more gentle pace. Ankers was also a character of the first order, with an obsessive compulsion to collect machnery and equipment of every kind. Some of his neighbors in Northern Virginia thought he was a junk dealer and had to idea that he was once a prominent photographer.

You tend to get a little jaded in this business, and it takes a lot to shock an obit writer. But yesterday afternoon, when we got word that Tim Russert had died, we -- and the entire staff of the Post -- were in complete shock and disbelief.

The paper quickly mobilized, though, and Pat Sullivan of the Obits Desk was asked to contribute background information on Russert's early life for Howard Kurtz's Page 1 obituary.

Sometimes we obituary writers resent being "big-footed" on stories, but in this case Howie was the perfect person for the job -- no one knows Washington journalism better, and in 2004 he wrote the definitive profile of Russert for the Post magazine. Tom Shales, who has known Russert for years and ran into him at the airport last week, wrote a touching and deeply informed appreciation for Style.

People throughout the newsroom were both hushed and animated when word spread about Russert's unexpected death from a heart attack. Our editor, Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb, was among the first to find out, and she turned around in her chair to ask who wanted to work on the obit. A colleague from another desk of the paper called in from vacation to ask me how we were handling the story. He mentioned that he had taken a class he teaches to the set of "Meet the Press," and Russert could not have been more gracious with the awestruck students.

Finally, I want to pass along something I saw from across the newsroom yesterday. Howard Kurtz appeared live on TV to discuss Russert's life and work. (We have a small studio in the newsroom for reporters to make comments about the news.) The second Howie was off the air, he sprinted back to his desk on the other side the newsroom to continue working on his obituary for the paper. That may be the ultimate tribute from one newsman to another.

I had meant to post this blog item last Saturday, but I was too busy writing the obituary of ABC sportscaster Jim McKay.

But, on the dubious theory that it's better late than never, I wanted to point out the odd occurrence of having two articles in The Post about F. Scott Fitzgerald on the same day. On Saturday, my obituary of University of South Carolina scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli, who was undoubtedly the country's leading authority on Fitzgerald, ran in the paper and online. I didn't realize it until I opened the paper on Saturday, but critic Jonathan Yardley, in one of his "Second Reading" columns, had a lovely essay about Andrew Turnbull's biography of Fitzgerald, written in 1962.

As it happens, I quoted Yardley -- my first mentor in journalism, but that's another story -- in my obituary of Bruccoli, and not to Bruccoli's credit. Yardley wrote in 1981 that Bruccoli "has been accused in various quarters of being the impresario behind a 'Fitzgerald industry.' The charge is not without merit, especially as it applies to his eagerness to edit and publish any scrap of Fitzgeraldiana, no matter how trivial."