Sad News from Santa Cruz

I don't read all that many blogs, and most of those I do read, I read sporadically. When I have time or feel in a blog-reading mood, I catch up on a few.
That was what I was doing this evening after a day of grant- and fiction-writing. I thought I'd see what mischief and political-sexual hellraising Susie Bright had been up to lately.
I always like to check in with Susie's blog. For one thing, she's always interesting and provocative. For another thing, we have a lot in common, including that we went to UCSC at the same time, we know some of the same people, and our mothers even came from the same area. (Granted, my life has been somewhat quieter, but that's beside the point.)
Consequently, when I read down the page and found out that Susie's father, the linguist Bill Bright, has been diagnosed with a remarkably lethal form of brain cancer, I felt a peculiarly intense distress despite not knowing either of them personally.
Send good thoughts in their direction.