• by John Capone , December 29, 2010

It's always a shock to lose a loved one, dear reader. We're no different. This online media and marketing armor doesn't mean we're any less human. And yes, we took the recent loss of our longtime cohort Lavinia from Hitwise hard. You may not know her personally (but, oh, reader, she had a name like a song), though surely you know her work.

Her efforts, the result of digging through the catacombs at Hitwise HQ (while being sure not to disturb Bill Tancer's collection of rare vintage champagnes) have been displayed in the back pages of this magazine for as long as any of us care to remember. Then one day it hit, and it hit with such devastation that it might as well have been a slug from a .45:

This is the mail delivery agent at messagelabs.com.

I was not able to deliver your message to the following addresses.

And there, dear reader, it sat, like a dead bird frozen in a snow drift after dawdling too long before heading south: her former business email address under those lines. Once we regained our composure, we dialed the number and someone who seemed never to have heard of Lavinia answered. There was a distinct note of scandal in her voice. But we won't dwell too long in the past, for as you can see if you flip to the back pages of the current issue of OMMA, our new friend Heather from Hitwise has picked up the the torch and soldiered on admirably.

But the season had its ups, too. Our own Lorraine Wiegand and her ever-lovin' bore baby Elsa Valentine into the world. And our MediaPost family has grown as well with the welcome addition of Carrie Cummings, taking up the reins as Assistant Managing Editor. You agency folk and writers and other assorted wrasslers can expect to get acquainted with her soon enough.

It all gives us pause, reader. Taken aback by the circle of life and all that. As a wise man once said, "I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself, down through the generations, westward the wagons, across the sands a time ..."

John Capone
On Twitter @justcapone