I’ve been a fan of film critic Roger Ebert since I first began reading his columns and watching his famous TV debates with Gene Siskel back in the early 80s. Early on I think I admired his caustic wit the most, but now I admire him more for other things…Of course, the caustic wit still surfaces from time to time. Remember a few years ago when Rob Schneider came out with the deplorable “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo”? Schneider got very upset at film critic Patrick Goldstein, who ripped the film (along with nearly every film critic in America), and he took out a full-page ad in major publications to attack Goldstein. He noted that Goldstein had not won a Pulitzer Prize or other awards, but Ebert came to the defense of his fellow critic: “As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize,” he wrote. “So speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.”…When I entered the journalism profession myself, I heard tales about Ebert’s remarkable ability to write — and write extremely well — at the speed of typing. I’m a fairly fast writer, and can crank out a readable column (800 words) in twenty minutes or so and a novel in about six weeks during my carefree summer months. But that pales in comparison to Ebert. He’s a machine. A few years ago he lost the ability to speak after several cancer surgeries on his jaw, and in 2008 he began writing an on-line journal. He’s written over 500,000 words in that journal. To put that in perspective, a 200-page novel is about 50,000 words — so he’s written the equivalent of 10 novels in the last two years. Beyond his formidable writing skills, though, I admire Mr. Ebert for the way he’s handled his hardships. He could’ve felt sorry for himself, retired, become a bitter recluse…Instead, he’s accepted the hand life dealt him and contnued his work. Eckhart Tolle said that our hardships can provide a portal through which we can access the richness of the world right here and now, and I think Ebert has done just that. Here are some recent words: “I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our curcumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”