I just sent Paul Krugman a fan email, b/c I'm sure he needs my affirmation. But he does rule.

I won't trivialize Katrina by attempting to blog about it (very interesting, btw, reading the Times magazine from two weeks after 9/11: the articles ranged from the prescient to the almost offensively stupid. Stephen King, I'm talkin' 'bout you). I will, however, write of trivialities.

1) Apparently the O.C. has a Hasidic community of roughly sixty families. Ask me how I know this.

2) The Pucci scarf I bought, which is supposedly a bathing suit wrap of some sort, ROCKS. I actually used it as a bathing suit wrap to spare other hotel guests the sight of my middle-aged form in a bathing suit. It also doubled nicely as a serape when I was on the cold, cold airplane. And it added a needed splash of color to my jeans-and-sleeveless-cashmere-turtleneck ensemble. I did not wear it a la Rhoda Morganstern around my head as a do-rag, nor did I use it as a belt, but I found it an exceptionally versatile traveling companion.

3) Someone in row 16 of my flight out was very rude to the flight attendants. You hear things when you're sitting bulkhead.

4) Dancing like no one is watching is not good advice: people really ARE watching. Sometimes they have video cameras.

5) Ram Dass's original name was Richard Alpert. Thank you, bro. He knows all the words to the Palisades Amusement Park jingle, too.