My friend and colleague Tom Daly, editor of Vital Speeches of the Day, improves my mood with this Twain quote:

“Talking of patriotism what humbug it is; it is a word always which always commemorates a robbery. There isn’t a foot of land in the world that doesn’t represent the ousting and re-ousting of a long line of successive ‘owners,’ who each in turn, as ‘patriots,’ with proud swelling hearts defended against the gang of ‘robbers’ who came to steal it and did—and became swelling hearted patriots in their turn.”

—Mark Twain, U.S. writer, Notebook May 26, 1896

I’m not immune from the grinding fear that things might get real shitty, and I know for some people, they already have.

But so far, the economic downturn has:

• Raised the price of gas to the point that even the least environmentally conscious of us are thinking and talking and open to new ideas about energy and sustainability and other ideas that bored us all to death two years ago. (Gee, I haven’t heard the term "tree-huggers" in a while, have you?)

• Served us our first reminder since the sudden death of "the new economy" (remember that one?) that you can’t always get what you want. (And that banks can be sharpers, too!)

• And, as of today, put Bennigan’s out of business. One down … TGI Fridays to go!

So you’ve gotta take the good news where you can find it is all I’m saying.

We were in Dallas over the weekend to celebrate the 90th birthday of Cristie’s grandfather, Robert Damon. Yesterday a lot of warm e-mails went around the family, everyone saying what a nice time we had.

Everyone except the birthday boy. As he told me in a ready-made poem on Sunday morning, he doesn’t do the Internet:

I still talk with my mouth,
And I think with my head.
No pressing buttons for me.