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.

Employee communication people want evidence of the connection between morale and customer service. They ought to do lots of business with corporate basket cases like Kmart, and United Airlines.

Yesterday on a United flight from Dallas to Chicago, the middle-aged head flight attendant gave a purposely overlong speech telling the passengers that it’s illegal to drink our own booze on the plane, adding that if we’ve done so, we must seal it up and stow it in our bags.

Incorrigible booze hounds that we are, we apparently also needed to hear another 30-second lecture about how we’re not to use the bathroom in first class. The flight attendant wasn’t finished until she actually apologized in advance in case anyone takes offense "if we have to remind you" of this rule.

And when it came time to push the drinks cart up the aisle, the flight attendant came on and told us to pull our arms and legs in. "We prefer not to hit you," she said.

While we passengers had done nothing to deserve Nurse Ratched, United has earned her over at least two decades of mismanagement, decline and forced union concessions.