Writers Bloc Presents, Temple Emanuel, 8844 Burton Way, Beverly Hills, at 7:30 PM. With Patt Morrison.

It was lovely to see familiar friendly faces in the audience at Writers Bloc. Andrea Polard, a writer and therapist I know only from Facebook, was in the front row. Karen, whom I met in New York a month or so ago, beamed at me after the Q&A. Though one blessed woman asked, just before time was up, about my favorite place in Greece, most of the talk in LA was about English usage and punctuation. Afterward Mina Kaneko and McKenna Stayner, former colleagues at the New Yorker, took me to a restaurant that looked like a set for “Zorro.” It was good to see them thriving on the West Coast.

The real luxury in LA was getting a tour of the Getty Center from Alex Abramowicz, the son of my friend Janet Abramowicz. When we arrived, I reset my watch to Pacific Time, which gave me two extra hours to enjoy the grounds of this amazing structure, with its colossal marble columns reminiscent of the Parthenon, water features evoking the Alhambra, and gardens set up so that they not only please the eye with detail and abundance but also attract butterflies and bees. It smelled good, looked good, and sounded good—an immersive experience. Plus there were ducklings.

And Alex commemorated the day with this shot: