Just got a(nother) catalog in the mail today. One thing about doing your Christmas shopping online: you would not BELIEVE the number of mailing lists your name ends up on. That's OK, actually, because so far I've received a bunch of catalogs for things I actually would be willing to buy.

So anyway, in this catalog, I saw an item that I saw a surprisingly large number of in the grandstand at Belmont on Saturday.

BLACK wide-brimmed sun hats.

All I can think of is how my mom got badly sunburned right through a pair of black pants, when I was a kid, and I wondered why so many female Belmont attendees were wearing black sun hats to match their all-black outfits. And they were standing in the full sun for hours on the hottest farging day of the year so far, to boot. I thought they were nuts.

People, I have brunette hair. If I stand in the summer sun without a hat, the top of my head gets so hot, it actually hurts to touch it. Honestly.

So my point here is that, though it's good to shade oneself by wearing a wide-brimmed hat, when I see someone wearing a BLACK sun hat, that tells me the person with the hat is a bit unclear on the concept of sun protection. And when they are wearing a black hat to match their BLACK sundress, then I know they're REALLY not getting the idea of sun protection. Especially if they're wearing this garb on a day when the temperature was about 99.9999 degrees in the shade, and the heat index was easily over 100 degrees.

Tip: wear LIGHT colors if you plan to be out in the sun. Really. Your core body temperature will thank you. So will the people around you who DON'T have to call 911 because you've fainted away from heat exhaustion before their very eyes.