DEAR MISS MANNERS: I'm pleased to note how consideration for others seems to be the guiding principle of manners as you promote them, but one rule of etiquette has puzzled me for a lifetime: the prohibition of wearing white or linen between Labor Day and Easter.

This rule assumes September is always nippy and Easter is always mild, when the reverse can often be true in the United States. The rule seems even more arbitrary when one lives in the subtropics, where February days routinely top 80 degrees. Would you please shed some light on how we might understand this rule?

GENTLE READER: Consideration for others is something you have kindly shown Miss Manners. When this rule is questioned, it is usually with a barrage of sarcasm and disdain rarely leveled on far more restrictive rules.

Miss Manners is aware of the glamour of rebellion, but could there possibly be a more tepid cause?

The source is a misunderstanding that you share with the ferocious rebels. It is true that consideration for others is a guiding principle of manners, but that is not its only function. It is also a repository of folk customs that are indeed arbitrary, but that folks like to practice anyway. Or, as Miss Manners has learned, hate to.

This one has to do with seasons, not with weather. Easter is a time for bringing out pastel colors and, for those few who care to, straw hats. Memorial Day marks the beginning of summer, when white seems refreshing. However, there is no wardrobe police to enforce this, which makes Miss Manners wonder what all the excitement is about.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I moved back to a state where I had previously resided, while my wife and daughter stayed behind to sell the house. I am now maintaining two residences on one salary, which, as you can imagine, is a strain financially.

My friends here are wonderful and invite me to do many things, including activities that involve at least moderate expense. I simply cannot afford to do these things. My friends, conscious of the situation, ALWAYS pay.

My protestations, my offers to pay at least part of the cost, my polite declining of invitations, are all waved away with love and compassion. I adore them all for their kindness and generosity, but I am starting to feel subsidized, and don't want to be a mooch, ESPECIALLY since I love them so much.

I have offered dinner to them all upon the reunion of my family, but what else can I do to avoid being a financial leech and still spend time with these marvelous people? They refuse my refusals, knowing the reason behind them.

GENTLE READER: Money is not the only commodity that friends can provide for one another, and not even the most valuable one, handy as it may be. You could be doing other sorts of favors for your kind friends.

Now you are probably going to ask Miss Manners what favors. People are always asking her what presents to give to their dearest friends whom she has never laid eyes on.

Think of something helpful you can offer without its seeming like payment: "I'll pick everyone up so we don't all have to look for parking," or "I'm doing my lawn this weekend and I'd be happy to do yours -- it's how I get my exercise," or "You don't need a carpenter to fix that -- woodworking is my hobby."

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: When attending a performance of, say, a high school musical, what are the rules about standing ovations? They seem to be occurring more and more frequently for what I'd consider an adequate, but certainly not spectacular, performance.

I know people are proud of their offspring and want to show that, but my goodness, a standing ovation? My husband and I feel mean-spirited just sitting when everyone has heaved him-or-herself out of the chair to "ovate." I must add that those who do stand appear to do so with some lack of enthusiasm. Any thoughts?

GENTLE READER: That pretty much everyone attending a high school musical has a young relative involved in it. If you merely wandered in because you were in search of a spectacular performance of "The Fantasticks," you are asking for disappointment.

Mind you, Miss Manners has sat quietly through many a standing ovation at the professional theater and the opera, clapping normally if she thinks the performance a good one, keeping her hands in her lap if not. She agrees with you that ovation inflation has made it impossible for audiences to express their enthusiasm for a performance of rare excellence.

And although she is incapable of uttering a "boo," she relishes being in audiences that are discerning and emotionally involved enough to register even negative opinions.

But high school? Or any amateur performance? It is there, and not in the costly professional theater, that the audience's kindly duty is to encourage the performers. Or at least to reassure them that they have not made fools of themselves.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Last month, my friend informed me that she was pregnant with her first child. Soon afterwards, she began including me in a group that receives a weekly e-mail regarding the status of her pregnancy. It includes a few comments from her, followed by a description of the baby's development, including a diagram like one you'd find in a textbook.

While I am happy that she is excited about having her first child, I find that this is a little too much information and somewhat self-centered.

Should I just let the e-mails continue or is there a way I can politely say something so that I can be excluded from these weekly e-mail distributions?

GENTLE READER: Let us hope that your friend does not take to tweeting. Minute-by-minute accounts of pregnancy are something that only prospective fathers and grandparents should be expected to bear.

What you are getting is also lacking in charm and general interest, but Miss Manners believes that once a week, you could take a minute to 1) hit the reply key, 2) type "Congratulations," and (3 and 4 in rapid succession) hit the send and delete keys.

Pregnancy is, by its nature, a self-preoccupied state, but it often leads to the opposite state. Should your friend start sending weekly baby pictures, follow the above instructions, substituting the word "cute" for step two.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: What should an American president do when he greets a foreign head of state? What about his wife? And would that be any different from an average American citizen greeting a foreign head of state?

A handshake and "How do you do?" seem appropriate everywhere, but what about curtsies, head nods and genuflecting? Is a bend at the waist considered different from a bent knee? If anyone can have a final say on this, I believe it would be you.

GENTLE READER: Final say? If only that were true. Miss Manners has now watched at least half a dozen administrations get this wrong. They go to one extreme or the other, behaving like other presidents' buddies or like monarchs' subjects.

Where is the Office of Protocol, for goodness' sake?

Yes, yes, Americans pride ourselves on being warm and open and spontaneous. But heads of state are the symbolic embodiments of their countries, and the greeting gesture is itself symbolic. If they improvise mistakenly, they can expect a spontaneous outburst of American disdain.

The American greeting routine used to be simple. Because we officially consider all people to be equal and equally worthy of respect, the same gesture, the handshake -- simple, dignified and egalitarian -- would do for all.

We knew it wasn't universal, but it was our way. We felt superior to people who had to bow down to their leaders. And we found it side-splitting to watch news footage of French generals bestowing kisses on their soldiers when they gave out medals.

Then, about half a century ago, came the American huggy movement. Instant intimacy was going to solve everyone's problems by making them feel good, which, in turn, would end war and strife. It took rather vigorous forms among some, but eventually infiltrated even the most staid parts of society, where the handshake had been the greeting that fathers gave their young sons.

And it spread internationally. Heads of state took to kissing and hugging one another, a truly bad idea politically. Those photographs are bound to surface when the loved one or his country does something nasty.

Symbolically, it is bad even in good times. Such bonding smacks of the days when protocol had sovereigns from different monarchies addressing one another as "Monsieur Mon Frere" or "Madame Ma Soeur," regardless of whether they had any familial ties. The idea was that they belonged to an international ruling class as distinguished from the mere subjects over whom they reigned.

And if you don't see that, you should try a spontaneous hug on any head of state -- your own or anyone else's -- who happens to come your way in a parade or ceremony.

But symbolic subservience to a foreign ruler is worse. When Miss Manners sees American citizens delighting in bowing or curtseying to royalty, she tries to remind herself that they are just being silly, not treasonous. When an American official does it, we can only hope it was because he was noticing that his own shoelace was undone-- and not that he recognizes the divine right of kings in general, or the authority over us of that king in particular.

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