None of that worked this morning. I verified that the Palm and BT dongle worked by moving to another computer. I tried configuring BT using another account on my iBook. I tried throwing away the BT prefs. I ever restarted the iBook. Then, and only then, did I think to check out the BT menu widget. It thought there was no BT connected.
On a couple of ocassions I've run into problems that were solved by turning the computer off all together. That's what I did - and BT once again worked. I guess this isn't so much as OS X tip as it is a cautionary tail. When all else fails turn off the machine. A restart isn't a cold start.

