I got to simultaneously laugh and cry—one of my most coveted sensations—when Ruby lost her first tooth tonight. Our little family was eating burritos at our favorite taco shop, quietly celebrating Ruby’s hard earned “Star of the Day” status at school, when her fourth bite resulted in a dangling tooth. I grabbed a napkin, reached in and pulled that little sucker outta there and I have to say, of the many milestones we’ve had up to this point, this was the mileyest stone of them all. I’ve seen that child with no teeth and then, when I was convinced she couldn’t possibly be any more darling, watched her grow a set of teeth only to become italicized Darling with a capital “D” and raised to the 7th power. And now, those baby teeth are falling out and my little big girl is asking about evolution. Oh, the joy! It all made me a tad nostalgic and firmly aware of the way time sneaks on by when you’re living life.

Of course, I spent the rest of dinner trying to stop the bleeding and calming my worried child who someday (which will be a nanosecond) will spend a good six months on a therapist’s couch working through issues stemming from my public tooth extraction and the animated outburst of excitement that followed.

Next to questions about how babies are made, it’s all dinosaurs all the time in my house these days. The discussions began more than a year ago with a mention here and a question there, until my then-4-year-old information-processing plant explained to me that, duh, the poor dinosaurs became extinct when “a giant asteroid from Spain” crashed down onto them. And to think: All this time I’ve blamed the French for the demise of the Velociraptor.

Like the dinosaurs, Ruby’s curiosity died out until last month, when the death of her sucker fish led to a volatile display of all seven grief stages within a span of 10 minutes. This was followed by a weeks-long contemplation of death and life and how it all started and why—why?—did all the dinosaurs die? I answered her in my best Catalan (“Va ser aquest asteroide Espanyols, recordes?”) to no avail. “But what happened to them and where did they go?” she pressed.

I wanted to tell her that the dinos went over the Rainbow Bridge, had all become vegetarians and were cohabitating peacefully with the American Mastadon, the Short-Faced Bear and our old dog, Asha. But, instead, I decided to take her to the San Diego Natural History Museum in Balboa Park. What an adventure that would be, no? She gets out of school early each Thursday as part of the school district’s brilliant cutbacks, and I viewed this as an opportunity to supplement that which she isn’t getting. As a selling point, I invited along her little friend Abigail, because what’s more fun than seeing dinosaur bones with a playmate?

I picked the girls up at school, gave them a snack and herded the walking dustbowl that is them toward the museum. “One adult and two children, please,” I said to the cashier, pulling out my wallet while admonishing the girls to please, for the love of Chordata, use their indoor voices.

“That will be $39,” the cashier said.

The atrium at the north entrance to the Natural History Museum is a seemingly ceiling-less room made of lots of echo-y materials, and I know this because my reaction to this blue-eyed, freckle-faced girl asking me for $39 reverberated through the foyer and into the adjacent gift shop like a tsunami sound wave. Ruby and Abigail stopped their game of tumbling, froze in their places on the floor and looked up at me in wide-eyed shock. I might as well have been a Spinosaurus coming to gobble them up.

“Thirty-nine dollars?!?” I shrieked. It was involuntary. “How much are the tickets?” The girl pointed to the sign. “It’s $17 for adults and $11 for children. But you can get $1 off the adult ticket if you have a Triple-A card.” The girl smiled a nervous smile as thin and taut as a line drawn by a freshly sharpened pencil.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me! ‘A dollar off the adult ticket.’” OK, now I was mocking her. “That’s laughable. Look at them,” I turned and pointed to the girls who were back to some other museum-inappropriate game that involved somersaults and yoga poses and hilarious bubbles of laughter. “They’re 5. They’re good for an hour, hour-and-a-half, tops. You don’t have a discount for children?”

“No. Sorry,” she said. She’d become rigid, her face emotionless, and now I couldn’t see her hands. I thought she might be pressing some hidden emergency button beneath her desk, one that would open up an escape portal beneath her. Or me. I looked around for the security guard who’d be removing me from the premises. I imagined a 20-year-old Ruby on her therapist’s couch, recounting the time they dragged her mother from the museum.

“You can always buy a membership for $70,” the girl said. It was then that I scoffed the scoff to end all scoffs.

“Do you realize,” I hissed, “that your prices make this museum utterly inaccessible to broad swaths of people? Look around this place: It’s empty!” I had a point. It was Thursday at 1:30 in the afternoon, and it was tumbleweeds in there.

For $10 (kids are free), I could have taken the girls to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see Viva la Revolucion. The three of us could even have gone on a scavenger hunt around the city first, to view all the free installations as part of this exhibit, searching for dinosaur bones along the way. For a $6 ticket (kids are free), I could have taken the girls to the Museum of Photographic Arts to see Reflections: Exploring Cultural Identity or Seeing Beauty or In Light. No dinosaurs there, but I could have linked cultural identity to extinction, I’m sure of it. The Reuben H. Fleet Science Center would have cost me almost $10 less than the relic racket I was facing, and the girls could have pretended to be prehistoric monsters, rolling on the filthy carpets all they wanted.

I could have just gone with my Rainbow Bridge theory and taken the kids to the Creation and Earth History Museum in Santee, where the Earth is only 4,000 years old and people of all ages are permitted entrance for free. They’re even open on Veteran’s Day, a Thursday, when public schools are closed. What is more accessible than that?

The cashier stood blinking at me, her freckles making what is quite possibly the sweetest constellation I’ve ever seen, forcing me to recognize the fact that it’s the museum, and not her, that’s doing a huge disservice to the San Diego community with its extortion-like, force-you-to-buy-a-membership entrance fees.

I opened my wallet. I pulled out two $20 bills and paid our way in. We spent one hour and 20 minutes there, including two fumbling trips to the bathroom. I promised my daughter I’d show her dinosaur bones, and that is what I did. But on principal, we are not purchasing a membership, and we are not going back. We’ll skip the creation museum, too, and rely instead on our old encyclopedias, the Internet and the story about the asteroid from Spain.

(As published today in San Diego CityBeat.)

In lieu of any written update—because my life is packed, wall-to-wall, with very stressful yet completely mundane shit, all to the background of incessant tile cutting and jack hammering (we’re three weeks in with no end in sight) at the next door neighbor’s pool-refinishing-project, no, I’m not completely losing my mind, only a little losing my mind, just enough to possibly ruin my marriage or go postal on the Cox Communication representative, good thing she was in Iowa or I might just have gone over there to show her the girth of my biceps (whew! Deep breath, long sentence!)—here is what keeps me tethered to any ounce of happiness that exists in the world.

“NUKE ALL RAGHEADS” was painted across the rear window of the 90’s era silvery-blue, sun-splotched Buick.  There was a small American flag attached to both the driver- and passenger-side doors, each one snapping in the wind with fury as the car growled past me in the fast lane on the I-5. I rolled my eyes and tried to pretend I wasn’t angered as the ugly message got smaller and smaller until it finally disappeared from my vision.

The date was Sunday, September 16, 2001 and like many other people around the world, I was still trying to find my balance in the “new normal.” Already, critical thinking had been swept away and replaced by jingoism and a caustic patriotic fervor. Two days earlier, I’d watched with great skepticism as our then-president stood bow-legged atop a pile of rubble, a bullhorn in one hand and the shoulder of an exhausted firefighter in the other. It was a photo-op made in publicist heaven.

We’ll smoke ‘em outta their holes, he said. You’re either with us or with the terrorists, he said. By September 20^th, the man widely perceived as a spoiled dolt on September 10^th was suddenly enjoying a historical 90% approval rating. America had had an abrupt and virulent case of amnesia. I had hoped we were smarter than that. But we weren’t and we’re not.

Nine years later, the un-thinking zombie-people among us not only have the bullhorn, but with it—and the complicity of Republicans and the still-spineless Democratic leadership as well—they’re framing the debate. As usual. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Those of us who cling to reason until our nails peel back and point to the First Amendment until our joints lock, can see the truth through the agenda-driven spin. But it’s pretty dang tough to fight the hysteria ginned up over the Mosque at Ground Zero Islamic Cultural Center, when leaders like Howard Dean and Harry Reid retaliate with a hem and a haw. Their let’s-try-and-find-a-compromise legitimization of right-wing idealoguery is about as effective as if they showed up to a duel, whipped out their guns and fired off little yellow banners reading “POW!”

Meanwhile, to the cacophony of Christian imperialists screeching about hallowed ground and the Islamization of America, a privileged college kid the media insists on absolving as “drunken,” went all West Side Story with his pocket-knife on the face of a Manhattan cabbie. Ahmed Sharif answered “yes” when the fare asked whether he was a Muslim. That was Sharif’s second mistake. His first was going to his job of 15-years that morning, only to be violently attacked by someone who didn’t like his way of life.

Hmmm—that’s eerily familiar. It’s reminiscent of something—. What could it be? Oh! I know! It’s like the 3,000 people—Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists, Scientologists, Hedonists, Nudists, Humanists, Wiccans, members of Iglesia Maradoniana and probably a Satan Worshipper or two—who showed up to work at One World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001.

It cannot be understated that all who died that day deserve to be equally commemorated.

And speaking of commemorating them, Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida, is having a bonfire on September 11^th to do just that. The International Burn a Koran Day event will be held at Jones’s church, the ironically named Dove World Outreach Center. I often think of book burning and peace doves and world outreach in the same meditation, don’t you?

According to Jones’s website, his 50-member church is “a New Testament, Charismatic, Non-Denominational Church that believes in the whole Bible and that we are to act in response to the word of God in order to change the times we are living in. Those times have gotten further and futher [their typo, not mine] away from God; full of deception like abortion and same sex marriages.” I really like the charismatic part.

Pastor Terry is as egomaniacal and presumptuous (i.e. cray-zay!) as the next extremist and claims to know the difference between the word of God and the dirty lies of Allah. Even though he told New York Times reporter Damien Cave that, when it comes to his familiarity with the Koran, “I have no experience with it whatsoever. I only know what the Bible says.”

I personally prefer to read a book before I burn it. But I like broad horizons, while Pastor Terry? Well. His worldview is smaller than his penis.

Normally, a dude with God’s ear and a flaccid member bigger than his global awareness is largely discounted by the masses as a street corner proselytizing whack job with little impact on so much as whether a dung beetle rolls or buries its “food.”  And, too, it’s not like he’s the first White Christian to exhibit nincompoopy aggression toward Muslims; Florida, specifically, has seen a recent uptick in acts of domestic terrorism aimed at Muslims.

But as Cave pointed out, Pastor Terry’s bonfire has earned him denouncements from a number of Islamic leaders around the world; one English Islamic group is urging its members to “rise up and act.” Not surprisingly, Terry is deaf to the possibility that his actions are dangerously inflammatory and in fact feels he’s the one being persecuted. Not the brightest bulb in the Evangelical shed, that one.

Personally, if I were a book burner, I would call for the event to be inclusive. Something more along the lines of International Burn a Bible, A Book of Mormon, a Torah, Dianetics and The Entire Twilight Series Day. It’s all just a bunch of hooey that leads certain gullibles to do very ugly things in the name of their God, which is always the Only God.

Flag waving or not, an extremist is an extremist is an extremist.

(As published today in San Diego CityBeat.)

To: aaryn730@gmail.com

Subject: You asked if I felt old…

Well…a sure sign that you’re turning forty is when your mother takes a shower with her glasses on!

The radio squawks at me on my ride to work each day about the economic upturn. Our melliflous but not-well-rehearsed local NPR guy offers median home prices, retail sales and unemployment numbers as evidence. See! He seems to be saying. The sun is shining! Things are getting better!

James Altucher wrote an article about this for the Wall Street Journal on June 4th and it was packed full of impressive charts and bar graphs and data points. The man loves himself some data. Of course, data comes as a result of very specific questions and those questions can be—and, in fact, generally are—framed to elicit the desired outcome. No, I’m not cynical. I’m experienced. Okay, and maybe a little cynical, too.

Speaking of jobs, Altucher described the obvious signs of our Improving! Economy!:

“…in the most recent employment data (out just this morning), it looks like hours worked are up, the unemployment rate is down, and nonfarm payrolls improved over April. In particular, hourly pay is up, implying overtime, and always a precursor to fulltime employment.”

Things are definitely rosy for Altucher. Unlike the 35 journalists at the San Diego Union Tribune who lost their jobs last Thursday, who still has a job.

Well, memo to Altucher: Where I work, people are being laid off every week. Those who are not laid off are picking up the workload of those who have been and are working more hours to get the job done. At the same time the workload has increased, there’s been a mandatory reduction in pay, one off-set (to a small degree) by mandatory furlough days. At least there’s that extra day off each month-ish to help the bitter pill go down. But rumor has it, the furlough program will be ending in the coming months while the reduced pay will be made permanent.

I know two groups of nurses, several of them 20-plus year employees, who were laid off in recent weeks. They were graciously invited to re-apply for their positions, jobs now listed at demoted titles and—big surprise—lower pay scales.  An entire department of web content editors was let go last month, several of them being notified by phone while they were on maternity leave. Their work has been distributed directly to the departments being serviced, departments who’s staff has been similarly decimated.  I know one woman who works 10-hours of unpaid overtime every single week because she can’t get her work done in a 40-hour week. But she doesn’t dare speak up because she needs this job, one of three she holds down. She hasn’t had a day off in 3 years. And the title I currently hold has been re-defined to add more responsibility, require less credentialing and offering lower pay (the salary has been slashed by thousands of dollars). And I’m not any where near a high income earner. I cannot move up, ever, because I’m already above the new “up,” and while there are no raises in the future for most employees, if there were, there would be none in mine.

So, in a way, Altucher has it partly right: People are working. Some people. And those who are working, are working: We need our paychecks. And holy shit do we need our health benefits. But the-hourly-pay-is-up thing is not something I’m witnessing at my place of employment, nor is it something I’m hearing from friends in other fields and at other organizations. I’m highly skeptical about this “improving economy” and think that for most of us, it’s going to be getting harder and more stressful.

How about you, readers? Are you experiencing the relief the pundits like to yammer about? Do you feel safe and secure and bright and sunny about your future? Or do you think that Altucher should find some place to stick his bar graphs?