There’s an old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” And so we are living today. Can anyone doubt that “the times they are a-changing”? Interesting, changing times, things aren’t what they used to be. I’ve been interested in the news coverage of these interesting times in which we live. The concentration, it seems to me, is centered precisely on the folks who are out-of-touch with the real consequences of the times. The real indication of the times is when someone in my income bracket opens the electric bill, not whether or not some jerk who lives in a penthouse apartment on Fifty-second Street in New York and has a little cottage in the Hamptons in which my house could fit into the living room got or didn’t get a bonus for performing or not performing. The real indication of the times in not whether or not the President should be appearing on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno but whether or not I can afford the bill to hook up cable or satellite so I can watch it. News coverage, in my not too humble opinion, is concentrated on the things that hold no relational quality with my living. News coverage of the economic down turn is convoluted at best. I mean, I know there are people in this town who have more money than my lawn has blades of grass, but the vast majority of inhabitants of this fair county, especially me, cannot read that stock market ticker that trails across the bottom of the TV screen. There are better indications of these interesting times in which we live. I found one the other day as I perused the online webzines. Brace yourself for this one. To my mind it is the true indicator of our economically challenging times. The average gift received from the tooth fairy has fallen from $2.09 to $1.88. This discouraging news evokes several questions: Have the interesting times in which we live forced the Tooth Fairy to take lesser income producing jobs? Have investments of the Tooth Fairy, like mine, been drastically reduced because of the idiots that run our government and corporations? Has the Tooth Fairy lost his job? The very thought of that stirs paralyzing fear within. But, then again, if he has lost his job, he is to be commended for continuing to give it his all. Has the Tooth Fairy’s equipment become obsolete? That certainly might explain the lower under-the-pillow deposits. With the cost of things these days expenditures on wing maintenance and repair can be oppressive. And, one has to admit, the need for such maintenance is expected. After all, he’s been doing this since I was a small boy. There is the possibility, of course, that the Tooth Fairy has, in this cynical age, begun to feel a bit less-than-appreciated. And when that happens it’s difficult to put forth one’s best effort. The truth is whatever reasons I might put forth regarding the apparent decrease in the liquidity of the Tooth Fairy’s funds would be only a guess. What is the truth, however, is that the economic difficulties in which we live had now reached our children’s bedrooms, specifically beneath their pillows. What is encouraging about this is someone noticed. When new agencies begin to notice the strain our interesting times have put on the Tooth Fairy they have become relevant.