I have always liked words. This is probably because I am a writer, which means I spend an unreasonable amount of time arguing with myself over whether a sentence needs a comma. I also get emotionally attached to words that other people apparently have decided are no longer safe for public consumption.

Take “chick.” I recently heard Dire Straits’ 1985 song “Money for Nothing,” which includes the immortal line, “Money for nothing and chicks for free.” It was written as a parody of the rock-star lifestyle. I laughed. Then I thought: There is absolutely no way that lyric makes it through today’s cultural airport security without somebody confiscating it. “Chick” might be offensive. Unless it is the name of an all-female band. Then it’s apparently fine. Unless the band is the Dixie Chicks. Then “chick” is OK, but “Dixie” has to go. So now they are The Chicks.

And then there are pronouns. He. Him. She. Her. They. I am not making a political statement here. I am simply a grammar guy trying to keep up. I grew up believing “they” referred to more than one person. Apparently, “they” has since received a promotion. My old grammar books are going to need therapy.

Growing up in small-town Iowa in the 1970s, I learned a lot about the world by watching television. Shows such as “The Jeffersons,” “Good Times” and “Sanford and Son” introduced me to people whose lives and experiences were different from mine. They also taught me that racist words were wrong. Some of the words I heard as a kid were new to me, but they were not new to my friends who had been called them. That made a lasting impression. Words, it turns out, can be tiny packages containing enormous amounts of baggage.

George Carlin famously had a routine about seven words you could not say on television. In the 1970s, those words were considered outrageous. Today, you hear most of them regularly. I will not print them here because my sister reads this column, and there are some lines a little brother does not cross.

Then came “woke,” which somehow became a word capable of starting an argument before the person saying it even finished the sentence.

My point is that words matter. They can educate. They can entertain. They can offend. They can heal. They can make you laugh. They can make you cry. But perhaps the bigger issue is not whether words themselves have changed. It is whether we have forgotten that the person on the other side of the word is more important than the word itself.

So, I will keep writing. I will keep learning. I will try not to offend anyone. And I will continue to use commas correctly, even if it kills me. Because if we ever reach the point where a comma becomes politically controversial, I’m moving to Canada.

Have a teriffic Tuesday and thanks for reading.

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital newsletter
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707

You probably heard the expression “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” It has been attributed to everyone from Samuel Smiles to Isabella Beeton to Benjamin Franklin. A lot of people throughout history have apparently had strong opinions about where things belong. I discovered that people tend to fall into one of two camps: Those who live by that philosophy and those who consider it a personal attack.

My appreciation for organization goes back to the late 1990s, when I met David Belin in his Des Moines law office. Belin was the senior partner in the Belin Law Firm and had an impressive resume, including serving as an attorney for the Warren Commission and the Rockefeller Commission. He also was a partner in our publishing company back then. But what I remember most was his office.

There were stacks of papers everywhere. Not little stacks. I’m talking knee-high stacks on the floor surrounding his desk. As I stood there trying to figure out how a human being could possibly find anything, Mr. Belin looked at me and said, “I have something for you.” He reached into one of those stacks and pulled out a piece of paper from somewhere in the middle. I was stunned. It was like watching a magician pull a tablecloth out from underneath a fully set dinner table — except this magician was retrieving a legal document, and the tablecloth was 18 inches of paperwork.

Somehow, he knew exactly where everything was. My brain doesn’t work that way. I am more Benjamin Franklin than David Belin. That becomes particularly obvious each time Jolene and I move to another home. Many of you can likely relate. Living out of boxes and between two houses makes finding a pair of socks feel like an archaeological expedition.

Silverware disappears. Screwdrivers go missing. Items I own enjoy an extended vacation. Those situations have me out of sorts. Thank goodness, Jolene deals with them much better than I do. Unfortunately, the organizational tendencies I inherited from my mother keep making regular appearances. I discovered that when my environment is chaotic, my brain doesn’t respond with, “Relax. It will all work out.” It says, “Where is the 10-millimeter socket?”

So, I found a temporary solution when situations like this arrive. I spend a few hours in the garage putting tools away and getting things organized. It gives me something to do, gives my brain a chance to unwind and gives Jolene a break from me. Everybody wins.

Yes, I have learned — and I am continuing to learn — through all of this. Some people meditate; I put tools in drawers and call it therapy. Maybe there really is a place for everything, and everything in its place.

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital newsletter
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707

We often hear our parents or grandparents tell us how things were done in their day, and we marvel at how much has changed in such a relatively short time.

Imagine walking through a foot of snow to use the outhouse when nature called. Or riding a horse into town because that was your only transportation. Or gathering around a wood stove in the middle of the house because that was the heat source. I remember my mother telling stories like these. At the time, they seemed ancient. Looking back, they really weren’t that long ago. It makes me wonder what stories we will tell future generations about the things we do today.

How about telling time on a standard wall clock? You know — the big hand, the little hand and the frantic moment when you are trying to determine whether you are 10 minutes early or 50 minutes late. I recently saw a post about a student who was asked by a teacher to draw a clock showing 10 minutes after 11. The student drew a digital clock reading “11:10.” Sigh.

Then there is money. I was paying cash at a sandwich shop the other day, and my change was automatically deposited into a little metal bowl attached to the register. I asked the clerk how many customers still pay with cash. He guessed about 20%. The latest Federal Reserve data show cash accounted for about 16% of consumer payments in 2023, down from 31% in 2016. Cards now dominate the payment landscape.

I vividly recall learning how to count change in school. One has to wonder whether that is still taught — and whether it needs to be. I remember taking my then-4-year-old daughter Samantha to a store when she wanted to buy something with her own money. She did not know the difference between a dime and a dollar, so she kept pulling coins from her little purse and putting them up on the counter until the clerk told her she had enough. I smiled. Samantha was beaming. She had bought something with her own money, and that was all that mattered.

Then there are gasoline-powered vehicles. Many of us are reluctant to give up the internal-combustion engine, but the transition to electric vehicles is real. In 2025, electric vehicles accounted for about 10% of U.S. car sales, according to the International Energy Agency. Will the gasoline engine eventually become as outdated as the horse and buggy? Maybe. I suspect Grandpa would have laughed at the idea of a horse being replaced by a machine. And someday, our grandchildren may laugh at us for driving vehicles that required us to stop, insert a nozzle and pump liquid fuel into them. Just as we laugh at the outhouse. Progress has a funny way of making yesterday’s normal look downright ridiculous.

Someday, somebody will probably look back at us and wonder how we ever survived with a wall clock that needed batteries, a credit card that had to be swiped, and a car that ran on gasoline. I just hope they remember that we were darn good at making change.

Have a fantastic Friday, and thanks for reading.

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital newsletter
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707