It’s Bat Week. That’s right. It’s “an international, annual celebration designed to raise awareness about the need for bat conservation,” according to BatWeek.org. The website calls bats “amazing creatures” that benefit our natural world and economy by eating insects, pollinating flowers and spreading seeds.

I don’t doubt that. I just prefer some distance between myself and those flying mice. Quite frankly, I don’t like bats. And they probably don’t like me, either. That’s fine with me.

We learned in our youth that bats are creatures to be feared, especially this time of year due to their spooky association with Halloween. They’re active at night, flutter through the moonlight and huddle in dark places like caves and abandoned buildings. Worst of all, they sometimes make their homes in residential attics. And then there’s that whole biting, sucking your blood and turning you into a vampire thing. Or something like that.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources says bats aren’t something to fear or be grossed out by. In fact, some bat enthusiasts call them “sky puppies” because they’re “pretty darn cute.”

Huh?

Don’t get me wrong. I was a Batman fan. I respect Adam West, Michael Keaton and Christian Bale. But learning that nine bat species call Iowa home didn’t give me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Four head for warmer climates when insects become scarce, but I can do simple math. That leaves five species here. In my attic.

Meanwhile, experts say the only bats we’re likely to see on Halloween will be plastic. They also note that only a small percentage of bats carry rabies. Fair enough. But did you know bats can live 15 to 30 years, depending on the species? That’s a long time to be hanging around my house.

If there’s a saving grace to this whole bat thing, it’s that bats are blind. Or so I thought. Further investigation revealed that bats aren’t blind. They use echolocation to navigate and find food. Echolocation. That sounds like something Elon Musk invented. Or maybe Al Gore.

I suppose Bat Week has educated me a bit. I now know that bats probably live near you, too, and that’s supposedly a good thing. They eat insects and help maintain healthy ecosystems. I can appreciate their contributions to society. Just keep those contributions outside my house.

As for the vampire thing, Halloween is still a few days away. I’m not ruling anything out.

Have a terriffic Tuesday and thanks for reading.

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

I can still picture those cassette tapes stacked neatly beside my home stereo, the handwritten labels, the carefully crafted mix tapes and the little plastic cases. In the 1980s, music was not something you simply streamed. You recorded it, rewound it, fast-forwarded through songs you disliked and occasionally performed emergency surgery with a No. 2 pencil.

Today, we have millions of songs at our fingertips and algorithms that know what we want to hear before we do. Back then, we waited for our favorite song on the radio, hoped the DJ would not talk over the introduction and slammed the record button at precisely the right moment. I was quite good at it, but, ironically, I can’t seem to figure out how to record TV shows digitally today.

This technological contrast came to mind when I remembered an exchange with my boss, Mr. Meyer, from my high school days in the mid-1980s. He was about 10 years older than me, and I asked him if cassette tapes were a thing in his time. He looked at me as if I had just questioned whether electricity existed. He thought I was being sarcastic. I was not. I genuinely believed he belonged to the album and 8-track generation. In my defense, 10 years seemed like a generation back then. Today, I realize it is barely enough time to wear out a pair of headphones.

I was reminded of that era recently when someone mentioned a cassette player head cleaner. Suddenly, I envisioned squirting cleaning fluid onto a swab and carefully cleaning the heads on my Pioneer dual-cassette deck. That got me thinking about terms younger generations may not understand: Dolby noise reduction, auto reverse, high-speed dubbing, mix tapes and splicing. Back then, we needed pencils, patience and, occasionally, a small miracle.

Philips developed the compact cassette in Belgium in 1962, released it in Europe in 1963 and introduced it in the United States in 1964. Cassettes made music portable, recordable and shareable. Then came the Sony Walkman, allowing us to carry our music everywhere without hauling around something the size of a toaster.

We also became amateur record producers. I made mix tapes for friends and carefully typed song titles on cassette inserts using a manual typewriter.  Of course, cassettes had flaws. One tangled ribbon of magnetic tape could turn your favorite song into an audio disaster. Rewinding with a pencil was practically an Olympic event.

Compact discs arrived in the 1980s and gained popularity in the 1990s. By the early 2000s, cassettes had largely disappeared. Still, they have staged a modest comeback among nostalgic fans and hipsters. I am not sure whether that is retro cool or a cry for help, but I respect it.

More than 3 billion cassettes reportedly were sold between 1963 and 1988. Sony discontinued its original Walkman cassette players in 2010. I still have mine. Somewhere.

I wonder what technology teenagers today will remember with nostalgia. Will they laugh about streaming music, wireless earbuds and asking artificial intelligence to create playlists? Will they reminisce about having to type requests into a search box?

Someday, a teenager might ask me if Spotify was a thing in my time. I will try not to take it personally. After all, I once asked Mr. Meyer the same kind of question about cassette tapes.

The difference is that he likely remembers where he put his mix tapes, and I have absolutely no idea what my passwords are.

Have a fantastic Friday and thanks for reading.

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

Catch some Z’s. Get some shut-eye. Cash in your chips. Retire for the night. Have your beauty sleep. We have plenty of expressions for sleeping, which is ironic because many of us seem to have trouble doing it.

Sleep is how our bodies recharge. Without enough of it, we can experience irritability, impaired thinking, hallucinations, paranoia and even psychosis. According to Healthline, the longest recorded period without sleep is about 264 hours, or 11 consecutive days. On the other extreme, some of us have trouble making it through a three-hour meeting without losing consciousness.

Meanwhile, most of us admit we could use more sleep. But how much do we actually need? We have been told for years that eight hours a night is the magic number. As a teenager, I could sleep eight hours without even trying. At 58, I considered it a major accomplishment if I could stay asleep long enough to finish a dream.

Apparently, sleep researchers have some questions, too. A 2023 Guardian article examining common health beliefs noted that people have different sleep needs. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reportedly got by on about four hours a night. Of course, she also ran a country, so perhaps exhaustion was simply part of the job description.

New parents might appreciate the strategy. When a baby is running the household, four uninterrupted hours can feel like a luxury resort.

Still, before we declare sleep overrated, consider a 2017 study cited by The Guardian. Participants who reported sleeping seven to eight hours performed better on cognitive tests than those who slept more or less, regardless of age.

So, apparently, I should sleep more. Message received. The difficult part is figuring out how.

The American Cancer Society recommends going to bed at the same time every night, including weekends. Clearly, these people have never discovered a Netflix series that ends every episode with a reason to watch one more.

They also recommend avoiding naps after 3 p.m. and limiting them to 20 minutes. That sounds reasonable until Sunday afternoon, when the couch, a blanket and a Vikings game combine to create a gravitational force no scientist has adequately explained.

Another suggestion is to keep the bedroom dark, quiet and comfortable. Finally, advice I can support without consulting a committee. I like my bedroom cool enough to make the blankets feel necessary. My wife may have a different opinion, but marriage is about compromise — and occasionally, extra blankets.

The experts also recommend turning off televisions, phones and other screens at least an hour before bedtime. Instead, read a book or listen to music. I am working on that one. So far, I have mastered turning off the television, picking up my phone and reading about why I should turn off my phone.

If you have tricks for catching 40 winks, counting sheep or convincing your brain that 2 a.m. is not the ideal time to review every questionable decision you have made since 1987, send them my way. Until then, I will keep chasing eight hours of sleep.

Have a terriffic Tuesday and thanks for reading.

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

I admit it. I watched too much television growing up. I know this because my brain is now a fascinating museum of completely useless information. I cannot remember where I put my car keys. I occasionally walk into a room and immediately forget why I am there. I have no idea what I ate for lunch yesterday. But play three notes from a 1970s television commercial, and I become Alex Trebek.

Apparently, my brain decided that remembering song lyrics, commercial jingles and obscure television trivia was more important than remembering where I parked. And I have television to thank for it.

I first heard many hit songs as television commercials and assumed they had been written specifically to sell ketchup, window cleaner or some mysterious product that apparently everyone needed.

Take “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” For years, I associated that song with the California Raisins. You remember the California Raisins. Little animated raisins singing Motown songs while somehow making dried fruit seem cool. It turns out “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” was an actual hit song. Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong wrote it for Motown, and it was recorded by several artists, including Gladys Knight & the Pips and Marvin Gaye. The Miracles actually recorded it first. So there you go. Another important fact I will probably never need.

Then there was Heinz ketchup. The commercial featured a kid slowly pouring ketchup onto a hamburger while Carly Simon’s “Anticipation” played in the background. I heard the song as something like, “Heinz is the patience.” This made perfect sense to me because the ketchup was, indeed, taking approximately three geological eras to come out of the bottle. The actual song was “Anticipation.” Carly Simon wrote it in about 15 minutes while waiting for Cat Stevens to pick her up for a date.

Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now” was another one. I knew it as the Glass Plus window-cleaner song. I assumed Johnny Nash had written it because he had a deep emotional connection to sparkling windows. Turns out it was a No. 1 hit.

Then there was “Rub It In,” which I used to sing while giving my toddler daughters baths. Billy “Crash” Craddock took it to the top of the country charts in 1974. But in my brain, it will forever be connected to Glade Plug-Ins and the immortal command: “Plug It In, Plug It In.”

That phrase is permanently stored in my memory, right alongside my Social Security number and the ability to recite the entire opening theme to “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

And let us not forget “Short Shorts” by The Royal Teens. The song was a hit in 1958, long before I was around. But Nair hair-removal commercials introduced it to me. This is how I received my musical education. Other kids had piano lessons. I had Nair.

And finally, there is the ultimate commercial-to-song crossover: “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.” It originated with Coca-Cola’s famous 1971 “Hilltop” commercial and eventually became a full-length hit song. And people bought it.

Looking back, I realize television did not simply entertain me while I was growing up. It educated me. It taught me music history, advertising slogans, product loyalty and, most importantly, that apparently anything can become a song if you put enough people on a hill and give them a bottle of Coca-Cola.

I may not remember where I put my keys. But if you need to know which commercial featured a kid waiting 14 minutes for ketchup in 1970-something, I am your guy. Years of television have prepared me for this moment. I just wish I could remember why I walked into this room.

Have a fantastic Friday and thanks for reading.

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