Those who find bats disturbing will not be surprised to know Bat Week coincides with Halloween. If you are among them, perhaps when you reach the end of this piece, you’ll think an international bat day could be designated on Cinco de Mayo.

The oldest bat skeletons on hand date back to the Eocene, over fifty million years ago, and bats were likely established in many of their current habitats, including in the arctic circle, when, in Ricardo Rocha and his team’s words, early hominids took their first steps. They also suggest our ancetsors lived alongside bats during their cave-dwelling millenia. Late Pleistocene terracotta paintings of bats were left by hunter-gatherers along the Amazon, and although bats were associated with witchcraft and death in many cultures, they were considered good omens and spiritual totems in other areas, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Agave tequiliana, or blue agave, lives up to its name: agave, taken from Latin, illustrious or noble, and of course the source of tequila. The lance-like leaves of the basal rosette can grow to over seven feet, and the flowering stalk, produced only once before the plant dies, can reach 16 feet. Currently agave is considered a succulent adaptation within the Asparagaceae family. Some are surprised to learn that many families, including the rose, include such adaptations to arid conditions.

The rust belt resonates with labor historians, but we generally don’t use the term. Years ago our friend Kim Hill, then at the Center for Automotive Research, CAR, in Ann Arbor, suggested it denigrates the progress being made in many of those communities, asking if we had visited Ann Arbor recently. We hadn’t, and respect his opinion.

But Erika McEntarfer, former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, described the region where she grew up in western New York as the rust belt in a recent talk, sponsored by the Levy Institute, on the importance of official data. Her community was “struggling to find its way economically…with unemployment very high and jobs very scarce.” Continue reading Erika McEntarfer in, mostly, her own words →