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Fri, Nov 14, 2025

12:48am EST

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Carrion Luggage

by Robert Waltz

Rated: 18+ · Book · Opinion · #2336646

Items to fit into your overhead compartment

Carrion Luggage

Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem.

This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it.

It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans.

It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier."

I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination.

Show Recent Comments

10 Most Recent Blog Comments:

tj gives thanks for all things

about 8 hours ago
In response to "Dish Me"

With just the two of us, we wash our dishes by hand; it's usually not a big job. As for oiling wood cutting boards, I use a product that is a combination of mineral oil and beeswax.

1 Like

Annette

about 11 hours ago
In response to "Dish Me"

I want a new dishwasher, but the one I have is not broken. So I'll keep it.

2 Like

WakeUpAndLive~NOV Word Monger

about 14 hours ago
In response to "Dish Me"

I sooo wished I had one. Tomorrow, this big chore of doing dishes by hand awaits.

2 Like

Robert Waltz

about 23 hours ago
In response to "Even Bigger Clock"

🌝 HuntersMoon

- Retirement's nice like that.

I like having the clock on the microwave. But it's got this "feature" where, whenever the power blinks off, I have to reset it. Okay, resetting the time isn't a big deal: put in the hours and minutes and am/pm. Fine. But for some arcane reason, it also requires month/day/year to be input. Perhaps it's got some timer feature I haven't used in the 20+ years I've had the damn thing.

Putting in the actual date is too much like work and for no good reason, so every time the power goes out, it's once again November 11, 2011.

I guess I should be glad it's not one of those things that requires an internet connection. But if it had one, at least I wouldn't have to go through the motions 3-4 times a year.

1 Like

🌝 HuntersMoon

a day ago
In response to "Even Bigger Clock"

I've reached a point in life where I don't give a shit what time it is. My microwave has been telling me it's 12:00 since the last time I unplugged it.

OK, not totally true. I do rely on the clock so I don't miss kick-off on Thursday Night and Sunday.

1 Like

Jim

a day ago
In response to "Even Bigger Clock"

have no idea how accurate this clock was (is), but my favorite clock was the one that had an arm that turned in a circle around a pivot point in one minute. (Of course it did). It ran by balancing marbles on a teeter totter. Once every ten minutes, the top seesaw tips, dropping a ball onto the the 10 minutes track. Every hour, the 10 minute track would tip, dropping a ball onto the Hour track, and every 12 hours, all the tracks tip, and the clock starts from 1. It was interesting, and in a way fascinating to watch. But I sure wouldn't try to use it as a timer of sorts.

1 Like

Robert Waltz

a day ago
In response to "Even Bigger Clock"

Annette

- well, thank you.

I don't think you need a physics background to appreciate the history of timekeeping. It's only fairly recently (last 100 years and change) that we realized we had to take relativistic effects into account for precision timekeeping and specialized applications, like GPS. Most of the history is, as the article relates, about technology and engineering.

For instance, intercontinental navigation was made a lot more accessible when someone developed an accurate mechanical timekeeping device (one that didn't rely on a pendulum, because you can imagine how useful pendulums aren't on a rocking ship). Fnding your latitude is fairly easy, but knowing your longitude requires knowing what time it is at some reference point, as well as some basic astronomy.

1 Like

Annette

a day ago
In response to "Even Bigger Clock"

I would enjoy a book review or book rehash by you. Not only do I not have the physics background to fully appreciate the minutiae of a book about time keeping, I find your reactions to scientific texts very approachable and understandable.

2 Like

tj gives thanks for all things

a day ago
In response to "Even Bigger Clock"

Time keeping/measuring has improved and advanced. No more do we have to dig up and move the markers at Stone Hedge every time we switch to or from Daylight Saving Time.

3 Like

🌝 HuntersMoon

a day ago
In response to "Big Throbbing Clock"

Mexico pretty much follows the US. Except Baja which (north to south) divides itself into two zones.

They also don't use DST except the states along the border. It really does seem economically driven.

1 Like

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