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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. |
An entry for "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+]:Purcell and Elmslie ...would be a great name for a band. Or, you know, a duo. Like Simon and Garfunkel, Sonny and Cher, or Hall and Oates. You know, when I first heard Hall and Oates on the radio, I thought the DJ called them "Haulin' Oats." I had to verify I didn't switch to a country station accidentally. This is probably why they styled themselves Daryl Hall & John Oates: to avoid precisely that mondegreen. Didn't stop them from failing to enunciate their lyrics (or from writing mayonnaise songs). I suppose they could also have avoided it by being Oates and Hall. Or by coming up with an actual name, like Whitebread or Nospice Boys. (Apparently, when they were roommates in college, their mailbox said Hall & Oates, which is much more legible in print than through a shitty radio).It may seem like I don't like them. This is not the case. They were (and presumably still are, though they divorced last year) talented musicians, and they deserved their fame and airplay; lots of people liked their muzak. It's their genre that leaves me cold, offending me with its inoffensiveness. Simon and Garfunkel, on the other hand, crafted nothing but greatness. Okay, maybe they had a few stinkers, but for the most part, their stuff was amazing. I'd be remiss if, after all that, I didn't mention the musical comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates, a couple of women who usually make me laugh. They apparently named themselves that because of the lower billing of the second names in those duos. One of them apparently called it the "silver medal," which I suppose works better than "second fiddle," because back when I was in an orchestra, in high school, I was often second fiddle. (I didn't mind; the first-chair violinist was much less lazy and much more talented than I was.) It's because of those classic duos, though, that I've often wondered how they decide which order to name themselves in. Maybe it's ego for one of them; musicians can certainly have those. Maybe it's just a matter of marketing, and their manager decides. Maybe they just pick the one that most easily rolls off the tongue; this is almost certainly the case with Sonny and Cher, the latter of which had 90% of the talent. But it still makes me wonder why they didn't just pick a band name, like Walter Becker and Donald Fagen when they came up with Steely Dan (yes, I know, they started out trying to be a multi-person band, but that didn't last long). Would they have achieved their greatness as "Fagen and Becker?" Probably, because they were awesome. But "Steely Dan" is a great name, and the story of how they chose it always makes me smile. For the literary connection, of course. No, I'm not going to link that; feel free to look it up if you don't already know. I guess the band name thing wouldn't work in a more serious profession, like law, medicine, or architecture. I managed, though, when I partnered with one other person to create an engineering and landscape architecture firm: we didn't use our names, but came up with a company name we both liked. That was 100 years after Purcell and Elmslie, though, so I suppose times changed. And look at that, I'm all out of time, and I haven't even addressed the actual title (I will say they were architects). That's okay. I'd never heard of them. Like with the name Steely Dan, the information is out there waiting to be discovered. |
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