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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:

Robert Waltz

about 2 hours 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

about 2 hours 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.

1 Like

tj gives thanks for all things

about 4 hours 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.

1 Like

🌝 HuntersMoon

about 7 hours 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

tj gives thanks for all things

about 23 hours ago
In response to "Big Throbbing Clock"

You hit the nail on the head, "Time isn't what's complicated, here. Timekeeping is."

2 Like

Annette

a day ago
In response to "Big Throbbing Clock"

France and Germany lining up in time zones is a little true. I remember a time when I had to check the time before calling my grandmother if we made an agreement to talk at a certain time. I guess, the switch between summer and winter time doesn't happen on the same Sundays for those countries, so there was a one hour time difference for enough of the year to make it something to be aware of.

2 Like

Lazy Writer est 4/24/2008

a day ago
In response to "Big Throbbing Clock"

That made my head hurt worse..Will read again when it stops hurting.

2 Like

🌝 HuntersMoon

a day ago
In response to "Zip Drive"

Like you, I've never really thought about it since the last time one failed me.

As to your comment, "I hadn't noticed." I'm guessing you don't wear a lot of "featherlight nylons, stretch fabrics, and technical blends that behave more like skin than cloth" except perhaps your undergarments, of course.

1 Like

Turkey DrumStik

Nov 10, 2025 at 4:36pm
In response to "Zip Drive"

The old zipper, with its woven borders and stiff seams, has started to feel out of sync with what surrounds it.

I hadn't noticed.

I've noticed this in some dresses I've gotten recently. When you combine the borders with other garment seams, things get bulky. The teeth are often too small to allow wearers to properly zip dresses without needing to use a ton of force due to all that bulk.

without the cloth strips, how in the hell does the zipper get attached to the garment? And the article doesn't go into enough detail about that. Perhaps it's a proprietary thing; I don't know.

From what I found on the YKK site, there are guide tabs and what not that help keep the zipper in place and the stitches going in between the outer parts of the teeth, maybe even going into the string itself. There are videos here

2 Like

Annette

Nov 10, 2025 at 2:13pm
In response to "Zip Drive"

I can see what they mean with the new fabrics needing something that's more supple than the old style zipper. There are some fabrics that are almost liquid in the way they behave.

But there is nothing ever that will beat ripping open a row of buttons on a 501.

2 Like

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