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.
You know I think I found a perfect way to be honest and travel with the pooch! Drive in your own vehicle! You'll see more sights, stay in a pet friendly hotel and maybe have some adventures. But thats just my opinion.
We've been flying two or three times a year the last few years, and with layovers and return flights that's probably eight or ten different flights. I haven't seen a single service dog. I wonder if it's more of a problem on other airlines or for certain departure point and destinations?
Oh, wait. At least half of those are international flights. I don't know how or if this applies to service dogs, but pets for sure have to quarantine before they can cross international borders. When we moved to Germany the second time, we had two dogs, and we rehomed them rather than put them in quarantine for (six months? I think it was).
And yet, they never ask people who had siblings things like "Was it hard, not being the center of attention?" Or, "How did it feel to feud with your siblings over the inheritance?"
To be fair, when it comes to the latter question, it doesn't really need to be asked because a lot of the time people will come out and complain about it on their own. That's what happened with my father-in-law, anyway.
And I will say this. Even though I was an only child, big family gatherings were a part of my childhood, and I generally enjoyed them. I do kind of miss it in middle age and do sometimes go overboard when it comes to giving Christmas gifts as a result.
Horace didn't "invent" souvenir. He maybe expanded the word's meaning from it's original use "to recollect" or "to remember" into "a token item that reminds me of something."
If this is how the article writer wants to define the beginnings of one word, he or she is clearly bad at this and everything else they wrote is now in question.
I guess I might have kept it because it's a word origin thing, and I do like knowing origins. But I've known this word's origin for decades, so I don't know.
Since the word was coined in the 18th century, "serendipity" has been used to describe all kinds of scientific and technological breakthroughs, including penicillin, the microwave oven and Velcro.
I'll take their word for it. For now.
And let's not forget that it was the name of the charming 2001 romantic comedy...
I'd already forgotten, thanks.
"Serendipity" — as the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it — is "the ability to find valuable or agreeable things not sought for" or "luck that takes the form of such finding."
A dictionary, being descriptive and not prescriptive, is the beginning of understanding, not the end.
While the word has often been associated with good fortune or happy accidents, its origin suggests that serendipity goes beyond just happenstance. Some researchers argue that serendipity can be acquired through skill and that opportunities for serendipitous moments occur more frequently than we realize.
Okay, but wouldn't that give it a different definition?
The term was introduced by English politician and writer Horace Walpole in a letter dated Jan. 28, 1754. Walpole is widely credited with writing the first gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, but he was also the inventor of dozens of words in the English language, including "souvenir" and "nuance,"...
Well, I thought "souvenir" was French, but I suppose someone had to port it to English. "Nuance" is definitely from French.
Walpole said he drew inspiration from a Persian fairy tale, "The Three Princes of Serendip." (Serendip is a historical name for Sri Lanka.)
No idea why I remembered that word origin over lo these many years, when I've forgotten so much else.
Over the years, the definition of "serendipity" has broadened slightly.
"I think often now people will use it in a bit more of a generic sense to mean a positive thing that happened by chance," Gorrie said. " It's the same basic meaning, but it's less to do with finding and more just to do with happening."
Yeah, words have a tendency to do that.
Personally, I don't know if I've ever used the word in other writing (besides today). I don't particularly like it. It's too close to "serenity," for one thing; and, for another, I suppose I was never quite sure of its nuance (see what I did there?) For a third thing, I can't say or even think the word without thinking "Dippity Do."
However, to Sanda Erdelez, a professor at the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University, serendipity involves more than just being at the right place at the right time.
" What matters is not just chance, but how people recognize this opportunity and then how they act on that opportunity," she said. "There is actually an element of human agency in it."
I could argue that the ability to recognize and act on an opportunity is itself a form of luck: either you start out with that character trait, or you find an article like this one, by chance, and decide to work on that aspect of yourself. (Whether such efforts can be successful, I leave up to the reader.)
In her research, Erdelez focused on how people come across information important to them either unexpectedly or when they are not actively looking for it. She called them "super-encounterers."
"These are people who have a high level of curiosity," Erdelez said. "[They] have either a number of hobbies or interest areas so they can see connections between various things."
Oh. Yeah. That's why I saved this article: I consider myself a curious person with many areas of interest, and for as long as I can remember, I've tried to see connections between disparate things. It is, I think, a good trait for a writer to have.
So, for those on the hunt for serendipitous moments, Erdelez suggests carving out time from a busy schedule to give chance a good chance to happen.
Yeah, that borders on mysticism, but I'm not going to quibble about that; serendipity or not, I can't help but feel it's important to do that anyway.
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