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Carrion Luggage

Carrion Luggage

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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.


August 17, 2025 at 11:22am
August 17, 2025 at 11:22am
#1095445
An important piece of music history here, from Smithsonian.

    How Bruce Springsteen Created the ā€˜Greatest Rock Album Everā€™  Open in new Window.
Fifty years ago, the Boss was at a pivotal moment in his career. A new book details what it took to launch ā€˜Born to Runā€™


Okay, yes, it's clearly a book ad. But it's an informative book ad.

In the late summer of 1975, Bruce Springsteenā€™s third studio album, Born to Run, launched to critical acclaim and rapidly climbed the Billboard charts, holding at number three.

Some might argue, well, "How can something that peaked at #3 be considered the greatest of anything?" I say: because quality isn't always recognized as such. Consider Vincent van Gogh, severely underrated in his own time, only later to become one of the world's most recognizable names in art.

So it is with Springsteen. Yes. Yes, I did just compare him to van Gogh.

ā€œI can listen to it now 50 years later and think that every note and word are in exactly the right place,ā€ says Peter Ames Carlin, Springsteenā€™s biographer and author of the just-released Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run.

Hence the book ad. Does it make me buy the book? No. I was going to buy it anyway.

The album continues to draw audiences with an estimated total of seven million copies sold in the U.S. alone over the past five decades and is listed for its cultural importance in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.

The actual 50th anniversary of the album's release isn't for another few days. I should probably put it on my calendar to remember to listen to the thing on that day. I was pretty young when it came out, and it wasn't on my radar at the time. It wasn't until a few years later that I discovered the awesomeness that is Bruce.

I won't bore you with the rest of the article, which is long. It's linked there for anyone interested; I know not everyone is into it.

Regular readers know I don't indulge in celebrity gossip. But I don't think of Springsteen as a celebrity; I think of him as a guy who makes great music. And music matters.



So you're scared and you're thinking
That maybe we ain't that young anymore...
*Thought*  Comment   •   View 2 comments


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