Carrion Luggage (Book)

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Carrion Luggage

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:

Wordsmitty ✍️

about 10 hours ago
In response to "Hold Me"

Hasn't this all been eliminated with AI chatbots answering now?

' ' '

' ' '

1 Like

Soldier_Mike

about 11 hours ago
In response to "Hold Me"

I prefer Hold music to no music, as it's easier to tell that I'm still connected to something and I dislike having to wake up my screen to see if the call timer is still running. Three related comments...

1. My pharmacy used to use the beginning of the 3rd Movement to a piano or violin concerto. I've lost track of which instrument was featured, as well as who composed it. I could listen to it all day, though.

2. My wife used to like to call the TRICARE [health care] people out in California - well, as much as she liked calling any company about a problem. She didn't mind it as much for two reasons: they were headquartered in the old Army hospital about a mile from where we used to live on Fort Ord, and their Hold music was a live feed of her favorite local radio station. At the end of the call, she'd sometimes ask to be put back on Hold for a bit.

3. I once had a question for my credit union. At the time, the closest branch was located on Buckley Air Force Base (now Space Force Base). I'm pretty sure my call was routed to a central line, probably at their main branch down in Colorado Springs, and I gave them about 10 minutes worth of waiting. At that point, I got in my car, drove to Buckley (5.5 miles), cleared Security at the gate, and parked - all the while still on Hold.

1 Like

Dave Ryan

about 13 hours ago
In response to "Hold Me"

I was on hold music last week. Mozart's 21st piano concerto, 2nd movement. All very nice until it suddenly kicked back to the start at what seemed a random point. I guess there's some maximum time limit or file size. The next time round, I found myself trying to anticipate it. By the fifth time, I swear I was developing a twitch. This is the kind of shit that goes on in Guantanamo Bay.

3 Like

JACE

about 13 hours ago
In response to "Hold Me"

My wife is often put on hold for a particular doctor's office. And she really likes the "Hold" music they have. Says she can listen all day. Right!

Any other place, No Go,

1 Like

🌖 HuntersMoon

about 22 hours ago
In response to "Bold Strategy, Cotton"

Not that I have the least bit of farming knowledge, but I know we've been growing GMO cotton for years, primarily for the same reasons as the Aussies. It's only the ingestibles that we have a problem with.

Sum1

Aug 6, 2025 at 5:17pm
In response to "Lager? I Barely Know 'er"

My preferred Beer? A good ale or IPA. Sometimes the more hops it has, the better it is to me. Lagers are alright. My youngest loves Porters and Stouts. The rest of the girls don't touch Beer.

1 Like

🌖 HuntersMoon

Aug 6, 2025 at 10:26am
In response to "Lager? I Barely Know 'er"

2 Like

Robert Waltz

Aug 6, 2025 at 10:01am
In response to "Lager? I Barely Know 'er"

JACE

- yeah, beer tourism is my thing. Sometimes I travel just for the craft breweries.

There's a wide variety of styles, for sure, but they can be divided into ales and lagers. Stout and Porter are dark ales. I like pretty much everything except for West Coast IPAs and some of the more fruity sours, and I prefer Belgian styles over just about anything else. But it's a good thing that tastes vary, else we wouldn't have so many delicious styles.

2 Like

JACE

Aug 6, 2025 at 9:52am
In response to "Lager? I Barely Know 'er"

One of my favorite pastimes when traveling is seeking out any micro-breweries along the way. Some times the kitchen is a nice bonus to go with a pint. I'm very partial to Stouts and Porters, but lean toward Lagers if the aforementioned beers are not available. Ales, especially IPAs are a no go.

When available, my wife will go for a wheat beer. One thing about beer--there's something for everyone's tastes.

3 Like

🌖 HuntersMoon

Aug 5, 2025 at 9:29am
In response to "Live Long and Suffer"

We're here until we're not. I'm taking some preventive measures like avoiding bungee jumping but, like you, the emphasis remains on living my life my way.

2 Like

August 6, 2025 at 9:38am

#1094802

Lager? I Barely Know 'er

I have to admit, Popular Science caught me with this headline. I don't usually fall for clickbait, but you can't just throw this headline out there and not expect me to fly into a rage.

Inventing lager was a huge mistake
The history of the beloved beer is full of yeast, witch trials, and royal spats.

Obviously, I thought the article would be about how it was a mistake to create lager-style beer. But no, English just has to be ambiguous; it's saying that lager came about by mistake.

Well, it wouldn't be the first or last fortunate mistake in the history of fine fermented beverages.

A study published April 27 in the journal FEMS Yeast Research reveals a possible origin story for lager beer, a light type of beer produced by bottom-fermenting yeast.

By "April 27" they probably mean "of 2023," when this article is from.

The research team used historical records, in tandem with evolution and genomics research, and believe that lager likely originated at the court brewery–or Hofbräuhaus–of Maximilian I, the elector of Bavaria.

That's a lot of work to come up with something they're not really sure of. I just hope they got to do a lot of hands-on research into beer.

The rest of the article gives a few more details about beer origins, but I don't have much else to say about it. Mostly I just had to read it to calm down and confirm that they weren't somehow asserting that it was a mistake to make beer.

Just one more thing: obviously, there was at least one actual mistake in beer history, and that was to pass off mass-produced rice-adjunct processed lager to the American public as "beer."

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