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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 etymology lesson from NPR, which, yes, is still around: If you hear someone asking that question (or the similar "What's the tea?"), they're probably not referring to the steeped, hot beverage that has long been cherished the world over. Just to be clear that we're not talking about the world's most important beverage (sorry, coffee). Instead — to put it in other slang phrases of days past — they probably mean "what's the haps" or "what's the hot goss" or, for children of the pre-internet era, "what's the 411?" Or, you know, "dish" or "scoop" or any number of other synonyms for gossip, which may rival even "penis" for number of different names for it. The word traces its origins to Black gay culture. Okay, well, that shouldn't be too surprising. A lot of our slang traces to either Black or gay culture. "Three southern-born informants explained 'tea' as 'gossip,' such as that exchanged between 'girls' taking tea in the afternoon. They indicated that the expression was black and originally southern." Southern? So it's really sweetened iced Lipton. The original "tea" — the oolong or Earl Grey kind here — traces its English roots to the 17th century, where it was spelled and pronounced "tay," according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. "Tea" evolved from the word "chaa," which was derived, in part, from the Chinese "ch'a." That much, I knew. I've heard that there's only two words in all languages for the drink: ones that sound like "tea" and ones that sound like "cha." Like "chai" from India, or "thé" (pronounced tea) in France. Legend has it that in 2737 B.C.E., Chinese Emperor Shen Nung was seated under a tea tree when some of its leaves blew into a pot of water that his servant was boiling, leading the emperor to try the beverage, according to the Tea Advisory Panel, an industry group. Legend for sure. That has all the hallmarks of mythology. What probably actually happened was something like: someone from the lower classes who couldn't afford other drinks started steeping leaves, and discovered one that a) wasn't poisonous b) tasted good and c) gave them more energy with which to serve their overlords. The upper classes wouldn't ever admit that anything the peasants did could be good, so they made up the "apple fell on Newton's head" mythology. "So in 2014-ish, there started to be a lot of memes of Kermit the Frog, and one specific one — looks like it was posted to Tumblr — was a photo of Kermit the Frog sipping a Lipton tea," said Amanda Brennan, an internet culture and meme expert who is known as the Internet Librarian. Oh, a copyright and trademark violation all rolled into one! There's more history at the link; that is, if you consider stuff that happened this century "history." That's it, really. I just like knowing where words (and new uses for words) come from, so there it is: the tea. |
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