Favourite Apps

Or more correctly, “Applications.”  I have an iPhone 3GS. Okay, so my favourites are as follows:

  • Maps (if you’ve read any of my blogs, you’ll know why this one is Number one–I get lost going to my own toilet)
  • Notes–I would die without this one–it’s Number 1a–got to capture all those thoughts and ideas that flit through my hummingbird brain, along with important information or some wise quote. For instance, my pond is 8 X 5 and 4 feet deep (I always forget when it comes to buying pumps), and this: “We worry only about exactly those things we can never do anything about. And then that very fact becomes something else we worry about. The cycle goes on and on until we let the mind give over to something larger–wiser–than itself.” ~ Pico Iyer.  At some point that must have spoken to me.
  • I used to like “Narrative“–it’s an excellent on-line literary magazine with fabulous writing–but I’m pissed at them right now because I didn’t win their Winter competition. To hell with them.
  • Fandango–movie locations and times. Not that I use it a lot, I’d like to, but I can’t seem to get away from my busy little life.
  • IMDB–International Movie Database. I use this one a lot.
  • Overdrive–when I can figure out the damn library site, definitely not user-friendly–I listen to books while I hike the hill.
  • Podcasts–this is a brilliant little app. I listen to the following free podcasts: The New Yorker Fiction, Selected Shorts from PRI, Litopia After Dark, The Moth, and Radio Lab.
  • What’s App–It’s a cross-platform (whatever that means) mobile messaging app. All I know is that’s how I communicate with my son in South Africa. Love it.

What I’d really like is an app that actually records my thoughts. Wouldn’t that be oh so splendid?

V is For Vulture

Jake, my Staffie thinks he can catch one of the local vultures on our hikes up the big hill. That’s because as the bird swoops across our view a little further down the hill, it looks as if it’s reachable. I’m talking about the turkey vulture, the kind we have around here, shown below. According to Wikipedia, along with the Andean Condor, it is one of the New World vultures, found in the Americas, up to southern Canada and northern Argentina. I always think of old cowboy movies when I see one above us, can almost hear John Wayne saying, “It don’t look good, Jeb, even the buzzards know we’re done fer, they’re just waiting for us to die.”

And then there are the Old World vultures, to be found on African plains as well on every other continent, except Australia and Antartica. I remember seeing one of these guys, an African White-Backed hunched over the carcass of a zebra when we took a trip to the Tsavo National Park when I was thirteen.

My favorite though is the Griffon also known as the Himalayan or Great Vulture, found in Europe, north Africa and Asia. It’s magnificent as you can see below. I say favorite because I’m quite fond of vultures. For one thing, like all creatures on earth they perform a valuable service. And, I don’t know, they just seem so unflappable. Get it? Unflappable.