The feather knows

Would you believe a feather could remind me how much technology has gone forward in just half of my lifetime? Forty years ago there were no seatbelts to hold us in the car when we were rolled over like three of us were in our Mazda truck in1988. But then there were no automatic turn signals either in those dear dead days beyond recall as the old song goes. How did we turn corners without losing an arm? A feather brought all that to mind as I explained the odd shape of the leading flight feather from a Canada Goose. Probably the five thousand or so kids that came through McNary National Wildlife Education Center are the only ones who had it brought to their attention.
Well just so you know, the vanes at the top five inches of that particular species' feather are very narrow almost as if an afterthought. Old mother goose doesn't even realize it as she leads the V of geese across the sky in migration. Well maybe she does; she's wise enough to hold onto her man for life. The leading edge has narrow vanes to make it easier to cut through the air. You can tell air has weight and pushes against you. Try holding on to a palm tree in a hurricane. Cars are designed for the least wind resistance engineers can figure for that solid rectangle of metal and plastic - not just to look sleek but to render the best gas mileage. But we're talking feathers here. Each feather as it overlays the next has wider vanes as they progress across the awesome wing.
Vanes are the parts of the feather that protrude along the shaft from the quill to the end. The quill is the hollow part of the feather after the very tip is cut off. The tip grows out of the bird about the same way and of the same stuff as each one of our hairs. That cut end is what was used to sign the Declaration of Independence and to write it as well as writing all the letters, love and political, that have clued us into our history. We can thank our lucky stars that the quills and ink escaped the stoop shouldered monks and made the world go around. My grandmother wrote with a flourish. How many of you thought to save a hand written letter from your grandmother? How many of your grandmothers even write letters at all?
If history needs handwritten proof we might question whether we'll know our history in another fifty years.
Naomi Sherer