re: question on feathers. I'm sure what you're seeing is both down feathers and powder-down feathers. Down feathers are soft feathers with no shaft. Powder down feathers form a podery substance which the birds spread over their plumage.
Oooops! podery should be powdery. Mea culpa.
I'm not recovering. Does that cover it?
I'm just kidding around, the "mea culpa" reminds me of
the Catholic church & I have quite a few friends who
went to Catholic schools and were brought up on a
diet of guilt and guilt ... so they laughingly refer to
themselves as "recovering Catholics" meaning that
they're trying to get over all of that GUILT training.
Yes I remember it well. I believed at one point my sole purpose in life was to help nuns break in new rulers. I had the reddest knuckles in the neighborhood.
It is such a shame that children were ever treated that way,
and in particular because it WAS a parochial school & based
upon Christianity and so, one would think, based primarily
upon the teachings of Jesus. I don't seem to recall one single
word uttered by Jesus about the necessity of hitting children
with rulers - although I do recall a passage where Jesus gave
a stern warning against anyone who hurt "one of these" as he
referred to a group of children. It's such a twisted, warped way
to teach small children ... indoctrinate them with pain and fear.
When meanwhile, it is simply child abuse. I have no doubt at
all that you would have turned out to be a perfectly fine human
being without those pathetic sisters and their little bit of power.
Well, as we all know: power corrupts, as I always say. And
the worst of all is a small minded person who is given just a
little bit of power then they take advantage of it to the max.
