Love. Hope. Feathers.

Looking up has its benefits, but so does looking down.

My late husband John loved feathers. As a Native American performer he almost always had them on both the traditional and non-traditional outfits he would wear when dancing professionally.

Whenever he found a feather, he would bring it home. He made bouquets of feathers and would place them in vases. He would stick stray feathers into potted plants, and into my books.

John would walk up to parrots at zoos and ask them politely if they had any feathers they no longer wanted. That was amusing enough but one time a caretaker heard him. Because John was Indigenous, they gave him feathers the birds dropped.

Same with injured birds on the Federal protected list. Once we were touring a wildlife rehab center and attended a demonstration showing the aid given to injured birds and mammals. The ranger had an endangered owl with a broken wing. The bottom of its cage was littered with feathers.