Conservation and restoration of feathers shaft and the vane. The shaft is composed of the calamus and the rachis. The calamus can also be called the quill and is the hollow portion of the shaft that enters the skin follicle. While the rachis is the solid portion of the shaft where the barbs attach. The vane extends to either side of the rachis and is made up of interconnecting barbs. This is considered the most substantial portion of the feather. Removing debris and organic matter from feathers is a key step in the conservation process. Here are several of the ways that feathers are typically
Calamus (poems) This cluster of poems contains a number of images and motifs that are repeated throughout. The most important is probably the Calamus root itself. "Acorus calamus" or Sweet Flag is a marsh-growing plant similar to a cat-tail. Whitman continues through this one of the central images of "Leaves of Grass"--Calamus is treated as a larger example of the grass that he writes of elsewhere. Some scholars have pointed out, as reasons for Whitman's choice, the phallic shape of what Whitman calls the "pink-tinged roots" of Calamus, its mythological association with failed male same-sex love and with writing (see Kalamos), and