Eyes--Ya Gotta Love 'Em

Dear old eyes!  They serve us well for many decades and, we hope, for several more.  But that's where we first begin to notice those extra lines--WRINKLES!  Oh no!  They show that I am getting to be an old person!  They no longer look like this:

(They never did, actually--but you get the idea.)

Well, let me tell you (says I to myself)--Just be happy that they are working.  I've had occasion to face the alternative lately. 



Because of extreme nearsightedness I have worn contact lenses for most of my life.  They have served me very well, with a minimum of inconvenience, giving me very satisfactory visual acuity.


Several years ago, though, I began to notice that my right eye just wasn't giving me the same clear distance vision as before.  Even though the eye exam in the optometrist's office showed that I was seeing 20/20, that just wasn't the case in real-life situations. When a cataract was diagnosed in that eye, I readily agreed to have that corrected with the now-common, painless, relatively simple type of surgery available . (Yes, it's covered by Medicare).


It helped, but it obviously wasn't the whole solution.  No amount of prescription change would give me good acuity in that eye (outside of the doctor's office with black letters on the white chart).  During one exam I did tell him that, although I could identify the letters, they were "dancing," the best term I could find to explain the fact that they did not follow one after the other in a straight line.  He was amused, saying that he had never heard anyone say that before, but he didn't know what to think of it.


My husband was going to a different optometrist, who diagnosed in him a few mild symptoms of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), so Ed had a small Amsler Grid hanging on the fridge to monitor his eyes for any changes.  Looking at it with one eye at a time, my left eye saw a regular pattern of straight perpendicular lines.  With my right eye (the one in question) it looked like a chain link fence! (see Amsler Grid)

So I went to see Ed's optometrist who, when I described my symptoms, immediately gave me a 3D retinal scan (OCT - Optical Coherence Tomography).  This new technique, which visualizes the retina in depth on a computer screen, showed that I had some significantly large drusen (fatty deposits) behind my retina.  The retina, where light is focused for vision, is supposed to be completely smooth.  The drusen, however, make it bumpy--like something wadded up under a tight sheet, he explained.  Since my retina doesn't have a completely smooth surface, the light can't focus as perfectly as it should.  (I like to think of it as trying to focus the light rays on a head of cauliflower).  So that's why I was seeing dancing letters and chain-link fences!


With age, almost everybody develops some drusen.  But they can become symptomatic if they get large enough.  There is, as yet, no direct treatment to eliminate them, but nutritional supplements have been found to help the body reabsorb them.  The doctor suggested that I take AREDS2 (which contains a high dose of Omega-3 fatty acids) and additional Lutein/Zeaxanthin.  Yes, a diet high in these nutrients is great, and is certainly recommended as a preventive measure.  But a person already finding symptoms of macular degeneration would have to eat enormous quantities of them in order to equal what is in the supplements.

I started the supplements almost a year ago and have had several followup retinal scans.
There has been a significant improvement (shrinkage) in the size of drusen!

Some of the cones on my retina have already been damaged (they enable us to see in color) and will probably not recover, so I will always have some difficulty in distinguishing slight color differences (contrast sensitivity, he calls it).

But there is definite hope that my macular degeneration has been halted.  I certainly look forward to having adequate, clear vision for many, many years--thanks to a timely diagnosis.

Whether our eyes still look comparatively young and unwrinkled

or show the years of life that we have been fortunate enough to enjoy,

we can just be thankful that they enable us to see the beauty all around.
                        It's what's inside that counts!

If you are young and unconcerned, you've probably had enough of all this!
But I just wanted to share my experience.  I am so grateful that I found a doctor with the equipment to diagnose this and with the information on how to slow or arrest the AMD before it progressed to serious vision loss.  

If you can relate to any of these symptoms, please do yourself a favor and follow up on them.  
Here are sites for more information, if you wish:
Facts about Age-Related Macular Degeneration
and a newsletter written in layperson's terms, WebRN Macular Degeneration News

 

Before I die I want to . . .

You never know when something is going to come out of the blue and hit you with its significance.  That happened to me recently while listening to NPR on the car radio.

The host was interviewing a young couple from Washington, D.C., about a project they had done.  I didn't catch all the details about its exact location, but I remember that it was in a heavily populated, non-affluent area of the city.  A graffitied wall, or maybe an old run-down former store-front, served as a place to put up sheets of black chalkboard, with lined columns where passersby could finish the statement, "Before I die, I want to . . ."

They purposely installed it in the middle of the night, so that their activity would attract the least attention.  By early morning they went home to sleep but were awakened at 11 AM by a friend calling to say that half the board was filled up already.  The day saw a steady stream of people contributing their hopes and dreams.  When all the spaces were filled, people would write on the edges, add to other comments, or even erase someone's wish and write in that space.  I don't know how long they left the project there, but every night they would erase the board, and it would fill up the next day.

...I want to pilot a plane

The things people wrote were of an amazing variety!

Of course, there were the usual sentiments: "write a great novel," "see my granddaughter married," "go skydiving" (a lot of this last one!)

But many were beautiful and altruistic: "start many free health clinics," "impact a child's life," "tell my mother I love her."

One that struck me as truly heartfelt: "be the one that she thinks I am and I know I am."
Naturally there were a few, but definitely the minority, who wrote things like "get rich" and "get even with ------." 

This couple was actually following the lead of New Orleans artist Candy Chang, who started this cooperative art work in her city.  The project grew out of some tragic losses she had suffered several years earlier.  Chang says, With help from friends and neighbors, I turned the side of an abandoned house in my neighborhood into a giant chalkboard to invite people to share what is important to them. Before I Die transforms a neglected space into a constructive one where we can learn the hopes and aspirations of the people around us.

 

See the original Before I Die project in New Orleans here

They are popping up in many different cities, some in Spanish if that is the predominant language of the neighborhood.

Of course, in the true entrepreneurial spirit, someone has made it available as a toolkit for purchase

Anyway, I just think it's a fascinating idea--a way for a person to dig deep into his/her dreams and desires, and a positive opportunity for people to connect with others in their neighborhood.

If you've had enough of all this--I hope you enjoyed learning about it, and thanks for stopping by. 

If you are like me, and always want to find out more, here are a couple more sites to check out.

1) There is also a Polaroid Before I Die project, in which people write their comment on their instant photo--while Polaroid film is still available.

2) And the lady who started all this has her website at candychang.com

Answering Hatred with Roses

It was all over the news today!  A huge crowd (est. 40,000) gathered in a central square of Oslo, Norway, to nullify the actions and words of Anders Behring Breivik.  

Breivik, who expresses no remorse for his cold-blooded killing of 77 defenseless people (mostly teenagers), testified that he hated the song "Children of the Rainbow" because "it is an example of how 'cultural Marxists' have infiltrated Norwegian schools and weakened its society."

"Children of the Rainbow" is a Norwegian translation of Pete Seeger's "Rainbow Race," written by him in answer to the social upheavals of the 1960s and released on his 1971 album of that title.   

Since I wasn't familiar with "Rainbow Race," I looked it up on Youtube.  I found it to be a wonderful song, especially moving in light of this story.  Here's a video of Pete singing "Rainbow Race" in 1971.

In 1975 Norwegian folk-singer Lillebjoern Nilsen translated it into his native language and it has been very popular there ever since, especially among school children. This accounts for Breivik's statement that it has "infiltrated Norwegian schools."

In response, Norwegians of all ages gathered yesterday (April 26) by the tens of thousands as Nilsen led them in singing "Children of the Rainbow."  Afterwards they walked to the Oslo courthouse and carpeted the steps with red and white roses.

Norwegians by and large feel that the best way to react to the gunman is by demonstrating their commitment to everything he loathes.  Instead of obsessing on feelings of rage and violence, they choose to show support for tolerance and democracy. One youth group leader said, "We aren't here because of him, but because of each other."

 And here you can see Norwegians singing "Children of the Rainbow" yesterday in Youngstorget, Oslo.

 The chorus to Pete Seeger's original is:

       One blue sky above us, one ocean lapping all our shore,
       One earth so green and round, Who could ask for more?
       And because I love you, I'll give it one more try
       To show my rainbow race it's too soon to die.

This is the Norwegian translation:
        A sky full of stars, blue seas as far as you can see,
        An earth where flowers grow, Can you wish for more?
        Together shall we live, every sister, brother,
        Young children of the rainbow, a fertile land.

As the Poet Hears and Sees

What do you see here?

Flowers?  Violas, to be specific.

Yes, but....
     anything else? 
















I ran across a poet recently -- well, didn't actually run into her because she died some years ago.  But she was quoted in a book (by an author that I'll talk more about at another time). 

The quoter is Ellen Gilchrist, and she was talking about how, over the years, she came to understand what was of real value to her.  Early in her life, when having to choose between nice clothes and works of art, the clothes often won.  But, with time and maturity, she thought differently and found herself living happily in a small house filled mostly with paintings and sculpture and photographs.  She never locked the door because "anybody that wanted to steal the things in that house would have been someone I wanted to meet."

She is musing over the fact that life will not give us everything we want, but perhaps it will give us some special things like, (and here she uses the words of the poet Elinor Wylie), "a very small purse, made of a mouse's hide.  Put it in your pocket and never look inside." 


For some reason, I just love the image of that small mouse purse--although I'm not sure exactly what she meant by it.  I looked up Elinor Wylie, but, of all her poems, I could not find one with that line.  I did, though, find the story of her life (1885-1928), which was not altogether happy.  She was from a well-to-do family and appreciated for her beauty and intellect, but she was never able to maintain a stable relationship.  


I see the small purse as something lovely but fanciful, not quite real.  You put it in your pocket to keep it safe and close, but it's best never to look at it too closely, for fear that you may find its existence to be only in your mind.


Her poem, A Proud Lady, must be somewhat autobiographical when she writes, 
     "You have taken the arrows and slings
      Which prick and bruise
      And fashioned them into wings
      For the heels of your shoes."


Another poem, Pretty Words, seems more light-hearted:
     "Poets make pets of pretty, docile words:
      I love smooth words . . . .
      Which circle slowly with a silken swish . . . ."

    But there is still a pained undercurrent in the last stanza:
     ". . . .and honeyed words like bees,
      Gilded and sticky, with a little sting."


Somehow I think that Elinor Wylie would see more in the photo than just flowers.

And you will, too, if you sit back a little distance from the computer screen and let yourself concentrate on those two red and yellow figures.  What do you see?


Would you like to know more about Elinor Wylie and her poetry?  Click here
 

Easter Greetings

Every sunrise is a blessing from God
--new life
--new hope
--new opportunities

  May this Easter bring you 
  a special reminder 
  of this newness.









  

  Blessings and love
  and appreciation 
  of the beauty around you

And maybe a bunny and a few jelly beans!

 

Flowers the Color Purple

Throughout the world the color purple tends to have many positive meanings--both now and in history.  The Bible sees purple as signifying wealth and beauty.  In many cultures purple represents nobility and ceremony.

For whatever reason the color purple is lavishly displayed among the flowers of spring.  

 
 

One of the most recognizable
is the iris--or "flag lily" as my 
Mother used to call them.

This specimen shows the glory and power of a very dark shade of purple.

The vinca displays a lighter shade, lavender, which is related to youth and beauty.

The hyacinth (above)
and the grape hyacinth (right)
each has its own tint of beauty.

   The crocus

            
      and the freesia



      can emphasize the
      reddish tint of purple.


Whatever the shade of purple, these flowers are a lovely
and welcome sign of the beauty springing up as the earth opens its arms to a new cycle of life.
 

3-Dimensional Printing

I've been hearing and reading about a topic that brings me smack-dab into the reason I started this blog.  I love to learn about new things, to mull over ideas, new and old.  Anything that stretches and challenges the mind.

We are by now accustomed to seeing 3D images, even though they really aren't 3D.  They may look as though they have depth, but that's just an illusion.  No matter how real they look, they are still just 3-dimensional representations on a 2-dimensional medium.

Here is a 3D picture of the St. Louis Arch.  It's really two slightly offset 2-dimensional images.  The picture looks pretty weird unless you put on the special pair of glasses to merge the images so that your brain interprets it as one image with the illusion of depth.









Photographs, no matter how well they capture a beautiful nature scene, are always flat on the page.  And a printer--at least the ones most of us have ever encountered--can only put ink down on a flat piece of paper.

That, however, is no longer true.  We now have 3-D printers.  Maybe you already knew that, but it seems that I am just waking up to that fact, even though my research tells me that they have been around for a couple of decades.  At first, of course, they were very expensive and limited in their use--mostly for prototype models in manufacturing applications.  Now, however, we probably have many products in our daily lives that are made directly from printers.  These are only a couple of the thousands of such items.

Cell phone case

Toy car

A computerized model with all dimensions (length, width, depth) is sent to the printer, which deposits ultra-thin layers of powder onto a surface, one on top of another, until the final product is made.  The powder is held together using a binding liquid that's deposited during printing.

And such items as these are only the tip of the iceberg.  What is really mind-boggling is the way 3D printing is becoming indispensable in the medical field. 

Applications in dentistry are becoming more widespread.  Crowns, bridges, and implants can now be made from a 3D printer right in the dentist's office.  No more living with a temporary crown--it can be scanned, manufactured, and put in your mouth all in the same visit!

The most amazing related medical story I have come across was done in June, 2011, in the Netherlands.
An 83-year-old woman had such a terrible infection in her lower jaw (mandible) that it had to be surgically removed.  Her age precluded the trauma of complex reconstructive surgery that would give her a new mandible, so the doctors decided to try something new: a 3D printed implant.

The project required a team of researchers and designers, as well as a company to handle the production.  But the actual printing took only a few hours.  A laser beam melted thin layers of titanium powder, one on top of the other.  Thousands of layers were necessary to build the jawbone (33 layers = l mm of height).  The printed jaw then got a bioceramic coating and was attached to the woman in about four hours.  She was talking and swallowing within a day.

This all sounds pretty amazing to me!

Next Post to Come:  FOOD PRINTING

It's All In How You Look At It

Nothing says Spring better than the fresh, vibrant color of tiny new leaves.  The ivy plant hanging in our atrium is proudly giving birth to new growth in response to longer days and more sunshine.

 

Looking for a few pertinent words about spring, I turned to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and was surprised to find how many expressed a view different from the expected.  To be sure, I found a few of the usual "tiptoeing through the tulips" sentiments:

      In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. 

                                                                      Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 and

      Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air

      Which dwells with all things fair.              Henry Timrod

First let me send condolences to those of you who live in a galaxy far, far away from California and its spring, a season which begins here as early as February and is galloping merrily along by now.  Of course, spring is, by its nature, quite fickle--no matter where you are.  In fact, though the past month was so warm and sunny that most green growing things got all revved up, we just had a week of sorely-needed cold rain here in the Sacramento Valley and lots of snow in the Sierras.  "Spring" seems to be an apt terms--lots of ups and downs! 

First leaf buds on a Black Oak

Henry Van Dyke took note of this fact in his book, Fisherman's Luck: 

The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another.

 

Stephen Vincent Benet must have been having a bad day in the big city when he wrote:

     Now grimy April comes again, .....

And Samuel Butler likewise:

     To me it seems that youth is like spring, an over-praised season .....

 

Leaflets on a willow

But I like spring, and so I resonate more with John Milton: 

In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.

                                                                              

Leaflets and blossoms on a Japanese maple

And, if we really want to get into the "springy" spirit, why not let it all hang out, romping and bouncing along as John Logan sings "To the Cuckoo" :

     Oh could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
     We'd make with joyful wing
     Our annual visit o'er the globe,
     Companions of the spring.

                  
                      
                   After all, in the words of humorist Donald R.P. Marquis:
                                     Oh, what the hell, it's Spring!

    

                                                                        

Mary Oliver - A Question

Just a short post today -- something I came across while researching poet Mary Oliver.
Her book of essays, Long Life, was published in 2005.  In the Foreword she wrote:

"...the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning.  'Here you are, alive.  Would you like to make a
 comment?' " 

Cat Lovers Know the Answer

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on. 

Most of us have read and enjoyed the imagery of this little poem, written by Carl Sandburg and first published in 1913.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But I just came across some lines by another Midwesterner, contemporary poet Judith Minty.

All winter, those cats of mine

doze like old women in front of the fire,

curl their fur around saucers of sunlight

they have trapped on my rug.  Sometimes

they bury themselves in the wool of blankets
to sniff dreams I left there.

 (I just love that last line!)

Awake, their eyes reflect deeper sleeps.
Delicate tongues yawn, hide needles of teeth.
I listen for their soft paws,
for their purrs to rattle in slow circles
near my bed.  They want to capture
warmth from my body.  "Why do you
keep those cats?" my neighbors ask....


(This is only part of the poem.  The original appeared in her book Lake Songs and Other Fears, 1974).

"Why keep us?  Who needs to ask?"