Xander disobeying a sign. Or was he? We were not kicked out.
The news about my eye yesterday was as good as it could be. The glamorous young surgeon, her assistant, and her "shadow" (a young doctor new to the practice who was observing) all smiled at me happily. "I cheated," was the first thing Dr. Hindman said to me, beaming, as I passed her at a desk on the way from the eye test to the exam room. "I peeked at your chart. You're doing really well." Evidently the period of doubt is over and all signs are positive.
I told Dr. Hindman that I had learned something about myself throughout this process—that I'm a pessimist. I had been prepared for the worst. In reply she said that one thing she's learned about herself from doing eye surgery is that she's not in control. "We put everything in place, and then it's up to God or nature or whatever controls these things to do the rest," she said. Mostly it works and sometimes it doesn't, and "...you need a little luck."
I've been lucky. "The graft adheres," meaning that the donor tissue, the Descemet's membrane and the vital single layer of squamous epithelial cells that compose the endothelial layer, has attached itself firmly to my cornea in the proper place. I will wear glasses for the rest of my life—the intra-ocular implant doesn't have the perfect prescription, because "sometimes the shape of the cornea changes in ways we can't foresee"—but she said my uncorrected vision will likely be 20/40, legal to drive with uncorrected. My eyesight is still not great at this moment, but, according to the good doctor, my right eye will get better and better from now on, as my left eye continues to get worse. I'll have to have the same operation on the left eye eventually.
I'm still curious about how it will affect my photography, and I still have more pondering to do over the remarkable fact that I'm now using part of another person's body in mine.
Both of those things are subjects for later, though, not for now.
Fred
After my appointment Xander and I went to a house museum officially called Sonnenberg Gardens and Mansion State Historic Park, which is also in Canandaigua, the pleasant resort town where the Eye Care Center is located. Thursday was a beautiful, hot Summer day. Sonnenberg means "Sunny Hill" in German, and the estate is known more simply around here as Sonnenberg Gardens. It attracts 35,000 visitors a year, which is a lot in these parts—it's more than the year-round population of the county where I live. Sonnenberg Gardens consists of a 40-room, 21,000-square-foot Queen Anne style house on what used to be 200 acres of highly landscaped grounds, of which 50 remain. It was one of the five (count 'em) residences of a fellow named Frederick Ferris Thompson and his wife, Mary Clark Thompson, who also endowed the original F.F. Thompson Hospital in Canandaigua in his memory. Frederick was one of the founders of a bank that is now part of Citibank, and his original partners, his father and brother, departed to form their own bank, Chase National Bank, named for their friend, Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase. Their bank is now part of JP Morgan Chase. F.F. Thompson's house, with Mary in charge, was built at a frantic pace by more than 200 workers, some of them craftsmen from Italy, in 1885–87. The grounds and gardens, which were Mary's passion and are now the main attraction, evolved more slowly, from 1902 to 1919.
Fred
Evidently Mrs. Thompson was in charge of spending the couple's copious supply of money, and most of the tourist information in the home and gardens is about her. But, in addition to being ungodly rich, the man of the house (I'd call him Fred if we were out photographing and probably wouldn't even be allowed into his presence at the bank!) was one of us. A wall plaque described him as "an avid amateur photographer," and, in the only picture of him I noticed in the house, he is standing with an air of recognizably geeky pride behind an imposing view camera. A row of his cameras—decidedly modest compared to the rest of his life (maybe he was the frugal one of the pair?)—is presented atop a bookcase at the top of the stairs.
Fred's Century Grand Studio No. 7 8x10 portrait camera,
missing its included "cabinet holder" and "Semi-Centennial Stand."
It cost $72 in 1902 (~$2,144 today).
There were photographs on the walls here and there, but no notation as to whether they were his or not. This visitor would like to have known.
I'm half back
Anyway, I still have to be on half speed for a while, but I'm back. The comments to this post are open! Hallelujah. Yesterday was a good day all around.
Mike
P.S. I have no idea if Frederick F. Thompson was known as "Fred" or not. It's just that all us Photo-Dawgs are on a first-name basis here in the friendly club environs of TOP, no matter what our walk of life.
Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Dennis: "Welcome back ! A few years back, my family stopped at an ice cream shop. When we walked in, there was nobody at the counter, just a couple of teens in the back, but there was a box with a note on it that said 'Do Not Open.' My wife—the nosier, more curious of us—really wanted to open it. When we walked out with our ice creams, the teens followed us out—turns out they were students doing an experiment for a psychology class. They asked whether we wanted to open it and why we didn't. I replied that I just generally obey signs, but later realized that I respect signs/rules on private property much more than signs/rules on public property. Then you have the paper tickets you get when you enter raffles that say 'Keep This Coupon.' I kept one of those for over 20 years and nothing ever came of it. Good luck on the rest of your recovery!"
Joe Holmes: "Whew! Congratulations! Welcome back. Your pessimism isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you don't believe me, I highly recommend The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman. Makes a very good case for pessimism as a path to happiness. I also recommend Jim Holt's really wonderful book Why Does the World Exist, one of my favorite pop-philosophy books, which at points touches on similar topics. Anyway, as I said, welcome back! I missed you."
Steve Jacob: (partial comment): "I found cataract surgery affected my photography quite a lot. I stopped oversharpening and oversaturating images for one thing and I could calibrate my screen properly again. ;-) We don't really give much thought to the range of vision issues people have when they express preferences for one image, or camera, over another."
Mike replies: So true. We will really need to talk about this!
Nothing much to report. My recovery is going well enough as far as I can tell, and I'm comfortable. Yesterday marked one full week to go till my next checkup. I'm already seeing interesting things out of my repaired eye, such as greatly improved color transmission and gorgeous large-structure contrast. Resolution is not yet adequate, but then I'm wearing a protective cover over the surface of the eyeball like a contact lens. My nine daily eyedrops include a beta-blocker, a quinolone antibiotic, and an anti-inflammatory synthetic corticosteriod. I haven't missed a one.
But I can't...do...anything. if you're ever tempted to think that "time flies," just put yourself in a position where you can't do most of the things you normally spend your time doing! On Tuesday I was cleared to make short drives in daylight, so I am able to get to the grocery store, but I'm not allowed to exert myself, exercise, or do much more than light housework, and I can spend only a cumulative total of one hour per day reading and looking at screens of all kinds. (I wrote this post in three ten-minute bursts across three days.) Next Thursday's checkup might—emphasis on might—clear me to return to my usual routines and get us back to normal. Keep your fingers crossed.
It's difficult to hold silverware with your fingers crossed.
I'm very mindful that this is not real suffering—it's certainly very far from the worst thing in the world. It barely rises to the level of an extended inconvenience. All the same, the passing of time has slowed to a crawl, and I am bored out of my gourd*.
It's probably one of those times that seem like a trial when we're in the middle of it but that we can compartmentalize and allow to fade from memory once it's been endured and is over with. But it's a trial even so. I can't wait for it to end.
More anon.
Mike
*Odd expression, isn't it? I don't know where it comes from...it just bubbled out of my brain. I suppose gourd = head.
Having just moderated 400+ comments over the past few days, I thought I'd mention a few nuts and bolts FYI—
Names: In the "Featured" comments, I reproduce commenter names exactly as written by them in the commenting box. The only rule I have is that I do not reproduce "handles" that are business names or come-ons (for example, "Best Seattle Drone Photog"), or URLs. (Or crude/profane handles, although that almost never happens.) Most often, I solve those problems by not featuring (and sometimes not even publishing) the comment.
Emails: Another issue is that in some cases I can email a commenter for clarifications (for example, the other day I asked a commenter if he really intended to say "discussed," which looked to me like it didn't fit in context, and it turned out the word he wanted was "discreet"), but I can't do this if people leave made-up email addresses which do not work. In cases where I can't contact the commenter, I just do the best I can.
Typesetting: TOP follows American typesetting conventions rather than British. So, for example, we enclose commas and periods within double quotation marks, "like this," rather than outside single quotation marks as our UK cousins are wont to do—in UK style that would look 'like this'. In terms of spelling and locutions, I leave Featured Comments as written (colour not color, winning line for finish line, and so on) except that I apply conventional American typesetting and punctuation in accordance with normal site style.
Pet peeves: I admit I have a...few (yes, let's go with "few"). Loose is the opposite of tight; lose is the opposite of win. Loose rhymes with juice. Lose rhymes with snooze. The loser is losing because the one who's winning is loose as a goose. And, "possessive its gets no apostrophe." You just have to memorize that—possessive its gets no apostrophe—as it doesn't necessarily make sense. Thus, speaking of a company, It's evident its website is beautiful shows the correct form of both its and it's. Just memorize "possessive its gets no apostrophe" and you'll have it. (And there's no such thing as its' .)
Whose Guidelines? Here are the full Comment Guidelines if you're really interested. Note that the formulations in the Guidelines are what I work from, not rules you're required to know! They're just there if you're curious (no, Mike, the Pet Peeves paragraph is done—don't go their).
My bad: We have the best readers and commenters on the Internet in my biased opinion. Many of our commenters are smarter than I, some are superior grammarians, virtually all are more knowledgeable in their own fields, and some are better writers. Thus, a good portion of the errors that abound around here are mine and mine only.
Fondly,
—Mike the Ed.
Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
David Elden: "One for the apostrophe police SWAT team:
Mike replies: That's so bad it's hard to tell how bad! :-)
Simon Miles: "The possessive its is just like his. No apostrophe is his. No apostrophe in its. Simple. I've never forgotten since coming across this simple aide memoire."
Longviewer: "Think I shall name my next pet Peeve. Should make for fun conversations."
Mike replies: I seriously might steal that. Brilliant.
Casey Bisson: "Re 'The Pet Peeves paragraph is done—don't go their,' I’m impressed you had the strength and determination to publish that. I am too weak to attempt such a joke. (I tried to write 'week,' but I really couldn’t bring myself to submit the comment that way.)"
Michael Perini: "I was going to comment, but find myself paralyzed by Grammar Anxiety [sic]"
Mike replies: Forgot the period. :-)
Seriously, most of the time I won't even comment on grammar or spelling or punctuation posts. There should be a name for it, but there seems to be a law that whenever I comment on posts like that, I make a mistake myself.
Ben w: "None of the possessive pronouns take an apostrophe—his, hers, ours, theirs, yours and, indeed, its. It's just how it's done!"
Mike replies: Well said sir.
I had a stressful and busy day yesterday, and the upshot is that I've lost the use of my car—I guess because, in the opinion of the Universe, I didn't have enough to worry about. You know how that can be.
I'm forced to return to related obligations this morning, and then this afternoon I'll be getting to the comments on the last two posts. There are at this moment two hundred and fifty three unpublished comments awaiting moderation, about half a day's work. So, no new post today, but, starting at about noon, I'll be adding new comments and Featured Comments throughout the day, so I encourage you to check back through the afternoon to read some of 'em.
To get to the comments on any post, simply click on "Comments (xx)" in the footer of any post:
Also, being behind in moderating by 253 comments is an all-time record in the 13 years, one month, and 18 days TOP has been in existence. I don't keep records, but I don't think I've ever been that far behind before.
Onward to my (temporary) fate, with a sigh.
Mike
Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
David Lee: "I could see it coming. The word 'bag' makes us all very opinionated Mike."
longviewer: "We do indeed know how it is. Just refinanced the home to pay off debt, so now is the Universally correct time for a check-engine light to come on and for the sudden death of our 11-year-old cat. Man Duncan was a cool kitty, my first cradle-grave cat. Greeted us at the door when we came home, gave great head-bonks for greeting. Always wore his good coat too, so photogenic."
Mike replies: I have a longstanding reputation for not liking cat pictures, but there's one huge exception to that: when they're of your own pal, a cat you know. Then, of course, cat pictures are good and many are great. Sorry to hear about Duncan.
