[MR] Eyeglasses!

[Marybeth Lavrakas]

There was a recent study discussed on NPR that suggests that the reason 
nearsightedness has increased markedly in the past 20 years or so it that 
children are spending more time indoors. Something technical about needing 
natural sunlight for the eye to develop properly.

And on an even less chipper note, remember that in period a lot of problems 
weren't a problem, because something like 50% of people born died by age 5 (and 
a further % I can't recall died before they ever lived long enough to 
reproduce).  It was quite interesting to see this playing out in the Norwich 
survey of the poor in 1570--although there were a handful of families with tons 
of kids (5+), the majority of families were much smaller b/c of the mortality 
rates.

There were also several cases of husbands a good 20 years younger than their 
wives...that made me grin. ;-)


Kateryn Rous




________________________________
From: Gina Shelley <paintedwheel at hotmail.com>
To: atlantia at atlantia.sca.org
Sent: Fri, July 1, 2011 8:51:33 AM
Subject: [MR] Eyeglasses!


Thanks for the eyeglass links! As a four eyes myself, I've always wished for a 
pair of period eyeglasses. It has occurred to me to order a cheap pair of single 
vision lenses and try to mod them for our time period, but I just haven't done 
it. I've worn classic Windsor style frames for years, and they're about as 
period as any sort of glasses can be without being outright period frames 
(Windsors are the little wire frame spectacles with the saddle bridge you see in 
Civil War movies, and on the faces of Ghandi and John Lennon and Ozzie 
Osbourne.) I wear progressive bifocals and my regular lenses are just too bloody 
expensive to turn into a pair of glasses I'm only going to wear every now and 
then. Not sure I want to spend the day not being able to read...which I suppose 
I should be okay with since my persona is illiterate. 


They might not be perfectly period, but they're not, say cat eyes or BC frames 
(the latter of which I discovered the hard way I cannot wear with my 
prescription...which is too bad because they're kind of cute on me.)

I always wondered about how people in our time period got by when they couldn't 
afford or otherwise get their hands on some glasses. It's one thing to just 
stagger around half blind, but if you're like me, visual disturbances trigger 
migraines. If vision correction was not available to me, I'd pretty much not be 
able to function. Sometimes when I am myself staggering around half blind, I 
wonder about what Dulcinaya would really do in period about the whole 
"everything looks like an impressionist painting" situation.

Dulcy
                          
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