Re: 25 Classic Books That Have Been Banned

On Sat, 19 Jul 2025 11:23:31 -0700, The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca>
wrote:

On Tue, 24 Jun 2025 09:34:49 -0700, Paul S Person
<psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>

Hmmm and I'm scheduled for cataract surgery in two months time. The
surgeon is Jewish so you can grok what I think of THAT "tradition".
>
(With me it's mostly about zapping "cataract precursors" before they
have a chance to grow to become real cataracts...

>
Sounds like a medical advance.=20
>
In my mother's day, she never got cataract surgery because hers
weren't "ripe" enough.
>
IOW, her doctor decided that she could see well enough. His vision, of
course, was not impaired by her cataracts at all.

>
Yup - I understand that. Unfortunately in my case he did the left eye
in 2023 and is only getting around to the right eye in August. We had
hoped to get to 20/20 after surgery but am now told that probably
isn't happening. On the other hand I am typing this without my glasses
from a range of about 18" (e.g. typical computer user to monitor
distance)

When a went in the day after my second surgery for the initial
follow-up, the Nurse asked if I was glad to no longer need glasses.

I pointed out three things:

1. The doctor who did the left eye (and then retired from surgery)
deliberately made it match the right eye. Which was not 20/20.

2. That eye also had astigmatism, and so the right eye that had been
operated on the day before might well need correction for that.

In point of fact, both eventually developed a need for prism. Which, I
might add, their "read the prescription from the glasses machine"
could not detect. And the opthalmologist test for which involved a
circle and a rectangle. Actually showing both eyes as corrected and
adjusting for prism until the result of viewing a straight horizontal
actually produce a straight horizontal line instead of two lines
slanted and crossing each other was used by the optometrist and makes
a lot more sense to me.

3. I had been wearing them for so long (5th or 6th grade, I think)
that they were part of me.

A few years later, having acquired a leaf blower, I invested in a
plastic pair of eyeglasses to protect against whatever the blower
stirred up. This turned out to be reasonable precaution, but then I
realized:

I had become so accustomed to wearing glasses that I no longer
recognized this sort of hazard: my glasses protected my eyes. The new
device protected my glasses.

Without my glasses I would have had no sense of danger from small
stuff flying about when outdoors at all.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"