Month: October 2024

Dear America,

I get that some folks are uncomfortable with the prospect of a female president.

And I can believe that the idea of a Black female president makes some people even more uncomfortable.

I don’t understand, but I can believe.

And some folks really aren’t worried about her gender, or her skin color, they really disagree with her politics.

And that I can l understand a bit.

Maybe one of those is you.

Fair enough.

I entreat you, vote for her anyway.

Even if – especially if – you were going to “sit this one out.”

Don’t abdicate that right and responsibility.

I’m not advocating for her because I think she’s the best possible president.

Rather because I think – because I am completely convinced – that she’s the best option.

By a country mile.

And because the alternative saddens and frightens me, in equal parts.

I’m saddened and frightened by the notion that the country would give power and control to a man who’s clearly and consistently demonstrated that he uses power to attack and suppress those who disagree with him… A man who has clearly and consistently demonstrated that he’s a petulant, racist, xenophobic, nepotistic, misogynistic, anti-science narcissist who can’t distinguish fact from fiction… A man who routinely, and almost casually, encourages violence against those with whom he disagrees.

That the country would give authority to such a man again makes me despondent.

Maybe you don’t like Kamala’s politics. Or her past as a public prosecutor. Or her performance as Biden’s Vice President. Or that she was part of Biden’s administration at all. Or that she’s a Democrat. Or her choice of running mate. Or.., something else.

I’m not saying those concerns aren’t important.

I’m saying that when forced to choose between the alternatives, I don’t see a choice. I have disagreements with Harris about what’s best for the country. I have a deep disagreement with Trump about what it means to be fit for leadership in a democracy, and what it takes to be a decent human being.

I get that a bunch of the people reading this live in states where your vote “doesn’t matter.” Where your vote will be just one more vote for or against the candidate that will nearly certainly carry your state.

That’s broken and needs fixing, make no mistake.

But even if that’s you. Vote.

Make a choice.

And please, please,

Choose wisely.

I’ve needed vision correction most of my life.

I have a strong memory of putting on glasses and being able to see the leaves on trees.

Despite the dramatic improvement, I hated wearing glasses as a teen. As soon as I could convince my parents I switched to contact lenses. I wore rigid gas permeables for years, before switching to extended wear softs for a while, and eventually to daily disposables.

I wore contacts basically exclusively from my late teens to my late 30s. I don’t even remember why I decided to get an updated glasses prescription, but at some point I did.

I still wore contacts most days – my glasses living in a case in my bedside table.

Until late 2019.

As COVID grabbed the world’s attention – and there was much speculation and uncertainty about how it spread – I decided that despite being careful about sanitation, sticking my fingers in my eyes twice a day every day was a risk I could easily eliminate.

By the time I considered switching back to contacts, two things had happened. First, my old contacts had passed their expiry date and I’d chucked them out. Second, and more importantly, I had gotten my first set of progressive focus glasses.

Presbyopia is a harsh mistress.

A bit over a month ago I decided to investigate contacts again, and made an appointment at a local optometrist.

I expected to end up with contacts and reading glasses, but learned that multifocal contacts had come a long way, and were only marginally more expensive than single focus. So we started there.

Over the next couple weeks I tried various combinations of distance and reading correction, ultimately finding a prescription that’s “pretty good.” Distance isn’t as good as my glasses, but it’s workable. Near field is similar – workable, but not as good as my glasses.

Annoyingly, this seems as good as it’s likely to get – ok, but very much a tradeoff.

Even more annoyingly, with contacts in you can’t “cheat” and look over/under them. Want to see detail in a piece of art? Getting closer doesn’t help.

As a final experiment I got single vision contacts and a cheap pair of reading glasses, to see if that was the sweet spot. After trying it for a day, running errands around the city and meeting friends for lunch, I can confidently say that reading glasses are not better,

Not even a little bit.

So after all that I’m likely to stick with glasses, at least most of the time. They’re better for reading. They’re better for distance. But they get rain drops on them. And steam up when coming in out of the cold.

And when you take them off to swim, or shower, or get a hair cut, the world closes in and gets very very small.

The optometrist told me that despite the claims in the marketing materials, multifocal contacts “won’t give you back the eyes you had twenty years ago.”

And that, it turns out, is what I really want.

So I guess I’m waiting for the ocular implants Cyberpunk fiction has been promising for decades to become an actual thing.

And when that happens, I hope they come with the option to toggle the world into black and white…