Sunglasses

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Stories? ooh, boy, do I have stories. Next time we need a Hun intervention force in Madrid, or I don’t promise the city will be standing when I come back. The full epic cluster f*ck of our almost 26 hours in Madrid can only be told in a Viking Canto which will include Dan raiding for water, twice, in the most Coloradan thing I’ve ever seen him do. (Yes, it was hot. Also, shut up.)

But that’s not the time, right now: When I was running past a kiosk in the Porto airport the whole weird relationship of Portuguese and sunglasses came to me.

You see, I actually have light-sensitive eyes. So did mom. But sunglasses aren’t for that. Sunglasses are for looking snazzy. So mom’s first wrinkles, and the most prominent ones at the end were the same I’m getting on my forehead, from squinting against the sun’s brightness.

Because the country is mostly dark-eyed people sunglasses were never associated with protecting your eyes. Just like sunblock is for smelling nice and hydrating your skin. Because honestly the spf is mostly “decorative.” Most sfps in the grocery here just plain don’t exist.

BUT American movies and TV show people wearing sunglasses, so sunglasses became what you do to look “rich”.

My fourth grade class trip I have a picture of all of us wearing huge, plastic sunglasses and feeling SO cool. (I never got the electronic version of that. Should ask brother. It’s so goofy.)

In the same way, the sunglass stand I ran past clearly looked like “Glasses to look cool wearing” not in any way functional.

Speaking of my mom gave me a pair of white raybans sometime ago. Not sure why, but she wanted me to look rich, I guess. It’s…. waves hand…. somewhere. I probably should find them. Unholy expensive glasses, and I’m getting those wrinkles on my forehead.

I was thinking of that as I ran past the sunglass stand. That’s a minor cultural misunderstanding. Now imagine that over and over and over again.

It’s what I’m trying to capture in No Man’s Land. Some cultural differences are rooted in physical differences, and are particularly hard to cross over and understand, because what’s bred in the bone is inherently “how things are.”

And this is why the UN was always a pipe dream and a lunatic idea. And why Americans, the land of many people who merge (or used to. Still do, actually. It’s just slower against resistance) into one didn’t understand how crazy that idea is. Because we’re not uniform at all. I might not need sunglasses, but my neighbor might, my wife might, might kid might, so it’s not possible to misinterpret what they’re for.

Something to think on. I’ve just had the first decent sleep in ten days, the cats are in a state of revolt, and I need to go clean the cat boxes and figure out where they peed in the family room.

I’ll PROBABLY be semi-coherent by Monday.

77 thoughts on “Sunglasses”

  2. Better be careful of the guy wearing sunglasses when there’s a red glow behind the sunglasses. [Crazy Grin]

    Liked by 5 people

  3. Reminds me of “Poor People Food”– which is how my family interacts with it– and “healthy meals.”
    Which is a similar thing, but way more status oriented and justified by basically declaring anything inexpensive and enjoyable to be bad for you, with bonus points for the inherent moral superiority of that which produces much less of a lower inherent quality of food. Must be unhealthy, right, that’s what poor people eat, and they’re not healthy!

    K, right now? There’s “chicken paws” for sale at the store. Yes, they are labeled that way. In three completely different stores with different demographics, you can’t find them as “chicken feet” except at the Asian market.

    I will not buy chicken feet, mom ate that when they were poor as a kid.

    Mom wouldn’t feed us spam because that was poor people food.

    Her mom wouldn’t feed her corned beef because that was poor people food. They ate Spam.

    Don’t know about her mother, but demographically it’s a good bet that they ate beef, because Irish ancestry in there, and beef means you have made it.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. People stare at me now with “Your parents are rich?” Because I grew up on Venison, Salmon, and Trout; with occasional mutton. To us Beef, Pork, other fish, were “rich people food”. I got told “Hunting and Fishing are what rich people do! Lamb/mutton are rich people affordable!”

      Last one first. Extended family raised sheep. Didn’t get it often. But occasionally we got one that died inopportune time and couldn’t be sold (sheep are stupid).

      Yes, hunting rifles can be expensive, even back in ’40s and ’50s, relatively speaking. But when you can start your hunt out your back door, use the same rifle for 60+ years (they do pass down). Now hunting is more expensive for most of us given the state regional drawings. The cost of rifles doesn’t figure into it, even now. But back then? Not so much.

      Same with fishing. Including Salmon fishing. We have poles from his folks that are older than I am, let alone our kid. When mom passes, there are poles older than I am that they used to deal with.

      Liked by 5 people

      1. 😅

        Yeah, I didn’t list what I grew up eating, because “beef, but that was part of the paycheck, usually it was this year’s cull” doesn’t translate so well for general audiences. Store bought meat was fairly rare, even chicken was usually “mom got a deal on chicks at the feed store” and some “I’m going to throw this away, do you want it for your dang birds?”

        Similarly, “these veggies look like crud because we can’t afford the stuff that makes them pretty” is low-grade, while “these veggies look horrible because I’m making a statement about how wasteful I can be” is high class.

        Liked by 3 people

        1. 60s and 70s suburbia: When we were struggling (not infrequently, looking back – didn’t notice at the time) Mom gave us kids Hamburger Helper or the tuna casserole equivalent, or spaghetti and meat sauce (note _not_ meatballs), all of which I now can see enable varying down the amount of meat through judicious extension.

          Not food but similar: Mom also absolutely refused to repair our socks as we blasted through them since she had been forced to darn her own socks when she was a depression-era midwest farm child, and she had vowed at the time none of her kids would wear darned socks. No that’s not a barefoot joke.

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          1. Hamburger Helper was rich people food.

            Heck, it wasn’t until I married my husband that I learned mac and cheese was a side dish, not an entrée.

            Liked by 1 person

        2. I had an entomology professor (hey, my advisor let me take anything I wanted) who felt Americans were too inclined to buy “pretty,” food, when slight blemishes don’t affect quality. But also, state Ag departments have standards, they do, for how food from the State is supposed to look.

          Hence his story about the “organic oranges,” in late 1960s Florida. Guy inherited a neglected orange grove and didn’t have the money to buy all the pesticides/fungicides/fertilizer needed to make plump, juicy oranges. So the professor talked to the local college-town organic grocery and presently they were selling tiny, brown, wrinkled “organic oranges.” It was all fun and games until the Agriculture Dept. found out.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. I had an entomology professor (hey, my advisor let me take anything I wanted) who felt Americans were too inclined to buy “pretty,” food, when slight blemishes don’t affect quality. But also, state Ag departments have standards, they do, for how food from the State is supposed to look.

            See, I can argue both ways on that.

            One, the folks who declare what “ugly” is, often don’t notice this has a bug in it. (Which your professor would likely have a good grasp on. ^.^)

            Kind of middle ground, the definition of “quality” is often “this is nutritionally identical, I think.” Ignore that it feels like slime and took twice the work to use, it’s the “same”.

            And on the agreeing side– man I miss my Ugly Fruit Store where I got veggies for a third of the price because they were, say, slightly bruised so needed to be used soon.

            So the professor talked to the local college-town organic grocery and presently they were selling tiny, brown, wrinkled “organic oranges.” It was all fun and games until the Agriculture Dept. found out.

            Ooof, I hope they found out the easy way, not from the neighbor’s crops being destroyed because he was a reservoir for pests and infections.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. He didn’t say, so I assume they found out the easy way.

              It was amazing how many Pests live in Forida orange groves.

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      2. I’m always amused by the breed descriptions for wool sheep. Size may vary, but they are all described as “intelligent,” and as excellent mothers.

        Liked by 2 people

    2. Shredded Wheat. Family of 9. That was our go-to breakfast growing up, because it was so cheap. Now, even accounting for inflation, because Shedded Wheat has been deemed “healthy” and full of fiber, it is out of reach of our family of 6.

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      1. Do you even see the original in the stores anymore? All I see are Frosted Mini-Wheats. (Which, mind you, I like as the occasional sweet snack, not as cereal.)

        Man, I miss having cereal with milk. (I can have milk; I can have cereal. I cannot have both together without issues, and boy, were my doctors boggled to hear that.)

        Liked by 1 person

    3. I grew up on a dairy farm in upstate, New York and we went to church every Sunday. My dad would talk to the pastor as he shook hands. And some weeks he would say, pastor we’re rich this week. We’re going to eat hot dogs for dinner. And then the next week pastor we’re poor this week. We’re gonna have steak. He didn’t get much sympathy.

      Liked by 4 people

    4. I don’t think my dad ate chicken feet growing up; I’ll have to ask my sister if she knows. They did eat pig feet even when I can remember because that’s a delicacy. I stop at brains myself (all of twice).

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        1. My beloved collected recipes from the aunts and uncles, plus my mom and his inherited recipes and made a small cookbook. They’re all gone now, but I still look up recipes. One of my cousins wanted my mom’s squash casserole recipe and I was able to pass it along.

          He’s also collecting my go-to recipes as I mention I like them.

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    5. And the cultural lag on the reality of prices and what poor people can actually AFFORD is amazing. I don’t know how many times I’ve been lectured condescendingly about how it’s IMPORTANT to pick a rich husband because hamburger helper suxx.

      Uh, well, yes, it does sukk, but have you priced burger lately? For that matter, simply NO groceries sell “hamburger” anymore. That is GROUND BEEF, and don’t you forget it. (One recent trip it was over seven dollars a pound for ordinary 73% ground beef. Yikes.)

      Poor people don’t eat “hamburger” much, because you can’t FIND it these days.

      [Culinary history–optional aside–not for credit]
      You see, long decades ago, before I was born, butchers and groceries just ground up all the scraps together and sold it as “hamburger”. It might have anything in it–beef, pork, veal, lamb, whatever scraps were around at the end of the day. This persisted long enough that “hamburger” got a Reputation for being cheap and nasty.

      Accordingly, cookbooks started specifying “ground chuck” or “ground round” and the like, instead of the much-maligned “hamburger.” And groceries shifted their practices and labelling. Eventually we got to the modern practice of “ground beef” with fat percentages on the label.

      But the “hamburger is cheap and nasty” belief just won’t fade away.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. There have also been several witch hunts against things like “pink slime.”

        Which was inexpensive beef, very safe, basically all the meaty bits from unusable chunks of bone and such.

        But that was– gasp! Unsightly when raw!

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      2. Fred Meyer (Kroger) locally has ground round at $7+/# depending on the fat content. Costco has it at $5.69/#, 12% fat. Up from $3.79/#, 10% fat. Taken a few years for the increase, but the last increase $4.99/# -> $5.29 -> $5.49 -> current, has been only a few months.

        Not to mention the steaks we like … they are off the menu at $30/#.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Our Kroger-chain grocery carries their frozen pre-formed 4-oz ground beef patties in 73% and 80% lean versions. We buy the packs of 24 whenever they are on sale because at $22 for the 80% bag that is less than $1 per patty, and less than $4 a pound. We have even been known to thaw 4 patties and crumble them for meatloaf or spaghetti sauce, because they are better quality than the chubs.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. I get the Costco bulk ground round and make our own patties and then freeze those in individual cellophane wrappers (get to set the size for us, and one for the dog). Reminds me, I need to make more. Also make ~1.1# packages using quart freezer baggies for foods like chili or spaghetti (I’m not allowed to make meatloaf), etc.

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  4. Cataracts make sun sensitivity worse. Ask how I know.

    I not only buy my regular glasses with photo sensitive lenses, which insurance won’t pay for, but get a second prescription pair of sunglasses, which insurance won’t pay for either, because the photo sensitivity doesn’t trigger if behind a windshield. Insurance doesn’t pay for scratch resistance, anti-glare, or computer blue light glare, either, but Costco (at least) auto includes these and does not list them.

    I can’t afford to misplace either glasses or sunglasses. I can’t just go out and buy them anywhere and walk out with something immediately.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Polycarbonate lenses are inherently UV resistant. You can also get UV coatings for other lens materials.

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      1. As long as I am wearing my glasses out and about, I’m fine; especially at night. Headlights tend to be “starry” (cataracts). One night I didn’t wear them to dinner (why? IDK). Never have forgotten them again. Sunglasses are for long drives in bright sun, like our trips. Otherwise the photo grays are fine.

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    2. I had to give up on photochromic glasses for very rural reasons. Go out in bright winter sun, they’d stop down right quick. Go into the shop/barn at 38-40 degrees, and the cold temp slooooooooows the reverse reaction. That barn doesn’t have much light, and it was worse back then.

      I go with the stereotypical Old Man glasses, fit over (most of my) regular glasses*, though one pair needs the XL OMGs. I keep a pair in each vehicle, and my retina doc hands them out for post-dilation patients who forgot their main pair. (Raises hand.) Those are Solar Shield. Not sure if that is the same brand Bi-Mart sells.

      (*) After cataract surgery, my eyes don’t change much–until I had cornea work to correct aa genetic dystrophy. Bifocals mostly, though I tried computer glasses, and now use single-vision distance for basic stuff at home. WalMart had really good prices on safety glasses in the late teens, no idea on current. Most of the time, I just have to replace glasses that are worn out and/or too badly scratched.

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      1. I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that you can get safety glasses with a ‘bifocal-type’ reading lens at the bottom. After cataract surgury, I have great far-vision but need readers (+2.0 is perfect). These safety glasses give me both in a durable, cheap package.

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      1. Both, even. We are multitalented like that. Or maybe just greedy for a good bit of destruction? I dunno, demolitions never had any lack of volunteers from what I recall.

        Liked by 4 people

  9. I don’t know. Speaking of coherence, it sounds like you’ve been lasing already. [That’s “emitting laser beams,” not “lazing.”]

    Welcome back to civilization.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Do you have a UV flashlight? Those are very useful for finding out where weird biologicals are hiding (yes, they work for pet barf too.) Mind you, they’re of no use at all on white fabrics and certain other things, but they work a treat on floors and furniture.

    And yeah, that’s often when you find out you weren’t cleaning things as well as you thought, but it’s very good to be able to find it without having to smell the floor.

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  12. My wife used to wear sunglasses even on overcast days. When she was calibrating a laser, she accidentally discovered she could see into the ultraviolet. She was comparing her observed spectrum with that in a reference book and found, “Whoops, I’m not supposed to be able to see that one!”

    That partially inspired one of her stories that begins, “At last count I have one hundred and fifty-seven pairs of sunglasses. Though some of them I can’t really wear because people can still see my eyes through them. But I’ve been so hungry lately that I just haven’t been able to take the time to get rid of the ones I can’t use.”

    Yes, it’s a horror story.

    Liked by 3 people

      2. My husband seems to have a bit of IR sight, enough to have told someone as a kid that their wall looked “hot” (upon which, said family discovered an electrical fault behind the wall.)

        My color vision is a bit better, though, which is useful for my job doing post-production photography. Don’t think I’m a tetrachromat, but I’m darned near perfect on the tests to put those micro-shades into a spectrum.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. That’s a hoot about your husband. He may have saved that family from a bad fire.

          My wife was very good at discerning colors. Not sure whether that part was genetic or learned. She used to urge her Chemistry students to go buy at least the box of 32 crayons, so they could have the vocabulary to describe their lab experiments. Also once we were adding to an assemble-it-yourself cabinet set and she complained to the company that the supposedly matching components were the wrong white. The man at the counter was baffled, but his female colleague immediately noticed it and assured him my wife wasn’t just being picky.

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        2. That’s a hoot about your husband. He may have saved that family from a bad fire.

          My wife was very good at discerning colors. Not sure whether that part was genetic or learned. She used to urge her Chemistry students to go buy at least the box of 32 crayons, so they could have the vocabulary to describe their lab experiments. Also once we were adding to an assemble-it-yourself cabinet set and she complained to the company that the supposedly matching components were the wrong white. The man at the counter was baffled, but his female colleague immediately noticed it and assured him my wife wasn’t just being picky.

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        3. Doubt I am anywhere near a tetrachromat, or as good as you are on color differentiation, but I drive my husband crazy when we are comparing color pallets for painting, etc. Him: “It’s the same colors!” Me: “It is different colors!!!!” I swear he is color blind (not, but still …)

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    3. I don’t think I could ever see into the ultraviolet, but I definitely wear sunglasses when driving, even when its pouring rain. As I’ve gotten older I’m a little less light sensitive so at least I don’t usually need them at night anymore (except for rural roads when those damn new LED headlight suddenly come round a bend).

      My “fun” lately has been the epiretinal membrane (who needs straight lines?) and the post concussion double vision which has been getting worse. A prism correction fixed it four months ago, but I need nearly double the correction now, and we haven’t been able to get former employer to pay for the first pair yet (the pair to replace the pair destroyed in the accident) and the accident was a year ago tomorrow.

      There is a lawsuit.

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  13. “I might not need sunglasses, but my neighbor might, my wife might, might kid might, so it’s not possible to misinterpret what they’re for.”

    My dear Miss Sarah, if you’re out collecting wives would you kindly involve your beloved husband first? I’m quite sure he’d like to know. Also, the might-y kid is kind of on the nose, isn’t it? They’re both, in their own way, mighty.

    (exit stage nadir, dodging carp)

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    1. Cue the only good running gag to come out of Seinfeld:

      ”Not that there’s anything wrong with that…”

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  15. Yeah! Sarah’s back. *quickly stashes the stuff that wasn’t supposed to be out of the library* And the European mainland is still intact.

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      1. Sometimes when I am to all appearances in, I am not in enough, or have shifted phase with the in universe, or similar, so I have to log out of not really being in, and then log back in again.

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  17. Felicitations and congratulations on returning to our mad island of (relative to global) sanity that we call the USA. (Somehow the back of my head kept me wanting to send you-all best wishes on the trip, but I had no idea how… epic the crossing would turn out to be.) And best of luck taming the feline ruction too. Hopefully there are guest-posts aplenty in the pipeline still as needed for the recovery phase…

    Liked by 1 person

  18. Have light sensitive eyes as well. My go to sunglasses for decades have been Gargoyles (which folded and got rolled into another company, which may or may not bring them back as a special release from time to time). Helps that I don’t need regular glasses.

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  19. Sorry to side track this, but there’s been some chatter in my circles about the Zhao pardon. For those unaware, he was convicted by the Biden administration of financial misdeeds through his company, Binance, which deals in crypto trading. Trump just pardoned him.

    The left is claiming that it’s horrible that this happened, but I’m not really seeing what this really did aside from removing Zhao’s “convicted felon” tag. His prison sentence ended last September (and was only four months in any case), before Trump took office. The Wall Street Journal is claiming that it will let Binance start doing business in the US again… but Binance already has a US subsidiary (the imaginatively named “Binance US”) that operates in accordance with US laws, and those laws aren’t suddenly going to change just because Zhao got a pardon. And that suggests that the Binance US subsidiary will still be required.

    So I feel like I’m missing something.

    Does anyone know enough about this to enlighten me?

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    1. Don’t have links handy because stupid tired now, and many moons ago.

      If you have not read the Andreesen interview (substack, some NYT guy, IIRC) and have not read the relevant bits about money, probably need to do so.

      Bits about money explains why the crypto folks were maybe wanting a lot from the bankers by banker lights.

      Andreesen interview is partly about his desire to invest in AI, but I think also has some bitching about crypto.

      Biden regime was maybe not a super consistent regulator of crypto. There were some maybe warrented complaints that the regulatory bodies were refusing to provide regulations, and just prosecuting people when they felt like it.

      But, definitely crypto would naturally seem sus to bankers, and also they probably understand the math as poorly as I do, or worse.

      Anyway, maybe the Democrats have some sort of point about crypto policy, I don’t know. Some might see crypto as being Trump supporter coded, and have a mad on for it. But, the Democrats just ran a no kings protest, and they are also doing the government shut down. Random fixations seem like they could be possible.

      I’m not a fan of crypto, and don’t really know anything. There’s a technical side, which I don’t understand.(1) There’s a philosophy of securities and banking regulation aspect, which I also don’t understand.

      So whether this could be helpful depends on what you already know about, and have opinions on.

      (1) One of the key papers was written by a Satoshi Nakamoto, who otherwise might not exist, and apparently has a lot of money that he can claim. If I was familiar with the academic theory of cryptocurrency, I might still be pretty paranoid about closely held implications of the basic mathematical theory. So basically, the rumors about the math give me an allergic reaction. (2)

      (2) And maybe I will dive into that stuff in three years, then master it in four more. Can’t entirely exclude that possibility, except with the appeal to the matter of me not being very bright.

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  20. I learned years ago not to take yarrow and then walk outside. I still wonder what it would do to night-sight, but after that first try I haven’t dared to try it.

    I suspect sunglasses would be necessary. They did absolutely no good at all in daylight.

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