Peripheral Vision

If state Sen. Tom Hayden is really serious about testing older drivers to determine if they are still safe on the road (May 3), he would add to his measure, SB 335, a test of peripheral vision, which is an ability that declines with advancing age and one that is very important to have to drive safely. SYLVAIN FRIBOURG West Hills

Macduff Everton is a Santa Barbara-based photographer with a wide reputation for wide pictures - often-staggering landscapes he creates using a panoramic camera in locations from Patagonia to Paris. (In fact, an exhibition of his Patagonia images will hang through Oct. 27 at the PYO Gallery LA in downtown Los Angeles.) But Everton's latest project is different. It's a set of intimate black-and-white images of Maya people on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. It's called “ The Modern Maya : Incidents of Travel and Friendship in Yucatán” (University of Texas Press, 2012)

Peripheral Vision, a privately held monitor repair company in Costa Mesa, said it has acquired Q Squared Service Inc., a unit of Kaga Electronics Co., for $120,000. The purchase included inventory, assets, a customer base and leased facilities in San Jose, according to Peripheral Vision. With the acquisition, the company said sales are projected to top $3 million in 1993.

Aries (March 21-April 19): You like things to stay the way they are. Knowing what's likely to happen next makes you feel relaxed and secure. Enjoy it while it lasts. Taurus (April 20-May 20): What would your life look like if you didn't have a worry in the world? Get a vision and analyze it — there is magic and direction there. Gemini (May 21-June 21): You can focus ahead when that's what's needed. But right now it is necessary to use your peripheral vision.

"Is it a book about optometry?" someone asked me, looking at the cover, which features an eye with a psychedelic spiral coming out of it and a spirograph design in the background. No. It is not a book about optometry. It is about everything but optometry, though I feel certain that optometrists could find something in here to talk about.

The tiny, streamlined, "eye-socket" goggles you saw in the pool last week at the Athens Olympics may save top swimmers valuable milliseconds, but they can be too uncomfortable and vision-restricting for average folk. That's why oversize performance goggles were an instant hit with recreational and open-water swimmers when they debuted several years ago, leading to the inclusion of more comfort features on small goggles. The four models below are among the best of the new breed.

* I read with interest "A Mixed Bouquet" (Nov. 30). The first time I saw these flower panels was as I negotiated the Orange Crush from the southbound 57 to the southbound I-5, and I nearly rear-ended the car in front of me trying to see what these eyesores were. Artwork on the sound walls ought to be something easy on the eyes and easy to absorb in our peripheral vision.

Margaret Waldron, 74 and legally blind, made holes-in-one on the same hole on consecutive days at Amelia Island Plantation, using the same iron and the same scarred golf ball. "It hasn't sunk in yet. If it happens as infrequently as my husband says, I'm going to go out and buy some lottery tickets," she said Tuesday. Waldron, who has only peripheral vision and relies upon her husband, Pete, to tell her direction and distance, mastered the Long Point Course's 87-yard No.

Now I am informed that I will no longer be able to ride my small motor scooter without wearing a helmet. It seems that the leaders of our great state have deemed this to be in the best interests of my safety and well-being. I can no longer hear cars approaching from behind until they are nearly alongside and my peripheral vision has been cut in half. When I turn my head to see more clearly, the wind buffets the helmet around. Whereas before I felt comfortable being able to see and hear what was going on around me, I now feel cut off from the flow of traffic.

A chance discovery--that people with dyslexia have peripheral vision vastly superior to those with normal reading skills--may yield new coping skills for victims unable to read. This is not, two Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers emphasized, a cure for dyslexia, even if subsequent studies confirm the new observations.

The old man in the front seat turned around to deliver a final admonition. "Remember, your name is Nazu," he said. Blinking through the blue mesh of my burka, I nodded. But we both knew that a Pashtun name wouldn't do me much good if we were stopped at a Taliban checkpoint -- a very real hazard on this stretch of road in northern Afghanistan. Our route was the main highway running between two provincial capitals, precisely the kind of vital link that ordinary Afghans expect their national police to be able to safeguard.

Mark Wetzel can't tell you exactly what his wife or children look like. He can, however, tell you how to hit a 95 mph fastball. Even one of baseball's greatest hitters, Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn, has taken the advice of the man known simply as the "blind guy." Left legally blind 45 years ago by macular degeneration, the 59-year-old Wetzel has immersed himself in the study of the swing for the last two decades. His "laboratory," as he calls his training facility, is just a few paces from the front door of the home he shares with wife, Judy, on some land on the north edge of Omaha.

IN the months before the 1992 Los Angeles riots, I lived in an Echo Park bungalow complex called Sunset Villas. There were about a dozen units, modest one-bedrooms with hardwood floors and red tile roofs that faced each other across a concrete courtyard, making our private lives somewhat public. That's the way we wanted it. We were Jewish from San Diego, white from Florida, black from Detroit, brown from Costa Rica.

The tiny, streamlined, "eye-socket" goggles you saw in the pool last week at the Athens Olympics may save top swimmers valuable milliseconds, but they can be too uncomfortable and vision-restricting for average folk. That's why oversize performance goggles were an instant hit with recreational and open-water swimmers when they debuted several years ago, leading to the inclusion of more comfort features on small goggles. The four models below are among the best of the new breed.

Marla Runyan is often asked how different her world would be if she could see it the way most people do. "If suddenly I had normal sight, and I went outside, I'd be like, 'Wow!' This is amazing. This is what everyone else sees?' I would have something to compare it to," says Runyan, her green eyes peering slightly to the side. "But I don't have that. This is the way I see the world. It's the only thing I know."

* I read with interest "A Mixed Bouquet" (Nov. 30). The first time I saw these flower panels was as I negotiated the Orange Crush from the southbound 57 to the southbound I-5, and I nearly rear-ended the car in front of me trying to see what these eyesores were. Artwork on the sound walls ought to be something easy on the eyes and easy to absorb in our peripheral vision.

The picture of a lost dog being found earlier this year after being gone for only one night did not seem to warrant front-page coverage in The Times. An incident in our family was much more interesting and received no news coverage whatsoever. An 8-year-old female black lab was stolen from outside a small restaurant late at night at Sandpoint, Ida. She was tied outside, which had been the custom of her owner for many months. This happened on June 12, 1984. The owner was so devastated with the loss of this companion that he came back to stay with his parents in Buena Park, Calif.