3 Good Things: A dress with mileage, a cure for corneal blindness and boons from books

What to wear?

Something old? Check. Something borrowed? Check. One bride in Chicago this month kept up a sweet tradition, wearing a wedding dress that’s been in her family for 72 years and that’s been worn by seven other brides. Adele Larson Stoneberg bought it in 1950 at Marshall Field’s for her own wedding, then lent it to her two sisters for theirs. Eventually her daughter wore it, and so did three nieces. “There was no question that I would become the eighth bride to wear the dress,” said Stoneberg’s granddaughter Serena Stoneberg Lipari, who was married Aug. 5. Seven decades ago at a department store in downtown Chicago, who could have imagined the life that dress would live? Who knows who’s next.

Bringing vision to the blind

A new procedure using collagen from pigs — a food industry byproduct — has replaced damaged cornea tissue in 20 people who were visually impaired. All 20 participants had improvements in their vision. Three who had been legally blind now have 20/20 vision. This is promising for the 12.7 million people awaiting cornea transplants, which until now have been the only cure for corneal blindness.

Take a look. It’s in a book

Have you ever had the experience of turning the page in a book to find that some previous reader has left something behind? A postcard, a receipt, a grocery list? When you find one of your own accidental mementos in a book that you read decades ago, like a stub from a movie ticket, that may trigger a wave of memories. When you find someone else’s relics in a book, they’re a prompt to use your imagination. That’s why Sharon McKellar, a librarian at the Oakland Public Library, has been collecting these random items and has gathered them into an online museum: the “Found in a Library Book” project. She has a few favorites among the love notes and critiques of the books and doodles: “I really love the way kids express themselves both in drawing and writing.”

And one more ...

The trailer for Tim Burton’s Netflix series “Wednesday” was released last week (you can guess which day). Wednesday Addams and her family will be back on the small screen sometime this fall. Television has changed a lot since their debut in 1964, but this clan has always existed outside of time, hasn’t it? The new series looks like a collision of “The Addams Family” with “Harry Potter” and “Mean Girls,” all executed in the style of “Edward Scissorhands.”