Shoeless Ruminations

This post germinated from a couple of seeds.

First, my own body. Because although my surgeon got me a lot of leg length back he didn't get me everything. I'm still about 3/8 to 1/2 inch shorter on the right side than the left. Meaning? That walking barefoot for any distance is fairly hard on me and, in practice, means that I can't go barefoot other than for short distances indoors.

And, second, an article in the World's Worst Newspaper advocating going barefoot as much as possible. I've tried to find it on the paper's website but it seems to have disappeared.

But the gist of it was a local mom (or dad) advocating for kids' playing barefoot as much as possible in the form of an anecdote about her/his kids shucking shoes-and-socks and the shocked reaction of the other parents at the playground.

Note that this is entirely expected here, where a substantial proportion of us embrace every "natural" and "paleo" and "organic" and "local" and whatever-isn't-whitebread-and-mainstream thing you can imagine. Raw milk, antiflouridation, tattoos, kids going naked until puberty, hipster this and hipster that...the people they make fun of on Portlandia? Yeah, that's kind of us. A lot of us, anyway.

Portland, BTW, is very much a Skinnerbox for that particular subset of barefoot enthusiasts, the barefoot runner. Despite our nasty cold, wet winters and our urban setting we have a fairly large number of people out pounding the pavement (or the trail) sans shoes and, often, railing against the shoes as the worst thing to happen to feet since the ingrown toenail.

So I wasn't surprised that Oregon's Newspaper would print something like this. What surprised me was my instinctive reaction to it; that the author made a case that was only effective prima facie, and that there were a lot of potential problems she didn't address.

So do I think that walking around barefoot is a bad idea? Hell, no. I'd love to be able to walk barefoot again. Like running (and playing soccer, and squash, and about a gajillion other things) I am now unable to do that, but I like to kick my shoes off as much as anyone.

At the same time, as a medic, and as someone who has seen something of the lesser-paved parts of the world, and has studied a little history, I also have a certain ambivalence to the notion of the average Portlander (or the average person in an industrial-Western-culture-type society) wandering around barefoot.

For one thing, we're not born to it. Aboriginal cultures that live their lives barefoot typically have a thick layer of callus on their soles that act as form of sandal; most of us don't have that nor do we have the years of ambling about skyclad from the ankle down to develop it.

For another, our industrial landscape is not friendly to bare feet. Pavement is unforgiving and the sort of litter we produce includes some really nasty dangers; metal, glass, plastic, and half a dozen other sorts of objects that will rip the hell out of even the toughest sole.

Another is the sort of historical amnesia you tend to see when antivaccination quacks turn up. Sorry, barefooters, but that's the comparison that comes to mind; you guys just seem very blithe about some very nasty diseases that love to attack your bare feet. It's been so long since most of us had to live barefoot that we tend to forget the hookworm, strongyloidiasis, and cutaneous larva migrans that were fairly common hazards for people before the widespread adoption of shoes.

And people DID widely adopt shoes, long before the coercive power of advertising made having this or that possession the key to coolness and riches and power and getting laid a lot. The Fort Rock people made themselves sandals damn near 10,000 years ago.

Even without the hammering feet take on pavement or the risk of picking up a nasty parasite the universal hazard of stones, thorns, even things like the sharp edges of dry leaves are damn hard on the foot. You could see why as soon as they can people would try and come up with some sort of gimmick to protect their feet.

So I guess that while I'm not completely hating the notion of floating about bare-toed I'm not sure that the idea is right up there with not getting involved in a land war in Asia as a no-brainer.

So, anyway, I'm curious; anybody else got any thoughts on this barefoot thing? Any particular insight or ideas on this? In your opinion is the Oregonian writer spot-on on the wonder of leaping about shoeless, completely off-balance, or is this more a case of being largely where I am; not utterly agin it but with a lot of reservations..?

Just random musing for a Monday...

Oh, great Heat Tab!

First, a bit of Army trivia.

Back in the ooooooold Army (you know, when Henry Knox was our Chief of Smoke...) of canned C-rations we were issued these purple-colored trioxane bars wrapped in foil. They were usually called "heat tabs", and were generally considered right up there with sex under the Christmas tree as one of life's little pleasures.Because of its association with warmth and pleasure the sun was often referred to as the Big Heat Tab in the Sky, and GIs were sometimes heard to invoke this deity when the weather was crummy; "Oh, great Heat Tab, bring us light!". This sometimes involved sacrificing some Ham and Eggs, Chopped; not that great a sacrifice. That particular main meal was usually referred to as "Yellow Death".

Anyway, the3 point is that we haven't seen much of the great Heat Tab until, suddenly, this weekend it was absolutely lovely.

We went and played in Overlook Park, we worked outside and just generally spent more time outdoors than I think we have for the past five months altogether.The kiddos are beginning to pick up daddy's old sport, lacrosse. Here's the littlest LAX player in Portland:What she lacks in technique she makes up for with ferocity. Her brother still enjoys his soccer, though, and wanted to have a kickabout with his mom and I:The Girl wanted to take some snapshots, so here's a sampling of her subjects, in no particular order:If you look very carefully in the last photo you'll see a woman walking on a tightrope; we spend a bot of time watching her, and agreed she was very good:The whole of Saturday and Sunday were like that (well, take away the awful beating at Jeld-Wen Field Saturday, but let's not bring that up, shall we?) - lots of lovely idle time just fooling around doing nothing of note and enjoying it thoroughly.

So, thanks, Great Heat Tab! It was a nice weekend!

Turned Away

I know that Fridays are supposed to be for "think pieces"; political and social opinion...but I took these pictures today and found them so intriguing that I wanted to get them posted up quickly.
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To get the context you have to know that I've been working all week on a state project for a fix for a portion of Interstate 5 south of downtown Portland. The area we're working in is on the southeast side of what's called "Marquam Hill", a wooded eminence that forms part of the "West Hills" that give much of suburban southwest Portland its character.

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The site is below Barbur Boulvard, a major arterial that runs south and west from down town parallel to the interstate, along the lower slopes of the hills towards the outlying areas of Capitol Hill, Sylvan and eventually Tigard and Tualatin.
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The work area itself is almost unnoticable, a hidden turnoff on the east side of the road, an abandoned street unmaintained and slowly rubbling back into the forest since the 1960's...
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And down this untravelled street, hidden from sight, almost overgrown by blackberries and English ivy...are these graffitti. Not just simple tags, some one or someones put some real time into these, adding the details and getting the mix of colors and shades right. I was amazed, and pretty impressed.
And of the aspects of this odd, secretive artwork, the oddest is the very secrecy. This is a place where hardly anyone, outside the hardiest of Portland's urban pioneers, briefly visits - far less stops to admire the artists' work.
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What measureless energy drove the creators out to this lonely place, to labor in the woods with only the chittering bushtits and the rush of the traffic for accompanyment? What satisfaction did they feel, looking at their art, knowing that it would glow only to the rain and wind and the changing shadows? Did the last sputter of paint mark a deep, unspoken completion, the perfect conjunction of personal form and functionless function, like the sheeting sunlight on a cartouche on a limestone wall as the door to the tomb closed for the last time, sealing the colors in an endless night?