Around the Blogosphere

I’m blogging mainly on my new blog, Ahcuah.

Here’s a bit of a survey of what’s going on there and on other barefoot blogging sites.

On Daniel Howell’s The Barefoot Professor:

In The Privilege of Pavement, Daniel notes that manicured grasslands really are not the “natural terrain” that our ancestors spent much time walking or running on. And he notes just how nice things like concrete are to run on.

In Mean People Suck: 50 Great Reasons to Guard Your Tongue, Daniel highlights 50 absolutely moronic comments to the various articles he has appeared in (“moronic” is my term, not his—but it applies). This entry is a must read. It is as if the commenters like to spotlight their ignorance.

On Dr. Michael Nirenberg’s America’s Podiatrist:

In Stories Your Feet Can Tell, Dr. Nirenberg discusses how the state of your feet can be used to diagnos other health issues, including one of his cases in which elevated uric acid, which enters the joints of the foot causing pain, led to discovering a tumor on the man’s neck. He also talks about how toes can reveal our overall health, and that toenails can indicate vitamin and mineral deficiency.

In Biomechanics of Sport Shoes: The Disturbing Truth About Running Shoes, Inserts and Foot Orthotics, Dr. Nirenberg discusses Dr. Benno Nigg’s new book, Biomechanics of Sport Shoes, which basically shows that the evidence that foot orthotics are effective at reducing injury is extremely weak.

On Primalfoot Alliance Blog:

In Spread the Word! ‘Your Day Without Shoes’ is Coming June 11!, Michael Buttgen proposes and promotes June 11 as “Your Day Without Shoes”.

On my own Ahcuah blog:

In A Feeling of Power, I talk about how libraries have enacted shoe rules just for me.

In On Freedomizer Radio Daniel Howell and I were interviewed, mostly about the legal aspects of barefooting.

In Creed Cred, I discuss whether “creed” as a belief that barefooting is good can come to our aid in forcing access to public accommodations. Short answer: no.

In More HuffPo HuffPoo: The Annual Flip-Flop Warning, I make comments about an article on the supposed dangers of flip-flops.

In More-on Libraries, I provide a link to some research I did on library shoe rules, and mention an update I did to that research.

In Wolfmaan, I highlight Wolfmaan’s (barefoot) exploration of Kettle Cave along the Niagara Escarpment.

In One Day Without Shoes, I present my (belated) take on the event a few weeks ago.

In More Thoughts – One Day Without Shoes, I mention a few more thoughts on the even, including the thought: There’s never “One Day Without Seatbelts”.

In Cute Picture in Yesterday’s Dispatch, I just show the picture. And add some snark!

Enjoy!

Barefooting novels

Have you ever read a novel where the hero is barefoot for a while but in the end is “saved” by some fortuitous footwear? As a daily rail commuter I do a lot of reading and in the late 90s became so frustrated by stories like these I decided to write my own!

 

Being a science fiction buff, it was only natural to put my barefoot characters into such an environment, in what started as a short story exploring some of my ponderings about the nature of space and time. Over the ensuing months and years I kept adding more, taking it forward through several generations of barefooters until it finally reached such a size that my thoughts turned to the possibility of having it published as a novel. After much perseverance that dream became reality, with Barefoot Times released in 2004 under the Zeus Publications imprint.

Of course the writing bug, having caught me, couldn’t be lightly turned aside, so in the following years came more barefoot adventures in Call of the Delphinidae and The Mind of the Dolphins. My latest work, Cry of the Bunyips, continues the series and is currently in the publisher’s production queue awaiting release later this year.

My aim in writing is to make the barefooting an integral part of the whole, an additional way for the characters to experience and interact with their environment. While the shod might see, hear, taste and smell the worlds around them, the barefooters feel them too through the soles of their feet, be it hot sand, gritty rock or the delightful coolness of dew-laden grass. Using their toes as an extra set of fingers provides additional traction when the going gets tough, and they even occasionally find themselves in situations where being barefoot is perhaps unwise but survive nonetheless.

A radio interviewer once asked me if all my hero characters were barefoot and all the villains shod, but real life is never that simple and neither are my books. Not only are there evil barefooters and good shoe-wearers, but the distinction between hero and villain can be just as nebulous. Expect the unexpected and you won’t be disappointed.

If I’ve whet your appetite, visit http://www.barefoottimes.net/ to find out more about the series and see some of the feedback I’ve received. The three published books are available as either physical trade paperbacks or PDF eBooks, with links on each book’s home page to the publisher’s on-line bookshop.