BS: Bare Footin'

Subject: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 07 Jun 21 - 12:51 PM

Today I walked barefoot on my lawn.

I am seeing life in a new light these days.

This morning, Donna came into my office and said, "Bill's weed whacking in the front yard." Bill is one of my next door neighbors. He's been on dialasis for six or seven years, and by all medical issues should be long gone by now. He's looked out for others all his life and has no intention of stopping. It's going to get close to 90 again today and he can't be outside, but it's just 8 in the morning, so he's cheating a little time, and to weed whack the grass under my split rail fence where I can't reach with my lawnmower.

My loyal friend Bob Nishti came over last Wednesday and mowed my lawn in the heat, and I told him not to worry about the edges because I'd weedwhack them later. I wanted to get him out of the sun. We all look out for each other. I knew Bill would be come and gone before I could put my shoes on, so I went out barefoot. I watered the front lawn last night, and the grass was cool and wet. I bet I haven't walked in wet grass for sixty years. How many other simple pleasures have I forgotten?

Growing up in Janesville, Wisconsin, the town was blessed with many active springs. Our downtown was scattered with "bubblers." It's only us old folks who remember those days. Spring water was so plentiful that there were water fountains on the streets downtown that ran 24 hours a day, with cold spring water bubbling up through a pipe. On a hot Summer day like these days, you were never more than two or three blocks away from a long drink of cold spring water.

At home, when we were playing outside in the yard, we didn't bother running in the house to get a drink of water. We grabbed the hose and drank our fill.

Around this time of year, school was over. There were
some other Summer rituals we honored. We'd head out the door, screen proch door slamming, and head off to a friends house in our bare feet. After a school year of being imprisoned in shoes, we set aside our shoes for the Summer. At first, we were tender feet, and we'd hop and holler on the hot sidewalk and we could feel every stone bigger than a pea. By the end of the first week, we could walk on sharp stones and gravel like we were walking across the kitchen floor.

I'm not going to go barefoot this Summer. There are limits to bringimg back the old times. But I'll do it again. Maybe I'll pick a sprig of Wood Sorrel to munch on for that light, lemony taste, and run through the sprinkler this afternoon. ??

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: robomatic
Date: 07 Jun 21 - 02:01 PM

Jerry:

Your note brought back memories of simply lying on the grass, looking up at the blue sky and scudding clouds until I thought I could fall up to the them. I could make myself dizzy without a motion.

Also, since it was mid-California, every so often a small earthquake would be perceptible behind my shoulders.

Meanwhile, either as a way to go 'barefoot' without the stones pricking your pads, or as a sign of how fallen we have become, there's this

I've seen 'em in REI, but not recently!

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Jun 21 - 03:21 PM

Robo welcome back after a brief absence.

I am thinking of James Taylor's Sept. Grass and how my dog Gromet would take an exciting grass bath like doing a horizontal dance.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Jun 21 - 04:41 PM

I am barefoot at all times around the house. If I'm gardening I wear clapped-out old sandals, but if I'm reclining I'm barefoot in the garden too. Even in winter. There is nothing on earth as joyous as walking on cold, wet grass after a hot, frustrating day. I never wear socks unless I have to go to a funeral.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 07 Jun 21 - 04:56 PM

It sounds likle you are enjoying yourself, Steve. I thinbk most of us, me included, lose contact with the physical world around us. That's good.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 07 Jun 21 - 05:12 PM

I only enjoy going barefoot occasionally as my left leg (with a club foot) is shorter than my right and I hope not to have too much back trouble; on most of my walkabouts, I'm wearing shoes with an orthotic insole, such that my knees are approximately aligned.

Generally, however, I think podiatrists would say going barefoot is better for you than wearing shoes.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Helen
Date: 07 Jun 21 - 05:30 PM

When I was in late high school I used to walk around the streets barefoot. My parents were horrified. You're right, Jerry, it took a while to get accustomed to walking on hot pavements and stones but after a while I didn't notice it.

Years later, when I had moved to the nearby city to go to Uni, a young man I didn't recognise came up to me in the street, looked at my shoe-clad feet and not at my face and said, "I remember you. You used to walk around barefoot!"

So, remembered for all the wrong reasons! Sigh!

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Jun 21 - 06:12 PM

I spent most of my life in jobs and occupations where shoes... and even boots.. were needed. No way I'm gonna change now. A pair of sandals for around the house or grocery shopping is my limit.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Jun 21 - 09:51 AM

Ummm...just watch your steps when barefoot. "Things" can be worse than land mines.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Jun 21 - 10:21 AM

It isn't that unusual for people to go barefoot in New Zealand though I didn't do it often. I did it for a bit in Edinburgh for a while. You do get funny looks but nothing like the racially-motivated bigotry you find in the US.

The person I knew in NZ who went barefoot all the time (this being in central Auckland) is now the high-profile senior figure in a government department. I'd be surprised if she wasn't still barefoot a lot of the time.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: robomatic
Date: 08 Jun 21 - 03:54 PM

I heard a story a few years ago about a small cult among students at University of Alaska Fairbanks. They were going barefoot year round. I think they were also trying to go outdoors with a minimum of overclothes. I heard they existed. I believe they existed. I don't know for how long they were in existence.

And I was hiking down a local small mountain Saturday and did see with my own eyes a young man running up the trail in sandals. While many of us with real boots were flailing in the dry sandy gravelly bits.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Helen
Date: 08 Jun 21 - 04:21 PM

Yes, Jack, in Oz it's easier to go barefoot when the weather is warmer, more difficult in full summer heat because of the hot pavements or asphalt roads, not unbearable in most of our winter weather unless it is really cold (i.e. 10 deg C/50 deg F!) but I've discovered sherpa socks so my habit of going barefoot in the house has gone by the wayside in winter.

Anti Slip Knit Thick Warm Socks Winter House Sock faux Fleece-lined

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 08 Jun 21 - 04:47 PM

I'm tempted by swimming socks/shoes because some beaches, Barcelona e.g., have pebbles making it awkward to get in and out, and the local lake may have glass, fishing hooks, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Jun 21 - 05:36 PM

Xenophon described Socrates walking barefoot in the snow over rhe mountains of eastern Anatolia when he was in the army. I've coped with light snow cover in Edinburgh, we're not in the same league as the Kaçkars.

You get good at spotting things you might walk into, be it dogshit, glass or hot tarmac. Unfortunately the only hazard that really affects me is one that footwear doesn't protect against: car fumes and the chemicals used to make some shoes give me crippling eczema. The best my feet have been in the last 25 years was when I was staying in rural Moldavia where the local transport was by oxcart.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jun 21 - 05:41 PM

After bee stings and ring worm I adopted a preference for shoes.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: robomatic
Date: 08 Jun 21 - 06:42 PM

What's fourth on your preference list? Bandaids? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Helen
Date: 08 Jun 21 - 06:44 PM

Well, another hazard is intestinal parasites like hookworm which can enter the body through exposed skin e.g. bare feet.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Jun 21 - 08:48 PM

Every bloody animal on earth goes barefoot, unless they don't have feet, in which case they are still in bodily contact with the planet. Keep in intimate touch with the interface twixt ground and space, as we are supposed to, and eschew the rubbery barrier between. Walk on wet grass and sod the parasites. You'll live forever.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 08 Jun 21 - 09:29 PM

All great posts! Thanks

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 03:36 AM

It's nearly impossible to get hookworm through your feet anywhere but West Africa. There is an account of somebody in the US about 20 years ago who wanted to get infected with it on purpose - he had a severe auto-immune condition and had worked out that it was a defence mechanism against parasites that had gone haywire. Finding a way to do it meant a special trip to Dahomey, then to a region and village of Dahomey notorious for it, then standing in a puddle that the villagers regarded as bad news. In the US, hookworm used to be almost exclusively a disease of black people - again part of the same complex of racist ideas that stigmatizes them as dirty and diseased.

Bees? How can you not see one in front of you? (I've only had one insect sting in the last 40 years - it was on my knee, through my trousers, while I was riding on a bus. Maybe that says I need to wear a Borat outfit when on public transport?)

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 04:14 AM

Well I'm a barefoot aficionado, and the only time in my life I've been stung by a bee was once when I was putting on a trainer. The bumble bee (which I'd just rescued from the lawn I was about mow) had crawled unseen into the shoe, and it got me on the big toe, the ungrateful bugger (it survived unsquashed). Well, I suppose it was only trying to save itself... So I'd have been a damn sight better off staying barefoot. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Helen
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 04:37 AM

When I was in high school, the father of a child my Mother used to babysit became very sick with hydatid disease. The family lived on a rural property. We were told that the infestation occurred because he used to walk barefoot in the paddocks. He was a city slicker slumming it in the country. He didn't know any better.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 07:08 AM

Hydatids is orally transmitted. Kids in NZ when I was there were told never to suck on stems of grass (or at least not in sheep country).

On a lot of NZ sheep meadows walking with your feet exposed (like in sandals or jandals, as nearly everybody did in summer) meant you got paspalum seeds stuck in your feet. Paspalum is a very productive grass that stays green no matter what and produces vast numbers of discoid seeds with a sharp spike on one end. You couldn't walk across a lawn without getting several of them stuck in you. I presume the stuff was introduced by the sheep farmers.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 09:19 AM

Infected dog licks its arse (as they do) then you let it lick your face. That's a good way of catching it. Seeing a dog slobber over its owner's face is about the most revolting thing...

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 10:21 AM

I once saw a photo of a model of a three pin plug (UK power lead plug) made out of Lego. It was said that it was the most painful thing to tread on anyone could think up!

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 11:47 AM

I stood on a piece of my grandson's Lego last week with my bare foot. The pain was legendary. My son thought it was hilarious. I wonder whether he's managed to extract the piece of Lego yet...

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 01:28 PM

I recall bindis as the lego of the lawn growing-up in the suburbs of Sydney.

(For the mods, that's a Wiki not a taboo WAV link.)

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 01:55 PM

For all my barefootery, I simply can't walk on gravel. Not a single step. I have a gravel drive ten feet across. If you were to put me half way across it and steal my shoes, I'd starve to death.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 02:03 PM

...how about hot sands on that visit to sunny Spain you mentioned, Steve?

That was another thing, in Aus., that, pardon the pun, occasionally gave me cold feet about bare footin'.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: robomatic
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 03:07 PM

Barefoot reminiscences are lovely. I can recall once in California when I was introduced to sand and again to concrete too hot for my tender downpads. But I like how some folks are going all shoeless when:

Shoes are actually a good thing . . .

How a worm gave the south a bad name

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Helen
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 03:57 PM

robomatic! What an interesting article! I never knew all of that about hookworm and it's effect on people.

It raises so many more interesting issues. Wow!

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Joe_F
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 05:39 PM

A fellow graduate student of mine in California came from Kenya, where she had run barefoot several miles to & from school every day. She had no need of shoes.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: robomatic
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 06:37 PM

There is also a theory that humans co-evolved with many of our long-term parasites therefore the quick elimination of so many of them due to hygiene and plumbing improvements led to the increase of auto-immune diseases because after millenia homo-sapiens had adapted to the presence of a certain amount of parasite 'load'.

the above is a theory I am only bringing up because I have known many folks with colitis.

Anyhow you can read about it here.

There was a radio story I've heard more than once about an American with Crohn's disease or colitis who went to Africa to pick up hookworm on purpose. He felt it diminished his symptoms and he started isolating them from his you-know-what, isolating 'em and posting them to folks who wanted to try it out. I'm positive this is not approved by any official medical institution(, and it may be illegal as well). Here's a tale of an individual who did the same thing. Here's a doctor who is working on the theory as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 07:26 PM

Let's steer towards mainstream is my advice.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Helen
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 07:27 PM

I have heard of that theory. I'll read your articles when I get the chance, but what I heard was that a secretion from the parasite influences the human immune response in a positive way.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Helen
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 09:11 PM

It's serendipitous natural events like that which can steer scientific development of more reliable and less injurious cures - thin of the discovery of penicillin - but personally I'd have to be on the extreme end of desperate to try using parasitic worms as a cure.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Jun 21 - 09:54 PM

Helen, here in Juneau, Alaska, we had an engaging Melbourne youngster living amongst us for a couple of years. He went barefoot everywhere, even to the weekly dances my group played for it. I imagine the soles of his feet were two inches thick.

After he died at age 29 from a fall in the mountains many songs were written about him. We loved our 'Toiny'.

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Helen
Date: 10 Jun 21 - 12:47 AM

Ebbie, we're a hardy lot down here but I imagine that, as he came from Melbourne, his feet were hardened by cold and rain rather than hot, sunny pavements. There's only two types of weather in Melbourne - cold and/or wet.

(That's a joke, BTW - just the usual inter-states rivalry. Here in NSW we call people from the state of Victoria "Mexicans" because they live down south.)

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 10 Jun 21 - 10:09 AM

Neary every morning as I walk round the bedroom I am reminded how the human little toe has evolved into an efficient furniture leg detector.

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Bare Footin'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 10 Jun 21 - 12:00 PM

Ouch...steel toe cap boots may be a tad cautious for the bedroom! but I have worn them on manufacturing shop-floors.

For the most part, Aboriginal Australians traditionally would go barefoot - occasionally fashioning a kind of shoe/sandal from possum pelts or bark, e.g.

Some temples in Asia, of course, insist on bare footin'.

For the first few years of my life, I slept in braced boots, designed to stop my clubfoot from bending back in - that, and the earlier operation, seemed to go quite well as I managed to play A-grade junior football plus tennis, and make a few walkabouts.