Three years ago when my friend Tad Jones the Executive Director of the Will Rogers Memorial spoke to my Rotary Club, I came up with an idea: work concurrently in preparation of the 100 hundred year anniversary of the American Mother Road (Rt. 66) in 2026 to grow our Rotary Club. The Highway was also named the Will Rogers Highway At Will’s passing in 1935. https://oklahomaroute66.com/news/the-will-rogers-highway Tad was starting the process in 2023 to raise $11 million to break ground on the Will Rogers Memorial renovations (he raised $18 million in fact and breaks ground this August). I got the club last year to start a companion club that meets 2X a month in the evenings to support all things Will Rogers Highway. As the official “Membership Dude” (yup that’s my title), this process has increased our club by 50%. One of the things I designed was a bench and brochure under the title The Rotary Initiative: On the Road to Civility. The ultimate goal is to have these benches from Chicago to L. A which is like a “zipper” across the center of the US. God knows we could use more civility. I am most pleased to announce the first bench was dedicated today. I helped a young guy in the troop make its installation and promotion his Eagle Scout project. We had a county commissioner, a state Representative, the UnderSheriff and of course Tad Jones at the ceremony. The Rotary Club members (most of us in club shirts, me included) were there naturally as the first Bench went up at the county courthouse. It’s not about a bench it about the message of Civility along RT 66. Hope it works.

Hello Gentlemen! I understand that ties with short sleeved shirts are a style faux pas, but what do you think about a bow tie with a shirt sleeved shirt?

I know it is spring, Saiurday mornings generally start with mowing the lawn, I wore an old Henley while I mowed that fit me well when I bought it. Now I drown in it. I finished mowing, washed up and went out to eat a quick lunch and then do the weekly grocery trip at Meijer. Once we finished that that we went home ro put up the groceries. Then we went to Cabella,s to nick up some camping gear Robin had ordered followed by a light supper at Chile Verde. We used to eat at this restaurant’s original location in North West Columbus but he moved north east to the Polaris area while we moved south to Lincoln Village so we have not been there in years. The owner did recognize us and we chatted briefly as we left with him saying we needed to visit him more because it had been a few years since. We had seen him. I am glad we stopped in and saw him, but what use to be a quick trip is now a twenty mile trip. Today’s outfit includes some black ankle boots, green dungarees, a fed polo, a green jacket and green linen cap.

You can go down a number of rabbit-holes on the topic of shoes and foot health, as I have in recent years, but the good news is that traditional marketing blather disguised as medical advice is rapidly giving way to actual science. Much of this research comes purely from a sports-science perspective, but we are seeing more and more general-purpose, science based, foot health advice making its way into the mainstream. A couple of bottom lines: - Anatomical toe boxes combined with zero-drop heels typically promote increased foot health by allowing the foot to function as intended. - Heel and mid-foot shoe structure - often labeled as support - is important for high-impact performance activities but bad for everyday wear - as the overly restricted foot movement promotes atrophy and degraded foot health. The question that needs answering is why, for so long, have so many people been so wrong about foot health? To answer this, let's start at the beginning... For millenia, all shoes were anatomical - they were literally custom made to fit each individual's feet. And they typically bore little resemblance to the modern dress shoe. So, from where did the look of modern dress shoes come - with narrow, tapered toe boxes and soles that artificially lift your heel 2-3 centimeters off the ground? Both of those aspects were born - in different ways - from the simple fact that those aspects were NOT functional; those aspects made those shoes not fit for walking and working. Heels, of course, came from riding boots. Narrow, tapered toe boxes came from the medieval, aristocratic, "clown" shoes with absurdly long toes. People who wore these styles effectively wore them as a symbol that they were not required to use their feet. Because they weren't required to use their feet for traveling or working, they were allowed to wear footwear specifically designed to not perform those functions. It was literally a choice to wear unhealthy footwear, as a symbol of wealth. These traditions were compounded by the advent of mass manufacturing and the use of "standard" last patterns. Unfortunately, these lasts typically weren't designed to promote foot health but, instead, to be as easy and inexpensive as possible to manufacture.