Letters for August 8, 2019

One size doesn’t fit all

Every day I hear the radio ads for the Good Feet Store in Reno, and I am taken back to the years of 2005 to 2007 when I was still living on the Monterey Peninsula.

As an avid hiker and former trail runner, and author of hiking and trail running books, I was always in the mountains of Big Sur (a.k.a. Ventana Wilderness) doing long, fast hikes. In 2005, I started developing a hip issue most likely brought on by all the leg-slamming steep downhills, so I went to the Good Feet Store in Monterey and was fitted for inserts for my shoes. Like magic, the hip issues vanished, and I was a believer in the Good Feet Store. But by 2007 I started developing chronic and painful knee issues that were almost crippling me. But I noticed when I was barefoot my knees didn’t bother me at all. So I stopped using the Good Feet Store inserts in my shoes and Tevas, and overnight the knee issues vanished. I’ve had zero hip and knee issues in the ensuing 12 years.

So the lesson in my story is that shoe inserts are not for everyone, and Mother Nature intended us to be barefoot as much as possible, which is what I am now 95 percent of the time, even in cold snowy Truckee!

Jeffrey Middlebrook

Truckee

No more one-stop?

A few words about the VA in Reno. I have been taking clothes and shoes to the VA for the vets. Today I take some in, and I am told that I have to take it to Saint Vincent church give it to them, and the VA will give the vet a voucher to go there.

The way it looks to me is that it makes the VA look good with the church but it doesn’t help the vet. They have to come get a voucher from the VA, then go find the church, and the church decides what they want to give to the vet. Who knows how much else that they will have to do in order to get some clothing?

It makes me think that they want to make it as easy as possible for them and they don’t really care about vets. I did see that they are in a nice and expensive office building. They probably pay a pretty high price for the place.

Mark Turner

Sun Valley

Key party

Re “Skill unlocked” (Arts and Culture, July 25):

The Key Bearer Project sounds like a genuine attempt to help people find the good in each other and also within ourselves. With so much negativity in our lives today this is a very refreshing idea The Key Bearer Project has undertaken. There is still hope for us all! Hats off to the project, especially the masterminds behind it.

Donna Straub

Wallkill, N.Y.

Engines of what?

The use of social media to store kitty pictures and emoticons exceeds available fossil energy. Essential systems start shutting down.

Will people give up their media addictions to keep the engines of civilization running?

Or not?

Like. Comment. Share.

Stay tuned.

Craig Bergland

Reno

Blessing stops at the water’s edge?

Re “Trump” (letters, Aug. 1):

While I agree with Mark Murray’s assessment of Trump’s doings, I find myself asking where people get the idea of “God Bless America.” God has his own plan, and it will continue to bear fruit. His plan is a global plan. Just because Americans like to label themselves as Christians, evidence falls way short of that. What is God, a Democrat, Republican, far left, far right? What?

Stop including God in your political lives. He could care less about man’s feeble attempts to create political answers to one’s problem. Remember what Jesus said. “Render to Caeser what is Caeser’s, but what is God’s to God.”

If you take the time to look up the meaning of “bless” you’ll find there is no way you can fit America in there.

Jim Martinez

Reno

Last week

All affected by the tragedy at the Gilroy Garlic Festival are in our thoughts and prayers.

Nevada, please pray the Litany of Saint Joseph every day to atone for this tragedy.

Matthew R. Dunnigan

Rome, Italy