St. John the Wondermaker
December 13, 2025 at 12:43AMRebecca E. Williams crafts a small, powerful essay from her work with the Herbalista Free Clinic, which provides footcare for unhoused men at an orthodox church in Atlanta. As she clips nails and trims calluses with the edge of a scalpel, Williams’s mind roams, considering the dynamics that dislocate these men from care. “I wonder about inertia and all the forces that push back on these men as hard as they try to push into the direction of their desires,” she writes—a crystalline moment of empathy in a moving piece of lyric writing.
An arch’s ability to support massive weight is one of the most fundamental concepts in physics—and weirdest. The idea is that if you push against a wall with your hand, the wall is pushing back with the same amount of force. This is one aspect of the concept of inertia. The arch of the foot (or any arch) diffuses the forces of compression, which increases the entire structure’s load-bearing capacity by orders of magnitude.
But feet don’t just provide stationary support, they move. They run and jump and—most of all—walk. The plantar fascia, a fan-like structure of connective tissue that is not muscle, not bone, not tendon, but a springy, stringy, sticky protein structure, tenses and releases beneath the arch with every step. Like a spring, the plantar fascia can hold tension generated by the leg and release it as that potential energy transfers forward. Who thinks about this complex orchestration of biology and physics? Our feet, most of the time, are just there, performing miracles.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/12/12/homelessness-health-clinic/
via IFTTT
Watch