News and Updates | Adam Reger | Freelance Writer | Philadelphia-based freelance writer

Plantar Fasciitis No More

Almost a year ago now I wrote a long account of my battle with plantar fasciitis, and wanted to update the record with some advice for anyone in the same boat.

First of all, I no longer have any real idea what was wrong with my foot, Achilles, posterior tibial tendon, calf, or any other part of my leg during that time. Plantar fasciitis is the handiest thing to call it based on the symptoms and likely cause (overuse). But after having rested my foot for the better part of a year and finding the discomfort still there, I have to believe something else was wrong. And the things I’ve tried and had success with since then have borne that out.

My road to recovery began with an e-mail from Runner’s World advertising the book Fixing Your Feet by John Vonhof. It sounded like exactly what I needed: a book that would address any conceivable pain afflicting the feet and lower legs. I ordered it (not directly from Rodale Press for $25, as the e-mail suggested, but from Amazon for $14. (What is up with your pre-internet sales appeal, Rodale?))

I’d recommend Fixing Your Feet to anyone with foot problems from running, hiking, or the infliction of punishment from day-to-day activities. And I’m glad to have it on hand for future reference. But its real value to me lay in turning me on to another book that has made the greatest difference to my recovery.

That book is The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief by Clair Davies. Since checking it out of the library I’ve bought a copy for myself and one for a family member, and later pressed my copy onto a coworker who was having leg pain. (The book covers pain throughout the body, not just in the legs.)

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March 21, 2014

The Great Pittsburgh Spelling Bee of 2014

This weekend I had the good fortune of participating in the Great Pittsburgh Spelling Bee of 2014, which raised funds for the extremely worthy Literary Arts Boom (LAB), a project run out of an awesome Pittsburgh nonprofit, Assemble. LAB is Pittsburgh’s answer to the 826 writing centers project from McSweeney’s and fills the same niche of tutoring kids in writing, publishing, making reading and writing fun, and so on.

A friend texted my fiancée and I about the spelling bee and, without too much reflection, I signed us both up.

I should say that I have a history with spelling bees. I participated in my middle-school spelling bee every year I was eligible (sixth, seventh, and eighth grades). I still remember each word that knocked me out: “raunchy” in sixth grade (“rawnchy”); “dormitory” in seventh (“dormitary”) . . . and the last one I’ll mention in a moment.

I love spelling bees; I love spelling. I always thought I was great at it in school, and I entered the spelling bee last Saturday feeling like I’d only gotten better over the ensuing years. Since eighth grade, I’ve graduated high school and college and earned a Masters degree in writing, and have accrued about a decade of experience as a professional proofreader, copyeditor, and writer.

Still, I didn’t have any expectations. I basically took it on faith that somewhere in Pittsburgh there existed a medieval Latin-reading philosophy grad student, or a wizened old doctor who knew all the derivations of a thousand polysyllabic conditions and syndromes, or an insomniac librarian with a photographic memory, who would show up and dominate the field with the detached cool and confidence of a spelling assassin.

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December 11, 2013

Just in time for the holidays: something I made

I’m not quite sure how to explain it, but I designed, laid out, and printed a 2014 calendar that replicates the French Republican Calendar, a historical curiosity used in France for about 12 years during the French Revolution. I think it looks pretty great, and am excited to have conceived the project and carried it through.

The calendar is now for sale at Etsy. Or you can get in touch with me (at adamreger [@] yahoo.com) if you’re interested.

Read all about it, including what the French Republican Calendar was, over at the website I set up for my publishing venture, Dr. Homunculus Press.

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December 2, 2013

New fiction at Pithead Chapel

I have a short story, “Commonplaces,” live online over at the excellent literary magazine Pithead Chapel.

I’m delighted to be part of the issue, and to have “Commonplaces” out there. It’s one of my favorite stories. I wrote it during graduate school and have tinkered with it a bit over the years. I hope you enjoy it, along with the rest of the issue.

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August 28, 2013

Free Box: A song, a genre, perhaps an entire way of life

Just wrote this down on a Post-It. I don’t know what it is, but anyone who wants it is welcome to it:

Office jazz.

Have a great day!

Update:

This just in . . .

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August 26, 2013

A Pittsburgh List That’s Actually Pretty Good

It’s great that Pittsburgh has been getting noticed nationally as a good place to live, and even a cool place to visit. But man, some of the appreciations out there have been kind of lame. Take as an example this Buzzfeed piece, “16 Reasons Why Pittsburgh Is the Greatest City on the Planet.” Sounds cool, but if you dig into it you’ll find that whoever compiled it likely spent an hour Googling things to do and see in Pittsburgh (and even then, the search isn’t current: Number 10: “And the Pirates . . . Well, they have a cool logo!” What?! The Pirates have owned or shared first place since the end of July! Get current, dude.) It name checks Primanti Brothers, the bridges of Pittsburgh, and the Cathedral of Learning (twice). This person evidently hasn’t even heard of the incline.

But a great list, “30 Reasons You Need to Move to Pittsburgh,” has appeared on Movoto, and I must tip my cap to its author, Molly Kirwan. It ranges from solid stuff outsiders wouldn’t necessarily know about (like the Carnegie Museums) to neighborhood-specific things not even every Pittsburgher knows about (like the Unblurred gallery crawl, the Allegheny Cemetery, Banjo Night, the patio at Pusadee’s Garden, and others) to more abstract things that Pittsburgh does well: dancing, drive-ins, estate sales, and thrifting.

So, check it out if you are addicted to “list-icles” (even if, like me, you always click against your better judgment). If you are interested in Pittsburgh boosterism, this one is well worth your time.

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July 12, 2013

So This Is What That Feels Like

My last name, Reger*, is not the most common in the world. If you go looking for famous people, about the only one out there is Max Reger, a German composer and pianist of the late 19th century and early 20th. (Max was also the name given to my parents’ German shepherd.)

So it was entirely novel, reading the story “Bennie” in Jon Raymond’s really excellent story collection Livability, to see this:

(Look in the bottom left.)

I was floored. I showed it around to my family, and watched each one of them have the same reaction: Reading, reading, reading, then suddenly a start, a raising of the eyebrows, looking up and acknowledging that yes, that was actually worth their time.

It had literally never happened to me before, as a reader. I doubt I’ve ever even been reading something and seen Max Reger’s name come up. (He’s not that famous, and I don’t read about classical music basically ever.) Other people must see their names every once in a while, and have probably become slightly more accustomed to the faint shock of it. The rarity of seeing “Reger” out there has never been something I’ve regretted, but it was kind of cool for my name’s sudden appearance to give me such a thrill.

*In case anyone is even remotely interested, the way my family (and, I believe, Max Reger) pronounces my last name rhymes with “kegger” or “beggar” (neither of which makes for the most useful or flattering mnemonic to share with new acquaintances). Not—I repeat, NOT—Ree-ger as in “eager,” “meager,” “big-leaguer,” or anything else that rhymes with “Ree-ger,” a pronunciation that haunted my childhood and that still kind of grates on me.

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June 25, 2013

Favorite literature re-encountered: “Red Harvest”

I’ve fallen in love with lots of lines from lots of different books (see here and here for two recent examples). Right up there with any of them is this passage from Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 novel Red Harvest:

“Your fat chief of police tried to assassinate me last night. I don’t like that. I’m just mean enough to want to ruin him for it. Now I’m going to have my fun. I’ve got ten thousand dollars of your money to play with. I’m going to use it opening Poisonville up from Adam’s apple to ankles. I’ll see that you get my reports as regularly as possible. I hope you enjoy them.”

That’s the (unnamed) protagonist, a man from a private detective agency who’s been called to Personville (a.k.a. “Poisonville,” as in the above) on a case, talking to Elihu Willsson, a wealthy old man who pretty much runs the town. The protagonist has just solved the mystery of who killed the man who summoned him to Personville, but in so doing he’s uncovered the stink of outrageous corruption in the town. He doesn’t like it, and makes the foregoing pronouncement.

This is on page 64. Solving the murder case is nothing; it’s the protagonist’s turn, his new intention to “open[] Poisonville from Adam’s apple to ankles,” that marks the first plot point in the novel. It’s also where, as a reader, you feel the book changing. I’m re-reading the novel now, and I already know that, indeed, the action of the rest of Red Harvest is the protagonist having his fun. But even knowing what happens, I still feel the thrill of that little speech as the detective declares himself.

Credit where it’s due: I picked up Red Harvest after reading the above passage quoted in this excellent AV Club “Gateways to Geekery” feature on crime fiction, written by Christopher Bahn.

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June 11, 2013

New fiction alert

I have a short story up at the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs, in its “Beauty” issue.

The story, “Polish Polka Band,” is one of the first I wrote after finishing graduate school, and it’s one of my favorites.

Also of note, this was probably the easiest time I’ve had of the process between acceptance and publication. Usually there’s a bit of a wait, during which there may or may not be edits to sort through, and an author bio is requested. It’s not arduous work by any means, but whenever I’m lucky enough to have a story accepted I anticipate it. With Halfway Down the Stairs, however, there was none of that. The story was accepted around May 26 or so; I wrote back saying, “Great! Thank you!”; the issue went live on June 1, with my story in it; my author bio was extracted neatly from the meaty second paragraph of my cover letter. Easy!

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May 24, 2013

This ‘n that

Updates to several recent posts:

-I wrote about the fascinating case of A.J. Richardson, the candidate for the Democratic nomination for mayor of Pittsburgh whose face is covered in tattoos. Others did not find him quite so fascinating, as he came in dead last in Tuesday’s primary election, with a vote total described, variously, as “in the triple digits” and “a smattering.” (Yikes. I’m no politics wonk, but I know you’ve got to get more than a smattering of votes.)

Some interesting links on Richardson:

*A Pittsburgh City Paper (blog) interview with him after the election.

*A City Paper blog photo of Richardson with his tattoos “removed.”

*And here’s the City Paper‘s cover for this week:

-Following this post, about my struggles with plantar fasciitis: this week, I got a cortisone shot in my heel to hopefully get me over the hump by reducing inflammation in my plantar fascia. As mentioned in the prior post, I really did not want to get a shot, let alone have surgery, but over time that opposition eroded enough that I basically asked for the shot.

So far my foot has felt better. The reduced inflammation has allowed the stretching to be more effective (I think), and I’ve done some increased activity. Nothing major: standing up while doing some weightlifting. I’ve been tempted to run over the weekend, but I think I need to hold off.

-And finally, I went ahead and secured the domain name adamjreger.com. adamreger.com, unfortunately, is taken by another Adam Reger who has had the domain since at least 1998; I had the bad luck to have the same name as an internet-savvy tech guy.

As far as I can tell the new domain name has meant no changes to anything or anyone, and hardly seems worth mentioning except that it feels like a step toward greater permanence.

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