How a BMW and a Truck Full of Leather Shoes Helped Me Get to America - The New York Times |
- How a BMW and a Truck Full of Leather Shoes Helped Me Get to America - The New York Times
- Light Hiking Shoes We've Tested and Trust | Outside Online - Outside
- UC Davis study: National survey shows different bacteria on cellphones and shoes - Woodland Daily Democrat
- Discover China: Traditional cloth shoes make comeback - Xinhua | English.news.cn - Xinhua
- Sustainability Drives GreenPlax(R), The World's 1st Shoes Primarily Made with Ocean Plastics - Monterey County Weekly
| How a BMW and a Truck Full of Leather Shoes Helped Me Get to America - The New York Times Posted: 09 Jun 2020 02:56 AM PDT  This account is from "Beyond the World War II We Know," a series from The Times that documents lesser-known stories from the war. Beginning in 1945, the Allied forces established displaced persons camps across Europe, where hundreds of thousands of concentration camp survivors and Jewish refugees reacclimated to life after the Holocaust. Some were former concentration camps with poor conditions, while others were requisitioned European villages, like Lampertheim, Germany, where Yankel Oltuski, who is now 102 and goes by Jack, lived between 1946 and 1949. After the war, in the Jewish displaced persons camp in Lampertheim, I became known as an entrepreneur. A fellow displaced person (known as D.P.s) sold me a five-carat diamond, which I traded to an American officer for maybe 100 packs of cigarettes, a rarity. A German doctor passing through sold me an American thousand-dollar bill. A local Greek man brought me a rough diamond. I'd never seen that, but I had it cut and sold it. There were many Germans who came to the camp to do business. As a Jew, I didn't think about who they were. You couldn't. Having fled my hometown in Ukraine when the Nazis invaded, leaving everything and everyone, I learned to work with what was in front of me. In Lampertheim, that meant trading with whoever passed through. People knew there were Jewish traders living there and asked around, "Who would buy this? Who would sell that?" Everyone said, "Go to Jack." Image  Everything I earned, I saved. After losing my home and being on the run, I knew that was the way to survive. A few months after arriving in Lampertheim, I married my late wife, Dora. I began courting her before the war and, having heard she was alive and in Germany, tracked her down in the camps. We were assigned to live in a requisitioned three-bedroom apartment with my father and two other young men. I hid the money in our oven because the boys never went into the kitchen — they ate in the camp cafeteria. Seldom did I spend, and there wasn't a lot to spend on. For our wedding, I had a cobbler make a pair of shoes for Dora. This was something special. When I fled home in 1941, I went east, not knowing where I would end up, and in Kyiv I was conscripted to the Soviet Army. In the army, resourcefulness was survival. As one of the only Jews in my unit, I had to be careful. Anti-Semitic officers would select me for the most dangerous missions. Knowing how to negotiate, how to talk to people, who to trust, when to follow and break rules saved me. By the end of the war, I knew it was probable that my family and Dora had been killed. I'd watch other soldiers open letters from home but never received any myself. One officer, taking pity, ordered me to send 10 letters to my hometown. To my disbelief I received a response. My father had fought with the partisan resistance and, just months after the war's end, opened a grocery store in the Polish city of Szczecin. When I found out he was alive, one kind officer gave me leave to visit. I never went back to the army; most of the time, it was a dangerous place to be Jewish. Reunited, my father and I went to Germany to look for others who survived, to look for Dora. We hopped a train that arrived in the Soviet side of Berlin, where I tossed my army jacket and got some civilian clothes. Then we made our way to Frankfurt, where there was a D.P. camp, and finally to another one in Lampertheim, where we heard that Dora was. But I had a longer-term plan: to move to America. Where else was there to go? In the camp, trading was survival, even though it wasn't permitted by the authorities. Earning money meant I'd have a chance of starting over in the States. In those times, there were no universal prices, so my intuition was my business. One day, I saw a man driving a convertible on the street in Lampertheim, a BMW coupe. Oh, this was a good car. I made a deal — I paid him 1,000 American dollars for it. I was told people with cars paid the police to look away, so I did. A German shoe factory owner who heard about the BMW approached me and offered me a truck full of leather shoes, maybe a thousand pairs, for the car. On a Saturday afternoon, he parked his truck on a side street, and I had buyers set up on site to take the merchandise, but one of the camp police — a man named Ostrowiecki — found out about the trade and tried to stop it. I had to wrestle him to the ground while the manufacturer unloaded the shoes. Ostrowiecki told the chief of police and wanted to arrest me, but the chief was friendly with me, so he said, "You know what? Give him some shoes, and we'll forget about it." The police weren't bad. Everyone just wanted to earn something because they had their own plans to start over. In our three years in Lampertheim, I had saved up enough cash to start a new life, a good life. In 1949, Dora, our toddler son, my father and I got papers and boarded a boat to America. At first, we settled in Kansas City, Mo., where we had relatives, and the first business I opened was a grocery store. Later, we moved to Forest Hills, Queens, and there, Ostrowiecki and I played cards together. Imagine my surprise when we became neighbors in another country. This account has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. Jack Oltuski told his story to Romy Oltuski, his granddaughter and a New York-based writer and editor. Sign up for the weekly At War newsletter to follow The Times's "Beyond the World War II We Know" series.  |
| Light Hiking Shoes We've Tested and Trust | Outside Online - Outside Posted: 08 Jun 2020 10:20 AM PDT A light hiker is the best type of shoe for on-foot adventures close to home. The right pair can bridge the gap between trail and town, saving you both money and closet space. Unlike a high-top hiking boot, it offers less structure, more breathability, and a minimal weight. That makes it much more comfortable for occasions when you aren't carrying a heavy load or walking for days at a time—i.e., 95 percent of the average user's hikes. An increasing number of manufacturers have caught on to this need and, in the past five years, have focused on more functional and better-looking designs. Now there are a wealth of options on the market. Since many of us are staring down months of nearby adventures (though these shoes will also serve you farther afield once things reopen), it seemed apropos to put five of these do-it-all light hikers in a head-to-head test. The TestComfort: I wore each pair while working at my standing desk for an entire day and during an hourlong hike in a green space near my house. Performance: Besides the hike, I wore each to climb and descend a steep scree field three times. I gauged how well each shoe gripped the ground and interacted with my feet. Style: I FaceTimed with fashion journalist and founder of the outerwear site Coatchecking, Alex Rakestraw. We studied each pair and discussed their designs. The Winner Danner Trail 2650 ($160)Comfort: 5 This pair was so comfortable and capable during both the hike and scree-slide tests that I wore them on a bonus hike with my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter in our Deuter Kid Carrier that same day. The shoes handled my adorable 25-pound load with aplomb, and the hours on my feet proved to be full-on enjoyable. Credit the cushy midsole, coupled with an OrthoLite insole, the latter of which hugged the bottom of my feet like an old friend; this helped while standing at my desk as well as when sliding downhill on scree, because my dogs didn't move around in the shoe at all. On the fashion front, Rakestraw shared my love of the 2650. "These are my favorite true-to-form light hikers that are out right now," he says. "A lot of the time, brands keep designs so firmly anchored in the idea that it's a boot, to the detraction of the sneaker. These hit a balance with this that no other pure outdoors light hikers have hit so far." Best Value Salomon Outline ($110)Comfort: 3.5 If you're on a budget, look no further than the Outline, which was fantastic by all three testing criteria and costs $50 less than the 2650. Its aggressive five-millimeter lugs allowed me to arrest a downward slide in less than two feet on the scree field. Meanwhile, its extremely lightweight and breathable upper felt like that of a comfy sneaker, making this a best-of-both-worlds day hiker. Rakestraw believes that this party-on-top, business-on-bottom approach added to the aesthetic of the shoe as well. "I love that it has a running-shoe upper with a monster-truck bottom. It looks a little sandwiched together, but because it is Salomon, there is a real tastefulness to how it was executed," he says. "It's like one of those Porsche 911 models with big Baja tires: you might say, 'Wait, that doesn't go together,' but it's very utilitarian because of it." Best Performance Oboz Arete Low ($125)Comfort: 5 If this test had been based solely on performance, the Arete Low would have won. I made audible oohs and aahs while navigating downhill amid both mud and scree, as the Arete's fantastic traction and best-in-test fit made it incredibly capable at maintaining control. The fit—a nice cupping heel to keep my foot in place, with an arched midfoot and a wide toe box—married the best of performance and comfort. Though the upper was featherlight and breathed well, I never felt like this shoe would be undergunned on a technical day hike. Oboz has not historically been known as a stylish brand, but it stepped up its game with the Arete. "I think this is a great move for the brand," Rakestraw says. "It's somewhere between a walking shoe and a really technical sneaker, and it looks completely unlike anything I would associate with Oboz. It has some of that outdoor niche detailing that's in fashion right now." Best Summer Style Columbia Vitesse Outdry Hiking Shoe ($110)Comfort: 4.5 I don't think of Columbia as a brand that puts aesthetics first, but the Vitesse proved me wrong. "I think these would be really fresh with shorts," Rakestraw says. "I like how big the weave is on top. This is a funky risk-taking shoe that is aggressively summer and retro in color scheme." On the performance side, these were the most running-shoe-like of the bunch, and I felt extremely comfortable standing in them for hours at my computer. They also had lugs that were tough enough to help me maintain control while descending the scree field. My only beef was that my feet got extremely hot because of the waterproof upper. I finished my 55-degree, hourlong hike with wet socks and clammy feet. Best for Mountain Townies Forsake Cascade ($110)Comfort: 3.5 I really liked the way the Cascade looked with jeans, but I wasn't happy with the shoe's performance. It was plenty comfortable for walking on streets and standing at my desk for hours, but the fit felt sloppy during hiking climbs and descents. On one downhill, both of my big toes hit the front of the shoe for 30 consecutive steps. That's a one-way ticket to losing a toenail on any longer hiking trip. Their lugs were the least aggressive of the test and did little to help me control myself on scree. But when I brought these issues up with Rakestraw, he reminded me that they have a place in this market. "They do look like a nice casual sneaker—like a generic seventies-inspired runner—and they have an extra layer of ruggedness to them," he says. "It is a more mature style." Our mission to inspire readers to get outside has never been more critical. In recent years, Outside Online has reported on groundbreaking research linking time in nature to improved mental and physical health, and we've kept you informed about the unprecedented threats to America's public lands. Our rigorous coverage helps spark important debates about wellness and travel and adventure, and it provides readers an accessible gateway to new outdoor passions. Time outside is essential—and we can help you make the most of it. Making a financial contribution to Outside Online only takes a few minutes and will ensure we can continue supplying the trailblazing, informative journalism that readers like you depend on. We hope you'll support us. Thank you. When you buy something using the retail links in our stories, we may earn a small commission. Outside does not accept money for editorial gear reviews. Read more about our policy.  |
| Posted: 09 Jun 2020 07:53 AM PDT  The largest study of its kind in the U.S. shows thousands of different types of bacteria living on cellphones and shoes, including groups that have barely been studied by scientists. "This highlights how much we have to learn about the microbial world around us," said David Coil, a researcher at the UC Davis Genome Center and first author on the paper, published June 9 in the journal PeerJ. In recent years scientists have started to better understand the communities of microbes, or microbiomes, found in basically every environment on the planet. We all carry around with us our own personal microbiome. While some of the microbes found in and on people can be harmful, the overwhelming majority of these microbes are harmless — and some are even beneficial. In 2013-14, Coil, with Russell Neches and Professor Jonathan Eisen of the Genome Center, UC Davis graduate student and professional cheerleader Wendy Brown, Darlene Cavalier of Science Cheerleaders Inc. and colleagues, launched an effort to sample microbes from spectators at sporting events across the country. Volunteers swabbed cellphones and shoes from almost 3,500 people and sent the samples to the Argonne National Laboratory, University of Chicago, for processing. The researchers amplified and sequenced DNA from the samples and used the sequence information to identify major groups of bacteria in the samples. They found that shoes and cellphones from the same person consistently had distinct communities of microbes. Cellphone microbes reflected those found on people, while shoes carried microbes characteristic of soil. This is consistent with earlier results. The shoe microbes were also more diverse than those found on a person's phone. Although samples were collected at events across the country, the researchers did not find any conclusive regional trends. In some cases, there were big differences between samples collected at different events in the same city. In others, samples from distant cities looked quite similar. Surprisingly, a substantial proportion of the bacteria came from groups that researchers call "microbial dark matter." These microbes are difficult to grow and study in a lab setting and thus have been compared to invisible "dark matter" that astronomers think makes up much of the universe. Since they are so difficult to grow in a lab, these dark matter groups have only been discovered as scientists have used genetic sequencing technology to look for microbes in the world around us. Although many of the dark microbial groups come from remote or extreme environments, such as boiling acid springs and nutrient-poor underground aquifers, some have been found in more mundane habitats, such as soil. "Perhaps we were naïve, but we did not expect to see such a high relative abundance of bacteria from these microbial dark matter groups on these samples," Eisen said. A number of these dark microbe groups were found in more than 10% of samples, with two groups, Armatimonadetes and Patescibacteria, being found in almost 50% of swabs and somewhat more frequently in those from shoes than those from phones. Armatimonadetes is known to be widespread in soil. "A remarkable fraction of people are traveling around with representatives from these uncultured groups on commonplace objects," Coil said.  |
| Discover China: Traditional cloth shoes make comeback - Xinhua | English.news.cn - Xinhua Posted: 08 Jun 2020 11:33 PM PDT CHENGDU, June 9 (Xinhua) -- In the township of Tangchang, Lai Shufang carefully inspects the new cloth shoes she has made and cuts the extra trimmings protruding from the shoe edges. Lai, 62, is a cloth shoemaker in southwest China's Sichuan Province. Her family has been in the business for more than 80 years. "My dad went into a famous shoe store in the township to learn about the craft in 1938, and then he became a technical trainer for a state-owned shoe factory," Lai said. "I also worked in the factory. After it closed in the 1990s, I started a home studio and continued the cloth shoe business." The business of traditional cloth shoes went into hiatus in the 1980s, when sneakers broke into the Chinese market, edging the cloth shoes out of the market. But cloth shoes are making a comeback these days, as nostalgia catches on amid increasing promotion of intangible cultural heritage by the government. This Saturday, an online shopping festival featuring products related to intangible cultural heritage will kick off on major e-commerce platforms such as Taobao.com, JD.com and Suning.com, as well as on the popular short-video sharing platform Kuaishou. Lai's son Ai Peng, who has joined his mom in the business, said he has applied to participate in the event. "JD.com has asked us to prepare 3,000 pairs, and said they would promote the shoes for free. Taobao.com wants us to prepare 8,000 pairs," Ai said. "The demand is just overwhelming, considering that we only made 10,000 pairs for the entire year last year." Traditional cloth shoes in the township of Tangchang have more than 700 years of history. A pair of Tangchang cloth shoes needs to go through 32 procedures, featuring natural materials such as flour, cotton, cloth and wool. Craftsmen like Lai stew flour into a paste, and stick cloth layers together. The cloth layers are then dried as raw materials for shoe soles and uppers. "Cloth shoes have more air permeability than those with plastic soles in the market," Lai said. "They are easy to walk in, and they don't get damp easily." The cloth shoes enjoyed huge popularity among the Chinese public until the 1980s. "In their heyday, there were five cloth shoe factories in Chengdu, the provincial capital, alone," she said. But after sneakers took over, their popularity gradually waned. The last of the factories, where Lai worked, filed for bankruptcy in 1998. To sustain a living and help the cultural heritage survive, Lai and her coworkers continued making cloth shoes. "It consumed a lot of time and effort, and the shoes didn't fetch good prices," Lai said. Five years ago, Lai reached the age of retirement, and she made up her mind to close her store so that "life could be less difficult." To her surprise, her son Ai Peng quit his job and came back home to help Lai pass down the heritage. Ai developed a deep passion for cloth shoes when he was just a child. "When I was little, I would always play with the thread wheels in my mom's factory, like it was the golden cudgel of the Monkey King," he recalled. "I also developed a passion for traditional culture because my grandpa would always listen to traditional Sichuan opera and sip tea, which had quite an impact on me." More importantly, Ai believed in the market potential of cloth shoes. "I know that since 2014, the government has been paying increasing attention to the protection and promotion of intangible cultural heritage, and the number of people willing to buy cultural products is on the rise," Ai said. Ai said that despite rise in prices for several times, their homemade cloth shoes are becoming increasingly popular. In the village of Zhanqi, where Lai and her son live, local authorities have been promoting rural tourism by restoring village houses into their original styles. Tourists can buy local souvenirs such as cloth shoes, embroidery, bamboo products and specialties such as soy sauce. Last year, the number of visitors reached one million in the village, and the revenue from rural tourism stood at about 10 million yuan (about 1.4 million U.S. dollars), according to village official Gao Demin. "Traditional cultural heritage such as cloth shoemaking was once buried in the sea of industrialized products, but as people have begun to pursue a high-quality life, they have come to understand the value of traditional art," Gao said. Enditem  |
| Posted: 09 Jun 2020 07:37 AM PDT  LOS ANGELES, June 9, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- GreenPlax®, the latest green technology innovated by CCILU Footwear, marks its formal debut in Autumn 2020 season, embodying the brand's visions of sustainability and circular economy, through the development of the recycling/upcycling ecosystem for footwear industry. The result of the five-year endeavor by CCILU's R&D team, GreenPlax® - in its first iteration - upcycles ocean plastics and turns it into high-performance material for every major component of the footwear (upper, insole, and outsole). This revolutionary technology was just honored by A'Design Award & Competition in footwear category of the year 2020. CCILU's first footwear product application of GreenPlax® technology, "Renee" sneaker, also brings back CCILU's signature SKIVE-ON® technology, which received the top honor from A'Design Award and Competition in the year 2017. With the SKIVE-ON® technology, 100+ completely independent and highly resilient GreenPlax® dots come together and form the extremely lightweight and flexible outsole which offers the best comfort and the ultimate bare-foot experience to consumers. The patented GreenPlax® technology brings the feasibilities of building up every major component (upper, insole, and outsole) of the footwear with ocean plastics to the table, while most of the other leading footwear brands simply use ocean plastics to make fabrics of the shoe uppers. One pair of GreenPlax® Renee sneaker averagely upcycles 15 plastic bottles. To embrace the spirits of entrepreneurship, true innovation, direct-to-consumer (DTC) business model, and deep-rooting the emerging generations, GreenPlax® Renee will be firstly launched at Kickstarter platform (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/greenplax/greenplax-the-worlds-1st-shoes-made-with-ocean-plastics) with the assistances of Funded Today, then moved to CCILU branded stores worldwide, and brand-owned digital platform www.Ccilu.com. Following the same path of its first green technology "XpreSole®", which upcycles the spent coffee grounds and turns it into footwear, CCILU plans to share GreenPlax® technology with other footwear companies, beverage companies, and any other organizations who are fighting the problems of ocean plastics, to assure an expansive sharing and dissemination of this cutting-edge innovation. "Every minute of every day, we throw away one million plastic bottles around the world. Only 4% of them are properly recycled. The most of them eventually ends up in the oceans. It takes up to 1,000 years for the bottles to be decomposed. The first plastic bottle was produced in 1947 and in theory it has not been decomposed till now," CCILU Footwear Founder/CEO Wilson Hsu explained. "The toxins from decomposing the bottles leached into the landfills and oceans cause a wide variety of health issues, including reproductive problems and cancers. On average, every week, each of us ingests 5 grams of microplastics from the ocean because the bottles we throw away end up a part of our food chain. That's like eating one credit card every week," Hsu continued. "The COVID-19 pandemic just gives us a heavy lesson that we've been over-riding and over-loading ourselves and our mother earth since the industrial revolution in the 19th century. We have to react immediately and do things completely different. We do not have the plan B." CCILU's plan also aims at significantly reducing petroleum consumption and carbon footprint generated from the footwear industry by at least 30%, with replacing the traditionally petro-based footwear material with GreenPlax® which can be used in all major components of the footwear, including upper, insole, and outsole. Most importantly, GreenPlax® technology demonstrates one of the best practices of circular economy: upcycling the pollutant and hazardous ocean plastics and turn it into high-performance footwear material. CCILU's GreenPlax® technology plan lays out five primary objectives: 1. Minimize the plastics dumped into the ocean. 2. Minimize human's regular ingestion of micro-plastics from the ocean. 3. Minimize petroleum consumption by the footwear industry. 4. Minimize overall carbon footprint by the footwear industry. 5. Embrace circular economy by up-cycling ocean plastics and turn it into high-performance footwear material. How does CCILU transform ocean plastics to be footwear? It all starts with the process of collecting the ocean plastics worldwide. The process of classifying, cleaning, drying, grinding, sifting, and pelleting the ocean plastics, through the patented process, creates a ready-to-export, concentrate masterbatch of either fabric or sole material that is then sent for final product cultivation to factories around the world. CCILU utilizes centralized resources in Taiwan to produce the master batch of GreenPlax® material which can be easily shared with other manufacturers. For CCILU's own footwear production, the GreenPlax® uppers, insoles, and outsoles undergo extensive physical properties testing to ensure quality before being made into CCILU footwear. In addition to contributing to alleviating the issues of ocean plastics and bringing back the SKIVE-ON® technology, CCILU's GreenPlax Renee also showcases a series of attributes of the most versatile sneaker on the planet, including vegan (PETA approved), super lightweight and flexible, water repellent, dirt/oil proof, moisture wicking, fast drying, odor control, great grip, and UV protection. "The ultimate lightweight and flexibility, the instant comfort, and the increasing sustainability are the three major pillars of CCILU's brand and product identity. We aim at developing and delivering a series of innovations and build up the milestones one by one in the journey. The XpreSole® tech was the first one and the GreenPlax® tech came after. We will have more initiatives in the next one year or two," Hsu said. "Our ultimate goal in the short term is to design and develop the first 'carbon-negative' shoes by the year 2021, and to get the footwear industry and the consumers embrace the concepts and products addressing circular economy and sharing economy," Hsu continued. "It is the embodiment and true realization of our motto, liberate yourself. In fact, the tagline for GreenPlax® conveys the message and intent of the new tech: ocean plastics is recyclable, and sustainability is liberating." About CCILU Footwear Launched in 2011, the award-winning lifestyle brand is now sold in more than 60 countries, with 40+ CCILU stores in Asia and a permanent presence established in North America, under the CCILU USA Inc. banner. Via its sponsorship of the World of Dance live competition tour, and the partnerships with PGA TOUR, Grand Slam, Swarovski, Warner Brothers, Hang Ten and Hang Ten Gold, CCILU Footwear is expanding its footprint in the North America and worldwide. "CCILU" (CHEE-loo) means "liberate" in Japanese, and "liberate yourself" is the call to action, a reminder that we each have the power to defy limitations. For CCILU, this means bringing our creativity and independent spirit to footwear evolution, thanks to CCILU Footwear's revolutionary technologies. These have evolved from comfort, fashion and function, to wellness and sustainability. In the year 2019, Ccilu unveiled XpreSole®, a revolutionary technology that upcycles spent coffee grounds to be high-performance footwear material. in 2020, CCILU launched GreenPlax®, another advanced technology that enables every major component of the shoes (upper, insole, and outsole) to be made with ocean plastics. Kickstarter project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/greenplax/greenplax-the-worlds-1st-shoes-made-with-ocean-plastics Brand site: www.Ccilu.com
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