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THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 1997
8A
LIFESTYLES
New York
cobbler
fits all feet
By Mary Esch
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ONEIDA, N.Y. - Some of the
photos in (iaiy Barlow’s files are
a cobbler’s nightmare: feet that
are gnarled, knobbed, flat,
arthritic, mismatched or miss
ing toes.
The owners of these feet don’t
come to his tiny shop to help
them hobble. They seek him out
to help them hike. They want to
dimb rocky mountain trails and
trudge through miles of rugged
forest terrain.
They want to do it in bUssful
comfort to boot.
Barlow is one of a handful of
craftsmen around the country
who make fine leather boots by
hand. He designs every hiking
boot to precisely fit the person
who will wear it, whether their
feet are odd or ordinaiy.
It can be a lucrative trade.
“The potential market is enor-
jnous (for custom hiking boots),”
said Randy Merrell of Vernal,
fUtah, who is considered a guru
'among bootmakers.
J Fancy Westem-siyle boots sell
^br up to $4,000 or more, said
^errell, who has trained 340
Jpeople at his bootmaking school.
He said the market is smaller
•for handmade hiking boots,
which sell for $500 and up. But
the demand is growing.
“There are many people who
go to the woods and aren't satis
fied with their boots," Merrell
said. “They don't realize what's
available.”
For Barlow, bootmaking is a
labor of love.
“I’m a hiker. I’m an old
diehard woodsman,” said
Barlow, 50, whose rugged,
bearded visage and flannel shirt
fit the classic image of a lumber
jack. “When you’re in the woods,
you’re in God’s coimtiy. You feel
the hving spirit that’s there. It
renews life for me.”
But it’s hard to find serenity
when your feet hurt.
“I was always frustrated by
the hiking boots,” Barlow said.
“Td pay $350 for a pair of boots
and they’d be clumsy, they were
like glorified sneakers.” People
he met on the trails also suf
fered foot fatigue.
That was 15 years ago. He had
been working for 20 years £is a
roofer, but wanted to be a cob
bler. He got a job at a shoe
repair shop to learn the trade,
then set up shop on a side street
in his hometown of Oneida, a
small city 25 miles east of
S3Tacuse. After several years of
fixing shoes, he spent $4,000 to
fly to Utah to learn how to make
them at MerreU's schcwl.
His boot business grew by
word of mouth until a year ago,
when Barlow put an ad in the
magazine of the Adirondack
Moimtain Club. Don Capron, a
retiree and avid hiker, bought a
■ pair of Barlow bx)ts and was so
impressed he wrote an article
for the magazine.
“Pictures of my feet have been
used in podiatry and orthopedic
tfoot surgery textbooks as exam
ples of the worst possible feet for
outdoor activities,” Capron
wrote under a photo of his
gnarled feet. He had seven ham
mer (clawed) toes amputated.
Standard shoes don't fit
Capron's feet. But his Barlow
boots fit perfectly, allowing him
to hike 12 miles painlessly the
day he got them.
“His finished boots fit my feet
like extensions of my legs,”
wrote Capron, who climbed the
111 highest northeastern peaks
in 1995 and, with his new
Barlow boots, hiked the
Appalachian Trail in 1996.
“Since that article came out
. everybody with bad feet’s been
calling me,” Barlow said. “That’s
good.”“I want to do something
for people,” Bsirlow said. “It feels
good to know I can build some
thing for somebody that
enhances their ei\joyment of our
natural surroundings.”
Keep New Year’s resolutions simple
By Jeri Young
THE CHARLOTTE POST
Wednesday marks the dawn of
1997.
It wUl also usher in yet anoth
er season of resolutions — fix)m
promises to finally win the bat
tle of the bulge to getting per
sonal finances in order.
'Whatever the resolution, in
most cases, they don’t make it
through the first week of the
New Year.
As the hohday hysteria fades
away. New Year’s resolution
become like “Tickle Me Elmo”
next Christmas - obsolete.
“My goal is to lose 50 pounds,”
says Terry. “I just don’t know
how to start. AH I know is that I
have to lose the weight. That is
my resolution.”
Terry asked that her last
name not be used, but her reso
lution mirrors that of thousands •
of Americans. She has made the
same resolution five times, she
says.
“I just can’t do it,” she adds.
“That makes it all even worse.”
New Year's Eve almost always
ends in a resolution; most will
bring disappointment.
“I think (making resolutions)
it is part of our tradition,”
Charlotte psychologist Wanda
Webb says. “We always hope
that we can be a little better
than the year before.”
According to Webb, most reso
lution makers have every inten
tion of keeping their promises,
but don’t realize how difficult it
is to change behaviors.
“We are creatures of habit,”
she said. “In a crunch, we will
almost always revert back to the
old ways of functioning. We
have the best of intentions, but
we don’t think about what it
takes to change. We minimize
what it takes to accomplish our
goals.”
Losing 50 pounds means a
change in eating habits and
your attitudes about exercise
and food, she adds. Resolvers
don’t think about their goal long
range.
“We know what we need to
do,” Webb adds. “We ofl«n just
don’t know how to get started.”
Webb offers the following tips
to setting the New Year off right
and living up to resolutions.
•Acknowledge the pattern of
behavior that needs to be
changed.
•Acknowledge that it will be
difficult to change.
•Set aside time in the day to
work on the behavior, whether
it be daily exercise or medita
tion.
“The bottom line is that people
have to realize they have to do
something,” Webb said. “And
they have to realize that it will
not be easy.”
Webb agrees that it is a good
idea to set goals.
“”I think that people have to
have goals to be highly function
ing,” she said. “The trick is to
set small goals. Take small
steps instead of huge ones. Most
people set too large a goal that
dooms them to failure.”
According to Webb, small vic
tories merit celebration.
“Every time you do something
good that you didn’t do yester
day, you’re making progress,”
she said. “If you goal is to exer
cise in the morning, celebrate
the first day that you wake up
10 minutes earlier even if you
don’t exercise that day. It’s a
step in the right direction.”
According to Webb, the most
popular resolutions are:
•Cleaning up debt.
•Living a more wholesome
life.
•Losing weight.
•Being more religious.
“Resolutions are good things,”
she adds. “It is the magnitude
that makes it hard.”
Webb has set her own goal for
1997.
“1 want to find out what I real
ly want to be when I grow up,”
she says with a laugh. “At the
age of 46,1 am still faying to fig
ure it aU out.”
Tips for losing weight from the
American Heart Association and
WeightWatchers.
•Work on modifying your diet;
tiy keeping a daily log of what
you eat.
•Drink eight 8-oimce glasses
of water daQy. Not only is it fiffi-
ing, but it keeps the body func
tioning properly which ends in
weight loss.
•Stay away from buffets and
all-you-can-eat; they encourage
overeating.
•Limit filed foods.
•After consulting a doctor,
begin an exercise program. Go
slow, you didn’t gain the weight
overnight so don’t expect it to go
away overnight.
•Don’t weigh yourself daily.
•Find someone to modify your
diet with; share your triumphs
and setbacks.
•Realize that weight loss is a
modification of diet and exer
cise.
For those who kept last’s year
goal of losing weight, exercise is
the key. According to a two-year
study at Baylor University’s
Debakey Heart Center in
Houston, people who exercise
without following a strict diet
maintained their weight.
“This confirms what we have
known all along - people who
diet fail at it because they feel
deprived,” says Dr. Ken
Goodrick. “By overcoming nega
tive attitudes about exercise,
people can learn to enjoy it and
appreciate the benefits.”
Big bash in works for 2000
By Helen O’Neill
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK - If things
seemed relatively tame this
New Year’s Eve, rest easy.
Three years from now, the
world will romp into an end-
of-the-century birthday bash
the hkes of which have never
been seen.
The planning and the count
down have already begun.
Iceland will light bonfires,
England plans a nationwide
pealing of bells, and Sri Lanka
will hold a gigantic beach
bash in Colombo on the shores
of the Indian Ocean. Brazil
also is planning a party in Rio
de Janeiro, on the shores of
the Atlantic Ocean.
In New York, Times Square
will be transformed into a
kind of cultural crossroads on
Dec. 31, 1999, with giant tele
vision screens conveying mil
lennium celebrations from
each of the world’s 24 time
zones.
Even though, technically,
the new century won’t begin
for another year, the lure and
symbolism of the year 2000 is
much too seductive for the
world to ignore.
Even the Vatican bowed to
emotion over mathematics,
declaring 2000 a Jubilee Year
- the church’s 27th since the
first in 1300 - and planning a
yearlong celebration expected
to attract some 20 million pil
grims to Rome.
“There’s no dispute that the
new millennium actually
begins in the year 2001,”
acknowledges Edward
McNally, co-chairman of the
Washington-based
Millennium Society. “The
dsmamics of throwing a birth
day party for planet Earth a
year early include the magic
of seeing the number 1999
turning into 2000 and launch
ing a year of events and cele
brations.”
A bunch of Yale graduate
students founded the
Millennium Society in 1979 to
plan “the largest charity fund
raiser in the history of the
world.” Plans include a roimd-
the-globe succession of black-
tie parties and concerts at his
toric sites, including Mount
Fuji in Japan, the Great Wall
of China and the pyramids in
Egypt.
Philanthropy aside, others
are simply planning one heck
of a bash.
“We figure you can't stop a
good party, so we will cele
brate the dawn of the new
millennium everywhere it
dawns,” says Gretchen
Dykstra, president of New
York’s Times Square Business
Improvement District, which,
with great fanfare, began
searching for “The Big Idea” a
year ago. It got about 750
responses from 21 countries.
Just west of the date line,
Western and American Samoa
are banking on their own
share of millennium madness.
As the last places on earth to
dust off 1999, they're hoping
tourists will come to the
islands not to celebrate the
new century, but to bid
farewell to the old.
8 - track
mind keeps
puzzles
coming
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MADISON, Wis. - Raymond
Hamel says his “eight-track
mind” enables him to be a prolif
ic amateur puzzle maker.
Hamel, 36, creates more than
100 crosswords and puzzles
annually for publications such
as The New York Times, the
Chicago Tribune and Games
magazine. He also writes a
semi-weekly trivia quiz for the
New York Times’ Internet web
page.
“I’ve got at least eight things
going on in my head at the same
time,” Hamel said.
A librarian at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison, Hamel is
a self-described compulsive
record keeper. His constant
companion is a notebook in
which he records trivia -
obsciu-e facts that few remem
ber but that are very important ’
to a few people.
Hamel's talent for trivia
emerged as a youth in Nekoosa
where he watched lots of televi
sion and memorized pop culture
minutiae.
He was an A student in high
school. Hamel started solving
crossword puzzles. He soon
turned to puzzle making, a skUl
encouraged by a teacher and
tested on his classmates.
Hamel’s first puzzles were pub
lished when he was 17.
As an English major at UW-
Stevens Point, Hamel won
national trivia contests, was
inducted into the Trivia Bowl
Hall of Fame and continued to
sell puzzles. An academic schol
arship paid for college tuition.
Puzzle proceeds peiid for food.
Hamel earned a master's
degree in library science at UW-
Madison that led to a job as
manager of the audio-visual col
lection in the Wisconsin
Regional Primate Research
Center, where he now works.
But nights, weekends and every
lunch hour, Hamel conjures
crossword clues and themes and
trivia questions.
The most challenging aspect of
puzzle making is creating origi
nal themes that both entertain
and stump, Hamel said. Theme
puzzles must contain at least
four related clues, but Hamel
tries to include more.
“Crosswords are all about free
association and humorous takes
on things,” Hamel says.
To develop them, Hamel pays
close attention to the sounds
and meanings of words. When
he came across the phrase “fly
in the ointment,” it struck him
as rmusual as a “bull in a china
shop.” That association led to
the theme, “Out of Their
Element.”
Hamel says crossword puzzle
editors have a few peeves that
constructors learn to avoid.
Diseases are off limits since
many people who do crosswords
are in hospitals. “Downer”
words are not allowed.
Publishers pay anywhere from
$15 to $300 .for a crossword.
Homeless find hospitality in roving camper
By Kathy Walsh Nufer
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
APPLETON, Wis. - It’s a slop
py night with enough nip in the
air to make him wish he’d
stayed inside in front of a fire
place, but Tom Hildebrandt is in
the driver’s seat of the used
camper he cedis “Hospitahiy on
Wheels” making the roimds in
downtown Appleton.
He’s looking for someone he
can offer a bowl of chUi, a mug
of coffee and a warm bed to for
the night, someone who doesn’t
have a home.
This night as he turns down
this street and that seeking out
the possible haimts of the home
less, he will find two someones
to invite in firom the cold.
After stopping to introduce
himself at the Appleton Public
Library, Outreach Center and a
Laundromat, he discovers one
in Jones Park.
The man is curled up on a
soaked piece of cardboard just
inside the concrete entry to the
park restrooms.
He has no blanket for cover.
Hildebrandt tries to coax him
to come inside, but the man
politely refuses.
He has “no needs” tonight, he
says.
Hildebrandt, who has given
the man a place to sleep before,
hates to leave him but heads
back to the camper.
“AU I can do is offer,” he says.
“Maybe he wUl find me later.”
Hildebrandt continues on,
parking on CoUege Avenue.
In a matter of minutes a
young man knocks on the door.
This is “John’s” second night
See HOMELESS on page 9A