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"As a batter, your goal is not to score runs, but protect the wicket," said Ethan Hart, the only American-born member of the Boulder Cricket Club. "A lot of the game is based on the bowler -- there is a lot of strategy in bowling and field placement."
In cricket, each player has certain positions in which they excel; not all players bowl, and not all are batsmen, although everyone on the team does field.
Amit Gandhi is an all-around player for the Boulder Cricket Club. He does what is best for his team.
Sharoon Swing's main role is batsman, a job for which he was specifically recruited.
"I just like to get maximum runs with the least outs," he said.
While Swing played cricket growing up in Pakistan, he has further experience in the No. 2 sport in the world: He played on the International League in Dubai before coming to the United States.
While members of the Boulder Cricket Club enjoy the sport's competitiveness and camaraderie, they're proud to carry on its long-running tradition.
Cricket, which is thought to have originated in England, can be traced to the 13th century. Though solid documentation discusses the popularity of the sport in the 1700s, it first found its place in the Rocky Mountain region in 1869, according to the Colorado Cricket League.
Maini does his part to keep the sport here alive by playing with his two sons.
"On Sundays, as a family we play cricket," he said. "It is tradition."
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On the Net:
Colorado Cricket League: http://www.coloradocricket.org/
Jun 22 18:22
By The Associated Press
Available @ Amazon
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In the run-up to this weekend's release of "The Love Guru," self-described Hindu leader Rajan Zed began blasting e-mail releases to media outlets (including The Associated Press) from his Nevada home, stating his objections to the Mike Myers comedy when it was still a two-minute trailer.
While the movie avoids explicit connections to Hinduism, Zed's concerns center on the frivolous use of Hindu terms -- gurus, the ashram, karma, yoga -- and crude allusions to its traditions. The potential for stereotyping was great, he argued, because the culture is not widely understood in America.
Paramount, which has previewed sensitive films to select audiences in the past, said in a March statement that "It is our full intention to screen the film for Rajan Zed and other Hindu leaders once it is ready." Zed said his repeated requests for an early screening were unmet, however, and he continued his campaign after buying a ticket this weekend.
In search of another perspective, the AP asked Vasudha Narayanan, a distinguished professor of Hinduism in India & the Diaspora at The University of Florida, to see the movie with one question in mind: Could "Love Guru" be seen as an affront to Hindus?
Narayanan, who is not connected to Zed and is too quick with a laugh to seem easily offended, was game. She thought she knew what she was getting into when she and her 22-year-old son went to a Saturday matinee in Gainesville, Fla.
"What can I say?" she said shortly after leaving the theater. "Having raised two boys, I think I could handle the most puerile sense of humor. I wasn't offended, I was just ... it was sick!"
At only one point did Narayanan, who holds a Ph.D. from The University of Bombay, say she truly cringed: "When I saw the guru peeing into the bucket -- it's easy for people to take offense at this, especially, if this is associated with guru behavior," she said, offering the caveat that "by that time it was so over-the-top that it almost didn't register."
In her own words, here are Narayanan's thoughts on "The Love Guru."
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"Guru," in many Indian languages, means "heavy" or "huge," suggesting the profound nature of a spiritual teacher's advice. The tag line for "The Love Guru" is "His Karma is Huge," but alas, the only thing heavy about the movie is the puerile humor.
The new Mike Myers movie is so obviously a farce that it is hard to take it seriously. How else can one view a guru riding an elephant named Bodhisattva (a primarily Buddhist figure), surrounded by Hollywood glitz, and who longs to be on "The Oprah Winfrey Show"?
There are, of course, some traditional messages embedded in the story, but they are crusted with toilet humor that borders on the fetid.
The movie spoofs gurus, pop-psychology, Freud, self-help czars, Bollywood movies -- all classic targets for lampooning -- and had it not been for the continued scatological lines, could have even been amusing.
Audience members over 40 will recognize several references that recall the gurus and movements of the '60s: Rajneesh, TM (transcendental meditation), etc. -- people and organizations that became famous in India after gaining popularity in the West. Some of the rare moments that evoked spontaneous laughter were those that showed starlets dressed up in Hindi-movie costumes and doing Bollywood dances.
One such "Guru" moment -- one that many Indians will immediately find familiar -- is the scene in which Guru Pitka (Myers) meets Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba). Recognizing her as a soulmate, the guru's mind drifts into a classic and oft-repeated Bollywood movie scene, where Lord Krishna and his girlfriend, Radha, frolic in a pastoral set against the backdrop of Hindi film music. (This is a traditional trope in Indian culture -- earlier this year, an Internet cartoon making its rounds in India portrayed Barack Obama as Krishna and Hillary Rodham Clinton as Radha.)
But there are others -- like the moment the master guru in India urinates into a bucket, or the several graphic portrayals of boogers -- that not only Hindus would find distinctly puerile (a word, by the way, from the Latin "puerilis," etymologically connected with the Sanskrit-Indian word "putra," or son).
But is this movie offensive to Hindus?
In answering the question, one has to remember that the Hindu traditions are exceptionally diverse; there is a wide range of opinion on practically every issue. Just about everyone I know loves the character Apu from "The Simpsons" and are happy that an Indian character has become part of mainstream entertainment. Still, there are a few who think the animated convenience-store owner is just another outrageous stereotype.
Most Hindus, however, have a good sense of humor and can make fun of their religion. From Sanskrit texts to the many vernacular movies, from dramas to even temple sculpture in India, religions are the subject of not just respect, but also satire and parody.
However, all that is "in-house" humor, and Hindus feel comfortable laughing at themselves or an imagined "other." When a movie is made by outsiders and comes with all the clout of Hollywood, and this becomes a lens through which Americans may perceive Hinduism -- like the second "Indiana Jones" film -- some Hindus in the diaspora become concerned. And unlike the "Harold and Kumar" films, which poke fun at the "model-minority" Asian stereotype, "The Love Guru" ostensibly deals with religion, one that is frequently misunderstood by the media.
That said, the movie is not overtly anti-Hindu -- or even anti-guru. It is as much a spoof of American followers as it is of gurus, Indian or American. In the end, it is just crass -- and does a good job offending many sensibilities, not just Hindu ones.
One could argue that there are some traditional messages embedded in the plot -- these illustrate lines that we hear in many religious traditions (including Hinduism) and New Age movements, or from self-help teachers.
Darren Roanoke, the Toronto Maple Leafs star, cannot be victorious unless he controls himself first; and to do this, he has to face his insecurities and his fears. Guru Pitka must learn to put others before himself, succeeding only after passing up a coveted slot on "Oprah." We have to love ourselves before we can love others. One has to have confidence in one's abilities and not fear evil.
And one has to learn to laugh, really laugh, to let go and be natural and in harmony with life.
Too bad there are few such real laughs in the movie!
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On the Net:
Vasudha Narayanan: http://tinyurl.com/3tuvkr
Jun 19 03:22
By RICHARD COCKLE
The Oregonian
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JOHN DAY, Ore. (AP) -- When herbalist Ing Hay died at age 89 in 1952, he'd built a reputation for medical cures that some claimed touched on the supernatural.
Now, researchers are wondering whether some of the 1,500 herbal prescriptions left behind by "Doc" Hay in this frontier gold mining town might not contain treatments still undiscovered by 21st century medical practitioners.
A cure for cancer might be too much to hope for -- but perhaps not, said Christina Sweet curator of the Kam Wah Chung & Co. Museum in John Day. "People say he was able to cure about anything."
The recently refurbished museum is operated by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, in the same fortresslike stone building where Hay lived and worked from 1887 until shortly before his death.
Sweet said representatives of Harvard Medical School and the University of Alabama, among others, recently have expressed interest in the treatments left behind by the "China Doctor."
Hay, "is just the tip of the iceberg of a host of Chinese doctors who were taking care of American patients" in the 19th and early 20th centuries, said Cambridge, Mass., researcher Linda Barnes. But what sets Hay apart are the documents remaining that describe the things he did, she said.
Barnes is an associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine. She wrote "Needles, Herbs, Gods and Ghosts: Chinese Healing and the West Until 1848," and visited the museum last month.
"It is almost as if he just left," she said. "We can see what herbs he was using. We can see his prescriptions. We can see the letters from his patients."
Erected between 1860 and 1870, the Kam Wah Chung building was constructed of a local stone called "rattlesnake tuft" and encompasses Hay's modest living quarters and a general store, medical office and pharmacy.
Hay was born in 1862 in Hsia Pin Li, a village in southern China. He was about 19 when he immigrated to the "Gum Sam" or "Golden Mountain," as frontier-era Chinese called the Western United States. Initially, he worked in the gold mines, according to a 1979 biography, "China Doctor of John Day," by Jeffrey Barlow and Christine Richardson.
At that time, Chinese immigrants made up about 25 percent of Oregon's population. Records in the 1870s suggest 3,330 Chinese lived along the John Day, Powder and Rogue rivers alone. Around John Day and Canyon City, most labored in the mines, where an estimated $26 million in gold was panned from the streams or gouged out of the mountains between 1862 and 1885. An 1879 census recorded 960 whites and 2,468 Chinese miners in the John Day-Canyon City area, although Sweet says the actual count of Chinese probably was closer to 4,000.
Chinese laborers were forbidden to bring wives to America or to marry white women. As a consequence of such federal immigration laws as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, they became a bachelor society. Only three Chinese women are believed to have lived in the John Day area in the gold rush years, Sweet said.
Life was hard and dangerous for the Chinese. Cowboys and miners were wont to drunkenly gallop their horses through Chinatown, shooting wildly, said Judith Bracken, a museum guide, and the door of the museum sports a large-caliber bullet hole. Such antics prompted Hay to install a second door of louvered steel to prevent lead from penetrating the building after he'd barred the door for the night.
"It was the wild, wild West," Bracken said. "They were riding fast, and they weren't really aiming, and they thought they were having fun."
By 1920, the mining boom ended and the Chinese all but disappeared. Some departed for jobs on farms, ranches and the Columbia River fish canneries, or returned to China, Sweet said. A few became cowboys. Doc Hay and his business partner Lung On remained in John Day.
By then, Hay's reputation for his medical skills was such "that people were coming to him from Utah and Nevada and from all over Idaho and Oregon and Washington and northern California," Sweet said.
Most of his patients were non-Chinese, and more than half were women, she said. He became famous for his treatments of blood poisoning, meningitis, lumbago, stomach ailments, hemorrhage, influenza, gynecological problems and the common cold, Sweet said.
On one occasion, Hay was briefly charged with practicing medicine without a license, Sweet said. The white community's respect for his abilities was so great that no judge would preside over a trial and nobody would sit on the jury. The charges were dropped.
Some John Day-area residents still recall being treated by Hay when they were children, Sweet said. They describe "going in there, and it being kind of dark, and being scared. But we have wonderful stories of him being able to cure stuff nobody else could."
Occasionally, he would suggest a patient visit a Western doctor. " 'He's not going to do anything for you, but come back when you've tried him,' " he would say.
Hay practiced "pulse diagnosis," an ancient technique of feeling a patient's pulse for irregularities. Sometimes he looked at a tongue or smelled someone's breath. Without asking, Hay then would tell them where their pain was centered, diagnose the problem and prescribe a remedy consisting of as many as 52 herbs.
After his death, the Kam Wah Chung building was padlocked and forgotten for nearly 20 years. When it was reopened in the 1970s, officials found 20,000 pages of his papers, including 1,500 detailed accounts of herbal remedies he administered between 1900 and 1920, Sweet said.
"The problem we have, everything is written in Chinese," and perhaps only one-fiftieth of the papers have been translated, Sweet said.
Hay never became fluent at speaking English, and John Day's remoteness has hampered efforts to translate documents from the Chinese, she said. Tim Lucas, a graduate student at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, helped translate some of Hay's papers in the early 1990s.
The Department of Parks and Recreation is seeking grants to get Hay's documents digitized and scanned into a computer so they can be sent elsewhere and translated.
Curiously, when the Kam Wah Chung house was reopened, local officials discovered uncashed checks totaling $23,000, written by his patients between 1902 and 1929. Hay may have known those patients were struggling financially and didn't have the heart to cash their checks.
Officials also discovered 96 bottles of unopened
pre-Prohibition-era whiskey between ceiling rafters and under the
floor.
The building is a time capsule revealing much about the Chinese medical arts of the era and about the life of the Chinese in eastern Oregon, Sweet said. Letters, journals, business records and containers of 500 separate herbs, only 200 of which have been identified, also were found.
When Hay himself needed medical treatment, however, no other "China doctor" was around to care for him. He was hospitalized in Portland after breaking his hip in a fall and then spent four years in a nursing home. Barlow and Richardson say he contracted pneumonia and died after being left untended on a cold metal table while receiving X-rays. At his own request, he was buried in John Day.
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On the Net:
Kam Wah Chung & Co. Museum: http://www.oregonstateparkstrust.org/OurWork/EasternOR/kamwahchung
Chinese Exclusion Act: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/statutes/chinese--exclusion--act.htm
Jun 23 22:36
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) -- Striker Tiffany Snow and goalkeeper Amy Tran are among the 16 players who will travel to Beijing as part of the U.S. Olympic field hockey team.
USA Field Hockey announced the roster Monday. The United States will make its first Olympic field hockey appearance since 1996.
The Americans earned their Olympic berth by winning a qualifying tournament in April. Snow scored six goals in that tournament, including the one that put the U.S. ahead to stay in a 3-1 victory over Belgium in the final game.
Tran is one of six players on the team who went to college at North Carolina, and Snow is one of four from Old Dominion.
The other 14 Americans are: midfielder Kate Barber, midfielder Kayla Bashore, defender Lauren Crandall, defender Rachel Dawson, defender Kelly Doton, defender Katelyn Falgowski, striker Jesse Gey, midfielder Carrie Lingo, striker Angie Loy, defender Caroline Nichols, midfielder Lauren Powley, striker Dina Rizzo, midfielder Dana Sensenig and striker Keli Smith.
Goalkeeper Barb Weinberg and defender Sara Silvetti were listed as alternates.
The U.S. opens its Olympic schedule Aug. 10 against Argentina. Britain, Germany, Japan and New Zealand are also in the Americans' group.
Jun 19 20:05
By GREGG AAMOT
Associated Press Writer
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Enrollment in Minnesota's charter schools increased by more than 4,000 students during the 2007-2008 school year, the largest one-year jump since charter schools opened in 1991, the Center for School Change said Thursday.
An increase of 4,337 students pushed enrollment to 28,206, nearly triple the number of students who were enrolled in the schools during the 2000-01 school year, the center said. Previously, the largest increase was during the 2004-05 school year, which saw an increase of 3,298 students from the year before.
"We have surveyed parents at a number of schools across the state, and people like the small class size and the individualized attention, and they feel that their kids are safe and the programs are distinctive," explained Joe Nathan, the director of the center, which is part of the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute.
Charter schools are publicly funded schools run by parents and teachers that have greater autonomy than traditional public schools. They are meant to spur innovation, and some of them specialize in a particular language or the arts, or cater to new immigrant groups, such as the Hmong.
Minnesota has been a pioneer in the charter school movement -- it passed the country's first law to create such schools -- and the state had 143 charter schools during the past school year, according to the center.
Since their inception, charter schools have been popular in Minneapolis and St. Paul, where low-income families or immigrant and refugee families with limited English speaking skills have felt underserved by traditional public schools.
But the Center for School Change said charter school enrollment is growing in suburban and rural areas, as well. In fact, if some far outer ring Twin Cities schools are counted -- such as Forest Lake -- then there are now more charter schools and charter school students in the suburbs than in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Nathan said.
Meanwhile, since the 2001-02 school year, the number of students attending traditional public schools in Minnesota has declined from 831,535 to 796,757, a drop of about 4.2 percent. Traditional schools lose thousands of dollars for each student that opts for a charter school, and officials have questioned the mission of the alternative schools.
Tom Dooher, president of Education Minnesota, the teachers union, said charter schools have gone beyond their original intent of being "an incubator of ideas" and are becoming "niche schools" for specific cultures and languages.
"Public schools are supposed to be the great equalizer that brings people together," he said.
He added: "We're not afraid of choice and we know parents want that. But we want to do it in a systematic way rather than through these small measures."
Charlie Kyte, executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators, said the new numbers show him families like the choices and smaller schools that charters offer. But he also said public schools have been subjected "to an unfair and continuing barrage of criticism" because the federal No Child Left Behind law "puts schools in a much worse light than they really are."
He also pointed out that some 96 percent of all public school students opt for traditional schools.
"We understand that the state made a decision to allow choice," he said. "As school superintendents we're accepting of that. We're not very happy about that. And especially at a time when the enrollments across the state are declining, so there are fewer students to populate all of our schools."
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On the Net:
The Center for School Change: http://www.centerforschoolchange.org
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