Thursday, December 10, 2009

“Dalai Lama To Make 6th Visit To Bloomington In May - Indiana's News Center” plus 4 more

“Dalai Lama To Make 6th Visit To Bloomington In May - Indiana's News Center” plus 4 more

Dalai Lama To Make 6th Visit To Bloomington In May - Indiana's News Center

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 07:25 AM PST

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - The Dalai Lama will teach about the "heart" of Buddhism during his sixth visit to Bloomington next May and also present a public talk in Indianapolis.

The Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center, founded by the Dalai Lama's brother south of Bloomington, announced the May schedule on its Web site. It says the 74-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate will discuss the "heart sutra" during three lessons at the Indiana University Auditorium May 12 and 13. A sutra is a teaching of Buddha.

The cultural center says details of his talk in Indianapolis on May 14 will be released later.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)


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fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger

Hanesbrands Inc. to Send High School Student on Cultural Adventure to ... - Yahoo Finance

Posted: 09 Dec 2009 11:44 AM PST

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Hanesbrands Inc., which is leading an expedition to climb Mount Everest in Spring 2010, announced today that it will take a local high school student to the world's highest mountain to help inspire other students to plan and set ambitious goals in life – their own symbolic Everests.

Expedition Hanesbrands will select one student from Carver High School in Winston-Salem, along with a school chaperone and a parent or guardian, to make the three-week trip in May 2010 to Mount Everest base camp in Nepal.

[Interactive news release available at http://akamediainc.com/SMNR/whats_your_everest-1024.html]

The student will experience the nonclimbing aspects of a Mount Everest expedition and Himalayan life. The cultural immersion and learning opportunity will include several days in Katmandu, the capital of Nepal, and a 15-day roundtrip walking trek to Everest base camp for a one-night visit with the climbing team at 17,700 feet.

"Mount Everest is so much more than a peak to summit," said international mountaineer, motivational speaker and Expedition Hanesbrands leader Jaime Clarke. "It's a symbol for how you set your goals, how you live your life, how you can be a better person. Any successful Mount Everest expedition is about planning, preparation, self-awareness and respect for the mountain and the culture of the area. This will be a once-in-a-lifetime learning experience for our Carver High School teammate."

Hanesbrands and its employees have partnered with Carver High School in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools district for more than 20 years supporting students' academic achievement and citizenship.

The Carver High School student, parent and chaperone are expected to be chosen by mid-February. Clarke and Carver High School Principal Nate Barber announced the student trek and the selection process today in a school assembly.

Interested students will write an essay discussing the topic "What's Your Everest" and what such a trip would mean to them. They will also interview with a selection panel.

"This is a wonderful opportunity for our students," Barber said. "It's our job as educators to challenge our students every day, and the trip to Nepal will show them how setting goals and working toward them can pay off in extraordinary ways."

Participation in Expedition Hanesbrands will be unlike any other Hanesbrands-Carver High partnership program. After a short flight from Katmandu, the guided trek begins in the village of Lukla at 9,250 feet in elevation and proceeds through the Khumbu Valley, where there are no mechanized vehicles. Commerce and everyday life depend on goods transported by humans and animals, including the ever-present yak. The trekkers will cross suspension bridges, hike along rivers, traverse valleys with vistas of towering Himalayan peaks, and visit villages, shopping bazaars and lodges to experience Sherpa culture firsthand.

"The trek is absolutely awe-inspiring," said Clarke, 41, who has climbed the highest peak on every continent. "It won't involve mountain climbing, but it will be challenging and will require determination. The Khumbu Valley is beautiful and is the perfect setting for inspiration, self-reflection and immersing yourself into a culture that is very different than North America."

The expedition team will be equipped with audio, video and Internet-based communications technology so that the school district trekkers can share their experience through frequent updates with the Winston-Salem community through the Expedition Hanesbrands Web site: www.climbwithus.com.

Expedition Hanesbrands

Hanesbrands and its Champion and Duofold apparel brands are leading the Mount Everest expedition to showcase the company's research and development innovation and to market the brands' activewear and base layer products.

The expedition team, including Hanesbrands employees, completed a Himalayan test climb and trek to base camp in October. When he climbs Everest, Clarke will be testing new cutting-edge apparel, including socks, base layer, insulating layer, and soft- and hard-shell garments, developed by Hanesbrands R&D team using more than 100 years of expertise and product innovation in the company's Champion athletic apparel and Duofold base layer product lines.

In January 2010, Hanesbrands expects to unveil a one-of-a-kind summit suit designed to keep Clarke warm and mobile in the high winds and severe cold on the highest reaches of 29,035-foot Everest, the highest peak in the world.

The expedition features two Web sites where people already can follow the progress of the team, including viewing a series of inspirational "What's Your Everest" video vignettes from Jamie Clarke.

Expedition Hanesbrands' ClimbWithUs.com Web site features articles about Everest, Nepal, Sherpas and the gear developed for the expedition team; frequent audio, photo and video expedition updates; and content provided by outdoor adventure freelance writers Stephen Regenold and Stephanie Pearson. Twitter users may follow the expedition at http://twitter.com/ClimbWithUs.

A second Web site, Champion Apparel's "Climb Everest With Us," houses an online community for users to declare their own personal Everest goal for a chance to win $10,000 to fulfill their dream. The site is located at www.ClimbEverestWithUs.com.

Each entry will be featured on the site where visitors can share, view and comment. The site acts as an online community that allows others to provide support and advice to those who have submitted an entry. A Facebook application allows participants to directly link to their personal Facebook pages for easy sharing of dreams with friends.

Other Web site content includes expedition updates, photos, gear information and Champion apparel information. The site also has a "What's Your Everest?" video filmed by students at the North Carolina School for the Arts.

About Champion

Champion offers a full line of innovative athletic apparel for men and women including sport bras, activewear, team uniforms, sweats and accessories. Champion can be purchased at most sporting goods and department stores. For more information about Champion for men and women, visit www.championusa.com.

About Duofold

Introduced in 1906, Duofold is a leader in base layer apparel for men, women and children. As an outfitter of the National Ski Patrol, Professional Ski Instructors of America and American Association of Snowboard Instructors, Duofold is the expert in helping winter athletes and outdoor enthusiasts perform at their best even under the most challenging weather conditions. Duofold is best known for its popular Varitherm and Originals cold-weather products. For more information visit www.duofold.com.

About Hanesbrands Inc.

Hanesbrands Inc. is a leading marketer of everyday apparel essentials under some of the world's strongest apparel brands, including Hanes, Champion, Playtex, Bali, JMS/Just My Size, barely there and Wonderbra. The company sells T-shirts, bras, panties, men's underwear, children's underwear, socks, hosiery, casualwear and activewear produced in the company's low-cost global supply chain. Hanesbrands has approximately 45,000 employees in more than 25 countries. More information about the company may be found on the Hanesbrands Internet Web site at www.hanesbrands.com.

Based in Winston-Salem, N.C., Hanesbrands was named one of the 10 best companies supporting arts in America in 2009 by the Business Committee for the Arts, a division of Americans for the Arts.

Hanesbrands began its award-winning partnership with Carver High School in 1986 to support school programs that help students achieve academic and citizenship success. The partnership incorporates volunteers from Hanesbrands and has created numerous ongoing programs, including student and teacher recognition programs, mentoring programs and a drug awareness and testing program.

fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger

Brian Kelly takes Notre Dame coaching job, leaves angry Cincinnati ... - Bridgeton News

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 08:32 PM PST

CINCINNATI  -- Notre Dame has settled on Brian Kelly as the man who can restore its faded glory, just as he turned Cincinnati into a national title contender.

He's leaving behind an undefeated and upset Cincinnati team that didn't seem prepared to lose him despite rampant speculation that the job was his.

"He went for the money," receiver Mardy Gilyard told The Associated Press after Kelly told players of his decision, nearly three hours after the news broke. "I'm fairly disgusted with the situation, that they let it last this long."

Only 10 days after Charlie Weis was fired, Notre Dame picked the Irish Catholic coach to revive a program coming off the worst decade in its storied history -- a 70-52 record and three losing seasons. Kelly, who earned the Home Depot National Coach of the Year award on Thursday night, signed a five-year contract and will be introduced at news conference Friday afternoon in South Bend.

"I am very pleased that a thorough and extensive search has led us to a new head coach in Brian Kelly, who I am confident will help us accomplish our goal of competing for national championships," Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick said in a news release.

Kelly officially takes over Monday, starting the job he has always wanted.

When Kelly's name was linked to Notre Dame's search last week, he told his players that he was happy in Cincinnati. A few days later, he said he would listen to Notre Dame's offer, but still sounded like he would be around to coach the No. 4 Bearcats (12-0) against Florida in their first Sugar Bowl appearance.

Instead Cincinnati athletics director Mike Thomas decided offensive coordinator Jeff Quinn -- an assistant to Kelly for the last 22 years -- will run the team on an interim basis.

The parting was painful.

The team held its annual football banquet at a downtown hotel on Thursday night. As players arrived for what was supposed to be a night of celebration, they were greeted by camera crews and reporters asking about Kelly's decision to leave Cincinnati for Notre Dame.

Three hours later, players were told to gather in a meeting room so Kelly could share the news that most already knew.

One minute into the meeting, the door opened and Gilyard walked out angry and alone, save his MVP trophy. His teammates soon followed, some with teary eyes. They had a difficult time accepting that Kelly was leaving one of the nation's top teams before its biggest bowl game.

"We already knew what he was going to say. We weren't giving him a round of applause or anything," tight end Ben Guidugli said. "It's like somebody turned their back on us. We brought this whole thing this far. We've come this far. To have someone walk out now is disappointing."

Kelly's statements leading up to a title-clinching win over Pittsburgh last Saturday made it harder to accept.

"The Tuesday when we were practicing for Pittsburgh, he said he loves it here and he loves this team and loves coaching here and his family loves it here," quarterback Tony Pike said.

Notre Dame was one of the few jobs Kelly has always coveted. Guidugli said Kelly thanked the players for making the move possible by doing so well on the field.

The 47-year-old Kelly was 34-6 in three seasons at Cincinnati, leading the Bearcats to back-to-back Big East titles and two straight Bowl Championship Series berths. The Bearcats set a school record last season for victories with an 11-3 record, then topped that with a 12-0 mark this season. They finished third in the BCS rankings, barely missing out on the title game.

When Kelly arrived in Cincinnati three years ago, then-university president Nancy Zimpher told Kelly she expected him to turn the football program into a Top 25 mainstay, win a Big East title right away and make sure his players graduate. He'll face even higher expectations at Notre Dame.

He goes to South Bend with slightly less job security than previous coaches.

The last three Notre Dame coaches got six-year deals -- Weis, Tyrone Willingham and George O'Leary. Weis signed a new 10-year deal midway through his first season, and O'Leary resigned five days after being hired following the 2001 season when it was revealed he didn't have the master's degree in education that he claimed. The last coach to get a five-year deal was Bob Davie when he took the job after the 1996 season.

No matter. Kelly has long admired Notre Dame, though turning the program around won't be easy. The Irish have a 16-21 record over the past three seasons. And he'll have to do it without two of Notre Dame's best players.

Quarterback Jimmy Clausen and his favorite receiver, Golden Tate, announced Monday they will bypass their senior seasons and enter the NFL draft.

Tate, speaking in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., after winning the Biletnikoff Award as the nation's best receiver, said he doesn't know a lot about Kelly.

"He seems to be a guy of high character. I'm excited for him. I think he's good for the Irish," Tate said.

Offensive lineman Christian Lombard, a high school senior from Palatine, Ill., who has committed to play for the Irish next season, said he was excited about the hire.

"I'm really optimistic. He's got a great track record so hopefully he's going to get things turned around," Lombard said. "From the time coach Weis got fired, he was the guy I wanted."

Kelly grew up in Chelsea, Mass., and went to Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester where he played linebacker while getting his degree in political science. The son of an alderman, he intended to go into politics after college and he even worked on Gary Hart's 1984 presidential campaign in the Boston area.

But football won out.

He learned how to be a head coach at Division II Grand Valley State in Michigan, where he won back-to-back national titles and 32 consecutive games over one stretch. He moved on to the Mid-American Conference and turned Central Michigan into a winning program in only three years.

Kelly was criticized in September 2004 for remarks he made to the Detroit Free Press about perjury charges filed against two former Central Michigan players after other CMU players were charged with second-degree murder in the fatal beating of a man.

"A number of them were African-Americans that had been in that culture of violence, and they're taught to look away," Kelly said. "You don't want anything to do with it. Get out of there. You don't say anything to anybody."

In 2006, when Mark Dantonio left Cincinnati for Michigan State, UC decided Kelly and his no-huddle, spread offense would bring a spark not just to the program but to the town, where college football ranked behind high school games in fan interest.

The Bearcats won 10 games his first season, set a school record with 11 wins and a Big East title the second and this season he had the high-scoring Bearcats (12-0) contending for a national title.

Gilyard said some players were angry Kelly is leaving just as the program had become nationally prominent.

"Just blindsided by the fact that it's a business," Gilyard said. "People lose sight of that. At the end of the day, NCAA football is a business. People have got to make business decisions."

fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger

Dalai Lama to return to Indiana next year - Courier-Journal

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 08:40 PM PST

The Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, plans a visit and series of teachings in May 2010 in Bloomington and Indianapolis, Ind.

The Dalai Lama's visit to Bloomington will be his sixth. He has had longstanding ties to the community since his brother, Thubten J. Norbu, joined the Indiana University faculty in the 1960s and later founded the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Culture Center. Norbu died in 2008.

On a previous visit to Bloomington in 2003, the Dalai Lama shared a stage with Louisville-native Muhammad Ali.

The Dalai Lama will give a series of teachings on "The Heart Sutra" at Indiana University Auditorium on May 12 and 13. The sutra is regarded as the "heart" of Buddhism "as it expresses the importance of compassion and wisdom," according to the announcement.

Details on tickets and other information are expected to be posted shortly at the center's Web site, www.tmbcc.net.

Also, details of a May 14 appearance in Indianapolis are expected to be released in January.

The Dalai Lama this week spoke at the Parliament of World Religions, an interfaith gathering in Melbourne, Australia.

Former longtime Louisville resident Michael Fitzpatrick performed an original cello composition, "Invocation for World Peace," after the Dalai Lama's talk there.

Fitzpatrick will be performing during the Dalai Lama's Indiana visit and has done so at similar appearances of the Dalai Lama since a 1996 dialogue of Catholic and Buddhist monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Nelson County, Ky.

Reporter Peter Smith can be reached at (502) 582-4469.

fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger

Thomas Hoving, Remaker of the Met, Dies at 78 - New York Times

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 08:40 PM PST

Thomas Hoving, the charismatic showman and treasure hunter whose tenure as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1967 to 1977 fundamentally transformed the institution and helped usher in the era of the museum blockbuster show, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 78.

The cause was lung cancer, his wife, Nancy, said.

One of the breed of brash, self-mythologizing leaders like Mayor Edward I. Koch who came to define New York in the 1970s, Mr. Hoving spent a whirlwind year running the city's parks before taking over the Met at a time when it was, as many thought and as he boldly told trustees, "moribund," "gray" and "dying."

He became its seventh director and, at 35, its youngest. And during his tumultuous reign the museum did many things it had never done before, often for the better, sometimes for the worse. It formed a contemporary art department and displayed Pop painting alongside Poussin and David; regularly draped the now-familiar banners on its facade to advertise shows; created the enlarged front steps that have become Fifth Avenue's bleachers; paid $5.5 million for a single painting (the Velázquez masterpiece "Juan de Pareja") while quietly selling works by van Gogh, Rousseau and others to help pay for it.

The museum also opened new galleries dedicated to Islamic art, organized a major reinstallation of its Egyptian wing and set in motion an expansion program that eventually resulted in a much larger American wing, a glass-walled addition for the Temple of Dendur, a wing for the arts of Africa, the Pacific Islands and the Americas, and a new southwest wing, now dedicated to modern and contemporary art.

Two years into his tenure, the Met received the largest donation of art in its history, the collection of the investment banker Robert Lehman. A new $7 million pavilion to display it — functioning essentially as a museum within the museum — opened in 1975.

In his establishment-rattling mission to make the art museum a more populist institution, Mr. Hoving was "probably the most influential and innovative museum official of the postwar period," Michael Kimmelman wrote in The New York Times.

Philippe de Montebello, who worked for many years under Mr. Hoving and succeeded him as director, said on Thursday: "People criticized him for his excesses, but you have to remember that it is not the timorous who climb life's peaks. He has left us with a changed museum world."

Mr. Hoving helped greatly enlarge the Met's collections, often in dramatic fashion, letting few things, least of all shame, stand in his way. A rangy 6-foot-3 man with boyish, at times explosive energy, he described how he once pleaded with a dealer who knew about the medieval ivory masterpiece known as the Bury St. Edmunds cross, telling him: "I am being devoured by this cross. I want it, I need it."

He outmaneuvered the Smithsonian Institution to get the crowd-pleasing Temple of Dendur and helped save an entire Prairie House by Frank Lloyd Wright, whose living room was meticulously reassembled in the American Wing.

But the story of probably his greatest acquisition coup — an exquisite 2,500-year-old Greek vase adorned by the master painter Euphronios, bought in 1972 for $1 million — did not end as happily.

Even before the vase, known as a krater, went on display, experts contended that it had been wrested illicitly from an Etruscan tomb near Rome. In 2006, after years of demands from the Italian government, the Met agreed to return the vessel to Italy in exchange for long-term loans of other antiquities.

'Reputation as a Shark'

Mr. Hoving admitted in "Making the Mummies Dance: Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art," his rollicking 1993 memoir about his years at the Met, that he knew that the vase, which he jokingly called the hot pot, had probably been smuggled out of Italy. But he made no apologies for his ask-questions-later approach to acquisitions, one he had formed as early as his days as a curator at the Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum's medieval branch in Washington Heights.

"My collecting style was pure piracy, and I got a reputation as a shark," he wrote, adding that his little black book of "dealers and private collectors, smugglers and fixers" was bigger than anyone else's.

Despite his braggadocio, Mr. Hoving, the son of a Fifth Avenue merchandising tycoon, proved to be an able administrator and budgeteer. Even during the city's fiscal crisis, when many other large cultural institutions were in the red, the museum was usually able to balance its books, and its merchandising operation grew tremendously during his years, eventually contributing more than $1 million in annual income.

But Mr. Hoving tended to receive more attention for his temporary contributions to the Met than for his permanent ones. Along with J. Carter Brown, the director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington from 1969 to 1992, he was one of the architects of the blockbuster exhibition, which introduced to the Met's galleries the carnival atmosphere of a summer movie opening.

Mr. Hoving defended such shows against criticism that they cheapened the museum and that they were intended solely to plump attendance and admission-fee income. "Great art should be shown with great excitement," he once said, citing an observation by a previous Met director that the museum is the "midwife of democracy."

"And damn it, it is!" he said.

fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger
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