PAGE 8A
MONDAY, APRIL 23, 2012
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
CULTURE
ASHLEIGH LEE/KANSAN
Jess Hase, a local resident, Debolina Ghosh, a sophomore from Michigan, Nirailee Parikh, a junior from Overland Park, and Hanvir Sanghera, a junior from Olathe, rub chalk on each other as part of the Holi, or Festival of Colors, Saturday afternoon on Watkins lawn. Holi is a Hindu holiday that celebrates the end of winter and the beginning of spring. "It's a fun holiday," Parkk said. "It brings the community together and even when you don't know someone, it's appropriate to slap come colors on them."
Students slap on some color during Hindu spring holiday
HANNAH BARLING
editor@kansan.com
editor@kansan.com
XIN LI editor@kansan.com
To celebrate the coming of spring and mark harvest time for farmers, Hindus hold a religious festival called Holi. The South Asian Student Association and Cultural India Club at KU co-hosted its second annual celebration of Holi on Saturday.
"We tried to bring all of this kind of celebration to campus," Tiwari said. "It's just to keep it as a culture on campus because language by itself is not enough."
Geetanjali Tiwari, a coordinator of the South Asian Studies Program of the Center for Global and International Studies, said the organization tries to keep the Indian culture alive on campus by hosting these types of cultural events.
Participants celebrate the festival by throwing colored, chalk-like powder at each other, feast on Indian cuisine and play music. The naturally colored powder, originally composed of turmeric,
"We walk around colored in school for weeks because the color doesn't come off for a while," said Shubbankar Mathur, a freshman from New Delhi, India.
rose petals, saffron, sandal paste and fruit extract, acts as a cosmetic to promote healthy skin. More recently, though, people began using chemically based powder for a longer-lasting color.
Traditional Indian food was served at the festival. Entrees included poha, a rice dish, bhel puri, a spicy trail mix snack and chokla, a cornflower-based bread dish.
"We have food everywhere when we celebrate Holi back in India, much more than the festival here, but it was nice to have the traditional food," Mathur said.
Holi is a social time for reconciliation and signifies the triumph of good over evil that relates back to Hindu mythology. Hindus believe it is a time of enjoying spring's abundant colors and saying farewell to winter.
"Saturday's celebration took me back to the times when I was young and celebrated Holi back in India.
It was nice to speak to some Indian friends here in Hindi," Mathur said.
Deep Singh, vice president of the University South Asian Student Association, said best way to spread culture is through fun activities, and Holi is one of the most fun festivals to celebrate together. Singh's face was fully colored by red, green and purple powder after the 20-minute "color battle."
"It's a fair game. Look, everyone is having such a great time and everyone is so blessed," Singh said. "Anybody can get involved in any culture and there are not really barriers."
The University's Holi celebration attracted many newcomers to the festival.
"Ive never heard of the Festival of Colors until last week when my friends were talking about it. It was fun to see a traditional festival of another culture and experience it with my friends," Emily Jones, a freshman from Lindsborg, said.
- Edited by Christine Curtin
WILDLIFE
TARA BRYANT/KANSAN
To celebrate Earth Day on Sunday, the Prairie Park Nature Center unveiled its newest addition: Harlem, a black-footed ferret. The black-footed ferret is the rarest mammal in North America and is currently on the federal endangered-species list.
Lawrence adopts rare ferret for Earth Day
REBEKKA SCHLICHTING
rschlichting@kansan.com
Lawrence is a new home for a black-footed ferret named Harlem.
This may not sound surprising at first, since ferrets are a common domestic animal, but Harlem is a descendant of one of the 18 survivors of the endangered species.
Most domestic ferrets originated in Europe and Asia, but black-footed ferrets are native to North America. In the 1950's, this species was believed to be extinct, until a few were spotted in South Dakota. In 1987, there only were 18 living black-footed ferrets. From then, the ferrets were placed in captivity until 1991, when some of the ferrets were slowly released to their natural habitats. Today, there are 200 ferrets in recovery sites in Canada, the United States, and northern Mexico, and there are approximately 1,000 in North American prairies.
"Black-footed ferrets are important because they were here before we were," Dan Mulhern, a biologist with the U.S. Fishing and Wildlife Services, said. "They became endangered because of actions that people took. It's only right that the actions that people take are to bring them back."
Black-footed ferrets have become an endangered species because of the decrease in their main food source, prairie dogs. Farmers and ranchers have been poisoning prairie dogs throughout the past century. Also, their habitat is shrinking because of farming lands, towns and residences.
Part of a black-footed ferret recovery project released 24 ferrets on two ranches in western Kansas in 2007. The U.S. Fishing and Wild Life Service biologists observe the ferrets twice a year. At the end of the ferrets' first year on ranches, eight survived and 16 more were born. Since then, their population has increased to a high of 106 ferrets.
"We are excited and lucky to be one of the three captivities in Kansas that has an endangered ferret," said Marty Birrell, director of Prairie Park Nature Center. Lee Richardson Zoo and Hutchinson Zoo are the other two facilities homing black-footed ferrets.
Harlem was debuted to a crowd for the first time, on Sunday at Prairie Park Nature Center during its Earth Day program.
Harlem is 6 years old, which is middle-aged for a ferret kept in captivity. She was named after the suburb of New York City in honor of the
9-11 victims.
The Nature Center received the ferret from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center in Wellington, Colo. Harlem is retired from breeding, after giving birth to five males, who were released into the wild, and two females, who were kept by the conservation center to continue the process of repopulating.
"Once the ferrets are retired from breeding, they can't be released back into the wild," said Heather Morgan, naturalist at the Prairie Park Nature Center. "They are kept in their captive environment until they die. So this is a good opportunity for Harlem to educate people one-on-one about the species."
The Prairie Park Nature Center plans to feature Harlem in its on-site endangered species programs.
"They are part of the natural ecosystem," Mulhern said. "We don't know what role they may be playing in the environment and the ecosystem and if we start taking away parts of the complex machine we call an ecosystem, things might start to crumble that we find important to us."
Edited by Caroline Kraft