Coffeeshophia

Inside U.S. Cricket’s Shocking Victory

When the players on the U.S. men’s cricket team showed up at a stadium outside Dallas on the morning of June 6, they were well aware that few people who knew anything about the sport gave them a chance of winning. That the match was even taking place was curiosity enough. Their opponent was Pakistan, one of the great cricketing powers. In Pakistan, cricket is the nation’s most popular sport, whereas in the U.S. many are surprised that America even has a cricket team of its own. The two teams had never faced off before. The website for USA Cricket contends that “America has one of the richest cricketing histories” of any country, but the argument is a dubious one. A timeline offers a few bright early moments—it notes, for instance, that in 1754, Benjamin Franklin brought a cricket rule book over from England; reports that the very first international cricket match took place in New York (America versus Canada, in 1844); and asserts that, at one time, there were up to 1,000 cricket clubs across the country. But it mostly details the waning of the sport, eclipsed by baseball in American life. From the 1960s onward, descriptions of purported achievements by U.S. national teams almost invariably include a phrase that lets slip the underlying reality: “narrowly miss out,” “bottom of their pool,” “not quite enough.”When the players on the U.S. men’s cricket team showed up at a stadium outside Dallas on the morning of June 6, they were well aware that few people who knew anything about the sport gave them a chance of winning. That the match was even taking place was curiosity enough. Their opponent was Pakistan, one of the great cricketing powers. In Pakistan, cricket is the nation’s most popular sport, whereas in the U.S. many are surprised that America even has a cricket team of its own. The two teams had never faced off before. The website for USA Cricket contends that “America has one of the richest cricketing histories” of any country, but the argument is a dubious one. A timeline offers a few bright early moments—it notes, for instance, that in 1754, Benjamin Franklin brought a cricket rule book over from England; reports that the very first international cricket match took place in New York (America versus Canada, in 1844); and asserts that, at one time, there were up to 1,000 cricket clubs across the country. But it mostly details the waning of the sport, eclipsed by baseball in American life. From the 1960s onward, descriptions of purported achievements by U.S. national teams almost invariably include a phrase that lets slip the underlying reality: “narrowly miss out,” “bottom of their pool,” “not quite enough.”When the players on the U.S. men’s cricket team showed up at a stadium outside Dallas on the morning of June 6, they were well aware that few people who knew anything about the sport gave them a chance of winning. That the match was even taking place was curiosity enough. Their opponent was Pakistan, one of the great cricketing powers. In Pakistan, cricket is the nation’s most popular sport, whereas in the U.S. many are surprised that America even has a cricket team of its own. The two teams had never faced off before. The website for USA Cricket contends that “America has one of the richest cricketing histories” of any country, but the argument is a dubious one. A timeline offers a few bright early moments—it notes, for instance, that in 1754, Benjamin Franklin brought a cricket rule book over from England; reports that the very first international cricket match took place in New York (America versus Canada, in 1844); and asserts that, at one time, there were up to 1,000 cricket clubs across the country. But it mostly details the waning of the sport, eclipsed by baseball in American life. From the 1960s onward, descriptions of purported achievements by U.S. national teams almost invariably include a phrase that lets slip the underlying reality: “narrowly miss out,” “bottom of their pool,” “not quite enough.” When the players on the U.S. men’s cricket team showed up at a stadium outside Dallas on the morning of June 6, they were well aware that few people who knew anything about the sport gave them a chance of winning. That the match was even taking place was curiosity enough. Their opponent was Pakistan, one of the great cricketing powers. In Pakistan, cricket is the nation’s most popular sport, whereas in the U.S. many are surprised that America even has a cricket team of its own. The two teams had never faced off before. The website for USA Cricket contends that “America has one of the richest cricketing histories” of any country, but the argument is a dubious one. A timeline offers a few bright early moments—it notes, for instance, that in 1754, Benjamin Franklin brought a cricket rule book over from England; reports that the very first international cricket match took place in New York (America versus Canada, in 1844); and asserts that, at one time, there were up to 1,000 cricket clubs across the country. But it mostly details the waning of the sport, eclipsed by baseball in American life. From the 1960s onward, descriptions of purported achievements by U.S. national teams almost invariably include a phrase that lets slip the underlying reality: “narrowly miss out,” “bottom of their pool,” “not quite enough.”When the players on the U.S. men’s cricket team showed up at a stadium outside Dallas on the morning of June 6, they were well aware that few people who knew anything about the sport gave them a chance of winning. That the match was even taking place was curiosity enough. Their opponent was Pakistan, one of the great cricketing powers. In Pakistan, cricket is the nation’s most popular sport, whereas in the U.S. many are surprised that America even has a cricket team of its own. The two teams had never faced off before. The website for USA Cricket contends that “America has one of the richest cricketing histories” of any country, but the argument is a dubious one. A timeline offers a few bright early moments—it notes, for instance, that in 1754, Benjamin Franklin brought a cricket rule book over from England; reports that the very first international cricket match took place in New York (America versus Canada, in 1844); and asserts that, at one time, there were up to 1,000 cricket clubs across the country. But it mostly details the waning of the sport, eclipsed by baseball in American life. From the 1960s onward, descriptions of purported achievements by U.S. national teams almost invariably include a phrase that lets slip the underlying reality: “narrowly miss out,” “bottom of their pool,” “not quite enough.” When the players on the U.S. men’s cricket team showed up at a stadium outside Dallas on the morning of June 6, they were well aware that few people who knew anything about the sport gave them a chance of winning. That the match was even taking place was curiosity enough. Their opponent was Pakistan, one of the great cricketing powers. In Pakistan, cricket is the nation’s most popular sport, whereas in the U.S. many are surprised that America even has a cricket team of its own. The two teams had never faced off before. The website for USA Cricket contends that “America has one of the richest cricketing histories” of any country, but the argument is a dubious one. A timeline offers a few bright early moments—it notes, for instance, that in 1754, Benjamin Franklin brought a cricket rule book over from England; reports that the very first international cricket match took place in New York (America versus Canada, in 1844); and asserts that, at one time, there were up to 1,000 cricket clubs across the country. But it mostly details the waning of the sport, eclipsed by baseball in American life. From the 1960s onward, descriptions of purported achievements by U.S. national teams almost invariably include a phrase that lets slip the underlying reality: “narrowly miss out,” “bottom of their pool,” “not quite enough.”When the players on the U.S. men’s cricket team showed up at a stadium outside Dallas on the morning of June 6, they were well aware that few people who knew anything about the sport gave them a chance of winning. That the match was even taking place was curiosity enough. Their opponent was Pakistan, one of the great cricketing powers. In Pakistan, cricket is the nation’s most popular sport, whereas in the U.S. many are surprised that America even has a cricket team of its own. The two teams had never faced off before. The website for USA Cricket contends that “America has one of the richest cricketing histories” of any country, but the argument is a dubious one. A timeline offers a few bright early moments—it notes, for instance, that in 1754, Benjamin Franklin brought a cricket rule book over from England; reports that the very first international cricket match took place in New York (America versus Canada, in 1844); and asserts that, at one time, there were up to 1,000 cricket clubs across the country. But it mostly details the waning of the sport, eclipsed by baseball in American life. From the 1960s onward, descriptions of purported achievements by U.S. national teams almost invariably include a phrase that lets slip the underlying reality: “narrowly miss out,” “bottom of their pool,” “not quite enough.”When the players on the U.S. men’s cricket team showed up at a stadium outside Dallas on the morning of June 6, they were well aware that few people who knew anything about the sport gave them a chance of winning. That the match was even taking place was curiosity enough. Their opponent was Pakistan, one of the great cricketing powers. In Pakistan, cricket is the nation’s most popular sport, whereas in the U.S. many are surprised that America even has a cricket team of its own. The two teams had never faced off before. The website for USA Cricket contends that “America has one of the richest cricketing histories” of any country, but the argument is a dubious one. A timeline offers a few bright early moments—it notes, for instance, that in 1754, Benjamin Franklin brought a cricket rule book over from England; reports that the very first international cricket match took place in New York (America versus Canada, in 1844); and asserts that, at one time, there were up to 1,000 cricket clubs across the country. But it mostly details the waning of the sport, eclipsed by baseball in American life. From the 1960s onward, descriptions of purported achievements by U.S. national teams almost invariably include a phrase that lets slip the underlying reality: “narrowly miss out,” “bottom of their pool,” “not quite enough.”

Coffeeshophia

An Intoxicating 500-Year-Old Mystery

Lisa Fagin Davis was starting her medieval-studies Ph.D. at Yale in 1989 when she got a part-time job at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her boss was the curator of early books and manuscripts, and he stuck her with an unenviable duty: answering letters from the cranks, conspiracists, and truthers who hounded the library with questions about its most popular holding. In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969.Lisa Fagin Davis was starting her medieval-studies Ph.D. at Yale in 1989 when she got a part-time job at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her boss was the curator of early books and manuscripts, and he stuck her with an unenviable duty: answering letters from the cranks, conspiracists, and truthers who hounded the library with questions about its most popular holding. In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969.Lisa Fagin Davis was starting her medieval-studies Ph.D. at Yale in 1989 when she got a part-time job at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her boss was the curator of early books and manuscripts, and he stuck her with an unenviable duty: answering letters from the cranks, conspiracists, and truthers who hounded the library with questions about its most popular holding. In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969.Lisa Fagin Davis was starting her medieval-studies Ph.D. at Yale in 1989 when she got a part-time job at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her boss was the curator of early books and manuscripts, and he stuck her with an unenviable duty: answering letters from the cranks, conspiracists, and truthers who hounded the library with questions about its most popular holding. In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969.Lisa Fagin Davis was starting her medieval-studies Ph.D. at Yale in 1989 when she got a part-time job at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her boss was the curator of early books and manuscripts, and he stuck her with an unenviable duty: answering letters from the cranks, conspiracists, and truthers who hounded the library with questions about its most popular holding. In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969.Lisa Fagin Davis was starting her medieval-studies Ph.D. at Yale in 1989 when she got a part-time job at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her boss was the curator of early books and manuscripts, and he stuck her with an unenviable duty: answering letters from the cranks, conspiracists, and truthers who hounded the library with questions about its most popular holding. In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969.Lisa Fagin Davis was starting her medieval-studies Ph.D. at Yale in 1989 when she got a part-time job at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her boss was the curator of early books and manuscripts, and he stuck her with an unenviable duty: answering letters from the cranks, conspiracists, and truthers who hounded the library with questions about its most popular holding. In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969.Lisa Fagin Davis was starting her medieval-studies Ph.D. at Yale in 1989 when she got a part-time job at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her boss was the curator of early books and manuscripts, and he stuck her with an unenviable duty: answering letters from the cranks, conspiracists, and truthers who hounded the library with questions about its most popular holding. In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969.Lisa Fagin Davis was starting her medieval-studies Ph.D. at Yale in 1989 when she got a part-time job at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her boss was the curator of early books and manuscripts, and he stuck her with an unenviable duty: answering letters from the cranks, conspiracists, and truthers who hounded the library with questions about its most popular holding. In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969.Lisa Fagin Davis was starting her medieval-studies Ph.D. at Yale in 1989 when she got a part-time job at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her boss was the curator of early books and manuscripts, and he stuck her with an unenviable duty: answering letters from the cranks, conspiracists, and truthers who hounded the library with questions about its most popular holding. In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969.Lisa Fagin Davis was starting her medieval-studies Ph.D. at Yale in 1989 when she got a part-time job at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her boss was the curator of early books and manuscripts, and he stuck her with an unenviable duty: answering letters from the cranks, conspiracists, and truthers who hounded the library with questions about its most popular holding. In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969.Lisa Fagin Davis was starting her medieval-studies Ph.D. at Yale in 1989 when she got a part-time job at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her boss was the curator of early books and manuscripts, and he stuck her with an unenviable duty: answering letters from the cranks, conspiracists, and truthers who hounded the library with questions about its most popular holding. In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969. Lisa Fagin Davis was starting her medieval-studies Ph.D. at Yale in 1989 when she got a part-time job at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her boss was the curator of early books and manuscripts, and he stuck her with an unenviable duty: answering letters from the cranks, conspiracists, and truthers who hounded the library with questions about its most popular holding. In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969.

Coffeeshophia

To Save the World, My Mother Abandoned Me

When I was in grade school, my prized possession was a button. It went on my quilted coat in the winter, and my jean jacket in the spring, and when it got too hot, I’d reluctantly pin it to my book bag. This was the ’80s, and buttons featuring Smurfette or Jem were sartorial staples. Still, my button stood out. Vote Socialist Workers it said, and below that: GonzÁlez for Vice-President. It had a photograph of a woman’s face in profile: black hair, big glasses, ribbed turtleneck, determined look. My mother.When I was in grade school, my prized possession was a button. It went on my quilted coat in the winter, and my jean jacket in the spring, and when it got too hot, I’d reluctantly pin it to my book bag. This was the ’80s, and buttons featuring Smurfette or Jem were sartorial staples. Still, my button stood out. Vote Socialist Workers it said, and below that: GonzÁlez for Vice-President. It had a photograph of a woman’s face in profile: black hair, big glasses, ribbed turtleneck, determined look. My mother.When I was in grade school, my prized possession was a button. It went on my quilted coat in the winter, and my jean jacket in the spring, and when it got too hot, I’d reluctantly pin it to my book bag. This was the ’80s, and buttons featuring Smurfette or Jem were sartorial staples. Still, my button stood out. Vote Socialist Workers it said, and below that: GonzÁlez for Vice-President. It had a photograph of a woman’s face in profile: black hair, big glasses, ribbed turtleneck, determined look. My mother.When I was in grade school, my prized possession was a button. It went on my quilted coat in the winter, and my jean jacket in the spring, and when it got too hot, I’d reluctantly pin it to my book bag. This was the ’80s, and buttons featuring Smurfette or Jem were sartorial staples. Still, my button stood out. Vote Socialist Workers it said, and below that: GonzÁlez for Vice-President. It had a photograph of a woman’s face in profile: black hair, big glasses, ribbed turtleneck, determined look. My mother. When I was in grade school, my prized possession was a button. It went on my quilted coat in the winter, and my jean jacket in the spring, and when it got too hot, I’d reluctantly pin it to my book bag. This was the ’80s, and buttons featuring Smurfette or Jem were sartorial staples. Still, my button stood out. Vote Socialist Workers it said, and below that: GonzÁlez for Vice-President. It had a photograph of a woman’s face in profile: black hair, big glasses, ribbed turtleneck, determined look. My mother. When I was in grade school, my prized possession was a button. It went on my quilted coat in the winter, and my jean jacket in the spring, and when it got too hot, I’d reluctantly pin it to my book bag. This was the ’80s, and buttons featuring Smurfette or Jem were sartorial staples. Still, my button stood out. Vote Socialist Workers it said, and below that: GonzÁlez for Vice-President. It had a photograph of a woman’s face in profile: black hair, big glasses, ribbed turtleneck, determined look. My mother.When I was in grade school, my prized possession was a button. It went on my quilted coat in the winter, and my jean jacket in the spring, and when it got too hot, I’d reluctantly pin it to my book bag. This was the ’80s, and buttons featuring Smurfette or Jem were sartorial staples. Still, my button stood out. Vote Socialist Workers it said, and below that: GonzÁlez for Vice-President. It had a photograph of a woman’s face in profile: black hair, big glasses, ribbed turtleneck, determined look. My mother. When I was in grade school, my prized possession was a button. It went on my quilted coat in the winter, and my jean jacket in the spring, and when it got too hot, I’d reluctantly pin it to my book bag. This was the ’80s, and buttons featuring Smurfette or Jem were sartorial staples. Still, my button stood out. Vote Socialist Workers it said, and below that: GonzÁlez for Vice-President. It had a photograph of a woman’s face in profile: black hair, big glasses, ribbed turtleneck, determined look. My mother.When I was in grade school, my prized possession was a button. It went on my quilted coat in the winter, and my jean jacket in the spring, and when it got too hot, I’d reluctantly pin it to my book bag. This was the ’80s, and buttons featuring Smurfette or Jem were sartorial staples. Still, my button stood out. Vote Socialist Workers it said, and below that: GonzÁlez for Vice-President. It had a photograph of a woman’s face in profile: black hair, big glasses, ribbed turtleneck, determined look. My mother.When I was in grade school, my prized possession was a button. It went on my quilted coat in the winter, and my jean jacket in the spring, and when it got too hot, I’d reluctantly pin it to my book bag. This was the ’80s, and buttons featuring Smurfette or Jem were sartorial staples. Still, my button stood out. Vote Socialist Workers it said, and below that: GonzÁlez for Vice-President. It had a photograph of a woman’s face in profile: black hair, big glasses, ribbed turtleneck, determined look. My mother.When I was in grade school, my prized possession was a button. It went on my quilted coat in the winter, and my jean jacket in the spring, and when it got too hot, I’d reluctantly pin it to my book bag. This was the ’80s, and buttons featuring Smurfette or Jem were sartorial staples. Still, my button stood out. Vote Socialist Workers it said, and below that: GonzÁlez for Vice-President. It had a photograph of a woman’s face in profile: black hair, big glasses, ribbed turtleneck, determined look. My mother. When I was in grade school, my prized possession was a button. It went on my quilted coat in the winter, and my jean jacket in the spring, and when it got too hot, I’d reluctantly pin it to my book bag. This was the ’80s, and buttons featuring Smurfette or Jem were sartorial staples. Still, my button stood out. Vote Socialist Workers it said, and below that: GonzÁlez for Vice-President. It had a photograph of a woman’s face in profile: black hair, big glasses, ribbed turtleneck, determined look. My mother.When I was in grade school, my prized possession was a button. It went on my quilted coat in the winter, and my jean jacket in the spring, and when it got too hot, I’d reluctantly pin it to my book bag. This was the ’80s, and buttons featuring Smurfette or Jem were sartorial staples. Still, my button stood out. Vote Socialist Workers it said, and below that: GonzÁlez for Vice-President. It had a photograph of a woman’s face in profile: black hair, big glasses, ribbed turtleneck, determined look. My mother.