John Hook
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A Happy Valley Fix-It List for 2023
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The holiday season in Happy Valley is one of our annual downtimes – those weeks or months every year when the 45,000 Penn State students mostly leave the area and we find ourselves back to small-town, middle-of-nowhere status. Fall commencement was held on Saturday, Dec. 17 (Penn State graciously delayed the start that morning due…
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An Ode to Trader Joe’s
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According to the U.S. Department of Commerce Retail Indicator Division, total retail sales in this country for 2021 were $6.6 trillion. That’s a lot of money. And the supermarkets and grocery stores industry is the third largest component of the retail industry by market size, generating over $811 billion in sales. Which if we do…
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Looking Out for No. 2
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In keeping with the standard practices of the motion picture and television industries, I’m providing this disclaimer: the following material may be suitable for mature audiences only. In fact, I’m hoping mature audiences pay attention to it because there is a lifesaving message at the end. In September 1972, a groundbreaking album was released that…
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Opinion: The Philadelphia Effect
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In the penultimate moment of the 2016 Marvel movie ”Doctor Strange,” the title character leaves a fight against three zealots and ascends into the sky to meet a villain who has come to destroy the earth. Upon meeting this villain – named Dormammu – Doctor Strange announces, “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain!” At the end…
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Turn Down the Lights and Tune Out Tensions with These 10 Movies
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I can feel the tension in the air in Happy Valley. One week from today we will go to the polls and vote. In a country where the standard is a government by the people, exercised by periodically-held free elections, faith in the election process is a must. The belief among some that it might…
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A Geographic Epiphany
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I recently had a local geographic epiphany. Nine years ago we moved from the east side of State College Borough to Ferguson Township west of the borough. Granted, I’m unhappy this placed us into the municipality with the highest resident earned income tax in the State College Area School District at 2.35% (remind me not…
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An Open Letter to Penn State AD Patrick Kraft
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An open letter to Dr. Patrick Kraft, Penn State Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics. Dear Pat, Welcome to Happy Valley. You’ve been in your job for three months now, and in the workforce I’m familiar with that would mean you’ve passed your 90-day probationary period and are here to stay. Congratulations! The primary purpose of…
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Opinion: Booze for Sale in Beaver Stadium? It’s About Time
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This past weekend the Penn State football team went down south and defeated an SEC team. Almost 40 years ago many of us witnessed a different Penn State football team go down south to play an SEC school and come away with a similar result. It was the early evening hours of Saturday, Jan. 1,…
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Like a Good Neighbor
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The United States Code is “a consolidation and codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States,” and is produced in a Main Edition hard copy every six years. The most recent edition, produced in 2018, is approximately 60,000 pages long and takes up 54 volumes as prepared by the…
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On the Return of Students, the Worth of College and Penn Staters in Congress
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The great annual migration has occurred! Like the historic return of the swallows to Capistrano, tens of thousands of young people have migrated back to Penn State. Except, unknown to most people, many of the swallows stopped returning to the Mission San Juan Capistrano because remodeling to the Mission affected their habitat. Fortunately or unfortunately,…