John Hook
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Leverage NIL to Lift Up Student Athletes Who Don’t Get Full Scholarships
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Last Wednesday, Ben Jones published a column on this website in which he posed five questions for Penn State head football coach James Franklin. The last of which had to do with the “ever changing Name Image and Likeness (NIL) landscape.” The premise was that it appears Penn State is still behind in this NIL…
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By Talking About Death, We Realize We’re Not on Our Own
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It was early in the evening of Sunday, November 4, 1984 when my future wife and I, and two very good friends, were allowed in the south side ground-floor door of Rec Hall. The door was serving as our own personal handicap entrance since my future wife was on crutches and unable to navigate the…
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Spiritual Director, Celebrant and End-of-Life Doula: My Wife’s Unusual Job Titles Mean Helping People Through Difficult Times
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President, nurse, truck driver, doctor, sales associate, cook, teacher, judge, accountant, web designer, dog trainer, receptionist, superintendent, real estate agent, electrician. These and thousands of other titles like these describe the jobs people have – and in many cases what they aspire to be (“I want to be an astronaut when I grow up!). The…
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Crafting the Happy Valley Experience for First-Timers
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My wife and I drove down to Washington, D.C. on Friday afternoon for a long scheduled fun weekend with our daughter. On Saturday evening, we had a rooftop cookout at our daughter’s apartment building for her and a few of her friends. Yes, it’s come to that – the old boomer parents regaling their millennial…
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Nittany Mall Casino Doesn’t Mean the Downfall of Happy Valley
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When I turned on my computer the other day a pop-up box appeared in the lower right-hand corner of my screen. It was from the Norton Security program/app, which is designed to stop viruses, malware and other nasty things from infecting my computer. The pop-up informs me of a “Data Security Incident” that has occurred…
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On Sacred Ground
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“You are walking on Sacred Ground.” Those are the first words on the sign at the entrance to the cemetery at Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge. The words “Sacred Ground” are capitalized, signifying their importance. The chapel and its cemetery are part of an active parish which was built in the early 1900s to…
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A Personal View on Abortion, Roe and Voting Decisions
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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This is the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, and was approved by Congress on…
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Flying the Friendly Skies Again
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After two years of various masking requirements, millions of Americans are back to some semblance of normalcy – at least for now. When the mask restrictions were eliminated two weeks ago in airports and on airplanes – one of the last bastions of federal control that serve a huge amount of people daily – it…
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The Composition of Penn State’s Board of Trustees Needs to Change
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A little over a week ago, my annual email from the Penn State Board of Trustees appeared in my inbox, requesting that I cast my ballot for alumni-elected members to the board. It was an email that I had expected because a week or two before that trustee campaign signs started popping up on the…
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A Time to Reconnect
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This past weekend my wife and I did something we haven’t done in more than two years. Late Saturday afternoon, we went to a good friend’s house and had a great time at a party with about 30 other friends. We spent five hours socializing and catching up with people we hadn’t seen in a…