John Hook
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Give Me the Candy, but You Can Keep the Scares
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Halloween is over. The celebration that, for many of us, marks the beginning of the holiday season has concluded. We’re past the days of full harvest and more than a month into our descent to darkness in the northern hemisphere – days when the hours of sunlight are overshadowed by the hours of night. Many…
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Information Tactics Used to Battle COVID Could Help Against Heart Disease, Too
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For the last 18 months one of the least desirable jobs in journalism has belonged to Geoff Rushton, the editor of this website. Seven days a week he creates the article on this site that reports the number of COVID cases that Centre County and Pennsylvania added the previous day. He updates the graphic with…
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Bereaved Parents Need Understanding and Support After Pregnancy and Infant Loss
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Humans in general find many things to worry about in their lives. Young people, especially, find things to worry about that gain outsize importance as they make their way through each day — things like fitting in, what their peers think about them, grades, family issues, the future, finding a partner and getting a good…
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One Solution to Pennsylvania’s Future Road Funding Dilemma, and It Can Start Now
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A few months ago I saw a Facebook post by a woman who uploaded a video of a man vandalizing her Tesla automobile in a parking lot. She posted the video in an attempt to find the vandal and bring him to justice. My first thoughts were probably similar to those of everyone else who…
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Despite Conventional Wisdom, Local Businesses Know How to Survive
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The Gap. Eddie Bauer. Abercrombie & Fitch. And now H&M. What do these national ready-to-wear retail chains have in common? All had a store in downtown State College and closed. Or, in the case of H&M, will close in less than two weeks. This goes against a common refrain I have often heard over the…
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A Lesson in Growth for Pennsylvania from the Beehive State
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The U.S. Census Bureau recently released initial data from the 2020 census count. As of April 1, 2020 the population of the United States of America was 331,449,281, a 7.4% increase from 2010. On a local basis this is good news for those folks in Happy Valley who are adverse to growth and want our…
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Penn State Should Rethink Football Mobile Ticketing Policy
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Along with probably tens of thousands of other Nittany Lion football ticketholders, I received a momentous email from Penn State Athletics at a little after 5 p.m. last Wednesday. It was an email that continued the process of what many of us hope is a return to hanging out in Beaver Stadium with 107,000 of…
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How NIL Opportunities for College Athletes Could Elevate American Soccer on the Global Stage
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They are finally on! The Summer Olympics from Tokyo are here. Starting on July 23 and running until Sunday, Aug. 8, NBCUniversal will present more than 7,000 hours of content across all its networks and streaming platforms. That’s over 291 days worth of Olympic coverage. Granted, a good portion of that – more than 5,000…
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Roads to the Future
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Frank Zappa once said, “You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” On a smaller scale, John Hook says, “You can’t be a real city…
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NIMBY, Etiquette and Pleasant Valley Sundays
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In today’s language, an earworm is not a worm, nor does it have much to do with your ear. It’s a song or melody that keeps repeating in your mind. Ever since returning to State College 15 years ago an oldie-but-goodie song has occasionally given me an earworm that reminds me of Happy Valley. The…