John Hook

The arts are alive and well in Happy Valley. The opportunities we have to immerse ourselves in creativity are pretty darn good for a community of fewer than 100,000 people. But there are many communities around the country of similar size or smaller than ours where arts are not available in multiple

Here we are on April 10, and one week from today your tax returns are due. If you haven’t filed yet, dreaming of being an accountant isn’t going to help you. You need to start dreaming of finding an accountant.

There are lots and lots of good kids in Happy Valley, which makes you wonder what they have to look forward to if they pursue basketball to the next step and beyond.

Since I am a Happy Valley and Penn State homer, I wondered how much of a connection Penn State has to the competitors in these Winter Olympic Games. We all know the names of plenty of Penn Staters who competed in the Summer Olympics. But not a single Penn Stater in South Korea.

Connecting with people in the same physical space is, for lack of a better term, a human birthright. We are social animals and need people. That means real people, not people within your phone. So how do we get the youth of today, and the rest of us, to focus a bit more on people…

With the closing of the Rathskeller, State College will lose one of the places that has contributed to its rich sense of community, writes John Hook. And the question becomes, is that how we want to do things? How do we maintain the spirit and life that is Happy Valley, so that it remains happy?

What a great holiday season this turned out to be for the youth of Happy Valley. The children of the Centre Region should soon enjoy the benefits of the largest park ever built in this area.