Columns
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Dancing Down the Street Like a Dingledodie
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I read Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” 50 years ago. When I saw a copy lying around the house last week, I took it to mean it was time to read it again. How that book had fired me up! Me and every other teenager who knew, even if we grew up in a definite…
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Moments Matter
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As the “Great Pause” restrictions start to relax and we begin to re-engage in more of our normal social activities, my wife, Heidi, and I experienced one of those moments in life that you remember forever. We took an amazing early morning hot air balloon ride over Happy Valley with pilot Kevin Witt of The Sky’s…
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Voting for School Board Directors Is a Decision with a Personal Financial Impact
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Today is municipal primary Election Day in Pennsylvania. For decades that statement has carried with it an air of urgency, responsibility and decision-making. You woke up in the morning knowing that today was one of the two days this year when you would partake in that most democratic of processes and go cast your ballot…
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State College’s Good Day Café Guides a Kindred New Coffee Shop on the Jersey Shore
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It was no ordinary business meeting in State College’s Good Day Café on the morning of April 1. All five participants were far too enthusiastic. And even though the joe is always hearty at the coffee shop at 286 W. Hamilton Ave., something more powerful than caffeine was energizing this gathering. Everyone at the table…
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NCAA’s Anticipated New Name, Image, Likeness Rule Comes with Downsides
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The NCAA this spring is rocketing toward allowing student-athletes to earn money using their own names, images and likenesses (NIL). This is being hailed as a revolutionary step forward that will free college student-athletes. At this point, if the NIL horse ain’t out of the barn yet, that horse is at least three-quarters of the…
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How Should We Pick Penn State’s Next President? Thoughts from the Star-Man in the Well
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Universities are sui generis, which is a fancy way of saying that they’re not businesses or governments or non-governmental organizations or bowling leagues. They’re their own thing – nothing else quite like them. I bring this up amid staff and faculty concerns about the way Penn State has launched its search for a successor to…
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Nature’s Ways: The Often Overlooked Trout-Lily
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“Trout Time” it is, with anglers lining local streams, but it is also time for an often overlooked wildflower — the trout-lily. Trout-lily is a small yellow wildflower that is so named because its leaf coloration resembles the speckled coloration of Pennsylvania’s native brook trout. Trout-lily is a long-lived perennial wildflower. It occurs in suitable…
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This Wild Housing Market Makes for Tough Decisions
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If you are like most people in this country, you have spent more time sheltering in place during the pandemic than you could have possibly imagined. Aside from COVID cabin fever over the past year, another pandemic-related phenomenon has emerged in this time like no other: the most head-scratching housing market since 2009. The current…
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Inflation: What Is It and Should We Worry?
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While the economy, earnings and employment show positive movement, demand is up but the shortage of supplies is leading to higher prices.
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Armed with Hugs and Inner Strength, Lydia Abdullah Is My Pick for Happy Valley Mother of the Year
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She arrived in Happy Valley as a Penn State freshman in 1972, and she’s never left. She married her college sweetheart, gave birth to two children and now dotes joyfully on three grandchildren. But even though she brims with pride over those loved ones, Lydia Abdullah has never limited the exercise of her motherly gifts to…