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A Penn State Love Story: Evan and Rebecca Valentine Pugh
In The Legends of the Nittany Valley, a unique and fun mythology emerges for the places in and around Penn State, but our community also has its own real-life fairy tale: The story of the tragically short-lived love between Rebecca Valentine and Evan Pugh, the University’s founding president. Pugh is a truly remarkable figure. If it’s…
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The Grand Experiment’s Hidden Stat
Some have called it “Paterno’s Payback.” Others term it “superlative.” Others still have just been wonderfully, spontaneously emotional about the whole thing. No matter how you choose to express it, ever since the Freeh Report handed down its “absurd” indictment of the Penn State “culture,” we have all gotten a little more outwardly defensive about the consistently high academic standards maintained by the…
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Graduate School and the Value of Extended Time in the Nittany Valley
“5… 4… 3… 2… 1… HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” I hear that same countdown every night, a few seconds before midnight, from my Beaver Avenue apartment, although its consistency makes it no less painful to digest. The commotion, of course, is coming from the line outside the local bar known for catering to belligerent 21st birthday crowds.…
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Joy of Christmas Spirits
Today, it is not unusual to enter a bar and find a laundry list of exotic beers on tap or to hear news of a local brew pub or microbrewery opening up. Such was not the case in 1984 (only five years after the legalization of homebrewing) when the editor of the Centre Daily Times…
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Why Mount Nittany is on Every Penn Stater’s Bucket List
I wrote the following for Onward State in The Magic of Mount Nittany to introduce The Story of Mount Nittany and to speak to why Mount Nittany tends to be on every Penn Stater’s bucket list: In “The Legends of the Nittany Valley,” folklorist Henry Shoemaker records some of the American Indian and settler stories…
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An Opportunity, Not a Punishment
As I write this, Penn Staters everywhere are still celebrating the immediate restoration of Penn State’s football scholarships and bowl eligibility. We are all happy for the kids on the team and the coaching staff (and of course, for ourselves as fans too). Great opportunities await a deserving, hard-working group. As part of an organization dedicated to…
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An Ode to Zeno’s
Onward State published a feature this morning wherein various staff members profiled their favorite local watering holes. Kevin Horne contributed a truly poetic paean to Zeno’s Pub, that famous purveyor of craft beer “located directly above the center of the Earth.” Kevin earns extra points for shouting out the Nittany Valley Press book, The Birth of the Craft Brew Revolution. We chose…
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Women’s Sports at Penn State: A Story Worth Celebrating
In the September issue of Town&Gown, celebrating 50 years of women’s sport at Penn State, there appears a profile of Penn State’s leadership in the age of Title IX. Taken in conjunction with Penn State sports historian Lou Prato’s article on the formative years preceding the law’s passage in 1972, it illuminates a legacy of…
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Happy Valley’s Magical Magnetism
You can already sense it here in the Valley. Before you know it, tens of thousands of students will make their way back to Penn State for another academic year. Soon after, tens of thousands more fans, alumni, and friends will follow them for seven Autumn weekends, many who are drawn back to a place they…
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Sugar-Coating Lessons from the Past
This weekend, I picked up a copy of “The Opening Kickoff: The Tumultuous Birth of a Football Nation” by BTN studio host Dave Revsine. With tonight’s Hall of Fame game set to usher in another season of pro football and just under 30 days until the Lions kick off the James Franklin era in Ireland,…
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New Life for the Old Willow
Although it has long been commemorated with a campus historical marker, many modern Penn Staters do not know the story of Old Willow, the University’s oldest tradition. Two recent graduates, Brenden Dooley and Jordan Harris, hope that will soon change. By Jordan Harris The duty of summarizing the history of Penn State’s Old Willow was…
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A Surprise Princess Nittany Sighting
I recently wrote about the presence of Princess Nittany throughout the community for our regular online column with Town & Gown. From downtown murals to student movies, our local hero manifests in numerous forms around the Nittany Valley. Yesterday, I encountered her in a rather unlikely spot: a 1985 football poster issued by Anheuser-Busch. I had the good…
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Discovering Princess Nittany
Who is Princess Nittany? Put simply, she is the Nittany Valley’s answer to Hercules, King Arthur, and Luke Skywalker — she’s a legendary champion who embodies virtues such as strength, heroism, wisdom, and compassion, and whose story helps define and strengthen a people’s sense of themselves. Like the proud Pennsylvania mountain lion who represents both…
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If ‘the World is Flat,’ Then Mount Nittany and the Nittany Valley Matter More Than Ever
In The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Friedman’s central insight is that globalization and Information Age technology work in tandem to diminish the distinctiveness and importance of location—of physical place. Nearly a decade after his book’s 2005 release, this “world is flat” thinking has seeped into almost every pore of…
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Penn State and the Ghosts of Blue/White Past: 1994
Thanks to the quirks of this year’s calendar, Penn State’s annual intra-squad scrimmage will be upon us earlier than usual and is now just a week away (let’s hope to avoid a repeat of last year’s wind and snow). Much has changed for the program since the Lions last capped off Spring practice with a Blue-White…
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