Mark Brackenbury, Town&Gown

Let’s call it a tale of two weekends, and one very changeable – and adaptable – valley. On the clear, cool Sunday morning of October 13, I did something I must sheepishly admit to never having done before: I climbed Mount Nittany. Now, the legions of central Pennsylvanians and others who’ve already conquered…

When Liberty Lutheran purchased The Village at Penn State in 2012, leaders began looking at ways to add more amenities to the senior living community. Dave DeLuca, Liberty’s director of real estate development, “took a shot out of the blue.” Years earlier, DeLuca had worked with golf legend Arnold Palmer, a Latrobe native…

As Penn State kicked off its 1995 football season, one fashion statement at Beaver Stadium struck a chord with me. It was a shirt featuring helmets of the Nittany Lions and the Nebraska Cornhuskers, one facemask facing the other. Underneath were these words: ANY TIME! ANY PLACE!! The shirt embodied the frustration many…

Yogi Berra once famously said, “It gets late early out there.” Yogi wasn’t speaking of August, but his words certainly apply. It seems like summer just ramped up, but our thoughts are quickly turning to fall. To me, there’s no better time of year around here, so that’s not such a bad thing. No…

The State College Area School District’s Delta Program is on the move. Students and staff will have a new home as the school year begins, leaving the longtime space in the Fairmont Building downtown for new quarters at the high school on Westerly Parkway. The Delta Program was founded in 1974 as the…

BookFest is back to open another chapter on July 13, and Maria Burchill says she is looking forward to the “look of fascination” on the faces of visitors as they interact with favorite authors. More than 20 authors and artists are expected at Schlow Centre Region Library for the event, which celebrates “Comics to…

“Let’s talk.” Those words lead our cover this month, and we devote a number of pages inside this magazine to play what we hope is at least a small role in encouraging an important, but sometimes uncomfortable, dialogue on race in our community. What’s it like to be a person of color in…