Russell Frank
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Happy Chrismukkah!
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It’s a harmonic convergence: Christmas today/Hanukkah tonight. I have excellent credentials as your columnist-du-jour: I’m Jewish but I’ve twice married women who grew up with visions of sugar plums, not latkes, dancing in their heads at this time of year. As a result of these exogamous unions, I have had a Christmas tree in my…
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Psst, Wanna Rent My House Next Weekend?
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If I were smart about money – which I’m not – I’d quickly get me one of those short-term rental permits from the Borough of State College, rent out my house for the Dec. 21-22 weekend and dash off to New York City for a dose of holiday cheer. Some of you, I’m sure, are…
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Spencer Bivens: A Thankful Giant Is Back in Town
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Last week was awards week in Major League Baseball. Spencer Bivens didn’t win any of them. His team, the San Francisco Giants, didn’t make the playoffs. Free agent outfielder Juan Soto is expected to sign a contract worth more than $600 million this winter. Bivens won’t command anywhere near that kind of money. A disappointing…
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Election Post-Mortem – and I Do Mean Mortem
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The morning after the Great Debacle, I lay down in my backyard and gazed at the sky. Inside, on my laptop, was the ephemeral – politics, presidents, punditry. Out here was the eternal — round clouds drifting eastward, glimpses of blue in the gaps between them. A dark flock flew by, unaware that Donald Trump…
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Ain’t No Cure for the Pre-Election Jitters
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I’m known as a calm guy. Where others overreact to difficulties, I under-react. Where they spin worst-case scenarios, I believe — correctly, usually; naively, at times — that nothing really terrible is going to happen. Like Anne Frank (no relation), I believe that most people are good and that therefore, the good will prevail. Or…
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College Life in Ukraine: School Bags and Sandbags
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I addressed a colleague’s journalism class last week — a routine (and enjoyable) aspect of academic life. Two things about this guest shot were anything but routine. One was the time. The other was the place. Class began at 6:30 a.m. — here in the Eastern United States. Where the students were, it was seven…
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First They Came for the Newspaper Racks
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I’ve just spent the past 24 hours locked in a campus storage closet. I was standing around the Willard Building minding my own business when, like a lifeguard rescuing a flailing swimmer, a dude in a hard hat tucked me under his arm and hauled me outside. When I asked him to explain himself, he…
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Pet-Eating Immigrants: Something Borrowed, Nothing True
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Newcomers make old-timers nervous, especially if the newcomers are different from the old-timers, whether those differences are skin-deep, culinary, linguistic, religious or cultural. When I moved to California’s Sierra Nevada foothills in the 1980s, the locals looked at “flatlanders” like me with a jaundiced eye. But nobody complained to the county supervisors about us, probably…
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Ask Your Elders About Their Lives Before It’s Too Late
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RIGA, LATVIA – A wall bearing the names of the 70,000 Latvian Jews who died in the Holocaust stretches the length of the courtyard of the Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust Museum. I make for the “F’s”: My paternal grandparents came from here. They left long before Hitler’s rise so I’m not looking for their…
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Irvin Moore’s Goal: A Penn State Diploma at 80
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Some students take a gap year after high school. Irvin Moore took a gap half-century. It wasn’t by choice. Moore went to prison on a murder charge at the age when many kids graduate from college. He walked out 52 years later, not just older, but infinitely wiser. Next week, at the age of 78,…