Russell Frank
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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,…
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A Refugee Builds a New Life in State College, but Misses Her Old Life in Ukraine
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What does it mean to have a normal life? To Oleksandra Pyrozhok, it means that she and her husband Stanislav are together, have jobs and have their own apartment. To appreciate what’s extranormal about the Pyrozhoks’ “normal life,” let’s go back to February 2022. The Pyrozhoks were living in Chernivtsi, a lovely city in southwestern…
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No Decision Yet on Subu Vedam’s Plea for a New Trial
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BELLEFONTE – Having spent 42 of his 62 years in prison, Subu Vedam is probably used to waiting. After remotely watching a two-hour hearing of his petition for a new trial on Monday morning, he’s going to have to wait a little longer. Centre County President Judge Jonathan Grine listened to a prosecutor argue that…
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After 42 Years, Another Day in Court for Subu Vedam
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Maybe you’ve seen the yellow yard signs around town: “WE’RE FOR INTEGRITY/ #FairTrialFor Subu.” Subu is Subramanyam Vedam, four decades into a life sentence for the murder of his boyhood friend Thomas Kinser in 1980 – a crime Subu says he did not commit. Next Monday, Subu’s lawyers will try to convince Judge Jonathan Grine…
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Bivens in the Big Leagues: It Just Gets Better
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Wait a second, you may be thinking. Didn’t you write about Spencer Bivens in your last column? I did, but the story of the State College kid who arrived in the Major Leagues after years of wandering in the baseball wilderness keeps getting better. I’ll let San Francisco Giants play-by-play man Dave Fleming summarize Spencer’s…
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‘It’s About Not Giving Up.’ State College Area’s Spencer Bivens Gets Call to the Bigs
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Spencer Bivens has played baseball for the Rogers State Hillcats, the Lions de Savigny de-sur-Orge, the Steel City Slammin’ Sammies, the Washington Wild Things, the Lexington Legends, the West Virginia Power, the Gastonia Honey Hunters, the Sacramento River Cats, the Eugene Emeralds, the Richmond Flying Squirrels and the Scottsdale Scorpions. Perhaps you haven’t heard of…
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Yes Mow June
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Now that we’re all mowing our lawns again, I thought I’d dig up some fun and un-fun facts about the green carpets beneath our feet. Fun Fact No. 1: We Americans grow a lot of grass. In fact, we devote more acreage to growing grass than we do to growing corn or wheat. Fun Fact…