This Week’s Connect Happy Valley eLetter
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Why People Keep Coming Back to Happy Valley
Some people leave Happy Valley to chase new opportunities. They build careers, raise families, and discover new places along the way. Then something unexpected happens. They realize the place they left behind still feels like home.
We recently sat down with two guests on the Connect Happy Valley podcast whose stories capture that feeling in different ways. Katie Colby and Karen Shelley each found their way back to Happy Valley for different reasons. One came back because she wanted to make a difference in her community. The other returned because she wanted the best possible place to build a life with her family.
Downtown State College Earns a Ten-Year Vote of Confidence
Borough Council reauthorizes the Downtown State College Improvement District through 2036, preserving a long-term commitment to the place where town, gown, residents, businesses and visitors come together.
This Week in Happy Valley: Fair Season and Fall is On the Horizon
With August, it’s fair season in Happy Valley, starting with the Bellefonte Arts & Crafts Fair on Friday and Saturday and Ag Progress Days opening next week.
It is also one of the last quieter stretches before Penn State students return and the fall semester gets underway. Enjoy the slower pace while it lasts, and look forward to the change of pace that comes with a new school year.
Rise Above Ability Recap
With a sold-out crowd of 450 people gathered under one roof to support Rise Above: Friends of Penn State Adaptive Athletics, the evening felt less like a fundraiser and more like a wedding, a celebration of separate lives coming together as one family and a shared future beginning.
A Full Moon and Plenty to Do in Happy Valley
July ends with a full moon, and August begins with a full calendar in Happy Valley.
The State Games of America continue throughout the weekend, bringing athletes and competitions to venues across Centre County.
Here are some of the events happening around Happy Valley over the coming week.
The Meeting of the Minds
Happiness, the old phrase goes, is a meeting of the minds.
I have spent a good while now trying to figure out what that actually means. Not as poetry. As a working proposition. And I think I have it. A meeting of the minds is not agreement. It is alignment. The convergence of understanding, values, intentions, and action between two people, or two hundred, sufficient that they understand one another, trust one another, and move toward shared purpose. When that alignment holds, something happens that looks, from the inside, like flourishing. Not pleasure. Not optimization. Flourishing. The condition in which a person’s capacities are exercised, their relationships are real, their work has meaning, their community holds them, and their life is, on balance, their own.
The People Who Quietly Hold Happy Valley Together
One of the best parts of hosting Connect HappyValley AM with Chris Buchignani is that we get something increasingly rare.
We get an hour.
That gives us time to listen without rushing and to hear stories that could never fit into a social media post or a two-minute television segment. We begin to understand not only what someone does, but why they keep doing it.
Over three recent mornings, we spent that hour with Erica Quinn, Don O’Connell and Chuck Gambone.
It’s a Good Day at Good Day Cafe
At Good Day Cafe, the staff clear your table for you. Not because you asked, but because manager Laura Snyder decided it makes customers feel welcomed. “We also have our staff come out and take care of tables. We put that expectation to clean up on us, not our customers, which I think makes it a little more welcoming,” she says. It is a small thing, and it tells you most of what you need to know about the place.
