Under the baobab: Election, film festival & more bring action to Happy Valley
Hooray, hooray, it’s a brand-new day.
Congrats to all the newly elected officials in Happy Valley. Ezra Nanes was elected as State College’s new mayor. Gopal Balachandran, assistant professor of clinical law at Penn State; Divine Lipscomb, Penn State adult student, and founder of Corrective Gentleman, alternatives to incarceration program, and assistant professor Richard Biever, director of Fuse Productions and Singing Onstage, have been elected to the borough council. These four progressive Democrats will be serving in their first elective office. Ezra will be the first Jewish mayor of the borough. Gopal is the first Indian-American and Divine is the first African American to be elected to the borough council.
The four top vote-getters to the State College Area school board were Deborah Anderson, Peter Buck, Carline Crevecoeur and Jackie Huff, all on the Democratic line. Anderson and Buck were also on the Republican ticket. Crevecoeur will be the first Black/Haitian woman to serve on the school board.
There were other political contests of note. Lisa Strickland, Tierra D. Williams and Hilary Caldwell were elected as town supervisors in Ferguson Township, the first ever all-female board of supervisors. Tierra is the first ever African American Ferguson Township supervisor. Democrats Pamela Robb, Sultan Magruder and Betsy Whitman were elected as supervisors in Patton Township. Robb and Magruder are both people of color. The Win 4 Bellefonte ticket of Andrea Boyer, Jeff Steiner, Jack Bechdell II and Jon Guizar swept the Bellefonte school board election.
The national media has proclaimed Election Day to be a disaster for the Democratic Party, focusing on the predictable defeat of Terry McAuliffe by Trump-clone Glenn Youngkin for governor of Virginia. They ignore the fact that no candidate of the same party as a recently elected resident has won the governorship in Virginia or New Jersey since Ronald Reagan’s administration. They ignore Democrat Phil Murphy, who eked out a victory over his Republican rival in New Jersey.
Other indications of a sunrise over our Happy Valley home include the third annual Centre Film Festival organized by artistic director Pearl Gluck. The festival presented 80 films online and in person in three theaters around the region — the Rowland in Philipsburg, the Mishler in Altoona, and The State Theater in State College. The fest began by showing “Beans,” “Home from School,” and “Sisters,” native themed feature films highlighting Indigenous People’s Heritage Month. The fest presented the Chandler Living Legacy Award to Keegan-Michael Key and the Lifetime Achievement Award to legendary filmmaker Madeline Anderson. Anderson’s film, “Integration Report 1” (1960), shown by the festival, was the first documentary film directed by an African American woman in the USA. Key, well known for his award-winning comedy sketch show, “Key and Peale,” is a 1996 graduate of Penn State’s MFA program in theater.
Other returning Happy Valley residents include Josh Leonard, who brought his clever domestic comedy, “Fully Realized Humans” to the fest. Josh is best known as an actor and co-director of the 1999 cult classic “The Blair Witch Project.” PSU alum, Michael Craven, conducted a workshop on cinematography and discussed his work on “The Chair” shown on Netflix. 1987 SOT-BFA grad, Patrick Fabian from “Better Call Saul,” is featured in “Driver X” and did an acting workshop.
The School of Theatre opened Andrew Lippa’s adaptation “The Wild Party” directed by Alison Morooney at the Playhouse Theatre. Performances continue until Nov. 14. The “Love is Louder” rally hosted by the Penn State Gender Equity Center endorsed by the LGBTQ Community, the State College Borough Council, the Faculty Senate, and many student organizations attracted over 1,800 people protesting the appearance of homophobe Milo Yiannopoulos. Two hundred and fifty showed up to hear his’ “Pray the Gay Away” speech. Almost as many people were outside shouting, “that they are here and had no intention of going anywhere.”