Under the baobab: Holidays arrive in Happy Valley with enhanced sense of joy, sadness

Rain has drops, Sun has shine, Moon has beams, That make you mine,

Rivers have banks, Sands for shores, Hearts have heartbeats, That make me yours

…Winter has Spring, Stockings feet, Pepper has mint, To make it sweet

…All and all, This much is true, you have me, And I have you. – Nikki Giovanni

The holidays have come to Happy Valley with an enhanced sense of joy and sadness. Penn State is hosting the first-ever 12 team College Football Playoff. Our Nittany Lions are playing SMU at Beaver Stadium. If we win, we go on to play Boise State in the quarterfinals in the Fiesta Bowl. Also, this weekend, our No. 2 ranked women’s volleyball is hosting a sweet 16 NCAA regional tournament at Rec Hall for the first time since 2017. Our men’s basketball team upset the No. 8 ranked Purdue Boilermakers at Bryce Jordan Center, while our wrestling team dynasty keeps rolling on. Yet there is sadness, as we note the passing of longtime Lady Lion Cager Clubber Theresa Harpster.

Ann Marie Stanley, the director of Penn State’s School of Music, celebrated the annual Mosaic Concert with a nearly full Eisenhower Auditorium, which “showcased the talented student ensembles and soloists of the Penn State School of Music.” In one of the evening’s highlights, Christopher Kiver conducted the Philharmonic Orchestra and the Combined Choirs in Haydn’s “The Creation.”

The School of Theatre’s staff, faculty and members of the community will present their second annual production of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” on Dec. 17-20. The Performing Arts School of Central Pennsylvania Nittany Ballet will present “The Nutcracker” at Eisenhower. Tempest Productions presents “The Velveteen Rabbit” through Dec. 15. And the State College Community Theatre presented ”And Then There Was One,” a spoof by Michael Druce.

Sadly our sister/friend, fellow activist, the “Princess of Black Poetry,” Nikki Giovanni, has joined the ancestors. She was 81. Her loss creates an unfillable void.

I first met our beloved Nikki during the volatile and transformative ‘60s. We were both treading waters in the quagmire of white supremacy, using Langston Hughes, James Baldwin and Carl Sandburg as guides. We studied under the direct tutelage of my mentor, activist/artist Oscar Brown Jr. and hers, Gwendolyn Brooks, the first Afro-American to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry. They taught us how to tell the story of our people using our own stories and words.

Oscar created and staged a musical, “Opportunity Please Kock,” using the Blackstone Ranger street gang as actors and their stories as text and lyrics. Gwen started a poetry workshop for young writers, which included some of the most prominent voices of our era. It set the groundwork for the Black Arts Movement.

Born into a poor working-class family, I was baptized into writing poetry in order to overcome a stuttering problem. Nikki found her voice trying to bridle but not break the tempestuous energy that flowed from family disruptions. As canaries in the mine, we both tried to light candles to help folks see the end of the tunnel. Ultimately, I channeled my efforts into the civil rights movement and the theater. Nikki kept true to our calling as poets. She became the guru of our pre-Boomer generation. Interestingly enough, we both wound up teaching at universities, me at PSU and Nikki at Virginia Tech. She was one of the first people to notice the menacing of Seung-Hui Cho, one of her former students, who murdered 32 people at Virginia Tech. She tried to warn us. We will miss her love and wisdom.

I don’t want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak.

I will never miss you because of what we do but what we are together – Nikki Giovanni