Posts filed under ‘Penn State traditions’
The Blue Band Steals the Show
I left Saturday’s football game in the middle of the second quarter, about which I only felt a little guilty at the time. I’m no fair-weather fan—I stayed ’til the bitter, water-logged end against Iowa a few weeks back—but with a restless almost-5-year-old on my lap and a blowout in the cards, I didn’t have too much trouble justifying it to myself this past week. What’d I miss? A whole bunch of points (knew that was coming) and, apparently, one of the best Blue Band halftime performances anyone can remember.
Twitter and the blogosphere were buzzing about it this morning, so I went to YouTube to check it out. Tributes to Batman, Rocky, Back to the Future, and, yes, Star “Roars”? I was bummed to have missed it—and won’t even think of telling my son that he missed anything having to do with Batman and Star Wars, two of his life’s current obsessions—but I’m happy for the band members, who’ve already been forced out of a game or two this season due to the soggy field.
If you weren’t there—or even if you were—enjoy.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Strolling Campus with the Lion Ambassadors—At Night
Students did a great skit on the way upperclassmen treated freshmen in Penn State's early days. Click to enlarge.
It’s one thing to go on a campus tour with the Lion Ambassadors, those enthusiastic, backwards-walking, history-spewing students. But going on one of their Lantern Tours turns out to be a whole other experience altogether.
The Lion Ambassadors—the student corps of the Alumni Association—offered their annual Lantern Tours last night. Having never actually gone on a Lantern Tour myself, I figured it was about time. So I went. Twice, in fact. (More on that later.)
Students reenacted the stresses of dating in the days of chaperones and curfews.
A Lantern Tour turns out to be a lot like a typical Lion Ambassador tour, only (a) in the dark and (b) with costumed characters. Basically two Lion Ambassadors take you on a tour of central campus, and get interrupted every 25 yards or so by other Lion Ambassadors who jump out from behind a tree and enact an impromptu skit.
I sort of knew that there would be characters; I just didn’t realize how many. I figured we’d see George Atherton, maybe, and Old Coaly, possibly Fred Lewis Pattee, and maybe Joe Paterno. Ha! Shows what I know. We saw all of those, plus George Atherton’s widow, Milton Eisenhower, Heinz Warneke, Sue Paterno, some THON dancers, some fraternity guys, an ROTC cadet, members of the old College Band … you get the idea.
Alexander Middleton portrayed Henry Varnum Poor, creator of the Old Main Frescoes.
And the amount of Penn State history imparted in that 45-minute stroll was astounding. We learned about everything from Pattee composing the Alma Mater to the VW-in-the-pond incident in the 1960s, and plenty of stuff in between.
(One stop was outside the post office in McAllister Building, where Jimmy Gibbons, playing the role of Milton Eisenhower, handed out cookies to go with a story about how Penn State got its own post office. You can read more about that story here and decide for yourself if it’s truth or folklore.)
In any case, there was so much going on throughout the tour that it was a little hard to get it all. Which was why I decided to go on the tour a second time—this time in a steady rain—just to catch some details (and photos) I had missed the first time through.
Mike Lampariello was great as Charles Schwab.
It seemed like the Ambassadors were even better the second time around. By then, they had done the skits so many times in the evening that they were really loose and having fun with it. On the Pattee Mall, Joe Caruano, playing the role of a hard-nosed Blue Band director, derided Nick Baccash for adding “glimmer” to his uniform, and Baccash responded with perfect deadpan, “Sir, with all due respect, it’s shimmer, and it makes me play better.”
Perhaps the best actors of the night were T.J. Keefe and Mike Lampariello, portraying rival tycoons Andrew Carnegie and Charles Schwab, shouting at each other on Pollock Road:
“My mother was Scottish!”
“Yeah, well I was the president of Bethlehem Steel!”
“You make me SICK!”
Even our tour guides cracked up at how much energy they seemed to put into their rivalry.
Sara Jones, the Alumni Association’s director of student involvement and the adviser to the Lion Ambassadors, says this year’s Lantern Tours attracted 650 people. A fun evening.
Tina Hay, editor
‘Twas the Night Before Iowa…
…and all was pretty calm at Beaver Stadium tonight. No rain—yet. And while the stadium was lit up like it will be at this time tomorrow night, it was a little empty, as were the parking lots. This is a view from the south end zone/club seats area near Gate B. (Click to see a larger version.)
Around the corner from that, near the student entrance, Paternoville was all lit up, but pretty quiet. Some students were just lounging on their sleeping bags inside their tents; others were standing around talking.
I heard a few Penn State students talking to two Iowa fans who had happened by; the Penn State students were advising the Iowa fans to be careful about where to go downtown and how much to flaunt their Iowa status. “Not everyone will be as nice about it as we’re being,” the one Penn State student cautioned.
I asked a student who was just hanging out in his tent why he wasn’t at the pep rally over at Rec Hall, and he said, “I never go to the pep rally. This [meaning Paternoville] is like a week-long pep rally.”
How long had he been camped here? “Since 5:30 Monday morning.”
Tina Hay, editor
Nittany Lion Shrine: Ready for Its Closeup
Like a lot of Penn Staters, I’ve got a bit of an attachment to the Nittany Lion Shrine. What can I say? My wedding photos were taken there.
So of course I made it a point to stop by this week as the shrine underwent digital 3D scanning, which will enable it to be rebuilt or repaired in the event of severe damage.
It turns out that the guys doing the scan, Greg Robinson and Kyle Herr of Survice Metrology, were just as excited. “We don’t usually get to be outside like this,” Robinson said. It turns out that while the stuff on Survice’s website highlights the really cool stuff, such as scanning a priceless Sphinx at the Metropolitan Museum of Art so that it’s preserved for posterity, a lot of the job is pretty routine. Satellite dishes. Hydroelectric plants.
And they weren’t inflexible on the “off-limits” thing, either. When a group that had come all the way from Atlanta appeared, they moved the equipment out of the way so the travelers could get the photo they came for.
The process itself, honestly, wasn’t all that compelling to watch. Robinson and Herr marked the statue with some reference points that looked as if they were pounded into the limestone, but turned out to be simply attached with blue painters’ tape. That’s a trick they picked up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“They tested the tape, and they let us use it on the 4,500-year old Sphinx,” Robinson said, smiling. “So if it’s safe for that, it’s safe for this Nittany Lion.”
They had brought an automatic scanner, but that wasn’t working. So Herr (right) worked over the statue by hand, and as he did so, you could watch the Nittany Lion appear on a computer monitor. Late Tuesday afternoon, only the paws were visible. (You can see for yourself in the photo below. All of these shots, by the way, were taken by our editor, Tina Hay ’83.) By Wednesday morning, however, it was possible to see almost the whole lion, minus a few holes.
Later Wednesday, to supplement the scanning, the guys bathed the shrine in white light, which gives them additional data for the scan. You can get a sense of what that looks like with Tina’s picture above, which shows the stripes.
It’s nice to know that in case of emergency, the Nittany Lion Shrine could be rebuilt. But there are other long-term plans, too–including possibly animating the shrine and making it move. WPSU producer Kristian Berg, who was onsite with a camera crew, is hoping to find a way to make that happen.
I’m rooting for that, too.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
Nittany Lion Shrine ‘Closing’ for Two Days
If you need to get a photo of yourself or your loved ones at the Nittany Lion Shrine, better get it done before next Tuesday, Sept. 22. Access to the shrine will be closed—or, as Penn State Live puts it, the shrine will “be unable to receive guests” for two days as it is digitally scanned.
The scan will result in a digital replica of the lion, and if it’s ever damaged, it can be rebuilt. The current plan in case of damage is to use a mold that was created in 1995 (when the shrine was closed for six weeks), but cracks and time have limited that mold’s usefulness. This scan should be useful for decades.
The process is the same one that’s been used on famous landmarks such as the Sphinx and Michelangelo’s David. So the Nittany Lion Shrine is going to be among some pretty elite company!
Penn State says the work should be done by Thursday, when football fans begin coming to campus. We’ll be at the shrine to monitor progress next week, and you can look for updates on the blog and in the November/December issue of The Penn Stater.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
Behind the Scenes at Beaver Stadium
Everyone at the Alumni Association pitches in during Traditional Reunion Weekend, and Thursday afternoon I helped guide the classes of 1959 and 1964 on a tour of Beaver Stadium. I’ve covered or attended a lot of games there over the years, but this provided a different perspective.
Alums got a chance to walk out on the field, too. Many had their pictures taken under the goalpost with a Standup Joepa.
My group’s first stop was the locker room—usually forbidden territory for reporters—where long-time equipment manager Brad “Spider” Caldwell and coordinator of practice facilities Kirk Diehl gave us a feel for life behind the scenes.
The team stays at Toftrees resort on Friday night, but doesn’t go straight to the stadium on Saturday. Instead, buses go right past the stadium en route to Lasch Building, where the players get 30 minutes to change into their uniforms. Then they re-board the buses for the traditional drive to Beaver Stadium.
That means Spider, Kirk, and the student managers, having already prepped the Beaver Stadium locker room, have to haul the players’ garment bags of street clothes to the stadium.
“You may ask yourself, ‘Why do they do that? That sounds crazy,’” Kirk said. He paused, then delivered the punch line. “It’s Coach Paterno.”
Added Spider, “He likes tradition.”
This, of course, surprised no one. Several people wondered whether Spider and Kirk had explained how the process could be streamlined by going directly to the stadium. One gentleman asked, “You’ve voiced your opinion?”
Spider grinned. “Our opinion has no merit.”
Other fun facts from the locker room:
—A player running out of the tunnel is wearing between 18 and 22 pounds of equipment, which costs about $1,000.
—The busiest day of the week for the managers is Thursday. That’s helmet day. They clean off the “graffiti” left by other helmets (specifically, by the facemasks), clean the facemasks with steel wool and make sure no metal is showing, and change the stripes (they’re stickers) as needed.
Alums got up close and personal with the equipment in the Penn State locker room. Some of the shoes are gigantic.
—Shoes are also time-consuming. “It’s a Penn State tradition to paint them black,” Spider noted, adding that a “big, black Sharpie” is the best tool to do so. In the past, the shoes have had white accent markings that needed to be covered. “The white’s unacceptable to Coach Paterno,” he said. Kirk chimed in: “You guys see a pattern here?”
But this time, the managers prevailed. Kirk, who is also the athletic department’s liaison to Nike, explained the situation to the company. The new shoe model has gray markings. Paterno is cool with that.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
Your Helpful Alumni Association Staff is Ready to Greet You….
Uh, Bob, can you get some touch-up paint on that goalpost before Thursday?
This week is a big deal around the Alumni Association. No, not because it’s Magazine Deadline Week (which, alas, it is), but because it’s time for Traditional Reunion Weekend.
Starting Thursday, we’ll be welcoming back 800-plus grads from 1959 and assorted other years for four days of reunion activities. It’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck thing for Association staff; we all help in some way, whether it’s staffing the registration tables or coordinating library tours or helping load the buses to Saturday’s All-Class Luncheon.
Among the most popular of the activities are the tours of Beaver Stadium, and this morning a bunch of staff headed up to the stadium for a run-through and a briefing. Apparently Bob Barlock from our Membership unit must have been one of them, as you can see here from the picture he immediately posted on his Facebook page.
Tina Hay, editor
Two Steps Back
Hmmm…. This health blog from the LA Times mentions a study that just might explain why the Lion Ambassadors walk backwards.
—Chas Brua, contributing editor
Campus Tours: Not Just for Incoming Students
Has anyone ever seen a Lion Ambassador walk forward?
We had the coolest staff meeting ever today. No sitting in a conference room for us, the employees of the Penn State Alumni Association. Instead, we divided into four groups for campus tours, led by the Lion Ambassadors. (Yes, they walked backward the entire time.)
I spent four years on campus as a student, and later I covered the university and its sports teams for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. So while I’m always up for a walk around campus (especially in the spring, when it’s green and gorgeous), I wasn’t expecting to learn a ton.
Turns out that wasn’t the case. I heard some nuggets I’d forgotten, such as how the ghost of Frances Atherton lurks in the upstairs window of Old Botany, the oldest academic building on campus, which overlooks the tomb of her husband George, Penn State’s president from 1882-1906. Other stories were brand new to me:
We wandered through the HUB, which prompted a question about student clubs.
—Chambers Building, home to the College of Education, was built to resemble a 1970s-style high school. That’s so the student teachers would get used to their future environment.
—There are some 700 student clubs at Penn State, including one for people named Bob.
—Milton Eisenhower, Penn State’s president in the 1950s, loved his mother’s cookies and eagerly looked forward to care packages. So he talked with his brother Dwight—who, as president of the entire United States, had a little pull—and asked if Penn State could have its own zip code. Dwight obliged, and that’s why University Park’s zip code is 16802 and there’s a post office in McAllister Building.
Fact or fiction? A little of both? I have no idea. But I do know that such stories are part of what makes Penn State’s main campus such a special place.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
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