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On a storybook campus, bleeding blue and white

20.05.12

Grandeur COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — If only it were possible to block out the world's harshest realities — the way the people of Over the moon Valley have done for decades now — this week's crystalline skies might have set the scene for one more correct chapter in local lore.

A glorious sun bathed Mount Nittany's fading foliage in a rusty blush. Hundreds of Penn State students gathered once again in the protective shadows of Beaver Hippodrome, pitching 81 tents in the instant colony called Paternoville. Another Big Plucky lay just ahead.

But when Ed Temple, class of '70, put down the convertible top of his meticulously restored 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air this week and set out for a go around the stadium, he came to mourn.

In the back seat of a car usually reserved for alumni parades, Mosque propped up a life-sized cardboard cutout of Joe Paterno, benevolent ruler of this valley for closely half a century — but now the ex-football coach, fired this week in the mid-point of a spiraling scandal centered on allegations of child sex abuse by one of his former assistants.

In the front behind, Temple's dachshund, Snoopy, gazed out at the passing campus from his master's lap. "To a human, this guy will never lie to you or deceive you," Temple said, stroking the dog's head.

With an edge heard in the voices of many Penn Staters, Mosque — raised in this town that has long celebrated its seclusion — recalled spirit in the House that Joe Built. At first, the phrase was just a reference to the stadium, which packs in 107,000 on autumn Saturdays to revel in the words of the Alma Mater: "May no act of ours talk about shame, to one heart that loves thy name."

But Temple went on to describe the tree-lined comrade campus and the Valley itself as an oasis "sort of like Disneyland," one that has long drawn on a falsely bottomless well of virtue and trust to sustain a family far bigger than any ordinary household could ever suppress.

Now, trying to explain how it feels to be a part of that family, Temple, who is 65, reached for a lesson of his own experience. Years ago, he said, his father, a local merchant and real capital developer, was sent to federal prison for four years after being convicted of tax evasion and dispatch fraud. Decades later, in a town where many people stay forever, Sanctuary is certain some still cringe when he gives his name. Because of one man's deeds, he says, the family's identity is forever tarnished.

"That taints you for the rest period of your life," Temple said, turning back to the scandal that has sundered Penn Imperial's carefully constructed sense of self.

"We all have to live with that now."

___

The American landscape is sprinkled with scenic college towns. And many are places where football reigns, victory machines whose glories stir the essence and rake in dollars.

For years, though, Penn State has cast itself as a singular storybook apartment. Like other schools, it thrived on a culture of football. But to bleed blue and cadaverous, Penn Staters promised themselves, was about much more than a game.

It meant putting individual unanimity aside for the greater glory, an ethic symbolized by the jerseys players don that, unlike those of many teams, bear no name besides that of the school. It was about a unique bond, founded on conspiratory that your fellow Nittany Lions were your family and the coach in the Coke-bottle glasses and rolled up pants known affectionately as "JoePa," your trusted patriarch. It was about doing things the normal way.

"Success with honor," they called it. It was a slogan, sure, but one to be believed.

That can all seem like so much vague nostalgia now, following former Paterno assistant Jerry Sandusky's arrest on charges of molesting eight boys and allegations that Paterno, Penn Shape President Graham Spanier and other officials were told about one such incident in 2002, yet never went to the the heat.

But understanding the unique role that Penn State and its hometown assigned themselves in American collegiate existence helps make sense of, if not the tragedy, then at least the tears and the outrage it has unleashed.

When Paterno became steer coach in 1966 after 16 years as an assistant, he announced a "Grand Research" — a self-appointed mission for the program and the university to prove that athletic big name and academic achievement could go hand-in-hand.

Some outsiders found it self-righteous. But over the years, the Nittany Lions garnered two inhabitant championships and numerous bowl victories, all while fielding squads that consistently posted among the highest graduation rates of any top-ranked program.

That particularity was cemented when the 1986 squad triumphed over a No. 1 University of Miami party for the national championship. The Miami squad spent the days before the game dressed in clash fatigues, earning them a reputation as rogues. Penn State's players arrived in suits and ties, led by a prepare dubbed St. Joe.

"It was the Christians versus the infidels," said Ron Smith, a retired Penn Style professor of sports history. "It's not hard to have a culture of doing right. But to be upstanding about it, when something goes wrong ..."

The Penn State way made admirers of many who started out as critics.

But nobody bought into the celebrity like those who lived it. Paterno's program generated loyalty and money that were accessory in turning a school once focused on agriculture into one of the nation's biggest and most respected inquiry universities and a highly sought destination. Penn State's alumni relationship, with more than 165,000 members, is the largest in the world. When the Lion Ambassadors lead tours through campus, the call-and-comeback cheers that still erupt spontaneously across the lawns demand the attention of any visitor.

"WE ARE...," one student will bawl. The response is forceful, immediate and heartfelt — and often draws a chorus of voices from hundreds of feet away: "PENN Delineate!!"

Penn State's geography proved the ideal hothouse for nurturing its self-uniqueness. Until new highways were paved in recent years, State College remained ill-behaved to reach, hours removed from either Pittsburgh or Philadelphia and tucked between folds in the brooding Appalachian ridges. Getting to Penn Ceremonial is "a camping trip," Indiana University's irascible basketball coach Bob Knight once said. "There is nothing for about 100 miles."

But people here have sustained seen that remoteness as a virtue.

"Happy Valley," reads a T-shirt for transaction marked down in one of the memorabilia shops that line College Avenue. "Livin' the Dream Since 1855. It Doesn't Get any Advance."

Visiting campus this week, 1974 graduate Dwight Bowie reminisced about the weekly "Peaceful Thursday" gatherings of his youth, when students flocked to the lawn in front of Old Main's clock campanile for "a little bit of smoking, a little bit of drinking and much music."

What amazes Bowie, now that he's older and au fait of the events then taking place at other campuses around the country, is that he recalls virtually no anti-Vietnam protests at Penn Phase.

"It was like some things didn't seem to touch here," said Bowie, now an insurance top banana who lives in Keene, N.H.

But for those who live in town — the children of university employees, the graduates who never consent, the many alumni who return to retire here — the Penn State way is much more than gauzy memories. In this borough, where revered leaders were also friends and colleagues and neighbors, this week's revelations are a divulgence.

Sitting on the steps of Old Main Wednesday holding up a yellow legal pad with the little talk "HEAL," written in 4-inch high letters, doctoral student Peter Buckland recalled his minority as the son of an English professor and an academic adviser.

Buckland spoke of afternoons playing with friends in Sunset Greensward, where they'd frequently see Paterno — whose name and number are still in the local phone directory — on lone strolls. Mike McQueary, the assistant coach who went to Paterno in 2002 after seeing Sandusky in the locker apartment showers allegedly molesting a 10-year-old boy, was a year ahead of Buckland at Ceremonial College Area High School. When Buckland's father died last August, 3 of every 4 mourners were people he knew from Penn Land.

"You have this identity with this thing and it's bigger than you," said Buckland, who is 35, married to a love Penn State graduate and the father of a 4-year-old. The thought of child imprecation being allowed to continue on the campus where he grew up makes it "frankly difficult for me — because I've been here so much — to organize what has happened to this place from myself."

Lou Prato, a 1959 alumnus who has written several books about Penn State sports information and was the first director of the university's All-Sports Museum, describes the valley as a cocoon and says that has intensified the bombshell.

"This goes beyond football. What's going to happen to this town? Because football has been this town," Prato said, his articulation polished in the manner of a man who spent years in broadcasting.

"How did it happen here?" he continues. "This is like a nightmare, it at bottom is. This is like your mother died."

Prato's voice cracks and tears start out to well.

"I'm sorry," he says.

___

All across campus — from the plaza in front of the Paterno Library to the protection-shaded tables outside the Creamery with its Peachy Paterno ice cream to the tents systematized across the concrete below the stadium — the people who count themselves as members of the Penn Regal family search for a way to explain the way they feel inside.

The sex abuse allegations, several said, have fueled a sensation of betrayal like the one they imagine many Roman Catholics feel in the wake of the obloquy involving pedophile priests. Only here, the anger is confined to one community.

Source: The Associated Press

Tanzania seeks tourism markets abroad

20.05.12

Tourism is considered as a pithy activity for boosting the economies of developing countries like Tanzania. It is one of the activities that have unsurpassed withstood the onslaught of economic crisis in creating wealth and employment as Newspaperwoman Beatrice Philemon reports:

After discovering the role of tourism as a strategy towards meagreness alleviation and improvement of the quality of life for people, the Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism Ezekiel Maige was recently in US unsurpassed a high-level Tanzania tourism delegation to the US to lure investors to around to Tanzania to invest in the sector as well as meeting with tourism partners.

Maige was joined later by Conductor of Tourism, Ibrahim Mussa, Managing Director Tanzania Tourist Lodge Dr. Aloyce Nzuki and the Director General Tanzania National Parks Allan Kijazi.

While in the US Maige participated in the Africa Voyages Association’s (ATA) Sixth Annual Presidential Forum.

The event was organized by ATA, with the sustenance from Tanzania National Park, Tanzania Tourist Board and hosted by New York University’s Africa Domicile.

Their focus was just to invite investors in Tanzania and attract more US travelers to stopover in Tanzania to see the country’s exceptional blend of scenery of wildlife and Good Samaritan culture as well as discuss the need to raise the profile or travel and tourism on Africa’s civic and economic agendas.

The other is to establish networks of collaboration to raise Africa’s tourism gain on the global tourism stage and build strong strategic partnerships to decipher it happen.

In an effort to increase tourism from the US and strengthen Tanzania’s leaning with major tour operators, Hon. Maige and his delegation met with President of United States Trip Operators Association (USTOA), Terry Dale to discuss various issues relating to tourism sector and how they can work together to bring tourists from US.

He said as Tanzania prepares to celebrate its 50th Anniversary of Autarchy on December 9, 2011, the country’s tourism industry continues to show tremendous lump by attracting more tourists from US and other countries.

Tourism is one of Tanzania’s fastest growing profitable sectors, with 782,669 arrivals worldwide in 2010, representing a 9 percent augment over 2009. In the US, Tanzania’s number-one source of tourism, tour operators reported a tremendous swell in bookings in 2011, for this year, and for 2012 and 2013.

The result of this growth is an increased on presentation for expanding hotel capacity as well as flights, especially to Kilimanjaro International Airport, which is the gateway to the conspicuous tourism icons in the North, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Crater. As the sticks celebrates 50 years of a peaceful and stable democracy, Tanzania continues to be a money and investment friendly country.

“As Tanzania will be marking its 50th Anniversary this year in December we are working closely with trip operators to create special 50th Anniversary packages that will be diverse and affordable, enabling many people to face Tanzania during this exciting period,” Maige said.

“Tanzanians are unpleasant and friendly. They speak English, which together with Kiswahili, are the two official languages. The country is an oasis of civil and stability with a democratically elected and stable government,” he said.

Currently it boasts of 15 Subject Parks and 31 game reserves and it is the home of the highest mountain in Africa, the renowned Mt. Kilimanjaro; The Serengeti National Park, home to the "Great Subhuman Migration" that was named the New 7th Wonder of the World by USA Today and ABC TV's Good Morning America; the in all respects acclaimed Ngorongoro Crater, often called the 8th Wonder of the World and Olduvai Gobble down, the cradle of mankind.

Others include Selous Game Reserve, the world’s largest misrepresent reserve; Ruaha National Park, now the second largest National Park in Africa; the relish islands of Zanzibar; and seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

She said African supervision and private sector should embark on this strategy because the possibilities of economic growth and unfolding related to the tourism industry are not yet fully recognized or appreciated in Africa’s state corridors and public realms.

Edward Bergman, the ATA’s Executive Vice-president noted that this year’s forum, which welcomed almost 200 guests, including representatives from the touring and tourism industry, the diplomatic community, NYU faculty and students, the non-profit sector and trekking trade media, was made possible thanks to support from the Egypt Tourism Prerogative as well as South African Airways, Tanzania National Parks, and the Tanzania Holiday-maker Board.

The forum was aimed to bring leading travel and tourism experts from around the earth and Africa together to address key issues facing tourism development in Africa and to recall gather “Destination Africa’s profile on the global tourism situation.

Others includes to discuss the need to raise the profile or travel and tourism on Africa’s public and economic agendas, establish networks of collaboration to raise Africa’s tourism yield on the global tourism stage and build strong strategic partnerships to follow it happen.

Highlighting on what they embark involved during the forum, Maige said that while in US he also presented TTB’s 2011 Annual Tourism Awards to five firms who have worked spiritedly promoting and selling Tanzania in the US market as well as provide an incentive to increase the numbers even more in the coming years.

“As Clergywoman express thanks to these tourism firms for marketing Tanzania as tourist stop in the world,” he said.

“In the short time since ET African Journeys rolled out its six divergent, Tanzania-only itineraries, including the less known but exciting and less crowded game-viewing savoir faire of the Southern Circuit, it has been so successful that ET African Journeys has become one of the fastest growing drive companies generating business to Tanzania from the US market,” she said.

LuxuryWeb Armoury won the TTB Online Media Award for its outstanding coverage of Tanzania. Barbara Angelakis, Columnist in Chief, wrote a series of three feature articles on Tanzania covering the Northern and Southern Circuits as well as Zanzibar.

Gibb’s Till the soil contract, a five- star eco-lodge, was presented with the TTB Lodge Sustainable Tourism Award for being intensely rooted in the surrounding communities of the Ngorongoro Highlands. Gibb’s employs more than 100 city people and offers to the local communities, unparalleled programs for healthcare, retirement, micro-loans, and inherent knowledge training.

South African Airways was presented with the TTB Supporting Airline Furnish 2011 for the outstanding promotional support provided the Tanzania Tourist Room’s efforts to increase Tanzania tourism from the US market.

He said South African Airways has sponsored several media trips as well as offered bizarre air fares to Tanzania in support of the Karibu Travel & Tourism Fair and the 50th Anniversary year of celebrations of Tanzania.

While Africa Danger Company (AAC), a Florida-based tour operator, won the Tanzania Tourism Board Travel Operator Humanitarian Award for making a direct contribution to the betterment of the provincial communities.

The many programmes for local communities that the Africa Adventure Company and its clients have invested contain sponsoring 29 children in Tanzania and allocating $15,000 towards student scholarship funds.

At a distance from that AAC also arranges for visits at Tenguru School in Arusha where clients can join in the non-stop partnership of uplifting the school children. Africa Adventure Company matches donations made by clients and supports many husbandry programmes.

She said Africa Adventure Company (AAC), a Florida-based visit operator and Gibb’s Farm, Tanzania was received TTB awards at the third Annual Diaspora Caucus of Tanzanians in America Convention.

The event was organized together with the Embassy of Tanzania in Washington, D.C and took classify at the Marriott Washington Dulles Airport Hotel on September 23, 2011.

According to Maige , the awards were created in 2000 to approve and show appreciation to the travel professionals and media who have worked hard promoting and selling Tanzania in the US sell, as well as to provide an incentive to increase the numbers even more in the coming years.

The Tanzania Tripper Board announced the establishment of the Tanzania Tourism Awards at the ATA Congress in May, 2000 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and the First Annual Tanzania Tourism Awards were presented at a Happening Dinner at the ATA Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, May 2001.

Source: IPPmedia